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

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

he's referring to the end game, and i agree that air was just too weak against naval - i don't think it was ever as simple as buffing air with respect to naval units though. i think the problem with supcom air is that air units are not in any way reliant to airbases. there is no establishment of air space in supcom - only air space denial. you can only deny space to your opponent with AA. if there was an airbase mechanic: e.g. air units within radius of an air base do not deplete fuel and outside of airbase radius rapidly deplete fuel then there would be a lot of strategy geared around establishing forward airbases and air space. carrier play would actually be a lot of fun and air would be integral to sea battles, making carriers realistically high priority highly defended units.

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

The problem with naval is that all ships do everything. Every ship has AA, every ship has radar and sonar, every ship has torpedoes or torpedo defenses or something like that. Ships being much more specialized so that you would need specialized AA ships and radar ships in the mix that could not double as shore bombardment would probably resolve the issue. A strong bombardment force would be vulnerable, but a balanced force would not be able to have as many bombardment ships.

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

agreed that was annoying in supcom

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

I dunno, the cruiser, short of the seraphims T3 sub was the only good navel based AA in SupCom. The battleship and destroyer aa was just for projectile show imho, as they did very little damage and were fairly inaccurate anyways.

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

ehm , not, i'm talking about Broodwar, not starcraft 2 crap

Broodwar was not rock paper scissor at all, was more about micro and using well your units(and there are tons of positional play, that lead in strategy decision, if you don't have played it at high level, don't bother trying to figure it at now, it's very complex, nothing to do with his sequel, starcraft 2) and of course it require high apm, without that the game it become to shallow and boring very quickly, also if a game require only 50 apm, it can't be competitive, because every retarded can play 1 game and become good at it, if you think about it even supreme commander at high level, require high apm to be played correctly.

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

I disagree with the statement that ships are too generalized, however I do think naval aa could have been increased slightly, because a lot or it is reaching the "critical mass" of cruisers when bombarding the shore.

Yes, the cruiser is designed as a bombardment vessel with good AA. However it has no torpedo's and little health compared to the destroyer.

The destroyer has good health, good anti-ship weapons, including torpedo's, but awful anti air capabilities.

The cybran stealth boat, and T3 sonar has no weapons, but has stealth capabilities and excellent torpedo defense..... Ect....



The aa on the other ships is is only effective in large groups.

Seraphim T3 subs are just dumb...

The general tactic with most factions is to win navy, using cruisers as protection against aa, then build a large bombardment force out of them, effectively creating a no fly zone, while bombarding the enemy base.

A balanced force for attacking a base after navy has been won, and one for winning navy are very different.

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

only UEF and sera cruisers can bombard, cybran and aeon cruisers are dedicated AA units

but they still have guns and radar and that kind of thing

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

No, cybran cruiser actually has the worst aa, aeon and cybran are more jack of all trades, they have direct fire weaponry, but worse aa.

Yes they do, but my point is that navy was already diverse enough in supcom, although I would say more tech one diversity could be needed.

I assume you are thinking of boats that are equivalent to tech one land scouts?

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

I found an excellent quote by Sirlin which contradicts what you say.

http://www.sirlin.net/blog/2012/7/16/execution-in-fighting-games.html

That's a bad thing. If the player is forced to train for hours upon hours before he can experience the depth of the game then that means that only very skilled players will be able to experience the real strategy in the game.

Well maybe it dosn't contradict what you say but rather: Do you want PA to be about strategy or execution skills?
I want it to be about strategy.

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

it's a good thing this thread is about supcom

i agree though, the game shouldn't be about executing a build order. i'm okay with there being reactionary tactics involved, in fact that's a lot of fun.

Oh you charged with skirmishers? I better pull that flank back and let my assault tanks destroy your flanking skirmish bots. One thing that made that impossible in SupCom is how quickly units died however.

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

but didn't you read the last part, that i wrote? even supreme commander require high apm, at the highest level of play, of course if you play 4v4 seton with scrubs, u can sit there and building a bunch of things, while taking a vacation

and i want PA to be about both things, i want strategy but also i want that it require high apm to be played at the highest level

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

The problem with the naval AA as it was in Sup Com is it was incredibly difficult to attack ships with aircraft. A few cruisers made anything less than Air Experimental attacks laughable, in terms of mass efficiency. This meant if you lost the sea, you could never take it back. Not sure what the best way to fix it is though.

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

No one will stop you from Micro-ing. It's just probably going to only increase your effectiveness by a few small percent, unlike Starcraft.

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

Nobody else wants a strategy game to be tied to APM though.

It really is just you.

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

I would like to see a land-based torpedo launcher, for instance a high-arc bot (think the Morty from TA) that fires an artillery shell into the water, where it changes into a torpedo and zooms off.

There would be balance concerns of course, but that notwithstanding it would be great to have some viable options for taking back the sea using land units.

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

I know it's been discussed at length but in real life air dominates the sea. Carriers have made any other type of warship obsolete. If there is an airbase system for air units then air could dominate naval units without throwing a wrench in balance. That is to say establishing air space would be more complicated than simply moving air units where you like, there would be strategy involved in establishing a forward carrier or airbase. Air space would not be intrinsic, it would be a function of where you dedicated the resources. Although that isn't to say game mechanics shouldn't allow you to do damage outside of your own air space. The time air can spend outside allied air space should simply be limited e.g. having to return home or land and "refuel" when far from an airbase.

Late game naval battles would be carrier-airplay where the tactical goal would always be to establish your own air space and deny your opponent air space - not through AA on naval vessels or cruisers being particularly punishing but by threatening the opponent's carriers. Carriers as capital ships would make for very interesting strategic and counter strategic play. What would happen when a player loses their carrier/airbase in an area? Well that player would lose their control of air space and their airforce would have to retreat to the nearest airbase while their opponent who may have had a smaller airforce will take air supremacy in the area.

edit: saw the post about land based torpedo weapons, I agree that amphibious or hover torpedo options wouldn't be a bad compliment to torpedo bombers. I do think though that while somewhat rooted in realism the airbase system has the most potential to satisfy these concerns; especially if complimented with a much slower and vulnerable 'land to refuel' mechanic players can combine with spy planes and sneak attack raids. E.g. sending a sizeable airforce to an area outside your opponent's radar coverage, recharging fuel, attacking, and then coming home to maximize your time over the enemy.

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

This is impossible. The premise of a REAL TIME Strategy game is that your actions HAVE to be determined quickly. APM will always matter because the faster player can do more things. It's inevitable. Trying to refuse the core nature of an RTS is a disaster in the making.

Nope. Nope nope nope. Don't do this. Theaters should not be arranged in a rock/paper/scissors battle against each other. If the enemy is dominating the sea, then land needs tools to retake it. It could be a combination of hovercraft, gunships and submersible torpedo k-bots. It could be a barrage of artillery from land. It could be nukes and an asteroid from space. Make a good variety of tools, and let the ocean be liberated from there.

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

Managing a booming Setons economy requires a lot of APM. Manual reclaim is about 2-4 times more effective than patrol or "Attack-move". So if you have nothing else to do you should do manual reclaiming.
Actually that is my biggest problem with SupCom. A lot of the APM is spent on managing your economy according to a predefined build order which doesn't have much to do with what your opponent is doing.
I want my micro to reflect what my opponent is doing rather than fighting the economy.

Isn't it good if everyone can become good at the game with only 50 apm? What would that mean? What would separate a pro player from an average player? Strategy and tactical skills? Sounds good to me. Related read:http://agoners.wordpress.com/2009/12/01/complexity-depth-and-skill-good-games/

Decisions != APM. You might be making many decisions in real time but if executing those decisions requires a lot of actions then you will be restricted to how many decisions you will be able to perform.
It is rather the opposite. The more APM that is required the less decisions you will be able to make during the game.
I'm perfectly fine with streamlining the UI so that the player can perform decisions faster which most likely will decrease the need of APM.

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

no shields

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

It has been discussed to death before but, unless you make something turn-based, given equal skilled players the one with higher apm is always going to win.

You can't eliminate any possibilities where manually doing stuff instead of relying on the AI is better. But you can reduce the impact of it, by slowing down combat (less dps compared to health), having less abilities that need manual intervention (bots that rely on kiting for example), etc.

Even the dreaded StarCraft 2 isn't as apm reliant as some make it out to be. Up 'till Gold or even lower Platinum league, having good macro and decent build orders allows you to win decently without the need for silly apm requirements.

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As for the sea armada issue, please, for the love of the Necromorphs, don't make it just air counterable. Air is usually the most boring part of the classical RTS theatres (no terrain, small amount of different units) and a pain to balance anyway.




As bobucles has said, make water attackable from other terrain types, be that land, air or orbital.

- some ships can be built on land (drydock)
- some units can swim (hovers)
- some units can dive (aquabots)
- some ships can be built on land, then move quite a bit over land to water where they will transform to ships (if the enemy navy also controls the beaches)
- some orbital units can drop into water and function as submarines or ship (think the stupid movie "Battleship" with the aliens which dropped into the ocean and its spaceship got used as a watership)