Even though GOG don't offer any C&C games, I assume that most GOG-users know or play these games.
So I would like to start a discussion on C&C balancing issues, and what other have of opinions.

IMO, Red Alert 2 was the first C&C game which was balanced. The fractions have different units, but it was still balancing, so one of the fractions wasn't overpowered, like in for example Red Alert 1. In RA1, Soviet have superior, infantry, tanks (the weakest tank in Soviet arsenal was stronger than the strongest Allied tank), aircraft and defence buildings. The Allies was only superior on navy and explore (GPS satellite offer entire map to be viewable). And the expansion packs, Counterstrike and Aftermath, makes the Soviets even more overpowered, by giving them a siege submarine, and the M.A.D. tank, that in group of three, could eradicate an entire base!
Tiberium Sun was unbalanced in vanilla (NOD artillery, with homing shells, that was overpowered in both offense and defence), but becomes more balanced with Firestom and several patches.

In RA2, infantry actually becomes usable. In games prior to RA2, especially RA1 and very first C&C, infantry was useless. But from RA2, and especially beyond, infantry becomes a useful factor.

So, what are your thoughts?

What I remember from RA1's single player campaign: In later levels, I built squadrons of MiGs (>=6) and sent them on raids in the enemy base to destroy the enemy's construction or harvesting capability. Usually lost 2 units by doing so, but crippling the enemy in a fast way was worth it.

Ugh, I haaaaated Nod's artillery in Tiberian Sun! Probably my least favorite unit in any rts ever :-\
I never really got into C&C multiplayer though, so I can't really say anything about balancing issues.

I spent all of April replaying every one of my C&C titles so needless to say, good timing from the OP. :D

I remember playing LAN on Tiberium Sun. My opponent always pick NOD, because NOD was overpowered (in vanilla). I still manage to beat him as GDI several times :)

I actually just recently managed to get the C&C collection (all the titles) whit a whopping 5 euros, brand new even.

Soviets might of had the better overall power but if you get atleast one of the Allied Battle ships on the map, then you were laughing all the way to the end. Those things were amazing.

In Red Alert, the Allies weren't underpowered. They were not designed to achieve victory with a massive army of tanks and infantry but were designed to crush the Soviets in a non conventional way. Yeah, I remember those battle ships. Surround the fucking map with a dozen of them and it's game over for the Soviets. Good times.

The tanks were cheap and quick to mass produce, what else do you need. :D

RA 2 = Prism Tanks = You don't even have to play. Just set them loose that will win it for you.

On a related note, a couple of months ago I tried out OpenRA:
http://www.openra.net/
and it worked perfectly on my win7 system. It has support for the original C&C, RA and Dune2000, and if you have the original discs/ ISOs you can import their content in OpenRA, and I assume, play through the original campaigns with the updated game mechanics. Has anyone perhaps tried this? I liked what they did with the games, but I don't know how compatible the changes are with the SP campaigns.

I only played vanilla Tiberian Sun via LAN once...wasn't a fun experience. I usually played GDI, my acquaintance NOD...and it was basically stalemate, all the time. When I sent an army of Mechs, hovercraft etc. to an enemy base they were ripped to pieces by the overpowered NOD artillery long before they could fire back. On the other hand, my opponent didn't have much luck with direct attacks either - his forces were always wiped out by my Orca bombers (which also were quite overpowered because NOD didn't have an efficient mobile anti-aircraft unit, if I recall correctly, they only had those rocket infantry which sucked). So unless one of us got lucky with some sneak attack (usually my opponent because NOD had those tunneling tanks that could be used for infiltrating engineers into enemy bases), the matches dragged on forever.
Tiberian Sun was a really bad game in my opinion, the balancing was really ridiculously bad, and the single player campign was also fairly lame. I had really looked forward to playing that game (which had been hyped up to a degree that looks bizarre in retrospect) and was extremely disappointed...pretty much killed any interest I had had in the C&C franchise.
The very first C&C though ranks deservedly as a classic, and RA1 had its moments as well (at least the single player campaigns were quite good, never played the multiplayer).

Go play Starcraft 2 if you want balance.

Not as bad as the latest Command & Conquer game though with the giant mechs that serve as bases.

It was the first C&C game which was solid, the first one which wasn't plagued by tons of quirky and impractical stuff. No units which are useless because they need constant babysitting, no units which have such a specialized purpose that you won't ever use them, sensible unit queues (IIRC without that ridiculous 5 unit limit from Tiberian Sun) etc.. I mean, I've enjoyed every C&C game (Tiberian Sun the least, though) but Red Alert 2 was the first C&C game where I felt that the devs had really put some thought into everything and not just done stuff on a "wouldn't it be cool if?" basis. Still not as well desgined as the Blizzard games but a really big step in terms of quality in the C&C franchise. I haven't played it enough in multiplayer to tell if it's really balanced but it seemed decent. Personally I didn't like the super weapons, though.

And it's funny that you mention the tanks from Red Alert 1 as an example of messed up balancing. I was like what, nine years old when I first played Red Alert 1 and already I asked my older brother "why is the weakest Soviet tank stronger than the strongest Allied tank? that doesn't make any sense!".