Davids v Goliath
While waiting for the next patch, I’ve come up with a 1v1 custom game idea significantly different from normal gameplay that doesn’t require any of the new custom map code coming in the new patch. Here’s how it works.
- Select a small, flat map. Set the options as follows: fog of war: none, unit limit 250, win mode: sandbox, civilians: neutral, adjustable game speed, unlimited timeouts, and cheats on.
- Flip a virtual coin to see who gets to be Goliath first. The Goliath player spawns a galactic colossus (Alt+F2 brings up the spawn menu). The Davids player spawns 250 mech marines. The best way to do the latter is to spawn a single mech marine, select it and copy it with Ctrl+Shift+C, paste it a few times with Ctrl+Shift+V, select and copy the group of marines a few times, etc., until you hit the unit limit.
- Each player brings his unit(s) near the center of the map, but outside of firing range. Then pause the game.
- Each player now has as much time as he needs to queue up an elaborate set of move, attack-move, patrol, etc., orders.
- When both players are ready, the game is unpaused, and the battle is fought without human intervention until either all mech marines or the colossus are dead. If the end of the queued orders are reached without a resolution then the battle is fought in live mode until it is over.
- Repeat the preceding steps, switching off sides of Davids and Goliath each time. Keep track of who wins each round; whoever takes the most rounds at the end of the game wins.
- If you don’t trust your opponent, watch the replay later from his point of view and verify that he wasn’t changing around move orders during the combat phase.
This “mod” does result in quite the entertaining battle. As you may not know, even mech marines, in significant numbers, do stand quite the chance against even a galactic colossus. The thing is, if they attack in a group, they will be slaughtered in just a few sweeps of the colossus’s death beam. So they need to spread out, but not too far, for if they spread out too thin, they won’t be able to fire upon the colossus in large enough numbers to kill it.
Meanwhile, the colossus’s main weakness is that it can’t shoot anything behind it, so the Goliath player must be very careful to set good move orders that frequently have it turn around so that it can take out units that may have gotten behind him. The Davids player, meanwhile, will probably have set move orders that have groups of units moving in different directions, such that one will always be (hopefully) behind the colossus. If at the end of all of the move orders the colossus is standing still getting wailed on by mech marines behind him that he cannot shoot at, the Davids win.
If this play style is a little too cerebral for you, you can just eliminate the pause phase and fight the battle out between the colossus and mech marines in real time with dynamic orders. But I think I like the version with the pause phase better. There are a lot of nuances to the plans that I haven’t given away here, and if you don’t think of them, you can find yourself utterly decimated by a player with superior strategy and forethought.
April 26th, 2007 at 12:41 pm
We really need that patch soon. :-) *j/k* I like that people (CedeWeys) are coming up with new ideas. While this particular one does not appeal to me, the fact that it’s somewhat simple and different is good. What are the odds? I’m thinking still like 3-to-1 in favor of the GC.
April 26th, 2007 at 1:00 pm
ya know, I think I’ll go make a version of one of the flat 5×5s that does this automatically. Because mech marines are OP.
April 26th, 2007 at 1:04 pm
Anyone else have a problem that when cheats are on only the host can use cheats like alt+f2 and cntrl+shift+c etc…
April 26th, 2007 at 1:13 pm
Wuped: Really? I didn’t know that’s the case (if it is). If that is the case, that kind of ruins my idea, at least partially. The host could still spawn a GC for the other player, but no way is he going to be able to spawn 250 mech marines for the other player, since you can’t copy and paste units that aren’t yours. So the host would always have to be the Davids player. Sigh. Assuming that other players cannot use these commands, anyway.
April 26th, 2007 at 1:31 pm
The host could ally temporairly, give the Mech marines, then keep going.
That works, right?
April 26th, 2007 at 1:38 pm
Will: Yes, that would work. You’d just have to make sure that alliances weren’t set to fixed.
April 26th, 2007 at 1:39 pm
Actually, that might be the best way to start a real-time battle. Ally with the other player and create a colossus surrounded by a horde of mech marines. Then un-ally. The battle will start at its most pitched moment, rather than having to wait for the units to get within range of each other. This will also make life more dangerous for the colossus, since he will immediately have units at his back.
April 26th, 2007 at 1:56 pm
If anyone wants to try this out im getting on gpg right now and would be happy to play a game of david vs goliath. My gpg name is “Wuped”.
April 26th, 2007 at 3:09 pm
I think you could use setFocusArmy as well? It even works in the campaign.
April 26th, 2007 at 3:38 pm
Cattletech: I don’t know what setFocusArmy is, or does? Is there a list of these different console commands somewhere?
April 26th, 2007 at 4:28 pm
setFocusArmy(number) changes which army you control. I believe its actually a lua command, not a console command, meaning you’d type in LUA setFocusArmy(2) to switch armies. Shortcuts can be found here: http://forums.gaspowered.com/viewtopic.php?t=3845 Lua/engine commands can be found here: http://wiki.supcomuniverse.com/wiki/SupCom_LUA_Documentation
I don’t have a good source for console commands.
April 26th, 2007 at 4:41 pm
Aha! That’s why I could never use that command properly before. I tried typing it in, but it never worked. So I just need to preface it with LUA?
April 26th, 2007 at 5:03 pm
Grokmoo and I just tried six rounds of this. It’s not as fun as it sounds. And 250 mech marines isn’t nearly enough.
I would recommend going with 500 mech marines and making it an interactive battle.
April 26th, 2007 at 5:53 pm
“Aha! That’s why I could never use that command properly before. I tried typing it in, but it never worked. So I just need to preface it with LUA?”
Yeah, just type in “LUA SetFocusArmy(armynumber)” (without the quotes)
Also, I made a mistake earlier, its SetFocusArmy, not setFocusArmy (lua is case sensitive, so it thinks setFocusArmy is a different command).
April 26th, 2007 at 7:22 pm
Strage, I always type it in lowercase. Like I said, it even works in the campaign (you can switch sides and ctrl+K all enemy units…)
It also worked when I was spectating in a custom game (allowed me to choose a point of view for the match). I don’t know if it works in custom when you’re not an observer. But I have a sneaking suspicion that it’d work even without cheats on, and on ranked as well. Haven’t tested it yet though, for obvious reasons…
April 26th, 2007 at 8:56 pm
“Strage, I always type it in lowercase. Like I said, it even works in the campaign (you can switch sides and ctrl+K all enemy units…)” There may be a console command with a similar name which does the same thing. I just know that SetFocusArmy(army) is a global Lua command to the moho engine (the C engine)
May 13th, 2007 at 12:38 am
Woo! Welcome to the world of cheating for me! XD
BTW, the spawn menu is a little confuzzling at first glance, isn’t it? :P