An open letter from some top players
Hey everyone, long time no see. I was camping over the weekend (and found a really strange cemetery), then got a little bit distracted by friends upon my return. But the Supreme Commander community wasn’t silent in my absence, oh no! We have some pretty significant developments to report on, so let’s begin.
Cauldron and many other top players have written and signed an open letter stating what they believe is wrong with Supreme Commander. They highlight three main aspects of Supreme Commander they believe are off and offer recommendations for fixing them, two of which I agree with and one of which I don’t. Let’s examine them in turn.
Mass fabricators
Most players realize there’s something wrong with mass fabricators (of both tech levels). They’re simply too good. After ten minutes into the game it becomes much more efficient to simply build up mass fabricators than to go out and fight for control of mass deposits. There are typically three stages of mass fabricator use: T1 mass fabs and T1 powergens, T1 mass fabs and T2 powergens, and then finally T3 mass fabs and T3 powergens. The latter two stages are significantly better than fighting for map control or upgrading mass extractors.
The simple recommendation is to make mass fabricators less lucrative by making them use more energy. This will restore the emphasis on map control and mass deposits. As the game stands right now, it really is quite disappointing that games devolve into huge farms so quickly, rather than raging dynamic battles across the landscape where both sides are fighting for every little inch of territory.
Assisting construction
The ability to assist construction is one of those cool features unique to Total Annihilation and Supreme Commander. It gives the game a different feel from most other RTSes. But it also has its downsides. Units can be constructed ludicrously quickly. Dozens of engineers assisting construction can build counters to incoming units in much less time than it actually takes those units to arrive. On a large map this makes air attacks pretty toothless, because many SAM missile launchers can be thrown up really quickly before the air units even arrive. And just forget about trying to attack with an experimental.
There are some diminishing returns on assisting already (i.e. one factory with two engineers assisting will build at a lower efficiency than two factories with one engineer assisting each), but the diminishing returns aren’t harsh enough. Even when dozens of engineers are assisting a factory, the efficiency hit isn’t that big. It should be. There should be a higher premium placed on the incredibly useful ability to rush construction. How about a cumulative 5% efficiency loss for each additional engineer? That way, anything built by ten engineers will end up costing a full 50% more resources. With this change we would likely see players starting to use more factories as well as having to plan out their counters and defenses farther in advance.
Scouting
Cauldron and the other top players signing this open letter say that scouting is too easy, and that it is way too easy to spot whatever your opponent is up to and have a counter ready in time. I disagree. I think scouting is frequently micro-intensive, and most players don’t use scouting nearly effectively enough. I don’t think the weight of the evidence says that scouting is over-powered. I think fixing the #2 point, that assisting construction is over-powered, will address Cauldron’s complaints a lot more effectively than nerfing scouts.
Though I must say, the game would be a lot more interesting if all factions were given mobile radar stealth units and the anti-stealth radius of the omni radar was reduced.
July 17th, 2007 at 12:43 pm
Good to see this open letter made someone (Tyo) high up at GPG come out and respond.
July 17th, 2007 at 12:53 pm
The first two points are very good. The mass fab thing is one of the reasons I stopped playing SupCom. I’d much rather attack a lot and not worry so much about economy, but the fact of the matter is the game is 100% about economy. Thus, to succeed you must be good at fab farming, and I don’t like playing like that.
Previously I would have agreed with what you say about the scouting, Cyde. However, after reading your post about having a dedicated air factory or two producing nothing but scouts every few seconds and sending them on a no-fog mission around the map, I’d have to agree with the top players. It’s true that the assist fix could help that, but as the game is right now, you can get a scout out every second (or quicker) if you wanted to with only a minor hit to your resources.
July 17th, 2007 at 1:50 pm
They should tweak the SAMs so they’re better at hitting scouts. They miss and awful lot.
July 17th, 2007 at 2:08 pm
I agree to various degrees with the points, though not being a top player, none of them affect the matches I play as much as it must for the top players. I must say though, for a semi-official open letter, it is written rather horribly. I guess that’s the internet generation for you.
July 17th, 2007 at 2:28 pm
If Tyo is telling the whole truth, Forged Alliance might improve SupCom far beyond what I imagined.
July 17th, 2007 at 2:38 pm
Baddox: Heh, you have a point. Maybe they should have taken cues from my open letter :-P
Or at least I could’ve done spell checking, or something.
July 17th, 2007 at 3:13 pm
“I guess that’s the internet generation for you.”
Or maybe that’s not speaking English as your first language for you.
July 17th, 2007 at 3:37 pm
RE: the mass fab issue. I’m starting to come to the conclusion that this is the game’s biggest weakness. I wish GPG would implement a TA hosting feature I particularly liked - the ability of the host to de-select certain units from the match. If implemented in Supcom, this would allow us to take out mass fabs altogether. SCUs could also be removed, thereby eliminating the RAS issue. Thus, one could play a game that emphasized map control of mass points. Now this might turn out to be a bad way to play the game, but at least players could experiment with it. On a side note, it might also allow long games to end in actual battles, as nukes/Mavor/T3 artillery could be removed at the host’s desire.
While I really enjoy Supcom an awful lot, the unfortunate fact is that the game is all about the economy race. Strategy and tactics are largely irrelevant. Whoever is best at boosting their economy the fastest wins the vast majority of games.
July 17th, 2007 at 4:06 pm
Rd_Commander: I’ve been thinking about a Total Annihilation-like modification to the game that would remove shields and SCUs and heavily nerf mass fabs. I’m thinking that might be a lot of fun.
July 17th, 2007 at 4:51 pm
Cyde Weys: If you make such a mod, I’d be interested in trying it out.
July 17th, 2007 at 4:55 pm
I would love to be able to turn off the Mavor, and strat nukes.
I would like to see a 4th tier to massex.
I would like to see it possible to only call one SCU (although you can replace it) and for it to be more useful as a battle command unit (By giving both it and the ACU the ability to ‘improve’ the skill of nearby units - sort of like free veteran levels or something)
However, the game is the way the game is - and I enjoy it all the same.
July 17th, 2007 at 5:56 pm
Rd_Commander: Alas, I am a programmer, but I haven’t done anything with Supreme Commander besides playing it and tinkering around with the map editor. Depending on how hard this mod is, I think I might like to try it. Anyone know of any good introductory/beginner/tutorial Supreme Commander modding resources?
July 17th, 2007 at 7:09 pm
yeah cydeweys read the sticky in the mod development support. although i think you’ll find mods for everything you want are already done.
In my opinion though, every point in this open letter is wrong. Mass fabs rule, scouting isn’t too easy, and assisting factories fuckin rocks. go to hell “Top Players”.
July 17th, 2007 at 9:36 pm
There was a thread started here…maybe 2 months ago…along the lines of “What”s wrong with Sup Comm?” I think it was taken off shortly thereafter…so I never did see the posts. I know Sup Comm isn’t trying to duplicate TA, but there are aspects of the TA which made it more fun and strategic (in some respects) when compared to Sup Comm. One of them for sure is the resource and economy building. In TA, it was definite battle for ground and the resources. That’s not the case in Sup Comm as you can expand your economy without having to gain map control. I also liked the Air construction and Naval construction units versus the “do it all” engineers in Sup Comm. You had to make choices based on the construction units you had available. Getting an air construction unit to a distant point was strategic and you had to pay a price to build that air factory to get the construction units. Same with naval as the maps had metal deposits. In both cases what you were trying to do was to gain control of the map and crucial resources. You don’t have that same urgency in Sup Comm. In the beginning of the game you do…but it can quickly turn into mass fabs and pgen building and control of the map doesn’t mean as much.
I’m not down on Sup Comm. I like a lot of what has been done. And for sure there have been some nice strategic improving aspects that GPG has molded into this game. The transports, shields, etc are great additions. I guess what were all hoping for is a blend of some of the things we’d like to see as improvements combined with the great aspects already in Sup Comm.
July 17th, 2007 at 11:07 pm
windmills… are obviously what supcom lacks and TA had.
July 18th, 2007 at 3:45 am
sam launchers uber? I had, i kid you not 15 cybran SAM launchers shieled by a double layer level 3 and level 4 cybran shielding. 20 broadswords ate me, my commander, my sams, my shields, my facs, and my whole damn eco and base for breakfast!
I say nerf broadswords!
July 18th, 2007 at 5:02 am
Mass fabs:
I totally agree with this point. At T1, the income/risk ratio is pretty balanced imho. Mass fabs are useful, but not overpowered, and against an agressive player, you can have a hard time defending them against harrassing - an early bomber or a few good micro-managed ground units can really hurt here.
Especially considering another factor not mentioned so far: space! At T1, you either have to build a tight matrix, risking chain reactions, or spread your massfabs over a wide area - which makes them hard to defend. But at T2/3, a really effective matrix is small enough to be easily defended. So not much risk involved here.
Scouting:
Hm, not sure. I always thought scouting was hard and micro intensive, but since I read this great articel about T1 airscout spam here, I think otherwise. ;-)
July 18th, 2007 at 5:04 am
(Ah, just read in the original forums thread that Xenox allready made the point about space.)
July 18th, 2007 at 6:34 am
I think a simple solution would be to have the t1 mass fabs take 4 adjacent t1 pgens to break even and the t3 mass fabs take 4 adjacent t3 pgens to break even on energy cost. Raise mass income on t3 mass extractors to what a t3 mass fab has or make a bonus to the number of mass extractors one has eg. 2 mexes =+1 mass, 4 mexes=+3 mass, 6 mexes=+5 mass etc…
I agree with everything else said.
July 18th, 2007 at 2:13 pm
I have to agree with point #3. Maybe air scouts should even be removed completely.
July 18th, 2007 at 2:51 pm
dont flack AA hit scouts better then sams?
July 18th, 2007 at 3:47 pm
@Disgraceful
yes they do. and they do it well. That’s why i always throw few along with Sams. t2 flak is great against anything t1, much more so than SAMs. SAMs are only good against t2/3 units.
Personally i’d remove tier 3 altogether. That’s just my humble opinion.
Best matches i’ve seen occur at t1/2.
July 19th, 2007 at 2:01 am
Omni needs to have a much shorter range/drain massive amounts of energy. I’m sick and tired of having Stealth be totally usless. Omni should defend your base, and if your freakin stinkin rich, keep watch over outside bases. Radar should work fine for outside bases
Air scouts/spies need to suck more. Stealth is useless, even after Omni-spammage, because a passing scout blows your cover. In addition, it becomes too easy to see what the opponent is up to
I LOVE the “mexes get more powerful the longer you hold them idea” And Fabricators change too: Instead of them being essential for a good economy, they instead are for “need mass, need it now” situations, due to the fact that they are now less efficient (especially compared to the new Mexes)
With scouting becoming that much harder to do, the quick-counter problem fixes itself
July 19th, 2007 at 2:06 am
Oh, and Gateways being impossible to assist too, removing the exponential-economy (and only allow you to have 2 or 3) And its perfectly explainable too! Rather than creating/building, you are pulling something from far, far away, something an Engineer is not programmed to do. Besides, the delicacy of the operation requires that there be no outside influence.
And having too many Gateways causes some sort…of…rift…..I don’t know, make something up!
July 19th, 2007 at 6:37 pm
Bah!
July 21st, 2007 at 6:14 am
Wow, I totally agree with the open letter by the top players - that’s just my quibbles with the otherwise superb game!
In fact I posted something similar to the forums a few months ago; fine to see that the community is also of this opinion. I hope GPG will react.
July 21st, 2007 at 8:36 am
Stealth field generators are only useful on big big maps, and even then you can’t do much with them, maybe hide an omni in range of someones base and he’d never know, but that sucks, personally I do think they have to do something to the counter intelligence but that’s being put in the expansion, so it might be good then :)
July 21st, 2007 at 3:55 pm
A member of the GPG team read it and said they would respond. The release of Forged Alliance will fix many of these issues, they said
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