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Ion cannon

S

Stiganator

Platinum Member
I always liked the use of it in the first C&C the most. I become more of a novelty in the later games. Thoughts?
 
My favorite variant of the Ion Cannon from the C&C series was the one in C&C 2 (a.k.a Tiberian Sun). The sound effect and the resulting crater (yes, a crater, one of the feature from the engine used back then, it allowed terrain deformation) made it the best looking, overall, and you couldn't built anything at the point of impact after the blast. The one from C&C 3 is just... I don't know, exaggerated I'd say, or just over-blown, like they wanted to do too much of a fireworks than an actual plausible effect. It's good eye-candy but I don't know... I preferred the previous ones (the IC from Tiberium Dawn was best in its CGI incarnation at the end of the campaign).
 
I like the C&C3 one the best by some distance. The original C&C one was actually quite useless. It was only good against obelisks and AGTs, and was too weak to destroy anything else of value. The TS one was more powerful and could destroy some larger structures, but still only affected four squares or something like that. The C&C3 one is more like the nukes in the previous games were.

I preferred the previous ones (the IC from Tiberium Dawn was best in its CGI incarnation at the end of the campaign).
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The Nod ending where you could decide what landmark to hit was brilliant. 🙂 You also got a cool alternate ending if you destroyed the temple with it in the final GDI mission, which showed it in action. The actual ingame one is barely enough to damage the temple about a third of the way though. 😛
 
Ion Cannons are weak, much better off getting a Plasma Cannon. At least if I remember my Wing Commander weapons correctly.
 
I also like the Ion Cannon used by the Rebels in many Star Wars games, but mostly in Empire at War during space battles. That cannon can disable any shields from the very first shot, and it fires three shots every time, so you're sure that it won't fail. It's so powerful that the only ship capable of sustaining two shots from that cannon is the Tyber Zann's flag ship in the expansion pack... but there's still that third shot that manages to deplete the shield entirely. The only problem with the Ion Cannon from EaW and FoC is that even though it disables the shields all the time it doesn't however disables the actual ship itself each time (it works mostly on small ships).
 
i rememeber playing C&C multiplayer over my 14400bps modem back in 96 or 97, i used to be so good with the ion cannon. there is like a pixel wide spot on the command center where if you fire an ion cannon exactly on it, the command center is destroyed but if you miss it by just a couple of pixels it remains with like 10% or 5% health.

but i likes the Nuclear Strike more...and the NOD Obelisk! man those were awesome! so much better than the puny Tesla Coil.
 
First interaction I had with them was Starcraft, where I had to blow one up in the Terran campaign. Never shot anything though 🙁
 
Originally posted by: ZzZGuy
Ahhh the Ion Frigate from HW2. They built the gun, then stuck some engines on it.
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Yes, the paper-mache ship. Currently playing through HW2 again and these die in no time. I miss those multi-ion cannon ships from HW1 that you could capture.
 
Originally posted by: JTsyo
Originally posted by: ZzZGuy
Ahhh the Ion Frigate from HW2. They built the gun, then stuck some engines on it.
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Yes, the paper-mache ship. Currently playing through HW2 again and these die in no time. I miss those multi-ion cannon ships from HW1 that you could capture.
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Hehe... I remember capturing so many of those with salvage ships in HW1... it was well worth it for later missions!
 
Originally posted by: Borealis7
i rememeber playing C&C multiplayer over my 14400bps modem back in 96 or 97, i used to be so good with the ion cannon. there is like a pixel wide spot on the command center where if you fire an ion cannon exactly on it, the command center is destroyed but if you miss it by just a couple of pixels it remains with like 10% or 5% health.

but i likes the Nuclear Strike more...and the NOD Obelisk! man those were awesome! so much better than the puny Tesla Coil.
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Was the command center that rader thing?
 
Nuclear Strike > Ion Cannon

In both CNC3 and CNC 95.

Superweapons were a lot more powerful in CNC3 in general. This was balanced by the fact that you knew where the launch site was and the amount of time left to activate.
 
Originally posted by: CP5670
No ion cannon in the Descent games. You might be thinking of the fusion cannon.
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Fusion Cannon + Mega Missile FTW!

Vulcan cannon was pretty sweet too, as were homing missiles. 😀
 
Originally posted by: Zenoth
The one from C&C 3 is just... I don't know, exaggerated I'd say, or just over-blown, like they wanted to do too much of a fireworks than an actual plausible effect. It's good eye-candy but I don't know... I preferred the previous ones (the IC from Tiberium Dawn was best in its CGI incarnation at the end of the campaign).
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Agreed. In terms of usefulness the C&C3 one blows the others away. It owns. But the visual effects are too flashy and don't seem "realistic". It would look far better if it were just a solid pillar of cleansing light turning everything to lava following an initial shock wave.
 
Originally posted by: dighn
Originally posted by: Zenoth
The one from C&C 3 is just... I don't know, exaggerated I'd say, or just over-blown, like they wanted to do too much of a fireworks than an actual plausible effect. It's good eye-candy but I don't know... I preferred the previous ones (the IC from Tiberium Dawn was best in its CGI incarnation at the end of the campaign).
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Agreed. In terms of usefulness the C&C3 one blows the others away. It owns. But the visual effects are too flashy and don't seem "realistic". It would look far better if it were just a solid pillar of cleansing light turning everything to lava following an initial shock wave.
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Thanks for agreeing, I'm not alone on the boat.

And, to add to this subject, the C&C 3 Ion Cannon doesn't leave a crater, and you can still build at the zone of impact/blast. With the sheer power of the cannon that the visual effects imply I'd think that it'd cause tremendous destruction, but, as I said, it's just fireworks more than anything else. In C&C 2, to repeat myself, it wasn't very eye-candy, but was very deadly (it was just a straight blast, coming very fast from the sky, of course, down to its target, leaving an electrical sound just before you could see the very small shock wave, and then ensued a crater where you couldn't build anything anymore, if the targeted structure was destroyed that is).

For C&C 3, to be honest, I'm not sure what I myself would have done as a visual effect. Perhaps something just simpler, maybe a straight beam of light, with a continuous energy/electric sound, leaving a relatively small shock wave on ground impact, and perhaps some dust going up in the air from the shacking ground around the beam, and then when the beam suddenly stops you'd see molten rocks (lava, I guess) and a nice heat/shimmer effect above the lava (of course the lava could be animated as well). Something more... plausible, would be better in my book.
 
Originally posted by: Borealis7
but i likes the Nuclear Strike more...and the NOD Obelisk! man those were awesome! so much better than the puny Tesla Coil.
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Come on, there's a difference of 50+ years there. That's like comparing WWII-era weaponry to modern weaponry. Obviously the Obelisk wins 😛

Although apparently tank technology really declined in that time... the soviets were smart enough to build only BIG tanks with TWO GUNS. GDI decided for some reason that one gun and medium armor was good enough for most of their tanks 😛
 
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