Spam
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Spam is a term refers to the tactics of overwhelming the enemy through superior number and scale. Due to spam-addicted commanders may use little, if any, tactics or micromanagement, and enormous casualties as often outcome, this kind of tactics is always criticized for lack of skill required and is usually viewed negatively and seen as signs of poor skill and game design. There are four different types of spam in the Command & Conquer series: Unit Spam, Defense Structure Spam, Garrsion Spam and Production Structure Spam.
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Unit Spam
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All the non-epic units can be the candidates for spam identically or compositely. Field commanders tend to mass-product low-tech gound units like conscripts and GIs, or standard MBTs for their inexpensiveness and fast-build. However high-tech units like Apocalypse Tank are also used to spam if the conditions are right.
Air units spam is common as well. An example are the Venoms, since they can attack both air and ground targets, and more importantly, the little dependance of replenishment. After upgrading them with laser capacitors, a group of them, with enough number, can easily eliminate almost anything they come across.
Artillery units like the V4 Launcher and the Dreadnought are also spammed by some field commanders to conquer enemy bases with tough defenses. However, artillery spam may inflict excessive damage to targeted bases and neutral loss.
Defense Structure SpamEdit
Defense Structure Spam is used for both defense and offense. Constructing many defense structures to form a huge and deep firepower grid can be quite challenging to enemy strike forces. Some commanders also set defense structure grids very close to enemy bases, isolating them form other sectors on battlefield and destroying anyone attempting to leave bases (e.g. harvesters and aircraft). Moreover, artillery squads can fire in safety behind defense lines, commanders even can build production structures like war factories to assemble strike forces directly under enemies' very noses.
Defense Structure Spam is first seen in Red Alert as "Tesla Coil Spam". The best countermeasure to this spam tactic are artillery units.
In games before Red Alert 2, there was a variation called the "Superweapon Spam". The commander could build many superweapon structures to shorten recharge time., but this is no longer seen, since in Red Alert 2 each superweapon only allowed to be built once.
Garrison SpamEdit
Garrison Spam is mostly used in urban operations as a combination of unit spam and defense structure spam. The tactic is garrisoning every building can be garrisoned and converting the entire battlefield into a large firepower grid. This first appeared in Red Alert 2, taking advantage of its new civillian building garrisoning system. However, in Red Alert 2 and Yuri's Revenge, only basic infantry units can station a garrisonable structure, but their en masse firepower, with the support of engineers and additional units and defense structures, makes this tactic useful to slow-paced commanders.
Bunkers enable this kind of spam even if there are no civilian structures to be garrisoned.
In the following games, the advanced artillery units, anti-garrison units, support powers and unrepairable garrisonable structures reduce the effectiveness of the Garrison Spam greatly.
Production Structure SpamEdit
The previous three kinds of spam consume resources severely and may require mutiple production structures like Construction Yards, Barracks, War Factories...etc. To collect and store more resources, dozens of refineries and silos are needed. To feed all above, power plants must be spammed. So a spam-addicted commander has to spam production structures before or during the progress of swarming anything else.
Spam in Command & Conquer 4: Tiberian TwilightEdit
In Tiberian Twilight, Crawlers, Command Points, Power Limit and rare civilan buildings prevent spam. However, since many critics claim spam is one of the most important signature of Command & Conquer series, some trainers have been used to re-enable spam in Tiberian Twilight.
