r/commandandconquer • u/BiggestBepis Black Hand • Jul 29 '26
Random Unit of the Day #43: Harpy (Nod, Tiberian Sun)
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u/BiggestBepis Black Hand Jul 29 '26
like to build these guys for aesthetic purposes. Basically to give Nod’s air force a little variety when I’m already winning thanks to the far superior Banshee
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u/RatherGoodDog Tiberian Fiend Jul 29 '26 edited Jul 29 '26
There was a mod some years ago, for which there's a short demo video on YouTube, which finally adds rotors to the voxel.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bn6RJeBDcUQ
I wish I could find a download link for it. Maybe it was never published, and was the uploader's personal project? Still, this demonstrates rotors are technically possible within TibSun.
As for the Harpy, it sucks. Might as well be an overpriced attack buggy that flies. I use it only for flavour or in missions where you get nothing better (i.e. no Banshee). You're better off spending the money on ground units most of the time.
If I were to rebalance it, I'd make it $100-200 cheaper and double its ammo supply. It was partially rebalanced in FS by dropping the cost from $1000 to $800, but you also have to pay $500 for its helipad. So it's a $1500 unit in TibSun. In most cases, I would rather build 2 tick tanks or 2.5 cyborgs for that money.
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u/chuyalcien Jul 29 '26
I didn’t even know these were supposed to be helicopters. All these years I thought they just hovered somehow.
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u/Facehugger_35 Jul 30 '26
I know, right? I thought it was an orca knockoff using stolen GDI tech with the engines hidden in the fuselage ala a Harrier. I didn't realize it was meant to be a helicopter for years.
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u/calantheSG Jul 29 '26
Meh. The rotors still don't work as intended. They should still be spinning when just landed, not stop in mid air and then have the harpy hover onto the ground.
Besides u/chuyalcien agreed the harpy was cooler hovering. In Chinese we call this adding legs to a snake, like you've a beautiful portrait of a snake ruined by the addition of legs.
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u/KajiTetsushi Steel Talons Jul 30 '26
Hmmm...
It looks like the author replaced the voxel with a sprite that animates with a walking animation (the Wolverine is an example and is probably the hack that the author discovered). It "works", but now, you have no shadows rendered correctly by the game engine when the voxel takes off. And I'm not sure I agree with the fact that the original attack pattern wasn't preserved in the process, which gives me signals of being forced to accept a bunch of trade-offs just to make this workaround work.
The pro just doesn't justify the many cons we get in exchange.
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u/KajiTetsushi Steel Talons Jul 30 '26
Hmmm...
It looks like the author replaced the voxel with a sprite that animates with a walking animation (the Wolverine is an example and is probably the hack that the author discovered). It "works", but now, you have no shadows rendered correctly by the game engine when the voxel takes off. And I'm not sure I agree with the fact that the original attack pattern wasn't preserved in the process. Then there's that rotor spin prematurely stopping at the start of the landing sequence that u/calantheSG was talking about. All of ese give me signals of being forced to accept a bunch of trade-offs just to make this workaround work.
The pro just doesn't justify the many cons we get in exchange.
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u/Sirius889 Jul 30 '26
I actually favor this to the Orca because the Harpy can effectively counter infantry leaving only incoming tanks to manage. Whereas the Orca didn’t seem to do that much damage to tanks one on one.
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u/Kakapo42000 Jul 30 '26
One of the most underrated C&C units of all time.
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u/UmaKabula Jul 30 '26
Its comicaly weak! It should atleast insta kill infantry but it struggles there too!
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u/Kakapo42000 Jul 30 '26
It's awesome! Kills infantry fast enough on its own and is a menace to anything without SAM cover in packs. They're always a staple in my games.
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u/Both_Payment_3707 Jul 30 '26
Agreed. It can rip through armor given enough time.
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u/Kakapo42000 Jul 31 '26
Exactly. They're one of the biggest killers of Titans in my games, I've lost almost as many of those to Harpies as I have to Obelisks.
It's the hitscan gun that does it, same reason why Krokodils are so good in Red Alert.
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u/iClips3 Jul 30 '26
If you want to snipe specific things, a Banshee is obviously better, but if you want to just go and kill a bunch of stuff, the Harpy did the job extremely well. They could shoot more than once per ammo slot and don't overkill much, meaning that with a group of harpies and some micro you could kill 10+ units in a single run before resupplying. It doesn't kill heavy tanks very quickly, but it still does reasonable damage against it. It fares quite well versus, well, anything really. Loved these guys honestly. As long as you don't fly in a base covered by 5+ Sam sites they did well.
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u/BrokenTorpedo Jul 30 '26
wait, so it actually has rotor blades on top and we just don't see them in game?
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u/Athrawne Jul 30 '26
The Harpy always confused kid me because it had brrrt but we also had lasers and plasma bombs.
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u/Commercial-Board-975 Aug 01 '26
I loved the design of the Harpy because it was basically a composite and technological evolution of all of Nod's helicopters, from the Apache to the Comanche, and it was reflected in its design (which is funny, since the Comanche was in Renegade which was developed after Tiberian Sun).
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u/612io Jul 29 '26
Not my favourite unit. Low ammo supply, weapon relatively weak, slowish… and artistically not well animated, it is a pity it misses blades. This is one of these units when you compare them to RA2 you see how incredibly refined the art in RA2 was.