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

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

Well these certainly made me do a lol, good work!

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

I'd say T1 spam in FA was not an issue.
While T1 spam is the established meta, if both players are good enough the game will eventually progress. Because once all mass points are claimed the map produces metal at some constant rate. This metal is converted into units that are then destroyed and serve as a form of metal storage. In higher level play, metal wrecks serve as a catalyst for game progression.
So if a T1 game goes on for say, twenty minutes, even though there is not a hint of T2 on the map, both players can have the resources needed to produce T4.

While the other side of this issue is that on large enough maps both player tech up for twenty minutes and then spam arty and nukes at each other is explained by the game's complexity.
Starcraft 2 is probably the most prodded game in the competitiveness RTS scene, and the community has come to the consensus that still, no one has the skill to play the game perfectly.
I think we can all agree that TA style games are way more complex than Starcraft, and we have a much smaller community. So how can we expect to see play that is even near perfect?
I think the problem that is being observed is the lack of a mature metagame.
I'm no pro, but I'm willing to go out there and say that twenty minute tech fests are countered by T1 drops, which in turn are countered by air superiority, so on and so forth. Before long, you don't have the resources to tech for twenty minutes straight.

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

Nope, you just about covered it all. +1

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

Shields, and to a certain extent long range artillery when things got spammy. I did not like this.

But one of my favorite things was how you could park a whole bunch of air spam over a launching nuke as a crude, yet effective form of nuke defense :twisted: . Couldn't help myself.

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

For me there were 2 or 3 BIG issues:

1. Inf zoom + overly large maps. these meant being as zoomed out as possible was almost essential to win a battle by flanking / multitasking on 2 fronts etc. Im told the graphics were nice but thanks to this feature my overriding memory was red dots v blue ones. It was a bad idea all round.
2. Megabot Balancing. They were well designed (pretty) and badass, but so quick to build and cheap that within 30 mins they had rendered all other units obsolete. I assume GPS were aware because the rest of the units were considerably uninspired design-wise (compared to TA’s). It looked as though in recognition that the other units no longer had a useful function rather than rebalance the megabots they simply decided to accept it and give up on the other units. Furthermore FA expanded on this policy by adding more and making them even cheaper, as did SC2 were most other units were scrapped altogether. The phrase flogging a dead horse comes to mind. Megaweapons should ALWAYS be less effecvive per unit of cost/build time than the equivalent tanks/bots, they should exist for awesomeness/shock value NOT as staple of the army, if they're more than a cool folly you're doing it wrong.
3. Shields. I love em as an idea, they make for siege battles; something that TA was missing however they did cause gameplay to grind to a hault mid-game and become just who could collect the more mass. Unfortunately this was made all the worse by them being essential to survive the megabot tide long enough that you could hope to produce even more megabots and win the (who can mass-produce most experimentals race). I.e. there was an implementation/balancing problem which thanks to issue 2 couldn’t be properly corrected. I’m told that as a result of shields being hard to balance they simply wont bother with them in PA, and whilst I agree not having them is better than having broken ones this 'solution' definitely puts me in mind of SC's 'solution' to the above megabot issue. Though perhaps I’m being overly pessimistic about them having solved these issues, we’ll have to wait and see.

That said as mentioned above there have been many worse RTSs and this shouldn’t be forgotten, SC was certainly above average.

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

Agreed, I hope they adopt the Zero-K style fixed mass drain on construction and units. Variable drain rates between structures and units in a factory adds no depth and only makes the economy more unpredictable.

Indeed low duration high intense energy depletion made navigating the economy more complicated without adding anything interesting.

Mass fabs if they are in the game (and I hope they aren't) should automatically toggle as necessary. Something like Zero-Ks overdrive mechanic (although even that could be streamlined and simplified) would be vastly superior as it keeps the emphasis on map control.

Absolutely this was a major problem in FA.

Agreed, I'm not sure I liked the effect experimentals had on gameplay. They acted as a T4 when we already had too many tiers and generally just lead to a game of tactical trumping. ASF massing was also very 1 dimensional and I do hope they employ something different. I've heard the 'fast strong interceptor' versus the 'agile weak fighter' suggestion a couple times and really like it. Interceptors would lose to fighters but fighters would be pretty useless for defending against air to ground threats, while interceptors would be useless as fighters but very effective against air to ground threats.

Static D in general could get a rework - T1 could be Flak splash while T2 could be longer range single target. T1 and T2 static defense would then have different roles and would make neither obsolete through out the game.

Yes.

Indeed, repair and "ressurection" should only cost time and energy although resurrection could be something like: [Energy Cost + (Mass Cost - Mass in Wreck)] all over unit build time.

Indeed, repair should be automatic when you are floating a lot of energy but automatically cease when your economy is stalling.

Yup. Having to just 'know' the map or check every incline before you place a tower is an unnecessary burden on the player.

Indeed, I hope they let your commander (if only the commander) build at maximum range automatically.

Yes, I think the pathing will be greatly improved in PA though. Also it would be nice to see some Zero-K style autokite and autojinx.
http://zero-k.info/Wiki/UnitAI


You also mentioned addressing build priority which could be done with a build priority system not unlike what Zero-K has:
http://zero-k.info/Wiki/EconomyGuide (bottom of the page)

In general all you noted were frustrations new players would have with a TA-clone and I think many of them don't have to exist. Many of them have common sense solutions and it would be great if Uber spent a lot of effort abating those concerns.

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

So is T1 spam a bad thing or are megabots a bad thing?

make up yer bloody minds

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

Different people different opinions.

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

....

In SupCom, both bmb. Both were a problem of SupCom.

Why do people insist on thinking two problems must be exclusive to one another?

---

My House is frequently overrun by ants eating all my food.
And there's an Elephant in my living room breaking all my furnature.

Don't tell me to make up my mind over which one is a bad thing... BOTH of these things are problems!

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

Damn, and I know I'm missing stuff too! I just forgot what it was.

Anyway, those kind of issues are things to find and stamp out out in the alpha/beta. Some of them are already solved due to core design. Others have to be tested, and more will be discovered as games get more intense.

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

Anyway since there won't be megabots and the tech levels are flattened, the T1 spam haters are going to be disappointed.

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

That probably will be counterable by a handful of carefully managed T2 units.
After all, why wouldn't there be a "Riot Control" T2 Tank?

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

Its not that unit spam was bad. It's that in supcom, you were better off not even touching T3 until way later and just spamming the crap out of T1. If you tried to tech up, you basically lost because your factory stopped spamming shitty, uninteresting units and used more metal.

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

Rushing directly to T3 is viable even on small maps you know.

I don't see why you would want to make T1 even more irrelevant.

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

Its been said that PA isn't going to use the supcom tech level=power level system of units. Tech 1 is going to be what you use for the entire game, tech 2 is specialized units and such. Tech 1 is entirely unsatisfying in supcom and its generally extremely lame to have the majority of the game dominated by who spams more tech 1.

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

Manual patching.

It just shouldn't be a thing anymore.

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

valvedrones pls

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

I hate to be deliberately inflammatory here, or risk sounding arrogant, but while some of the points raised here were legitimate, as a relatively 'mid to high' level player in supcom, lots of the complains here are simply due to lack of experience or skill at the game.

I don't want to go through the entire thread here, but if anyone has any specific things they want to ask I will reply.

I would hate to see some things missed out, or balanced badly here, because people lacked the experience to know how they worked.

At the end of they day, strategy games, such as MOBA's or SC2 are balanced around high level play for a reason. At lower ratings X champion may be overpowered. Or, more importantly, the game may not be played as it was meant to be played. However this does not mean the game should be judged at this level.

Supcom has it's flaws, but I think a lot of the ones addressed here are simply due to lack of experience, or maybe the style of gameplay has simply evolved since a lot of people here have played it.

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

maybe complex than starcraft 2, but not certainly than stacraft broodwar

don't say starcraft, like the two game are the same, cuz they are not, BroodWar is vastly superior, and with much more strategy, nothing to do with starcraft 2