What are some good games to help me prepare for PA?

I am not such a great rts player but i am getting better. I was just wondering what game titles i should be playing to help me hone my skills. I know about C&C and SC but are there any others?

Total Annihilation and SupCom(1, with the Expansion Forged Alliance), every other RTS out there won't prepare you in the slightest.

Also Spring and Zero-K as well, but I feel TA and SupCom are better in terms of preparing.

Mike

Awesome, thanks

Supreme Commander 2 as well.

(bring on the haters)

I didn't mention it because I feel it is just too far removed from what PA aims to be.

Mike

Supcom 2 really won't prepare you, except perhaps in the workings of a unit cannon.

Sup Com 2 not as much because it leans more towards the micro-managing side of things and has Greatly reduced map size compared to sup com 1/FA. so go with sup com 1/FA because they have a closer vibe to that of PA.

Who is this person? I have never seen him before.


SupCom2 would be very bad as preparation for PA because it has an extremely simplified economy. You want to play TA, SupCom and FA. Once you can get a hang of their economy you will have no problems with PA.

Total Annihilation is available on GOG.com for $5.99:
http://www.gog.com/gamecard/total_anihi ... ander_pack

SupCom Gold is on Steam for $19.99:
http://store.steampowered.com/sub/11732/?snr=1_5_9__403

Solely getting forged alliance would already allow you to play through the community made lobby for it though (Forged Alliance Forever). They've got weekly championships and a ladder system with matchmaking.
So if you're willing to go as far as looking for a competitive environment that will prepare you for PA, that might be it..

Almost any RTS should 'prepare' you to play other RTS games as long as the game in question has a multiplayer community active enough to have a decent metagame. I feel that RTS skill is fairly transferable so it is more important to get a challenge from the community around the game. Sure, there are a lot of specific things you need to know to be particularly good at any RTS game but any game that isn't PA isn't going to help you here.

It is worthwhile playing TA/FA/ZK if you want to become familiar with some of the mechanics such as the flow economy. Although if you play ZK a lot you'll probably end up frustrated at the PA UI.

See? I said they'd come out!

Supreme Commander 2 pretty much has the same gameplay feel as the original.

You people just didn't like it =P

I don't like that it's called Supreme Commander 2.

Other than that it's a fine game.

Things to get a handle on.

- Flow Based Econ
- Units under a powerful GUI, assists, patrol, ferry, formations, queued commands (shift+click).

That is a blatant lie. I'm sorry, but it is. SupCom2 plays very differently from its predecessors. Simplified economy, even more spammable experimentals, research, no techlevels, smaller maps etc etc.

This, however, is true. For several reasons. Wether one likes or dislikes SupCom2 is very much down to taste. Some liked the new way, some hated it. But saying that "they are the same" is lying at best

I agree with Polynomial. In fact it felt TOO similar... which is why I disliked it.

I said gameplay. Economy and upgrades is way different yes.

The bots blow each other up with strategic zoom the same in both games. And that's the only relevant thing to get comfortable with if you want to know know what PA might feel like.

I want to know how the economy is not the gameplay. There really is nothing that is the same in supcom2.

More importantly the upfront economy will not in fact teach you anything about flux economies.

Game revolves around Mass Points and Energy Generators.
Build up force.
Protect Commander.
No inherent "Hard Counters".
Shields are broken.
Experimentals are broken (just in different ways).
Air Superiority is broken (in exactly the same way).
Mass Gunships are broken (still).
Commander Sniping is still too easy.

The Gameplay of SupCom/FA is still very similar to SupCom 2.

The Only thing that really changed are the map sizes and the Economy model.

All RTS games are about collecting resources and building units.

These are not similarities.

Supcom 2 is like supcom superficially. It is not at all the same game. You must be shallow.

The only real point of comparison, the ACU, still works completely different.

Similarity is too strong a work, rather I think it's more correct to say they had similar ideals originally, but they executed on them different, which was more successful is up to opinion, but I feel that based on what we know so far about PA, TA and FA are best games to learn from, TA truly is the foundation of PA, and is adopting many system(thought many slightly modified) like the 2 Tier system, while SupComFA really gives a good approximation of how the larger scale plays out and in many areas further innovated on TA's successes.

ZeroK and SupCom2 had the same 'core', but they built out differently and I don't think they are as representative of what PA aims to be at this point.

Time might make fools of us all, we'll just have to buckle in and see what happens.

Mike