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

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

That is a really crude view of RTS and I don't agree with it at all. Feel free to ask me to explain myself.

Slowing down combat usually makes combat more micro intensive in my experience but mostly it depends on a lot of other factors like the importance of positioning, if units can drive past eachother before dying, how easy it is to chase down enemy units and how much you gain from focus firing, etc.
If kiting is performed by an AI it doesn't need much manual intervention so it really depends on how far you are ready to let the AI manage your units.

And this is strategy in what way? Starcraft macro typically means managing your base and build orders is just building your base in certain order. You just make Starcraft 2 seem very shallow when you put it like this.

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

Um... its true though. I mean, its almost a tautology. If you have 2 players C and D which are equal at action A besides player C being better at B which is a subset of A, obviously player C is going to win.

Of course having C(A)=D(A) is unlikely to happen in the real world.


As for Starcraft, its quite a shallow game with an extremely high skill ceiling. High level Starcraft games are most often about executing a few well known strategies as good as possible. Executing those strategies is hard and very apm reliant and small mistakes can cost one the game in mere seconds.

Its just that in mid to low level games of Starcraft neither player has the ability to execute those strategies very well and having a higher overall economy can win you the game even when you don't have the apm to do high level manouvers. (Good build order and macro means outproducing the enemy which is harder then it sounds to execute. It still needs lots of training to follow a build order accurately and fast enough while doing the other stuff to prevent losing.)

Starcraft isn't a very strategic game, but a very good esport since it relies (like most popular sports) on a players skill in executing different moves as well as possible, making it reliant on training and skill, but easily understandable.

You don't usually win a high level Starcraft game by inventing a new strategy (although after the release of HotS, it was still possible (hellbat drop pressure play for example), it won't be possible in the new future). Yes, the metagame is always shifting slightly, but usually only by a small group of extremely good players. The strategies are known, the maps are known, etc. Most often one wins by executing one of the given strategies as well as possible without making critical mistakes with choosing this strategy.

Ie. appropriate build order and good execution of those. If the Terran drops the Zerg, either the Zerg is fast enough with scouting those drops and reacting to it or he doesn't.


In the end, in low level Starcraft, managing your base and following build orders is hard enough, that being better at those two things can ensure your victory. Being minute behind the enemy at expanding and not able to do damage to them, can cost you the game. Startcraft is imo a game about execution. Yes, that makes it a shallow strategy game, but a very nice game to watch in high level. (Like watching soccer players. They have incredible skill at soccer, but the most strategic game it ain't. For that I watch chess.)

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

all + i got atm

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

Maybe something like this?

Mike

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

This is only true if the players are performing the same actions, the same tactics and the same strategies. Even players that are at the same skill level except at APM they might chose different strategies. Depending on how the strategies interact one player might come out ahead regardless of the difference in APM.
The player with higher APM would still have a higher chance to win but how often he will win because of it depends on how important APM is compared to strategy.

I like your Starcraft analysis.

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

This isn't a problem that adding a land unit that can attack naval units can fix.

The only way to fix this problem is to make naval warfare sufficiently large-scale, with enough units spread over enough space, that a single battle doesn't confer total sea dominance at a stroke. If there are only two fleets in the sea- yours and the enemy's- then the winner of the battle between the fleets has won that sea. And the other player would need to construct an entire fleet, up to the point it could defeat the surviving fleet, right underneath the enemy's fleet. It's impossible. You can never take back the sea once your entire navy has been destroyed.

Much the same problem is present with ASF's in SupCom. Once you lose your ASF force, the enemy's surviving ASF force becomes impossible to defeat. We want to split these air forces (and land and naval forces as well) out of deathballs, and into more interesting armies.

Now imagine that both players have 20 fleets, or even more. They have lots of ships in multiple groups in different locations. One fleet defeating one other fleet doesn't decide the entire war. The player whose fleet was destroyed can react, can construct more units, can move their forces to defend, etc. A single battle does not decide the game, although it might have large strategic importance since the winner controls the area the battle was fought.

The critical issue is how you encourage players to have multiple groups instead of a single group twenty times as large. A game where each player has one army where they clash to decide the victor is much less interesting than having a larger-scale game with many pieces of varying strength, position, and influence.

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

The premise of a realtime strategy game is to remove the pen and paper abstraction of turn based gameplay and let the computer enforce movement speeds and damage.... in real time. APM is only important if the game requires APM. A realtime game can have a pacing that does not require it. Supcom of all games should prove this without a doubt, where the very highest level players play a decidedly deliberate game because it's not required to be a clickfest it's required to have a good overview.

Imagine if you sat around a risk table and everyone was allowed to move at the same time, it would be chaos. That's why turn based exists and no other reason.

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

the only RTS that doesn't require high APM to be competitive is made by paradox and that's only because you can slow down time

edit: also up until the advent of carrier coastal batteries were extremely effective against naval bombardment:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coastal_artillery

Following that rule of thumb the metal cost of a coastal battery emplacement capable of beating an opponents navy should be LESS than 1/3rd of the opponents' naval guns and obviously stationary emplacements do not require metal-intensive boats to be built on.

with such a system in place it becomes very cost efficient to protect a particular coastline, sure if you're spread along the coast the opponent can move to what isn't fortified but if coastal batteries have a similar range to battleships that's going to be a wide area. Would you still make torpedo defense towers? Probably to protect against subs, but if you're worried about cruisers or battleships your best bet will be coastal artillery.

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

Ignore facts if you wish, but don't open your mouth about it.

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

Coastal batteries very quickly become inland batteries. Using emplacements as a counter for boats just won't work very well.

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

It works in NOTA on the Spring engine. Coastal guns have extreme range with no splash damage and are quite inaccurate making them ineffective against land targets but good against ships which are a lot larger. I wouldn't call it a counter but it is a way to get back into sea if you have lost it to an enemy fleet.

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

That is exactly how it was done during WWII..big cannons, inaccurate as all hell but with a long range where built on the coastline to ward off incoming battleships. A ship only "cannon/laucncher" that would only target ships/submersibles would be a good benefit to fend off offshore bombardment and would be counterable by fast moving hover vehicles...?

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

How would the game know when and where to use the abilities automatically? The right time to stim, which units to stim, where to drop a storm, fungel, EMP, or force field? Should TA have just auto-launched nukes as soon as they finished building to a random spot on the map?

If your game is going to have special abilities, it makes more sense to have to player control them. I don't think PA is going to have any of that (except maybe nukes) so it probably won't be an issue.

To stay on topic, I hope the units move faster in general. Everything moved sooooo slow in SupCom.

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

I think you have to be a little more specific than that. Technically most land units moved at more than 100 kilometers per hour. http://forums.gaspowered.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=51338
What actually made it feel slow is an interesting question. Scale? Unit speed vs unit ranges? Acceleration?

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

Most abilities are fairly straightforward, it's just busywork to use them, AOE on groups extra damage on tough enemies, healing when low on health etc. In most cases this is something that an AI could easily do.

You'd only need to toggle autocast off if you know you need them for a special purpose. Which is why you'd have a toggle that defaults to on.

Supcom already has this to a degree with autobuild on nukes and TMLs.

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

I guess it was scale? When my ally was attacked, there was no point in going to help because the battle would be long over by the time I got half way there.

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

Well if you waited until the attack was underway that's not surprising at all.

Mike

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

TA was good, TA was REALLY good. I think with what we know so far, this game is going to be like TA when it comes to strategy and APM, and there is nothing you can do to convince Mavor otherwise.

Personally, I think the single factor that should decide games should be player awareness. My opinion could be wrong, I haven't refined it in any debates yet.

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

Completely wrong, have you watched Zock, Napalm, or even ZLO play? I believe napalm was telling me the other day his Apm averaged about 50. Supcom did a good job, of separating micro and APM in my opinion.

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

could you explain why you think this didn't happen in real life? obviously the range of coastal batteries and coastal bombardment would have to be somewhat relative unlike they were in supcom

my understanding was that artillery would be ineffective against regular units, either as over kill or simply being too inaccurate but against boats this wouldn't be the case, and artillery would be impractical in most situations because of the opportunity cost of building additional tanks or bots

there could also be land based counters to inland artillery, jamming and stealth or walls for example