RedShocktrooper

Anyone played this old game from 2003? It's this RTS 4x game kind of like Empire Earth, and in fact shares a developer with the first one, Stainless Steel Studios (Mad Doc would handle Empire Earth from its expansion all the way up to Empire Earth III). It didn't seem like it got much love even though both the community it once had and the critics both thought it was pretty good, and I can personally attest that it's aged surprisingly well all things considered, and even have it running on windows 10 with next to no problems. Probably what sets it apart from Empire Earth is it focuses on a smaller number of countries over a smaller span of time. Instead of from the stone age to the future, it covers the medieval age up to World War II, has three campaigns based around Richard the Lionheart, Admiral Yi, and George Patton, but because of the smaller number of nations and the smaller span of time they all feel different from each other. Like, China for instance, they still build houses and stuff, but instead of building a proper stationary barracks and town center, both of these structures can move around like regular units. And they don't build siege factories, their citizens built their field weapons right there. Korea lacks an archer unit, but makes up for it in having the first air unit - a dude on a kite with a bow and arrow. These two countries are only available for the first three eras though, with France (focused mostly on stonewall defense as well as having infantry units who can walk through forests which is way handier than it sounds, also their farms are literally free and they don't need to build houses, while also being able to draft their civilians into whatever the basic infantry unit of the era is) and England (who instead of having to have a commoner build a structure, only need to have him initiate it while the structure builds itself and also having automatically collecting mining camps and food warehouses, which aren't as efficient as normal farms or mining, do free up workers for other tasks. Like logging). Once you get to the last two eras you change over to a different pool of factions which themselves all play differently, with the spam happy Russians who keep using their World War I units during World War II (in fact, the new unit coexists with the old one frequently), the middle of the road Americans who for some reason have no antiaircraft, and the Germans who have expensive but powerful units and even have a second grade of tank. Plus France (who also get invisible vans to act as scouts and have tanks that can just bulldoze their way through everything, even if it kind of doesn't make sense when it's the tiny Renault FT...), and England (Who have a thing for fire). If you skipped that block of text, basically because it's only got five eras and nine nations (four of which are available in the first three eras, five of which are available in the last two, and four of which are technically just continuations of one another [Franks into France and England into the UK]) and means they're more than just the same core group of units with a a few stats tacked on.

Hi, I'm RedShocktrooper, and I greatly enjoy Freeman's Mind, however my favorite stuff by Ross is the Game Dungeon, and heck, I came here hoping someone could help me out with my own Obscure As Heck game issues.

This really bugs me because Red Ace Squadron I remember playing quite a bit when I was younger (like, way younger), and a lot of other Small Rockets games that I never played. I don't really remember RAS being good, but because I like experiencing multiple types of flying games regardless of flight model and such and thought it was pretty neat at the time, I've been trying to track down a way to get a copy working of Red Ace Squadron and Master of the Skies: The Red Ace (I was big into World War I at the time and this was LONG before games like Verdun were around). Problem being that Small Rockets shut down back in 2012, Red Ace Squadron and related titles have basically vanished other than trial versions for them with "Buy Now" links that redirect to Big Fish's home page. I've tried tracking down Johnathon Small, the company's former owner, but can't find the right one to actually try and talk to. I admit I myself don't know too much about programming or such things, not enough to try and make RAS work on a modern system, but last I knew he had some interest in trying to keep the series going and even had a sequel to RAS in the works as far back as 2007, but who knows what happened to that stuff. I guess this is just a guy rambling about a lost piece of his childhood, but I have to wonder if anyone here might be able to help me out. EDIT: This probably doesn't help me out, but my attempts at googling my way into using the game are leading me to keygens that don't even exist anymore. Doesn't bode well as far as I can tell

I would like it if Ross could manage to get some of the old Small Rockets games some limelight. Preferably Red Ace Squadron and Master of the Skies: The Red Ace, especially since Small Rockets vanished back in 2012 and took all their games with them.