Things you disliked about Supcom that you hope wont be in PA

Re: Things you disliked about Supcom that you hope wont be i

Mike, you make some reasonable points, but I think I'm going to have to agree with Mike on this one.

Mike

Re: Things you disliked about Supcom that you hope wont be i

I rofled hard on this.

Re: Things you disliked about Supcom that you hope wont be i

Mike, i'm afraid i'm going to have to disagree on you on this, although i can respect your position, i feel the community needs an outlet to vent their frustrations at the failures of the previous games, hopefully it won't get out of hand and crash the internet, because the last thing i want to do is crash the internet, but if that happens i'm sure we can use the bat signal and summon Mike to help us stay the course.

Mike

Re: Things you disliked about Supcom that you hope wont be i

I think I'll have to agree with Mike, this is an open forum after all.

I'd also like to point out to Mike that Supreme Commander had many flaws that are best left unrepeated in the next generation of this style of games, and it's worth discussing at our lesiure. The kind of economy micro-management present in supcom was tedious at best, and it needs to be made clear to Uber that very few people want to see three levels of economy structures in the game.

As for Mike, I'd like to see some explanation as to what points you feel are reasonable, but why you also choose to agree with Mike.

Mike

Re: Things you disliked about Supcom that you hope wont be i

Didn't know we had back seat moderators...that's annoying as well .

After all this thread doesn't seem like a rant to me, more a dicussion, which is the whole point of having a forum.

Ontopic
Personally my annoyance with SupCom is every 1on1 i played was just a pure T1 spam and that was the only 1on1 tactic I ever saw which got boring, fast.

Re: Things you disliked about Supcom that you hope wont be i

Can you please point me out to those "more" strategic games? I'd like to know what I've missed out there

Re: Things you disliked about Supcom that you hope wont be i

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Re: Things you disliked about Supcom that you hope wont be i

Sounds simple but SupCom's requirement to create new builders when you got a tech tier upgrade killed the game for me. I was fine with the economic management (mostly), I loved the forming of mass groups of units and directing them around the map to flank people and generally had a great time but seriously being told, "oh no, that teeny builder is only a tier 1, you need to go back and make a whole new one that looks the same but is somehow able to build tier 2," stuff was infuriating.

Oh, that and having to manually tell them where specifically to collect mass instead of just click in an area and trust them to do the right thing. I loathed having to set up patrols for getting mass.

Those complaints aside though I loved SupCom, though I don't think it's the "best" RTS. I'm not even sure there *is* a "best."

Re: Things you disliked about Supcom that you hope wont be i

please stop quoting its giving me a headache

Re: Things you disliked about Supcom that you hope wont be i

This isn't something they ever teach you and it's not obvious from the GUI, so I can't blame anyone for not knowing and it's a shortcoming of the game to not be telling you about this.

But if you alt-click it gives an attackmove order even though it doesn't have an attackmove button. For engineers attackmove is basically area reclaim.

What probably should have been done is that reclaim orders given on the ground has this behaviour instead. It notably does not work with commanders since they have a real attackmove order. Folding it into a real reclaim move command would fix that problem.

Re: Things you disliked about Supcom that you hope wont be i

This is a common complaint leveled at Forged Alliance and it is partly true, but partly not true. Small maps demand that you produce T1 land up to a certain point, and if one player has not reached the level required to manage his eco and spam like crazy then the game will end at this point.

In fairness the learning curve on FA is stupidly steep, so you do need to put in a lot of effort before you ever get to the stage where you can hold your own in 1v1. But on a balanced matchup this game is simply beautiful.

Have a watch of this replay, very good players on a 5km landmap and there's a lot more to it than just T1 spam.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NR2SNFNPAVU

Re: Things you disliked about Supcom that you hope wont be i

That's another thing, I hate how 'pro' play only takes place on the smallest maps in supcom. The entire point of these kind of games is epic scale, not tiny maps where you can take two steps and be in the other player's base.

I skipped around in that match. Didn't see a single experimental, and the utterly tiny map size meant no naval battles. It's literally just 45 minutes of unit spam and eco management. You might as well just watch a Starcraft 2 pro stream, because 'pro' supcom 1v1 games are really uninteresting.

Hopefully Uber can avoid that esports trap with their 40+ player multiplayer games and massive galaxies.

Re: Things you disliked about Supcom that you hope wont be i

i wasn't partial to the eventual nuke / t3 artil slug feast that transpired in a lot of the larger vs games.

It never really eventuated in 1 vs 1 since you could always apply pressure, only in the larger games where some players (usually protected by allies) focused on nukes or t3 artil.

i guess I'd rather be run down by 1000 tanks than taken out by a single surprise nuke, much more fun. Gives others a more obvious target too.... when you were in the heat of it defending against two or so players attacking nobody noticed the nuke silo in the 4th players base.

but maybe root cause is that the nuke silo was built unnoticed? (where as tanks are pretty obvious on radar). perhaps a voiceover "nuke signature detected" when someone completes the nuke silo building? could spice things up a bit. the race before launch.

Re: Things you disliked about Supcom that you hope wont be i

T2 torpedo launchers. Were those nerfed in FA? I'm 30 hours into the original right now.

That's my contribution to this thread. (Which I'm okay with!)

Re: Things you disliked about Supcom that you hope wont be i

I don't understand why people don't bother properly defending their bases with tac missile/strat missile structures. Tac missile defenses have no upkeep, and strat missile defenses are 2.5x cheaper to maintain than a nuke launcher.

Edit: And shields are cheaper to maintain than artillery, even stacked shields.

Re: Things you disliked about Supcom that you hope wont be i

Eh...competitive play is ALWAYS going to seek out the least random situations possible. The bigger the map the more random a game becomes.

Starcraft II has pretty much devolved into a game of chess. If you are a certain class, and they are a certain class then you do x-y-z as fast as possible and have from minute 11 to minute 18 to win. If by minute 18 you haven't won, you lose.

Its this EXTREME lack of almost any variability that makes starcraft able to be an esport. Its the same that makes the game so innaccessable and un-fun to a decent chunk of the TA/Supcom community.

Random gameplay that is a little different every single time is FUN. It may not always be 100% FAIR, but it doesn't become this stagnant gameplay of 'execute this list of 1200 exact keystrokes/mousclicks in this exact order as fast as possible on this map when against this class opponent'

Re: Things you disliked about Supcom that you hope wont be i

Big battles with many units are more fun than one or two exp. There was topic on that t1 spam, and I say its good. Every game is different in FAF and its fun as hell. My last 1vs1 game was won not by t1 spam but t3 bricks You must just play good enough to make decent defense against that spam.

Re: Things you disliked about Supcom that you hope wont be i

In order to get to a point where there are experimentals, one player needs to be left alone long enough (and have ~20,000 mass spare) that he can build one. In competitive 1v1s it is possible that there will be experimentals, but only if both players are equally matched and the game goes on a long time.

In that game had either player tried to start building an experimental he would have lost, because the eco he sank into it would have allowed his opponent to steamroll him. There is a sort of Catch-22 situation that seems to elude some people - if you are applying constant pressure to your opponent then he will have little chance of teching up, and if you decide to tech up without having clear breathing space to do it, then the constant pressure he is applying to you will cause you to lose.

The T1 spam is especially pronounced in FA, but it is inevitable in any game with infinite streaming resources that armies will continually get bigger and bigger, and the player that falls behind will lose. It is only when neither player falls behind that the game progresses to a later stage, which is entirely the way it should be, otherwise entire stages of the game would be superfluous.

I can't find one myself now, but if you want an example of more varied FA play, search Youtube for a pro game on on Roanoke Abyss casted by either Praisegugleourmaster, Felixlighta or ZaphodX. I'm pretty sure the most epic one I've personally seen was casted by Praisegugleourmaster, so I recommend starting your search with him. It fried my brain just to watch it, I have no idea how people can actually play at that level.

Re: Things you disliked about Supcom that you hope wont be i

the alternative is 20 minutes of teching followed by experimental/nuke spam, that sound more fun to you?

the "epicness" is derived from constant conflict. and smaller maps simply lend themselves better to that, they're still big, just on a playable scale

Re: Things you disliked about Supcom that you hope wont be i

Things that were annoying about Supcom? Well. This could take a while.


- Metal stalling.
- Metal stalling because your extractors are non functional during an upgrade.
- Having no metal at all because of the extractor glitch.
- Getting to a grand master position just by mastering the nightmare maze that is "getting more metal" without crashing and burning.

- Energy stalling.
- Energy stalling because of a Commander upgrade.
- Energy stalling because you found a big wreck and all the construction projects go nuts.
- Getting an energy permastall.
- Being unable to escape a permastall because the only alternate source of energy comes from your Commander, who produces less than a single t1 generator.
- High priority energy expenditures that can completely stop production despite having an energy income.
- The fact that high priority energy users exist at all without telling the player, offering any way of knowing who they are, or any way to control them until it's too late.
- None of the high priority energy users are the things you would actually WANT to have priority during a crisis.
- Some devices can still completely function during an energy stall.
- Metal fabbing energy micro.
- Actually... metal fabbers in general.

- Nukes.
- Nuke defense as the only answer to nukes.
- Eco stalling that stops nuke/SMD construction entirely (broken prorate).
- An endgame defense that is virtually unbreakable except for nukes.

- Upgrading factories.
- The upgraded units that came out of those factories, which were vastly superior despite their costs.

- Experimentals.
- The lack of tools to deal with experimentals.
- The complete reliance on air to deal with experimentals.
- ASFs and interceptor spam in general.
- The way that ASF spam ruined Restorers.
- Gunships vs. Flak, contender for most lopsided matchup in the game.

- Comm sniping.
- The ease of which Comm sniping can be done.
- Getting comm sniped because some missile dots hit for 6000 damage and some dots hit for 200.
- Getting comm sniped because of T3 bomber stacking.
- Getting comm sniped because of A gunship.
- Getting comm sniped because of A submarine/boat.
- Getting comm sniped because of Aeon Mercy--- haha nah you had that coming.

- Engineers that don't attack with their lathe unless explicitly told so.
- Engineers that still won't attack when enemies are clearly in range.

- Shields.
- Layered shields.
- Mobile shields.
- The absurd recharge mechanic that established the brokenness of shields.

- 100% cost repairs.
- 100% cost repairs on units that can normally regenerate their health for free.
- 100% cost repairs for an intangible shield composed entirely of energy.
- 100% cost repairs when you can reclaim and rebuild a unit to completely replenish its health for 20% cost.
- Having your economy utterly and hopelessly destroyed because a single engineering tower or drone decided to repair your commander at 100% cost.

- Not realizing that your Cerberus turret is useless because it can only hit the ground from where it is.
- Having your units fire at inaccessible targets behind hills.
- Having your units fire at hills when they are literally bathing in viable targets.

- That tenuous starting position where your Commander can reach all his build points and if you move ever so slightly he no longer can.
- Having your Commander waste 10 seconds walking to a build site that he can physically reach in half a step.
- Having your Commander stop moving for 5 seconds because he bumped into a tank and hurt his ankle.
- Having your tanks run in front of the commander for the express purpose of getting in the way.
- Having your tanks stop and think about the possibility that they should probably get out of the way.
- Having your tanks decide that they know better, and continue plodding on regardless.
- Move commands that are flat out rejected.
- Move commands that are flat out rejected on reasonable looking terrain.
- Move commands that were replaced by reclaim commands.
- Having your Commander stop and use his lathe at max distance (finally) because he got a move command on a tree which automatically means he stop and pick some flowers.
- Having your Commander die because he decided to pick these flowers in range of enemy turrets.

And last, but most certainly not least:
- The unavoidable LAG, slowdown, and "weakest link" architecture that felt like pulling teeth for just about every game, ever.


Did I miss anything?