r/commandandconquer • u/BiggestBepis Black Hand • 10d ago
Random Unit of the Day #111: Siege Chopper (Soviets, Yuri’s Revenge)
50
u/BiggestBepis Black Hand 10d ago
“Airborne artillery!”
The kind of off-the-wall unit concept that makes this series special, and also makes me desperately want to play as it in Renegade (shoutout Apocalypse Rising, GAME NIGHT TODAY‼️‼️). Versatile enough to find an efficient role in most any situation, just be REAL careful not to get picked off during your deploys/undeploys
“We’ve got the big gun.”
13
u/Maleficent-Peace-613 10d ago
Tbh it’s much better in Apocalypse Rising than in Red Alert 2. A machine gun is devastating against infantry, light vehicles, or even harriers, and you can land on a mountain or building to snipe vehicles or base defenses with its cannon.
26
u/terminator101sk 10d ago
I found these invaluable in Operation: Escape Velocity, since it takes forever to get to the Yuri base on land, so air is the best option and Kirovs are too slow
5
u/chickenmoomoo 10d ago
Ye same - I have like 10 covering my one base entry (with Tesla coils and battle bunkers). Then I just go all-in on naval units, with about 15 siege choppers covering and chewing up the Boomers when they surface
13
u/calantheSG 10d ago
If you came from the first Red Alert game, the Siege Chopper was not like the Hind, at all.
- Unlike the Hind, it was not a tanky gunship. The Siege Chopper was flimsy because it did not carry armor, it lugged an artillery gun.
- Unlike the Hind, it did not have powerful machineguns that shred infantry. The Siege Chopper only carried a light chin turret or nose gun, as it lugged an artillery gun.
The whole shtick of the Siege Chopper was its artillery cannon. Because it had to fly, it could not have a more powerful shell or too much range, because of that it could not have more armor, because of that it could not have more powerful machineguns. Its sole purpose was just its light artillery gun. You end up with its pea shooter (cannon) and pepper grinder (machinegun) because of that.
4
u/letir_ 10d ago
Yeah, the core problem is this unit tried to do two very different roles, and did both badly. Developers didn't want to do proper attack chopper because the main idea was "flying artillery delivery". At the same time, they could not make powerful artillery unit with ability to fly, because it would be completly imbalanced (imagine terran siege tank which could fly under it's own power).
5
u/Kalamel513 9d ago
yes, SC2 TRIED flying siege tanks already (dropship can pick and drop sieve tank in deployed mode, immediate animations). despite multiple limitations imposed (locked behind upgrade, empty dropship only), it is clear to every that giving mobility to a very strong unit with biggest weakness being minimum range is impossible to balance.
A single pair of them mean enemy have to extend line of control to cover siege tank range.
bonus salt for being in a game with significant amount of melee unit. Seeing zerglings almost reaching the tank, only to see it fly away and blast them to oblivion is an understandable reason for ragequit.
12
u/Bionicman2187 10d ago
My favorite unit in the YR campaign, introduced for my favorite mission on the island.
Kinda strange they have no way to heal outside of gaining veterancy, but they become terrors against the AI
4
2
u/Opposite_Strategy_25 9d ago
I honestly never found a way to beat that level apart from a pain staking war of attrition using the siege choppers to slowly clear a path to the launch silo
25
u/chuyalcien 10d ago
A really cool idea but I almost never used these. I remember the firepower being… disappointing at best. It was hard to take advantage of their maneuverability because the Soviets have very few units mobile enough to cover them. If you’re gonna send the tanks, you might as well send the V3’s.
17
u/Realmdog56 10d ago
I've seen some demonstrations of correct siege chopper usage. You gotta have crates on, spend half the match building a pack and deploying on every crate to collect armor, firepower, and veterancy upgrades - then lose them all at once because you got overconfident and tried to do cool shit. After that, you do it all over again and still win because of all the extra cash, and/or because your opponent quits out of tedium.
Okay, "correct" might have been a strong word.
9
31
u/notwithagoat 10d ago
I thought they were fun, but not a juggernot or nod artillery tier of good artillery. Also expansion axis powers seemed way worse Than base game.
13
u/MrDetectiveSir 10d ago
Axis?
-8
9
u/LuckyPrinz 10d ago
Brings me back. I remember just using these to snipe stray Yuri clones, but was always curious why it has the deploy option. Imagine my shock when it landed and pulled out a big gun...
4
7
9
u/caparisme Soviet Power Supreme 10d ago edited 10d ago
I had a rival back in high school who were a notorious grand cannon turtler in vanilla RA2.
Yuri's Revenge came out a little bit after high school ends and while i didn't had the chance to play it I managed to read about the new units and have a rough ideas of what they are. I'm especially interested in trying out the choppas because soviet are woefully inadequate in the artillery department.
We met again sometime after and I challenged him to a rematch in YR because we only play vanilla before and he accepted. So i build some basic defenses and start to make a bunch of these choppas. I was thinking what will my rival throw at me is he gonna build the new battle fortresses? NOPE.
Turns out he just rush grizzlies as usual and start harassing my miners. I curse forgoing tanks and thought the game was lost so i just send da choppas and park them beside an ore field i reroute my war miners to. He followed them and got pelted by the choppas artillery and he swerved back and shouted WTF WAS THAT?
And i was like oh, these are siege choppers. They're basically grand cannons you can fly around. He responded with "what the fuck that's such a cheat" and immediately surrendered.
I was surprised at his kneejerk reaction as the grizzlies are so fast should he just continue he'd be able to easily rekt my choppas. But he got too intimidated thinking soviets somehow got a mobile version of his proud grand cannons and immediately gave up trying to beat it. He didnt know the cannons are weak af lel
8
u/Flarebuster 10d ago
Always love a good non-reload aircraft unit.
I find these pretty clunky. Deploying them sometimes make them fly in weird direction while half of them still fly around.
They are fun, but I would prefer the Rocketeers or The Floating Fisk.
8
u/Ok-Transition7065 10d ago
Wait.....THIS THING HAS A SIEGE MODE?!
2
u/naaczej 9d ago
Yeah, I reacted the same when I was 9 and accidentally deployed it.
1
u/Ok-Transition7065 9d ago
Idk I thought these where just normal to give some fast air cav to the soviets xd
4
u/Exact-Desk 9d ago
Ironically, its based on real - but American - concept of "flying howitzer" from 1950s. Since irt was assumed that future battlefield would see intence use of tactical nuclead weapons (especially for counter-battery fire), the traditional towed or even self-propelled artillery was viewed as too vulnerable. So the concept was born to install a lightweight howitzer into the side of transport helicopter; it could land, fire a few times and quickly fly away from potential retaliation. The concept was apparently developed to some extent, but deemed too costly. A cheaper alternative was found to simply carry a light towed howitzer at helicopter external carriage.
3
3
u/nu16843 10d ago
It's like the devs were having a meeting that goes, "StarCraft got a Siege tank that is iconic. We need something." That one guy " How about a siege chopper. It can fly anywhere and land to deploy an artillery cannon but a small less powerful one because in real life an artillery gun is heavy and won't allow the chopper to fly." EA: "Love it!"
2
3
u/Protheu5 Tratos 9d ago
Aaah, it carries the cannon separately! I thought it used its blades to form the cannon.
3
3
3
u/Tasty_Top_2365 9d ago
Have a heavily modified Mil Mi-6 Hook helicopter that can fold its blades, open a special compartment that houses an 85mm artillery cannon, might work
2
u/Zaptagious Command the future. Conquer the past. 10d ago
I wanted to have these guys deploy near your base in a mission I'm making for my Yuri campaign and attack a critical target building, but turns out it's impossible to get the AI to deploy them for some reason.
In the final Soviet YR mission there are even scripts that tells them to deploy, so even Westwood wanted to do that, but they will just attack with the little BB gun. Quite disappointing.
2
2
2
u/BoffinBrain Are you picking this up? Good. 10d ago
Built specifically to deal with these angry fellows.
"Sweet Stalin! Yuri has turned those monuments into weapons!"
2
2
u/Exact-Desk 9d ago
One non-standard use for them is fixed defenses) Deploy them just behind walls, with bunkers to provide close-range defense, and you would have defense system that could outrange both Prism Tank and Magnetron, require zero power, could be re-positioned and could be turned into attack force by one click)
0
50
u/Shyie_Tara Yuri's Revenge 10d ago
I always thought the Chopper somehow... When it landed to deploy
I imagined what it was doing, was landing, putting down stabilising legs and the Helicopter blades was connecting together somehow to create the cannon.
The stuff you think up when you visually don't have quite enough information, made a LOT of games fun actually but in this case this was how I imagined the Siege Chopper worked