Am I The Only One Who...

I don't really see the problem right now - at least for me.

1.) I think any "I-win"-strategy, be it a first Airfac in SupCom, any fast tech or whatsoever deserves to be put out of game. And I think these will be handled by Uber quite on user's feedback.

2.) Currently, we're having a discussion about the specific properties and advantages in a completely different game. What's the point of it?

3.) If you're so keen on lining out specifics on the gameplay, shouldn't be the focus on what the gameplay should be like? So more whether we want to have a game where more focus is put on early/fast action or more like playing Settlers?

Regarding 3.), my opinion on the topic: Once the games starts, gloves off.

If any player gains the early initiative, he should be (rewarded by being) able to impose pressure on the passive player, by having map control, resources etc. This may be frustrating to unexperienced players who see the game as a playing field where they are able to set up everything properly according to their fantasies. I'm implying that some people are not having a plan, but more a movie in their mind where they leave the battlefield as a glorious winner. Sorry, but your opponent won't rig the game for you to win.

As well, understanding the early(read: small scale) gameplay of a game is more likely a solid basis to understand the implicit game-mechanics of a game than vice-versa, going from top/late to bottom/early. If you know the way to your defeat from the start, you are way more able to understand the different decisions and events leading to it, rather than just be presented with the result of your base being systematically destroyed by a superior player, who made a ton of better decision until that point.

Now one thing on the commander issue: no AA. A built mobile AA (or two) seem to be useful to me if you're handling the properly (-> micro?) It should not only be the right idea (building AA if we fear bomber), but also the right implementation of the idea. Otherwise we might be as well playing chess - just creating counter to an attack, to which the opponent has to find some counter-counter etc.

I'll just point out that in SupCom's intro video you see a Commander shooting at a plane. This was a nasty surprise in my first skirmish against the AI when it begun to harass it with one bomber, because I thought it would be able to shoot it down by itself...
Though this is off-topic, a word of advice: if your main unit is shooting at air in the intro video, it has to shoot at air in the game as well.

Eh. Comm needs some weakness, taking FA as an example, if he could shoot down Mercies then there wouldn't really be a point to using mercies. Same goes for <insert ground-attack air unit here>. While it is fun to drown the enemy commander in units, it's more fun to carry out a dastardly plot to assassinate him.

Now you're all just talking about a specific game which igncom1 thinks has unbalanced rushes.

We have a misunderstanding of terms. You seem to be referring to an attack aimed at the commander whereas I am talking about an attack in any sense. As in commanders can stand in front of their base and defend it from attacks. They can even 'defend' from scouting with the right weapons.

Comms are weak against overwhelming numbers. That's why they fight by building armies. :roll:

Anything that outranges a Comm is going to be completely brutal. Considering how the D-gun worked in TA, having units in range vs. beyond d-gun range creates completely different leagues of battle. A brawler with 99999 HP and 50000 damage, but only 2 range? D-gun, haha. A sniper with 10HP, 20 damage, but 50 range? The Comm is totally screwed.

Would you please point on this globe where the front of the base is? Because the way worlds are being developed, there's going to be no such thing in PA.

Putting your Comm in "front" means that your base can be attacked from every other side. That's not going to work out too well.

Also, I'd like to see your commander stand in front of 2 tanks in different locations.

Aww am I being drawn into an argument that started over definitions?

If the commander can defend against any attack it means they can defend multiple sides of the base at the same time. So they must have quite a bit of range.

I know it is a stupid situation! I was poking holes in what I thought the person who said "they can defend against any attack" meant. Apparently they actually meant any attack aimed at the commander.

Fair enough, misunderstanding than. I think it´s a good idea if the Commander can hold off anything attacking him the first few minutes of the game, but will have to work really hard to defend the other stuff he's built as well. That seems about right for this game.

People should stop thinking that you can balance a game by looking a some unit database. The air exemple is a good one.

The simple fact than less than 5% of the 1v1 games outcomes are determined by a bomber first is a proof that the prices are not a problem.

I want to emphase on this : bomber rush is not a problem at all in FA (it was for maybe a month) like some people tends to think.

The bomber, in this case, was never used because it was to pricey. The logic behind is :
- You can defend a rush effectively by T1 AA.
- Later in the game, a inty, while more expensive, is able to kill an infinite amount of bomber.

A good balance is more difficult to achieve than looking some numbers. Really.
IE if the bomber was more expensive than anything that can counter it (like the TA stats, but there is more to it too), you would not have a single good reason to build it in the first place.
But now you still have to make the player able to defend it. So you need a cheaper counter, but with limited action, ect etc....

To stay on topic, rushing should be possible, but only viable if you are better than your opponent.
IE. you can rush in chess (and win in a few moves) if your opponent is totally new player.
Same on FA.
A game that make everything to avoid rush -and so make defense more effective than attack- lead to a static (and probably boring) game.

The difficult part is to make the game easy enough to learn so avoiding basic rushes is easy. Starcraft 2 for exemple very bad at this. You have to play dozen of games before being able to counter all the basics rushes. That also limit early game, sacrify map control importance, and make the game static.

I can see what IGN is saying with rushes, they can take something out of a game that is made for massive battles but more so in team games than 1v1s, as all that firepower is focused on one point and we don't know how fast our ACUs/Units will be yet before the "Well your team could help you!", Now if you imagine it with 3 players rushing bombers.

But then you can't balance for team games, so you have to balance for 1v1. In a nutshell I agree that Commanders should get a basic AA gun, not a Demon Spewing Cannon of aerial death. Just something to back up the forces you've already built to boost slightly that homefield advantage in the early game. To those that would think this would unbalance the game, not every rush should be an "Hold A, Click, Wait for Results screen" even if you only take out a couple of MEXs/PGs you've still damaged his Econ more than he would have.

On a side note concerning length of the game, some of the best games of Starcraft 2 i've had have been beating rushes then pushing forward & winning the game.

Also i've had games of Starcraft 2 where we fought that long and hard that all the 1st, 2nd & High Yield expansions were used up and we were fighting over those expansions people rarely get the chance to exploit.

By the way, if the ACU was able to defend anything before X minutes, that's basically playing with a no rush option by default.

It's okay that less experienced players use such option because they feel that everything that come to them before X minutes is an unfair rush, but please let the competitive/more experienced player have their fun fighting from minute 0.

Just because your com can't die from 3 tanks or 1 bomber, doesn't mean you can't fight from minute 0. It just means you need to pick your targets more intelligently.

I don't think that's what igncom1 meant.

You can't die from a bomber (or even 3) on the start on the game even if they cost 0 mass.

But you can harass engineers, early unit, in a nutshell : be annoying. That's the purpose of early harassment and it's good that a game have that.

Remove it (by having an ACU able to defend itself and all its early constructions) is a virtual no-rush option, and it's not good for gameplay.

You can say that a game can not have that. Yes, that's true. But what will happen ? You are just shifting in time the first battle, but the same thing will happen : The best player will win (and probably will humiliate the "noob" even more).

The problem is that you did not learn progressively how to achieve to be better, and you've spend 15 min in a game that was played after 5 min. I think some players will have the feeling that they lose their time trying to play the game.

So, the only difference is that you are making the game less dynamic, not more "noob friendly" : even they have the feeling it's more accessible, it's actually harder as you have to master your production better, and way sooner in your learning process.

With early skirmishes, you can compensate your lack of knowledge in a perfect BO by some easy micro moves. That's how I learn to play on every RTS I've played. Sure it can be annoying (it's the goal !) but it's actually a better learning curve than facing directly a 100 units army.

This is mainly @ign.

The idea that you can win in FA by making 20 tanks and attacking the enemy base is flawed. You can only do this if your opponent doesn't make any units, which by implication means that he is less skilled and would lose the game anyway.

As for 1v1 games progressing to the T3/T4 stage, it's true that it doesn't happen often, but the reason is not “OP rushes” or whatever excuse you care to use. The reason is that at some stage before T4, one of the players does something that the other player has failed to anticipate. In other words, it ends because one player is better than the other.

Believing that T1 spam is a cheap or easy way to win is incorrect. Watch some 1v1 casts of top FA players (search YouTube for praisegugleourmaster, he has loads of casts and links to other casters), and you will see vast T1 turbospam, but because they are good players this does not end the game. In fact you will often see T3 land inside 15 minutes, and all the while they are raiding and counter-raiding each other.

THIS is when the game gets really fun, by just sitting around until you can make experimentals you are not even slightly exploring the game's potential.

Again it's good that the game has no rush/sandbox/prebuilt/2x ressources modes, but don't enforce them

Wrong...

Just as Wrong...

Last I checked and I admit I haven't played FA in a while the commander is slow. Its no where near as fast as bombers to begin with.

All a commander with an AA gun would be doing is helping the defence but he's only in one place at one time and do you want your commander to be chasing aircraft around when you can't catch them? No you want him to be building AA or assisting a factory to pump out a few mobile ones, an AA gun active while he was building would just be an annoyance and stop cheesy one unit harasses but wouldn't stop a real attack with some meat behind it.

The fact that you think a Commander having an AA gun (I'm not saying it should be spewing T3 AA missiles out) would be a No-Rush option is utterly laughable...

Also what if the said player who likes to rush is sh*te at the mid game? who's to say he would win the game just based off a quick rush?

Are brute force Zergling rushers skilled players in Starcraft 2? No anyone with a brief understanding of hotkeys can Zerg rush...

The only thing I agree with if you saying early harassment is good, it is a good thing! But Harassment by its very nature isn't going in for the kill, its strangling your opponents econ or picking off units that pop out of the factory.

A Commander been able to defend itself and its base still allows harassment, it also will teach newer players how best to use their Commander, build placement for early game So the commander can defend as much as possible ofc MEXs will be placed out of the "comfort zone" but that's all part of the learning curve.

If you really want to go with the bomber exemple, an aircraft is flying.

That may sounds obvious but the chances that it fly over your ACU weapon range while trying to reach a target or during a turn is not negligible on a small/medium map.

That may (or may not) make the ACU too powerful against air. Also, if it can OC/Dgun air, you can remove gunship/bomber snipes, or even the infamous 'ACU steal with transport' in TA.

Or you make the air range really small, and it has not the purpose you wanted (a t1 bomber will never try to rush-kill an ACU), while still countering gunship way too effectively.

Just for info, it was tested in FA. It wasn't good because of too many side-effects.

Well if he is better early game, so much that he is able to defeat you right there, why do you think he shouldn't be able to kill you ?

For the rest, we are basically saying the same thing. I agree with you, I was mainly answering to igncom1 about his idea that an ACU should be able to defeat anything until mid game, virtually rendering the game as a no-rush game.

I never said for the Dgun to be used against air, just a light AA gun and if your attack will fail if there is one AA gun, then you should be thinking out your plan of attack better. I'm not wanting the AA gun to be 1 hitting bombers but it needs to be able to fight off 2-3 bombers within its range.

Plus your thinking too much in the lines of Supcom and TA. We are going to be able to attack from a full 360 degrees, you won't be able to back into a corner and put a wall of AA between your base and the enemies. You can harass without making the ACU completely useless to your attack.

Personally I think the range should be small. Should be more powerful than a normal mobile AA but have less range than a AA tower. So its an in between for the two starting AAs.

This isn't FA, There is no backing into corners to hide behind defences or put buildings too out of reach.

But if the presence of one AA could mean the difference between a "Rush" failing or not aren't both the players just as bad?

On a side note (and I know its a completely different game with different Eco etc but its one of the two strats i've been playing a lot a lately other been SoaSE) I played a 2v2 a while ago with my cousin, we go rushed, they basically ignored me and bashed his mineral line before we beat them back (With my cousins Queen and my Marines). Because they were one trick ponies and were sh*te at following up this harassment it allowed him to quickly rebuild - helped my mineral gifts from me - we ended up only having 2 more battles one in mid map and another outside/inside their base. I came knocking on the front door with M/M and siegetanks, he slipped in the back with Mutas. All in all the game was over in 15-20mins we didn't even get a GG...

So i'm getting at is some people can be good at the early game harassment and not the ability to capitalise on it Yes there are people who would have owned me and my cousin due to the position the rush put us in but not everyone.

For the rest, we are basically saying the same thing. I agree with you, I was mainly answering to igncom1 about his idea that an ACU should be able to defeat anything until mid game, virtually rendering the game as a no-rush game.

Oh god no I don't want every game stretching on for 30-60mins what I'm mainly against is the 2-3 minute mark where only a few units could have been built and nothing that should be a threat to a commander, anything between 5-10mins is fair game when you should have a decent amount of early units...

You people misunderstand (It is mainly my fualt, as I am not very good at arguing my position).

What I would like is an AA weapon that will have the same success against aircraft as their normal weapon does against ground targets, not to invalidate the next 20 mins of the game.

I just feel that is is kinda stupid that a commander can defend himself from ground raiders but not from air raiders.

(Disclaimer: I AM NOT TRYING TO REMOVE YOUR STRATIGY)

Far to meany people are using the argument that this change will change the dynamic, the stratigy of the game, but that is not my intent, my intent is to prevent cheap shots at a player with a weapon that your commander should at least be able to ward off.

Raiding is rushing, I understand the point of such a stratigy and I even do it in my games of SupCom 2, but what I don't want is a 'rushing snipe' to win the game against an opponent who either didnt have the time to build AA, or is doing somthing that could be considerd as a poor stratigy.

Wining against an opponent like that is just so wroung in my eyes (AGAIN, NOT RUSHING), and while the agrument that they should play better has been presented multiple times it comes down to the same reason the commander has an anti-ground weapon.

The commanders weapon is a buffer, a stop-gap until appropraite forces can be constructed, but is not a replacment for tanks.

That's what I would like for the commander, a temporary weapon, a stop-gap, a buffer weapon to provide time, and to suppliment the real thing.

This isn't about getting to turtle for experimentals, or for killing hordes of aircraft.
Nor do I want to 'deminish' stratigy (Isnt the point of stratigy that you create new ones? I see a lot of people saying that particular additions would destry or invalidate stratigy, but why don't they just create new ones? isn't that the point of a stratigy game? I dunno it just seems wierd to me that people would complain about somthing like that.)

In the end try to consider ideas that are spesificly what I say, as like you, I only want the game to improve from it's predecessors.

This idea is my way of giving players a buffer (Read: Not barrier) against such stratigy's while not invalidating them, allowing more people to move on to the much more exciting mid game where we can all go and gunship snipe to our hearts content.

When has a single T3 AA ever stopped anything? It never had the fire rate(it fires salvos every few sec.) to handle large numbers of aircraft.

TA was the most successful at doing this, because most units could shoot air. The plasma cannons failed horribly, but laser weapons were pretty good at both AA and AG duties. In PA they can be even more effective at tracking targets and scoring hits.

A simple laser should be enough to kill air. Make the the first defense a laser tower, and there will be even less trouble with multi role defense.