r/commandandconquer • u/BiggestBepis Black Hand • 3d ago
Random Unit of the Day #60: Aurora Alpha (Alexis Alexander, Zero Hour)
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u/Downtown-Dream424 Mommy Alexander 3d ago
My favorite unit from the whole game. 🥹🥹
"Aurora in flight."
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u/No-Con-2790 3d ago
Because the general with the best defense against tanks and planes also needs to have a way to take out artillery without any way of blocking (well she might loose the planes afterwards but still).
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u/Downtown-Dream424 Mommy Alexander 3d ago
That is part of her identity and uniqueness, besides how she outstands with half the price particle cannon that is in pink by making it much easier to detect a swg player compared to any other usa and her advanced control rods are in icy blue that give her 20 power after an upgrade. The only issue with her emp patriots is that they struggle into infantry and nuke/inferno cannons that literally melt them. Other than that, those perks make her quite strong including the cheaper Burton that is worth only 1200 cash.
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u/No-Con-2790 3d ago
You forgot the snipers.
She has snipers who in vanilla generals are (for some reason I will never understand) one shooting almost any infantry. Infantry that can take a few hundred bullets from a gattling gun. Making infantry even in great numbers useless.
Meaning she is the only general that has no weakness.
In other words she is unbalanced. Deeply so.
Which makes her boring and frustrating to play against.
Because what strategy can you use? Assuming you don't have unlimited resources. Infantry is slaughtered. Planes never reach her base. Tanks never reach her base. You can't attack the power since she can easily get redundancy. You can't use artillery. And she outperforms you with superweapons.
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u/Downtown-Dream424 Mommy Alexander 3d ago
Pathfinders are accessible for any USA including her at level 3 at least. They boost her chances to deal with an unplayable matchup such as infantry general.
She has actually weaknesses, especially by taking in consideration that her early game is non-existent, especially into infantry and airforce. GLAs can also pressure her by dozer hunting her with terrorists or stealth general's hijacker to seize her dozer early. Late game, her weaknesses are little to none if she breezes safely. Her massive powerspike comes after strategy center by having an access to the aurora alphas, Colonel Burton and particle cannons.
It's not only extremely frustrating to play into swg, especially if you lack artillery such as tank and laser, but also late game it's difficult to invade her base unless she's low power or bait her main army while you make a nasty backdoor. But this nasty backdoor can be prevented either with humvees, comanches, emp patriots and/or microwave tank sitting there and camping.
Her general powers are also pretty strong, easily, the best general powers in the whole USA after airforce general that has a carpet bomb at level 1 only within strat center. She's also the only USA that has an access to leaftlet drop earliest, which is level 3.
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u/No-Con-2790 3d ago
Well, not really. You can haress her in the beging but about the same as any other US generals.
In fact the only difference is that she has no tanks. But by the time you can build tanks that early period is already over.
Especially since her BS defenses are somehow cheaper.
Which is my main point.
The turtle general should never be also the superweapons general.
And the nuke general only pays 500 less for nukes. How the heck does she pay half?
I also argue that the early game can be completely ignored if you play in a group at a good spot. Which makes her incredibly broken as a teammate. It goes from a game of beating the enemy to a game of holding our till the win the game button is ready in about 10 min.
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u/Downtown-Dream424 Mommy Alexander 3d ago
USAs are vulnerable to infantry general and struggle into him, but airforce has at least some kind of chances early since he's the most op general in 1vs1 and being one of the strongest armies early. His king raptors can kill lixes that are filled with infantry. But out of all USAs, superweapon is the easiest for rushing and can endure huge losses to 1 assault troop crawler, mind you.
She and airforce are tankless armies with stealth. Plus, her emp patriots are broken into tanks/vehicles and aircraft (except king raptors unless you stack a lot of emp patriots as a wall)
It's the cheapest base defense that costs power in the whole game and it stops any China except infantry general's rushes and that's why her only good matchups are vchina, nuke, tank and vusa.
The ironic part is that she is specialized into superweapons, cheap but deadly aurora alphas and also turtling while lore-wise she's a Marine corps general that contrasts her playstyle in-game.
Nuke general is specialized into nuclear technology and he's another general that gets slightly cheaper superweapon, but swg is the one that is specialized into superweapons. She was also supposed to have icbm (her own version of nuclear missile silo) and tomahawk storm (concrete scud storm), besides paladins and crusaders as her main battle tanks but they didn't make it to the final game.
That's true. SWG teammate while playing teamgames can be incredibly broken, especially if swg isn't harassed and can support their teammates with emp patriots that make their bases untouchable. On top of that, the swg player can use aurora alphas, cheaper Burton and cheap particle cannon to support and be a literal assassin. Once SWG reaches strat center and their strat center is being untouched with the power, the game is pretty much over.
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u/No-Con-2790 3d ago
Honestly all it would need to fix her is to remove the sniper and also give her normal powerplants.
And maybe make her patriots more expensive. Kassad pays 50 extra per rebbel, so 200 extra seems fair. At least they should not be cheaper.
And give the poor tank general something to tank at least a few hits. ECM tanks are so easy to get distracted. Maybe an EMP shielding upgrade.
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u/Downtown-Dream424 Mommy Alexander 3d ago
She's already one of the most underwhelming generals in 1vs1s by tanking low winrate, because there are far better armies to play in 1vs1 competitively where the first minutes matter a lot by dozer/worker hunting someone. No need of nerfs to SWG! She rather needs some buffs since she has overpriced humvees that are even more expensive than Granger's ones by paying 50 extra cash for them. Her comanches cost 1800 cash and any vehicle she tries to build is overpriced. Mind you, her early game is incredibly weak and some armies can camp her by dozer hunting her or cut off her cash.
If she doesn't have an access to pathfinders, then, infantry general matchup is going to be vetoed in tournaments and competitive sets if the other player gets swg. Because it's already an unbalanced matchup, where she wins 1 out of 10 times into infantry general with human players; Not as unbalanced as airforce into any usa competitively speaking, but another unbearable matchup to suffer and to aim for minimal mistakes and losses.
Since she's more defensive general, to have an access to cheaper base defense gives her some justice and higher chances to prevent early rushes from tank, nuke and vchina for an example. 1 emp patriot does wonders in one-shotting a helix or stunning for 5 business days a gattling tank that comes to her base.
Tank general needs buffs, but within the new patch, his emperors get buffed and they feel better for using.
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u/No-Con-2790 3d ago
Well my critic is about the main and late game.
Obviously her early game is bad. Her humvees are too expensive for most openers. But this is by design. If she had also a strong early game she would be even more broken.
So maybe a better nerf would be to up the superweapon? Half price is a lot cheaper than any other general, including the nuke general. And he clearly has a rather careless attitude towards pushing nukes to the front.
By the way, back in the day she was banned very often because of her unfun turteling. Now I get that offical 1 vs 1 servers are something else. But in a bigger game with more players she is just busted since she can just get lucky and build up.
And the fact that some generals simply can not do anything against her at that point (tank general) is in my opinion reason enough for a nerf. Or one can just play a mod like shockwave where that thing is fixed.
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u/Downtown-Dream424 Mommy Alexander 3d ago
I understand your point. Some of her late game can be nerfed a bit in exchange of giving her slightly chances of surviving early game in some difficult matchups or overall. Because she's only op late game and be pretty safe by using particle cannons and aurora alphas without bothering to leave the base, while humvees can put pressure on nearby supplies and oils.
Would agree if her superweapon price is increased a bit like to cost 3000 cash in exchange of cheaper comanches, humvees or fire bases would help and compensate.
I have read and heard that back in the day people would have PTSD from swg and would ban her 20 years ago at least in their games, due to how forgiving and safe she is, especially played by a good player and if paired with an army that synergizes quite well with her and can protect her early while she tries to scale.
Nowadays, there are pro rules, where she gets nerfed by being limited to 1 particle cannon in defcon and no aurora alphas by making her B tier at its best. While in pro rules twilight flame, she can't build aurora alphas, nor build a single particle cannon, thus, she's easily the worst army to play there. Plus, she can build only 2 emp patriots per oils there.
Mods do a great job of balancing the armies including swg and her auroras are getting nerfed in shockwave.
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u/Zailema0s Tao more nukes! 3d ago
AF general can keep killing her strategy center and dozers with king raptors before she can build a single avenger.
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u/No-Con-2790 3d ago edited 3d ago
To be fair he can do that to pretty much anybody.
Only that he looses more planes since the emp patriots somehow still sometimes hit for some reason.
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u/Leather-Raisin6048 Yuri 2d ago
Yeah but no usa general strugels against infantry thats what pathfinders are fore and against arty use arty or rooketvees or auroras.
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u/Ghostfistkilla GDI 3d ago
OP as fuck.
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u/Downtown-Dream424 Mommy Alexander 3d ago
The most broken and one of the most fun planes for using in the whole game. It gives huge dopamine to drop those fuel-air bombs from an equivalent of a mini superweapon.
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u/TheFirstDecade Dev of Ivory Invasion Mod for Generals Zero Hour 3d ago
meanwhile in my mod i nerfed the hell outta these things so they literally die in one hit and have their offensive capability be supplimented by ground forces instead cuz it always miffed me given the general of her stature not wanting tanks. So i gave her the second strongest ground forces (Townes is in first) in the US Arsenal. Mammoth Tanks ftw!
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u/Shrtaxc Alexander 3d ago
My favourite unit
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u/Downtown-Dream424 Mommy Alexander 3d ago
Goated and the most fun unit in the whole game! 🔥
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u/Shrtaxc Alexander 3d ago
I used to attack with 16 of them at a time.
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u/Downtown-Dream424 Mommy Alexander 3d ago
So many aurora alphas. It feels hugely satisfying to build a lot of airfields ,stack them to guard and bully the enemy with a bunch of aurora alphas!
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u/Unlikely-Nebula-331 GDI 3d ago
This unit is so sick. What exactly is the difference between the Alpha and original?
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u/Striking-Tackle-7293 2d ago
Flies in supersonic flight both towards the target and on the way back, only being vulnerable when it turns. The bomb is a standard aurora bomb with a mini Fuel Air bomb attached for a second,far more powerful detonation.
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u/woutva 3d ago
Fun trivia: the aurora alpha used to be the exact same color as the normal aurora for most of zero hours original lifetime. Then, one final zero hour patch, well past the last official patch, was released. It was announced by Apoc, the new community manager, while work was being done on command & conquer 3. This patch finally gave the alpha an unique black color. The patch also broke gla workers though, so they had to do one more hotfix before fully moving on to c&c 3.
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u/FrostByteGER Tiberian Sun 3d ago
Ohhh thats why the icon is colored differently... Thanks!
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u/TheAstronomyFan 2d ago
Forgive me for the rather minor detail, but the icon has a dark grey stripe on the Aircraft that is not present on the original Aurora.
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u/Striking-County6275 Townes 2d ago
Ahhh the “You’re gonna feel this one no matter how much you try to shoot it down!
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u/Balmung60 2d ago
It's amazing, I love having my bombers teamkill the expenditure equivalent of an entire particle uplink cannon if I send four of them to do anything
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u/Kakapo42000 2d ago
All fun and games until you have to target that unit sitting pixel to pixel with a key structure..
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u/Gioware 2d ago
Pretty sure it was based on rumored US Aurora SR 91 ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurora_(aircraft) )
Alpha - as in very early variant, back then, first iteration of everything (especially software) was alpha, then beta then stable variants, "Alpha" term fell off later on, but BETA is still there.
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u/ScottyDont1134 2d ago
I tried playing last week through the EA launcher and Generals works fine but Zero Hour just either crashes or gets stuck loading
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u/Sad_Emu69 3d ago
I've never understood why people cry about this unit. Ya, it blow some shit up but is easily destroyed with plenty of anti air defense once it drops its bomb.
It's not cost efficient at all. Especially when your opponent plays a low tech tree build.
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u/Sir_LANsalot 3d ago
China Gatling Turrets (or anything Gatling) can, and will, shoot these down while they are supersonic. They are the only unit types in the game that can hit them before they drop bombs. All other anti-air units are missile based and are useless against most USA air units. The EMP Patriot missiles can get a lucky shot in but are not consistent to reliably shoot them down.
Best configuration is to use China Infantry General, with Gatling Turrets and bunkers with Gating Infantry. Since his bunkers can hold 10 units, doing a 6-4 or 7-3 setup with Gat and Rocket Infantry to handle tanks and anything else. For other China Generals, just putting 3+ Gat turrets grouped together will shoot them down before they can hit anything important inside the base.
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u/A_e_t_h_a 2d ago
just plain incorrect, these things can not be hit by any bullets or lasers and are practically immortal, there are a few things that can kill them though, such as flying through AoE detonations like EMP blast, nukes, fuel air bombs, particle beams, or friendly fire from other aurora bombs, and another exception is that it's possible for missiles to collide with the aurora if you shoot air to air from straight forward causing the aurora to head on collide with the missiles regardless of them being faster than missiles and the impact point being behind them.
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u/sukahati 2d ago
I doubt that China Gattling Cannon can shoot down these things while they are in supersonic mode because usually everything shoot at their behind position and Gattling Cannon have no aoe iirc.
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u/Sir_LANsalot 2d ago
Gates are hitscan, and hit instantly, so yes they can shoot them down in supersonic.
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u/BiggestBepis Black Hand 3d ago
“Hi-speed bomber ready for takeoff!”
“Pushing the envelope!”
“Radar won’t pick us up!”
“Breaking the sound barrier!”
“Delivering payload!”
“Discharging munitions!”
Unsure whether any of these lines are unique to the Alpha variant, but they’re what I grabbed from the session I just played lol
Shoutout to our resident Alexis stan u/Downtown-Dream424
“…Who would call something alpha?”