Welcome to this GDI Offense Guide, this will explain everything about the Offense Class, it takes up all the units, upgrades, tiers and most of the passive unit abilities, and explains them thoroughly. There is a lot to talk about so take your time reading this article, take a couple breaks whenever needed and come back later to finish the Guide.
Introduction
Before you get started, please have a look at our
Counter Section if you are unfamiliar to the counter system of Command & Conquer 4. Reading through it first will ensure you don't have any troubles understanding what is discussed in this guide. During this guide we will look at how you should play with the GDI Offense class before examining the Offense Crawler, followed by the tier-1, 2 and 3 units along with their abilities and upgrades. In the final section we will discuss blue Tiberium upgrade cores, which play a huge roll for the Offense class.
About GDI Offense
If you play with a Defense Crawler, you need to make use of structures and units together in order to reach the class's maximum potential. When you play with Support you need to be moving around and supporting your allies while collecting enough Support Powers and max out your Command Points Cap to ensure you can do as much damage as possible. However, when you play with Offense, it's different. All you need to do is to use all of your Command Points on GDI units and you have reached the limit. But make sure not to spam one unit type, as you can be easily countered. If you want to kill some air units for example and all you have is anti-ground units, you will need to Delete all your units and spend precious time getting the right units for the job, so make sure you mix and match your units depending on what your opponent is building and what is required at that time. All Offense units (except Engineer) can also be upgraded with a Blue Core, you can only see Blue Cores when you have an Offense Crawler functional on the battlefield.
It is nearly impossible to give a certain class a certain role or purpose, but based on what was said above, the Offense class is extremely good at attacking enemies. The reason for this is you don't have to wait to collect Support Powers or to build structures. You just build your army, and then you fight with it.
If you like to hit your opponent(s) hard with a fast attack group of well armored Tanks, then there is no better option than the GDI Offense class. With this class you will constantly try to attack the enemy over and over again. If you need to protect or lock down a certain area then the Defense class is a much better option, or if you constantly need to help your fellow commanders then pick Support class. Taking and attacking enemy nodes and capturing Tiberium crystals is what this class is good at doing. GDI Offense can also use its benefits of speed and agility to flank opponents, while Nod Offense prefers to use stealth. Use it well, commanders.
GDI's Offense Crawler
HP: 3000 (up to 3400 HP with both composite armor upgrades)Armament: Cannon during tier-2, Rockets and Guns during tier-3. Strong versus medium ground, medium air and light.The Crawler is the most important unit/War factory in your entire arsenal. It has several functions, the most important one being to build your army. An unpacked Crawler can also heal units around itself and can be used as a weapon if you progress to Tier 2 and 3. The Offense Crawler can also see Blue Cores scattered around the battlefield.
The difference between the GDI Offense Crawler during tier-1 (top-left), tier 2 (bottom) and tier 3 (top-right).From the picture above it should be clear that when you first start out your Offense Crawler is rather plain and weak. When you collect Tiberium you can advance to tier-2 which will give you access to a dual-cannon, which is strong versus medium-armored ground units (it will take you 5 Upgrade Points to get the tier 2). Tier-3 gives you two mini-guns (strong versus light) and rocket launchers (strong versus medium air) to play with (it will take you 9 more Upgrade Points to get the tier 3 upgrade).
Here's a picture so you can have a better look at these weapons:
The Crawler's rocket launchers are circled by red, the guns by blue and the cannon by yellow.This beast works at it's best when unpacked into a War factory. Not only will your Crawler heal other units close by, but it will also heal itself. It will be much harder for Nod units to kill an unpacked GDI Crawler. Always ensure your Crawler is unpacked during battle, except in cases where your facing an overwhelming Nod force, or Nod Specter artillery.
Along with the extra weapons you get as you progress to tier-2 and 3 you also get access to
Composite Armor (tier-2) and
Advanced Composite Armor (tier-3) upgrades.
Both upgrades add 200 HP to the maximum health of your Crawler (don't be fooled by the word "advanced") and moderately increase your Crawler's speed. It doesn't matter in which order you purchase them.
