Assassination: the only way to play
Expert players will tell you that the assassination victory mode is the only way to play Supreme Commander. The sole exception is if you are for some reason playing against the AI, in which case you probably want to play supremacy, because the AI is notoriously bad about even trying to keep its commander safe. But against people, assassination is the only way to play. Why?
First of all, assassination is the only game mode used in ranked play, so if you’re playing other games that aren’t assassination, you’re going to be getting a lot lazier than you can afford to be when it actually matters. It’s all about protecting your commander. The name of the game is also “Supreme Commander“, not “Supreme Army”. The commander is important: it’s you! So it makes sense that if you die, you lose. The person inside the ACU is the one ordering around all of the rest of the units. If the commander goes down, it doesn’t make sense that you would still somehow be able to keep playing. Supreme Commander is thus different from all other RTSs (except Total Annihilation) because it places such an importance on one unit. It’s SupCom’s unique charm.
So, don’t let other people get away with playing non-assassination game modes. If you do find yourself in a custom game that isn’t set to assassination, teach them the error of their ways by introducing them to your commander after you’ve gotten your own base set up. When you lose your ACU it won’t be such a big deal, but when nearly everything in his base is destroyed in the ensuing explosion, he won’t be able to say the same. And if he (rightfully) accuses you of being extremely lame, just turn it back around at him, and call him lame for choosing the dumb game mode that allows for such a tactic.
And when playing ranked games, never ever forget that you’re playing assassination. You don’t have to beat your opponent’s army, or his bases. He could even be a lot stronger on these areas than you. All you have to do is beat his commander. Any player who’s pulled out a win with tactical missiles to the ACU can tell you that. I’ve seen many replays where players have left their commanders vulnerable. In some cases they even walk their commanders away from their base during an attack and the forget to bring him back, leaving him totally alone and exposed out in the wilderness. Do your scouting well, and always be thinking to yourself, even if you’re losing terribly, “Can I kill his commander?”
April 17th, 2007 at 12:28 pm
Comm bombing as a form of blackmail? That seems… silly. The idea of it is kind of funny, though.
April 17th, 2007 at 12:38 pm
I wouldn’t call it blackmail per se. More, uhh, vigilantism. But certainly you can see the problem with supremacy mode. Expert players already play very offensively with their commanders. If you don’t even risk losing if your ACU dies, you almost have to comm-bomb, because not doing so against the enemy who does is giving him a huge advantage. SupCom has a series of checks and balances, and the check on being offensive with a commander is that if he dies, you lose. Switch the game mode over to supremacy and that check is gone.
April 17th, 2007 at 12:42 pm
We’ve always just not done it because it isn’t fun. Sure, you can comm bomb right away, but that’s hardly a match, is it? You play five or ten games like that and think “Gee, this game used to be fun. What happened?” and people stop comm bombing.
That said, I don’t really disagree with you or GPG on Assassination being the best game mode, from a standpoint of both balance, fun, and sensibility.
April 17th, 2007 at 1:01 pm
I definitely disagree. Comm-bombing is the most hysterically funny action possible. Rather than ranking it as not fun, I’d rank it as too much fun to do too often, or else you risk a fun overload.
My fondest memory of Total Annihilation was a 4-way FFA at a LAN party with friends. I used a transport to pick up my friend’s unsuspecting commander, brought it over to another friend’s base, and then detonated it, killing two commanders in one stroke. I don’t even need to say how furious they were; they wouldn’t talk to me for several hours. But it was soooooo worth it. A week later they finally saw the humor in it, once they had gotten over the loss.
April 17th, 2007 at 1:10 pm
I miss my 10k Com bomb.
April 17th, 2007 at 1:15 pm
Agreed Wuped. It just doesn’t seem right that the Commander, the most important unit in the game, doesn’t even take out T1 factories with him anymore when he goes down. If they were so concerned about comm-bombing, perhaps GPG should’ve just reduced the damage one commander exploding does to another, while leaving the damage level to other units intact.
April 17th, 2007 at 1:30 pm
I do agree assassination is the only way to play.
However I don’t think it’s nice of you to encourage people to ruin other peoples games, even if that was just to point out the flaw in that gamestyle. If some people likes to play annihilation, it’s bad sportsmanship from someone to make a very early unstoppable combomb for quick victory. In longer games though, to make a hole in defensive line with combomb is alright and fun though.
April 17th, 2007 at 1:46 pm
Why is it unsportsmanlike though? It’s allowed within the rules of the game. It’s not a cheat or an exploit or anything. And they can do it to you too. I don’t play multiplayer to screw around, I play it to win, even if it’s an unranked game. Now if someone had a game explicitly labeled for screwing around, then I wouldn’t go mess with them, assassination or not. But the default game objective, if you will, is to win, and if the game mode is not set to assassination, why wouldn’t you get the best use out of your commander as possible?
April 17th, 2007 at 2:29 pm
I think Cyde’s just expressing some frustrating about game modes because he prefers one and wants everyone else to as well. Me, I just play skirmish anyway so I can play however I want. ;)
April 17th, 2007 at 2:35 pm
Hey Cyde your comments bring up an interesting question: Is there as great a downside to losing your ACU as there was for losing your Commander in TA? Namely the loss of a large amount of energy and metal/mass storage, construction output, etc?
From a quick thought it would seem:
Early Game: TA’s Commander would be more of a loss
Mid Game: With the upgrades available to the ACU, losing an upgraded ACU is a greater loss
Late Game: Due to the availability of SCUs, losing your TA Commander again becomes a greater loss than losing your SupCom ACU, even if upgraded.
April 17th, 2007 at 2:38 pm
As a former TA “game continues if com dies” -type of player (before me and my friends realized the beauty of assassination) I’ll try to explain.
Those who play annihilation-mode are generally into a good game experience, not into a quick win. The reasons behind not playing assassination may lie in a fear of losing your com for some random artillery lucky shot instead of “proper” overrun by bigger army. These type of players are into a massive fights where the biggest army rule and they just dislikes the idea losing the game because they didn’t babysit one of their units good enough. That was the fear back then atleast.
They might not know about the weak-spot to combomb, but even if they did, they would never use it themselves. I mean what’s the point in a 3 minutes long game experience? These type of players also never play in ranked because of this but should that really matter to us? The most important is that they have a good time with game.
When we played TA everybody knew a quick win could be achieved by fast combomb, but no-one did it. The idea that we finally got 6 players for a massive 3v3 game and then someone would ruin it in 3 minutes with an early combomb was just outrageous. Where’s the fun in that?
Now we can try to explain why Assassination is better than Annihilation and that you need to protect your com, as you mostly did in your blog but in the end the most important is that everyone is having a good time, be it assassination or annihilation.
Live and let live and all that.. (now there’s a phrase that don’t fit in a game with 1000 years war going on, but you get the idea ;))
April 17th, 2007 at 3:46 pm
In a general sense though Hipsu, com assassination is a very hard thing to pull off against a veteran opponent. Once you learn how to protect your ACU, stopping assassination attempts becomes much easier.
Often in high level play you typically have to overun the guys base before you get a chance to kill an ACU. Assassination ends the game at the most fun part when the game is played to that extent. For me it is no fun chasing every last unit around a large map when I have already essentially defeated my opponent.
When I do play under supremacy I usually like to keep my ACU if I am UEF or Cybran because the upgrades to those ACU’s are worth more than a quick bomb at t2 that wont destroy factories or anything under a shield.
April 17th, 2007 at 3:46 pm
This is the reason I got so fucking frustrated with the TA: Spring community. Everybody played large team games. And everybody played Commander Continues. There was a much larger proportion of noob players who just couldn’t be arsed protecting their commander properly. So any attempt to convince them they should play Comm Ends was met with widespread whining.
The end result was everybody built loads of construction units, and all the cheap shits would Comm bomb you after 8 minutes, and send an army in after it. There was no way you could protect yourself from it at that early stage.
There was a short period where a few good TA players started playing Spring and proper 1vs1 competitive matches took off. It made for some interesting replays and the modders finally got a good idea of what was wrong with their balance. They lost interest fairly quickly and mindless 4vs4’s and 5vs5’s on choke point maps took over again relatively quickly.
Spring also has the most hostile forum known to man. Truly and awful place.
April 17th, 2007 at 3:54 pm
I should clarify, I personally am not interested in being perceived as a jerk, so you won’t see me ruining these large multiplayer custom games just because they set the wrong game mode — but at the same time, people need to be aware that the best protection against early comm-bombing is to set the game to assassination, and that if they don’t, they are leaving themselves open to the possibility of their game being ruined by real “jerks”.
April 17th, 2007 at 4:06 pm
Deadlegion: And that’s why I love assassination.
Molloy: That sounds bad. Thankfully in supcom ranked games you just must play assassination. Generally I feel assassination is also the most favored game-mode in custom games so it’s not like it’s a huge problem for anyone.
My whole gripe went to Cyde Weys’ way of encouraging people to do the wrong thing and ruin the game for those who just like to have a good game playing supremacy/annihilation instead.
April 17th, 2007 at 4:08 pm
Ookay, Now I’d like to have an edit button to do something to my last line…
April 17th, 2007 at 4:25 pm
Hipsu: Why, what needs editing? I don’t see any typos.
April 17th, 2007 at 4:49 pm
I guess nothing. I just posted that after you posted yours and didn’t see it. Would have commented something like you’re ok fella. Then again it would have been edit-abuse so never mind. ;)
April 18th, 2007 at 2:33 am
As much as assasination mode may balance out comm bombs, the reality is that even if you die your army keeps fighting. When was the last time anyone has heard of a general or other leader in battle that died and the fight was over, no more fighting. Maybe the moral of troops were done but the fighting didn’t stop, plus these are machines they do not have feelings, what do they care whether the commanders dies or not. I like both ways of playing if that matters, and both ways of playing have there own stratagies, so to each their own.
April 18th, 2007 at 3:59 am
Sneakypete: When was the last time you saw two armies of giant robots fighting for cyborgs and followers of an alian cult? It could just as easily be argued that the robots only function under the direct control of the commander.
The point being that it comes down to playability. If you’re too lazy to protect your commander, like the idea of building douzens of air scouts while you chase down a defeated opponent, and are willing to put up with the risk of getting comm bombed then maybe supremecy is for you. Although I guess all that’s been covered.
April 24th, 2007 at 12:44 am
agree absolutely ,exploited your commander under your troop protection like what u said ..