Our hopes for the patch and the revival of tech 2
I was talking with Grokmoo yesterday and today and we both have very fervent hopes that the patch will open up the middle game. Supreme Commander (at least in competitive play) currently plays in two modes: tech 1 and tech 3. Tech 2 is little more than a highway pit stop between your origin and your destination. Tech 2 battles seem so exciting though. They’re like a whole new game that none of us have played since finishing the campaigns (which was over two months ago now).
Imagine how much fun the tech 2 battles could be. You’d actually use those tech 2 tanks, and the mobile missile launchers in great numbers. Mobile shield generators would actually be used often in battle. It’d be terribly, terribly fun. It’s the kind of battle a lot of us haven’t experienced in a long while. Tech 2 battles are just so much more fun than homogeneous bunches of tech 3 siege assault bots slugging it out. The way to make tech 2 a more viable type of battle is to increase the cost of tech 3 factories (and possibly units) — something that we’re hoping and praying that Gas Powered Games does with the next patch.
An expanded tech 2 war would also open up even more asymmetries between the factions and make for more varied gameplay. Cybrans lack mobile shield generators, which make a huge difference in tech 2 battles. They also have tanks that aren’t very powerful and tend to hit the ground more often than enemy units. Great, you’re thinking, Cybrans are totally going to be owned in tech 2 wars. Not so fast! Cybrans just need to take advantage of their other strengths. In particular, I’m thinking of their powerful Renegade gunships and excellent tech 1 mobile anti-air.
Cybrans need to field a mixed-arms force to win in tech 2 battles, but luckily, they are the best-suited faction for this strategy. With gunships making up for their lack of strong firepower on the ground and their excellent land-based anti-air units providing cover for the gunships from enemy fighters, they make for a potent tech 2 fighting force. I can’t wait to see more battles like this, and I sincerely hope that the patch delivers us this opportunity. If the patch fails to make tech 2 battles more viable, oh well, I suppose there’s always the mods that rip out all units tech 3 and above. But those won’t be usable in ranked play, where I really want to experience a full-on tech 2 battle. Anyone up for some competitive custom games?
May 4th, 2007 at 12:15 pm
Yes, I am up for some gameplay. Want to do a free for all with self restricted t2 limit? That means absolutele no t3, except for maybe mexes to help things along a little. No t3 factories, engies, power plants or mass fabs. I think it could be fun.
May 4th, 2007 at 12:18 pm
I think it’s safer to just say no tech 3 or tech 4 units, period. If you just disallow the engineers, but not upgrading to tech 3 units, you’re going to give UEF a huge advantage, because they’re the only ones who can upgrade to advanced shields from tech 2 (Cybrans’ are so bad they don’t count). And advanced shields will pretty much hold out indefinitely against tech 2 units. So no tech 3 and above, period, is probably the simplest rule. You’d be allowed to get the tech 3 engineering suite on your commander if you desired, but you couldn’t use it to build anything tech 3.
May 4th, 2007 at 1:35 pm
Cyde if you want to try a battle where you are capped at tech 2 I would play.
May 4th, 2007 at 1:40 pm
Although the idea itself sounds good it would be very easy to turtle and since T2 PD’s and arty are devastating against T2 units the battle can last way too long. So probably you need some rule for that, but thats just a side note. Can’t wait for the patch.
May 4th, 2007 at 1:54 pm
Would not be that easy to turtle… Mobile missile launchers would devestate the PD.
May 4th, 2007 at 1:55 pm
Yarood: Again, it appears the answer is economy. If the attacker can produce enough combined arms and attack simultaneously the defender should be overwhelmed.
May 4th, 2007 at 2:14 pm
I don’t know about that, as Aeon I think I could make a pretty formidable defense with only T2 technology: both techs of PD, TMLs, TMDs, T2 arty, shields, and mobile units to fill in holes (like flak, mobile shields, and MMLs of my own). SABs could walk past something like that, but a T2 army will get annihilated once you get a critical mass of defenses.
Especially on a map like Isis, you really need T3 and experimentals to punch through something like that. Also, with respect to a navy, the lack of T3 means that you can kiss shore bombardment goodbye except on maps with tiny islands, T2 arty will outrange your destroyers and you can’t build battleships.
Better to just make T2 worth using. T3 and experimentals are there for a reason.
May 4th, 2007 at 2:31 pm
tech2 ground units are boring. if mobile shield generators automatically positioned themselves to cover the most units and and could be fixed at the front line, rear, or sides where they’d be affective without overlapping and micro then it would be useful but they could also be removed and just bump up the hp on the other tech2 units without the hassle. the mobile artiliery doesn’t have a long enough range and high enough firepower to make tech1-2 ground units have to work hard to kill them. defenses don’t win games so when someone says pd and aa are good in tech2, I think back to the newb article that says the main thing in supcom is to be aggressive and I consider tech2 boring.
May 4th, 2007 at 2:46 pm
If you think about it t3 stuff absolutely rips through t2 stuff in very small numbers. This should be the case for t2 against t1. Just give the t2 stuff a bit of a buff and then people who skip t2 to go to t3 hoping that their t1 army will hold out would get annihilated.
Making t3 factories expensive isn’t the solution. It’ll slow down the gameplay and make games on maps like Isis drag out even longer. It’s a much better idea to simply improve the tech 2 stuff.
May 4th, 2007 at 4:07 pm
I’m just afraid that the t3 cost increase will make the game more turtle prone, and might possibly eliminate most if not all of the T1 game. Think about how quickly you can get T2 right now, it’s pretty friggin quick. T2 PD without the imminent threat of SABs running through become much more relatively powerful, and TMD is pretty cheap to build, I’m not confident in MMLs preventing excessive PD building. We might end up with a more varied game, but I’m not sure it’s going to be a better one. Plus the thought of Isis with harder to get T3 makes me cringe.
May 4th, 2007 at 5:15 pm
I am far from being the best player around, but from what I’ve read it sounds as if placing tech 3 farther out of reach resource wise will make it much more difficult to overwhelm an enemy defensive position. The ground war will no longer be as much a game of economics, i.e. who can get to T3 siege bots first. As a result of being forced to use T2 units, in order to win, a commander will have to find more clever strategies to defeat their opponents. I see it as shifting the game further toward strategy and away from the typical “build the biggest unit first and begin stomping” method. (Hmmm…group target priorities and area of attack boxes might be helpful here.)
I’m sure this is why the patch is taking so long. It is a difficult thing to balance all the changes out. You want to make sure T3 is expensive enough that T2 is a viable option in the appropriate circumstances. However, not so far that its cost does not offset its usefulness.
Then you have to evaluate the attainability of T4 units. Do they need to move up the ladder as well? Are they now so close to T3 that T3 is going to be skipped? (Not likely, but I’m sure it is a factor.)
And then,* when GPG finishes with all that, they realize they’ve completely broken the AI, and it no longer knows what to build. More testing.
(* There is NO “and then!” There is nothing else! …Andthenandthenandthenandthen!…)
May 4th, 2007 at 5:24 pm
This is all assuming they just make T3 more expensive. They might change how the siege bots work instead, remember? Slower siege bots need more support from other units because defensive positions can’t be dodged through as they can now. As T3 only has two units, that means the main support army of siege bots would be T2 units.
Regardless, I think the patch can only make the game better. I’d rather have a tougher, more diverse game than one where whoever gets the first siege bot out wins 97% of the time.
May 4th, 2007 at 5:42 pm
I have a t2 meatgrinder mod (meatgrinder 2) that might be an interesting preview of what’s to come. I only just realized while reading this article that I’d still have to disable the t3 shield upgrade for UEF, but still, it should be interesting to see how the T2 battles go. Sometime tonight or tomorrow I’ll make some updates to the mod to fix the shield problem.
http://www.jrpereira.com/supreme_commander_mods
May 4th, 2007 at 5:50 pm
That is true, I was assuming they would just be adjusting the economics, rather than the units themselves. I agree though, anything that leads to more diversity is only a good thing.
May 4th, 2007 at 8:55 pm
they better adjust some of the unit ai, damn im sick of strat bombers missing first run and stuff shooting mountains, more consistent inaccuracy please.
May 5th, 2007 at 7:45 am
Surely T2 units would also be adjusted relative to T2 defenses, in addition to nerfing SAB, to make assaults more viable.
May 6th, 2007 at 8:41 pm
The T3 rush NEEDS to be slowed down, so yes they DO need to be made more expensive – factories AND units. Fewer of them so early in the game will make a huge boost for T2’s effectiveness and prolong the time period where T2 ground units are effective.
May 7th, 2007 at 2:25 am
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I see it as shifting the game further toward strategy and away from the typical “build the biggest unit first and begin stomping” method.
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As it should be. The whole purpose of SupCom was to make players think strategically and give them strategic freedom, instead of just doing siege bot rushes. The game was supposed to be balanced and along with the varied nature of the three races would have made rushes ineffective, but somewhere along the lines not enough balancing was done.
Let’s hope the patch properly balances the game and reduces the effectiveness of rushes, putting the focus of the game purely on strategy and not repetitive tactics.
May 10th, 2007 at 3:47 am
Argh, unit AI!
(Yelled from a mountain top, and echoing off the boundaries of time)
May 13th, 2007 at 1:07 am
All that needs to be done is to slow down the damn siege bots. :P They move WAY too fast.
June 6th, 2009 at 2:10 pm
I know sometimes it can be a race, but I like how a swarm of T1 bots can take down relatively decent size group of T3 units. It’s all about your economy management. I do wish that they would find a way to eliminate the constant rushes. I want strategy, not “build and pour”