Supreme Commander Talk

Check out this exciting match between Gollum (ranked 4th) and Ftang (ranked 7th). The match is played on Open Palms, which is a small, mass-rich map where the conflict starts almost immediately and never slows down. It’s pretty much the optimal map to watch great players really going at it, which is what made this game so fun.

Ftang and Gollum both get off to a very fast start. Ftang doesn’t exploit his mass deposits as quickly as Gollum does, and suffers some brief damage to his infrastructure after being overrun by a tech 1 rush. But he recovers and upgrades to tech 3 faster than Gollum does, so he has tech 3 bots on the ground faster than Gollum.

Before the tech 3 battle really gets underway, though, Gollum uses a very interesting tactic. He airlifts six engineers into the back of Ftang’s base and uses them to build tech 1 point defenses, which proceed to destroy all of Ftang’s initial base, including two land factories, some power generators, and four mass extractors.

Ftang tries building an overly ambitious advanced tech 2 point defense after his first siege bot, but it is quickly overwhelmed.

By this point Gollum is getting siege bots too, so Ftang is unable to hold this highly advanced position. Gollum is still outnumbered on siege bots, though Ftang isn’t pressing his advantage just yet. So Gollum turns to a different tactic. He notices that Ftang’s commander is in a highly advanced position and shuttles up some tech 2 engineers into the arctic mountainous region in the northeast part of the map, where nobody ever usually goes, and begins building a tactical missile launcher.

Luckily Gollum is playing as Cybran, which means his tactical missile launcher basically has no delay between launching missiles. Ftang’s commander doesn’t know what’s hit him until it’s already too late.

So what do we learn?

The basic lesson here is to keep your commander safe. It’s kind of refreshing seeing even great players screwing up on this point, because I know I’ve had it happen to me a couple of times (with tactical missiles alone). After about ten minutes into the game your commander should no longer be fighting on the front lines. This is when tech 2, including the highly dangerous tactical missile launcher, starts appearing. At this point into the game your commander can only make small contributions to combat anyway, especially when siege bots start arriving, and the risks are not worth the rewards. So get him out of there. Ftang is probably kicking himself over this and is sure to remember to keep his commander safe in the future.

Download the replay of this match (v3223).

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 31st, 2007 at 11:51 pm by Cyde Weys and is filed under Multiplayer, Replays, Strategy. Keywords: Tags: Multiplayer, Open Palms, replay, Supreme Commander, tactical missile. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.