Red Alert 3 Patch 1.09 and the upcoming 1.10

Banshee

Last week EA has released a new patch for the original Red Alert 3. According to CNCNZ, the patch 1.09 comes with:

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Balance Changes

* Added a smoke flare delay when using the Magnetic Singularity support power.
* The IFV base defense is now more vulnerable to cannon damage.
* If a King Oni uses his bull rush secondary ability while shrunk by a Cryocopter's S.H.R.I.N.K. ray, the King Oni will now explode on impact.
* In multiplayer matches, Allied and Soviet players may now dock their aircraft at any friendly airfield, regardless of faction, to refuel and reload.

User Interface Enhancements

* Added the ability for hosts to select a random tournament map when playing in a custom match with 2 or 4 players. Players will see the Random Map option on the Map Selection list.
* Added a community news window that is displayed on game launch. This window can be disabled by selecting “Do Not Show Again” on the news window.
* Added a Spanish multiplayer lobby.

Bug Fixes

* Units will no longer occasionally animate incorrectly when crossing a bridge.
* The Striker VX and King Oni now correctly animate when powered down by an EMP attack.
* Fixed an exploit that allowed players to create health, money, or veterancy crates.
* Fixed a crash caused by saving while a Magnetic Singularity was active on the map.

Other Changes

* Added additional Mod support to Red Alert 3.
* Updated the credits.

You can use the Red Alert 3 Control Center to patch it.

Anyway, one of the changes is the additional mod support, which is something that we'll still have to wait some time to use this feature. The interesting and bad thing here is that EA is only adding this mod support on late patches. If they add it once in their original release, future games will automatically have it featured in box.

Anyway, this patch has brought up some issues for those who play the game without internet connection and, if you are one of them, you'd better wait to the 1.10 patch before patching the game. Here's APOC's words on the upcoming 1.10 patch:

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Hey everyone,

As some of you may have experienced, there is an issue where if you are not connected to the internet, you may have trouble booting up your copy of Red Alert 3 and also playing LAN as well. We're fully aware of this issue and working on a quick-hot-fix patch which will be called Patch 1.10, but will only include a quick fix for this issue.

Most of you should not be experiencing this issue as I am certain, especially if you are reading this, you are connected to the internet. However, if you've had any situation this week where you wanted to play Red Alert 3 but your internet connection was out, and you could not boot the game up, then the above fix will sort you out when its live.

I'll keep you posted on this hot-fix.

Thanks for understanding,
APOC

And finally, that is not all from EA. They've also released a tool to deauthorize the game without running it, which is very useful for severed systems, although I don't know if you can use it if your windows installation refuses to work. Grab it HERE.

In a completely unrelated note, there is an interview with the developpers of the map 'Black Sheep', recently released as a gift to celebrate the 6th anniversary of Generals.