The Dawn of the Tiberium Age v1.1117
DTA 1.1113 finally got rid of those worthless paper laser fence posts that looked like tiny wooden poles poles; so tiny that I've actually once spent ages looking for LKO's last laser fence post when I'd already destroyed all of his other stuff and neither of use could find the pole (I eventually managed to find and attack it by clicking on it via the minimap).
New laser fence posts that look and also are tougher now replace the old ones and the increased hitpoints (about 3 times as many as a brick wall piece) actually make it useful as a counterpart for GDI's brick wall.
It's no longer possible to manually power down the laser fence posts however, so don't even think about just sitting in your cloaked base and wiping out all of the AI's units that attack your base with just a laser fence
Like most of you probably already know, AlexB made a breakthrough with his hack to disable VideoBackBuffer a little while ago and thanks to this many people were able to experience TS (and RA2) with (much) higher frame rates (for some it even made the framerate go from unplayable to normal).
This hack has now also been included with DTA and is enabled by default, but since it turned out that there were a few systems where this hack in fact had the opposite effect, DTA's launcher had an option to enable VideoBackBuffer again added.
DTA 1.1117 comes with a much more intelligent AI, which is a lot less predictable and thus is more challenging while using fewer cheats. This also means that you can no longer trick the AI into chasing a single unit of yours around the map when you don't have the means to defend yourself, but you'll instead receive the death that you deserve.
Since some people were complaining that the AI was too hard to defeat however, the easy and medium level AIs have been made easier, while the hard AI has been made even harder so that there's still something for the people who need a bigger challenge.
Some other additions in version 1.1117 are that you can now build MIGs and Tesla tanks after capturing the tech center of an opposite faction, the Microwave Tank now immobilizes units (and keeps them immobilized for as long as it keeps firing at them) while only still inflicting a tiny amount of damage and GDI can now build the M.A.D. Tank.
You most likely know this unit from Red Alert Aftermath and in DTA's classic mode (where it's only available as a crate goodie) it functions exactly like it, while in Enhanced mode it's a special unit with a build limit of 1. Unlike the classic version, the enhanced version won't self-destruct when using its weapon, but will keep repeatedly keep causing wide-area damage with its quake weapon until it un-deploys again.
In addition to this 9 new multiplayer maps have been added:
- Train-ing Holiday
- The Experiment Lab
- Frozen Wasteland
- Beach Landing
- Field
- Dante's Desert
- Red Valley
- Circle of Death
- Hectic Oasis
You might notice that the last map (Hectic Oasis) has no tiberium on it; this is because it's one of the 7 scavenger maps that have been added in DTA 1.1117. Scavenger is a new game mode where players are only able to build a few structures:
- Barracks/Hand of Nod
- War Factory/Airfield
- Repair Bay
- Guard Tower
- Gun Turret
As you can see these are only the factories, a repair structure and base defenses (like you probably noticed, GDI and Nod both get the same defenses). Since there's no tiberium on the maps, there's also no tiberium refinery; instead of acquiring credits from tiberium, you instead have to acquire these credits by collecting crates and using these credits you can only build a few basic infantry and vehicles. More advanced vehicles are to be acquired by collecting crates as well.
You can view the change log to see all of the other changes that have been made, or you can head directly to the download page to download the launcher if you don't have it already (alternatively you can also download the full version of DTA 1.1117 from Mod DB's download page).
