Unit | Character | Quotes | Gallery | Changelog |
“ | ¡Y tango preparando! | ” |
—Morales |
Colonel José Arcadio Morales is the hero of the Latin Confederation.
Official description[]
José Arcadio Morales, or just Morales for short, used to be part of an elite Cuban death squad, trained to silence political dissidents in the communist state. Due to his infallible aim and his unwavering loyalty to the Confederation, he quickly became one of the top assassins in South- and Middle-America.
José's track record for completing seemingly impossible missions is the stuff of legends in the Americas. With a flair for the dramatic from his time as an executioner and his provocative attitude, he has forged a cult of personality around himself. Important American politicians and military figureheads have been shot in broad daylight with full military escort in the states bordering Mexico, instilling fear in all for the man whose crosshair no one escapes.
Morales is equipped with an incendiary, armor-piercing sniper rifle, allowing him to eliminate all infantry in his line of fire with a single shot. When ordered to fire on a vehicle, Morales will kill the operator of the target, leaving the vehicle a sitting duck for the Confederation troops to capture. In situations where the vehicle has no operator, he will simply damage and eventually destroy the vehicle. An Engineer, Ivan Cadet, Hijacker or Huntress will then be able to recapture the vehicle.
On top of his incredible skills and a powerful weapon, Morales has the authority to call in a tactical nuclear airstrike upon enemy structures as well, causing massive damage and localized radiation.[1]
Overview[]
“ | One clean shot to the head and they're dead. | ” |
—Morales before sniping a line of unfortunate enemies |
Acting as the only sniper unit available to the Soviet Union (with the exception of Reznov, who is not deployable under normal circumstances), Morales is a major threat to anything on the ground - he can systemically eliminate infantry, heavily damage/instantly neutralize vehicles, and level entire structures with his rather unorthodox arsenal of ranged weapons while leaving his opponents almost no chances of retaliation against the Latin Confederation's finest assassin.
Morales's primary weapon is a long-ranged Dragunov sniper rifle that fires incendiary rounds. His high-powered firearm can kill almost all infantry units with a single shot; only the heaviest infantry units such as Stalkers and Giantsbanes can hope to withstand multiple hits. What sets him different from the British Snipers and Epsilon's Viruses however is his ability to snipe multiple infantry units at once. Provided the Latin Confederation general can carefully assist Morales in picking out his targets, a single shot can set an entire line of infantry ablaze and dead almost instantly, making him a dreaded adversary that no infantry company will ever want to end up in his sights. To further exemplify his talents as a lethal sniper that knows almost no equal, Morales can even snipe the pilots Tier 1 and Tier 2 vehicles and render them useless. At that point, a Latin Confederation Engineer or an Ivan Cadet can then acquire the vehicle for their own use, although this can be exploited by enemy commanders/generals/proselytes as they too can send their own Engineers, Hijackers, or Huntresses to steal the vehicle for themselves. If the vehicle has no pilot or the pilot is immune to being sniped (such as Robot Tanks, Stingers, and Tier 3 vehicles), Morales will moderately damage the targeted vehicle in question.
“ | Fireworks for everyone! | ” |
—Morales calling in X-MiGs to make a bang |
His secondary weapon intended to deal with structures is a Laser Designator - upon marking a targeted structure, two X-MiG Prototypes will swoop in from off the map and proceed to bomb the quarry into oblivion with a tactical nuclear strike. Very few structures can hope to survive this assault, making Morales one of the best long-ranged structure eliminators available to the Latin Confederation. He is also trained to detect stealth over a moderate range.
“ | It's getting hot in here! | ” |
—Morales under fire |
Though Morales can easily bring ruin to an enemy over great distances, he still comes with his own weaknesses. For starters, he cannot target air units so anti-infantry aircraft like Invaders pose a strong threat to his welfare. His sniper rifle is a threat to almost every ground unit in the game, but it is greatly hampered by its rather slow firing rate - this means that while he can pick off lone infantry threats such as Attack Dogs/Spooks and Terror Drones and not have to worry too about being bitten or clawed to death by them, a large swarm of them can be problematic for him especially if they charge his position from multiple directions. The X-MiGs he calls in to perform airstrikes against enemy structures, while blisteringly fast, are still vulnerable to anti-aircraft weapons and if they get shot down, there will be a delay before another squadron can be called in. During the process of initiating an airstrike, he cannot defend himself with his sniper rifle which can potentially make him an easy picking for the enemy. Despite being more than a match for his closest equivalents in every aspect (Snipers and Viruses) he must be careful of not engaging superior numbers of them as he can still be overwhelmed if he isn't careful.
Morales cannot shoot or call in airstrikes from within the safety of a Catastrophe Tank either, meaning he must be on foot in order to contribute anything significant to a battle. Friendly infantry units fighting alongside him should also be wary of the fact that his sniper rifle can inflict friendly fire, as it inflicts damage to everything in the bullet's path.
AI behavior[]
The AI uses an exclusive variant where its sniper rifle has a minimum range of 5, to simulate performing hit-and-run or a retreat when an enemy is too close, as AI-controlled enemies normally do not retreat.
Due to an inconsistency, the AI-exclusive Morales does not go prone like most infantry in Mental Omega, while the regular Morales lacks this attribute(though the infantry sprite does not reflect this). This does not appear to affect gameplay, however.
Morales controlled by the AI have the following attack patterns:
All difficulties[]
- 1x targeting everything, accompanied by 2 Pyros
Appearances[]
- Main article: Morales/Character
Assessment[]
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Trivia[]
- Morales is a reference to the character of the same name in the Polish 1999 film Kiler-ów 2-óch.[2]
- Some of his quotes are even lifted directly from the movie, such as "¡Y tango preparando!".
- In the Mental Omega 3.0 Hero Spotlight #2 (skip to 1:00), the scene in which he is introduced in the movie is replicated, even down to the herd of cows, a Humvee hidden in the bushes, and two characters (possibly Siara and Wąski, the two gangsters who hired Morales in the movie) standing next to a car waiting for him to get down from the plane using a parachute.
- Morales is intended as the successor to Boris, the Soviet hero from vanilla Red Alert 2 Yuri's Revenge.
- In terms of abilities, Morales greatly resembles Natasha Volkova, the Soviet heroine from Red Alert 3. Both wield sniper rifles capable of killing multiple targets on a straight line, can depilot vehicles in one hit, and can call in an airstrike. The main differences lie in their rate of fire (Natasha attacks faster, but Morales depilots faster) and that Natasha can depilot any vehicle, even Tier 3 ones, unlike Morales.
- Morales uses the same firing sound as Jarmen Kell's Sniper Attack ability in Generals. Similar to Morales, Jarmen Kell is also a sniper commando that is able to kill the crew of enemy vehicles.
- Whenever Morales depilots a Draco Tank, another Draco Drone can still come out of it even though the drone itself is still attached to the Draco Tank model. This is caused by nature of the killdriver warhead, which forcefully ejects passengers from vehicle when driver is killed. Since Draco Tank has an initial passenger consisting of the Draco Drone, a drone can be released after Morales is ordered to shoot the Draco Tank.