Timing your death to allow unit donations to teammates
Grokmoo and I got back from the beach today. It was a lot of fun, especially sailing in the Delaware Bay and motorboating in the Atlantic Ocean. Oh, and the beach wasn’t too bad either. And I got a hole-in-one on three separate holes at the mini-golf course; the last hole-in-one even won me a coupon for a free round of mini-golf. But I digress! This post is about how best to handle situations in team games of Supreme Commander when you die before your partner.
Prior to a recent patch, unit donations could be given at any point in the game. So you could just select all of your units with Ctrl-X, go into the Allies screen, and give everything but your commander to a teammate. This was very useful to do after your commander died in an assassination game but before you were defeated and all of your units exploded. Obviously, there’s a huge difference between all of your units being destroyed and your ally getting them.
But after the recent patch, once your commander explodes, you can no longer donate units. Luckily, there’s a way to get around it. If you’re sure you’re about to die, quickly give all of your units to your ally before your commander dies. This makes a huge difference in 2v2 or 3v3 ranked ladder games. A 2v1 is rather unwinnable, but a 2v1 where the 1 player has the combined strength of two armies is doable. There’s just that timing issue of making sure to donate your units before your commander dies.
There’s one important caveat to consider: what happens when two commanders are fighting each other, leading to an inevitable draw? There’s actually a huge advantage in self-destructing your own commander! JGet the enemy commander to under 4,000 HP, make sure he’s within death-nuke range of your commander, donate your units, and then Ctrl+K your commander. Both commanders will die and you and your opponent will be defeated, but your enemy will not be able to donate his units. One of my partners in 2v2 used this to great effect on Open Palms in a recent 2v2 ranked ladder game. We drew enemy-pair starting positions on Open Palms and quickly got locked into offensive comm battles. My partner reached a draw with his opponent, but he managed to give me all of his units while denying his opponent the opportunity to do the same by self-destructing his commander. Obviously, I won after that, with about twice the units and resources of the surviving opponent.
So don’t forget to donate units to allies before dying, in ranked ladder games or custom games, and if you ever end up near the enemy commander in a situation that looks like it’s headed towards a draw, be sure to donate and self-destruct so that your opponent cannot donate. This will give your teammate a huge advantage, and very likely, your team will win the overall match, which is the only thing that matters in a team game (and certainly on the ranked ladders). Oh, and it’s not recommended to sit on the miniature foredeck of a smallish motorboat traveling at 30 knots through choppy ocean water. Just trust me on that one.
July 2nd, 2007 at 11:36 pm
Even if someone cntrl+ks on me I can still get all my units to my teamate before I blow up.
July 2nd, 2007 at 11:45 pm
Wuped: Are you sure? How? I thought unit donation turns off as soon as your commander explodes? I haven’t had any success giving away units postmortem.
July 2nd, 2007 at 11:55 pm
You need to be very very very very very quick. I ctrl+x f4 share and ok in a split second.
July 3rd, 2007 at 2:05 am
This doesn’t seem at all seem in the spirit of a competitive match, and the fact that they’re trying to prevent units being given after comm death seems like a giant hint thats its not considered a fair tactic. my 2c you cheap bastards!
July 3rd, 2007 at 2:18 am
Cheap I may be, but losing I am not! Wait….. Ah to hell with it.
July 3rd, 2007 at 2:54 am
Well, I don’t think it’s really that cheap, I mean it’s a case of knowing when your commander dies; pure assassination (which isn’t exactly something you can easily predict) or getting pounded on all fronts so you know you can’t hold out for much longer? In the latter case your ally won’t have that much use for all those extra units/buildings imo, not to mention that his/her unit cap might get royally screwed.
July 3rd, 2007 at 8:29 am
Personally I think it’s a cheap tactic, if your opponent kills your ACU he deserves to have the massive advantage over your teamate. I think they should change it so you can only give units when your ACU has 5000+ health
July 3rd, 2007 at 10:16 am
I’ve always disagreed with this tactic, even in TA.
July 3rd, 2007 at 12:00 pm
it is too much of a defeatist tactic to pre-select all factories, extractors, and power as a control group, so you are guaranteed to give them (seeing as you just have to hit the number of the group instead of what was it, ctrl x and F4), if not all of your current units?
July 3rd, 2007 at 2:01 pm
another reason why acu death does damage being utter bullshit
July 3rd, 2007 at 2:23 pm
Personally, I love the ACU death explosion, especially in non-Assassination mode. If your Commander dies anywhere near your main base, your severly crippled for the rest of the match, if not dead. (making keeping your Commander allive a very good idea) HOWEVER, I believe that to reduce the preemptive commbombing (using a commbomb to punch through defences is usually consitered OK) they should put a timer as to when the Meltdown ability activates, and make it a slider on Custom games, ranging from 30 secs to 30 mins. Consider it the time it takes to generate the antimatter :)
July 3rd, 2007 at 5:22 pm
I always liked in TA that you could give your units before you died. 2vs1 is always a struggle so giving the losing player a little boost isn’t going to help him that much. Especially in long games where they’re pretty close to the unit limit anyway.
Is anybody else a little unsatisfied with 2vs2 play at the moment? I don’t see nearly the amount of coordination between players that you get in TA. On Open Palms it’s more like two 1vs1’s working in parallel. If they redesigned the maps so teams were closer situated and could help each other out more easily without leaving themselves vulnerable you’d get much more interesting matches.
I mean, think of Finns Revenge with two players on each side starting at the same start position. That would make for some interesting cooperative play.
July 3rd, 2007 at 6:56 pm
To all the nay sayers, you are so full of utter rubbish.
The idea of using your ACU as a sacrifice in a team game is neither new nor particularly revolutionary, the only difference is that with the right know-how you can knock off one enemy player while your team only loses an ACU. I don’t see the massive problem, anybody can do it, it really isn’t a secret (if you’ve read the game manual, or spent half an hour in Halcyon) and it adds a new level of tactics into the game, if this ebcomes popular, we will see people being a lot more careful with their ACUs when they get to sub 4000hp, this IS A GOOD THING, it adds something new to thing about to the game.
I’m all in favour personally, though I hadnt thought about ctrl+k your ACU to deny your opponent the oppurtunity to donate. Anything that adds new ideas to the game, that is not actually a bug, is a GOOD thing. Whether it’s considered dishonourable, lame or frowned upon is entirley irrelevant.
Nice guys don’t finish last, they don’t finish at all because the not-nice guy kneecapped them with a sniper rifle! They can get all high and mighty if they like but it changes nothing.
July 3rd, 2007 at 6:59 pm
ok, so if I were to cheat, and win, I wouldn’t be a nice guy, but I would clearly be better than you?
July 4th, 2007 at 12:04 am
Cheating is a whole different concept. The unit donations, the team sacrificing, its not cheating, its strategy. Underhanded…..yeah, it is. But you haven’t altered the game you play in, you have simply used the tools given to you to the greatest possible ability. Cheating is when you change the perameters of the game in your favor.
Spelled perameters wrong, but whatever :)
July 4th, 2007 at 3:04 am
So, by that logic, using the sacrifice upgrades, hiding your units on the edge of the map or creating invincible units with the transport bug are all legitimate strategies, as you haven’t changed the parameters of the game. what a load of toss. Justify it however you want, I’ll still call you a cheap fuckwit who needs to win more than you need to enjoy yourself…
July 4th, 2007 at 9:17 am
I agree with Unconquerable, the ACU death explosion just needs to be removed altogether as there are a crapload of issues resulting from it, from Commander Bombing to MAD to this.
July 4th, 2007 at 2:28 pm
Zordon you are explaining exploits that are obviously exploits this is not a exploit.
July 4th, 2007 at 5:20 pm
The commander explosion is too much a part of the TA/SupCom experience to be completely removed.
Perhaps it should be a map option. 1) standard ACU death nuke, 2) No ACU death nuke, or 3) ACU Death EMP.
July 4th, 2007 at 7:02 pm
Yeah, and I think this is an exploit. They’re obviously trying to prevent units given after ACU death. It’s a comm bomb that lets 1 side keep all their units and the other only half. They stop you giving units after ACU death, so what do you do? Oh shit, better kill myself or else we wont have a huge advantage when I die. It’s an exploit thats hard to fix without removing functionality, but I bet they will if you guys keep up with this.
July 5th, 2007 at 2:15 am
Zordon, this could be compared to factory reclaiming. Did they remove factory reclaiming? Ya. Was it an exploit? No. It was simply something in the game people did not like but things the top players did there was nothing wrong with it(despite all the whining). If they had kept factory reclaiming would supcom be a horrible game? No.
July 5th, 2007 at 3:24 am
No, Theres a big difference between reclaiming a factory and comm bomb with no downside. I refer you to my comment on justification.
July 5th, 2007 at 12:35 pm
It’s not a comm bomb with no downside: you’re out of the game! One player can’t manage a large force as efficiently as two separate players can. Human attention is the most precious limited resource in Supreme Commander.
July 5th, 2007 at 6:27 pm
yeah, the opponents team has also lost a player, only also lost the units that go along with the player. This isn’t cool.