A first look into Forged Alliance
Now is the open beta finally here. We have been playing it for a couple of days now and hopefully have been enjoying it. A lot of things have changed and it is hard to speak of them all. The economical system is changed to make map control more important. To do that the developers have nerfed the massfabs so they now cost more, can only be build with T2 engineering and consumes 150 power per second instead of 40 as in retail. I find this nerf great but maybe a little bit to much. I think it should consume 100 power instead of 150 only because I want it to be a option to turtle up a bit even when you lose map control. But the way it is now works really nice for the purpose of map control and I salute it.
GPG have advertised their new air flight engine and remade air units. I got to say that it is fantastic. The fighters now attack from much bigger angles and all attack air got buffed. Now the bombers got radar included and can drop bombs quicker in a row. The T1 Cybran gunship called jester is a little devil against engineers and mexes. T2 bombers are now also fighters and even good fighters, all this makes it more worthwhile to play with air. Who knows if not air as first factory will be the thing on some maps. Naval is also changed and we got to see a lot of new units. My personal favourite is the UEF T2 shield boat because the shield looks so damn fluffy. Submarine hunters and stealth ships are other new exciting units. Seraphim got a hovering T1 arty that can be pretty damn good on naval maps. If you don’t believe me, then ask TheLittleOne because he got to taste my seraphim rage on the excellent naval map Roanoke Abyss.
Another big change in FA is in the tech levels. Tech 1 is generally much faster now and with the speed much more important. On a big open map like Palms the T1 is crucial. Now there is no way to tech up quick to T2 and not get overwhelmed by the opponents T1 units. I like it because it gives room for more strategic unit movement and a quicker paced game play. the downside is that games sometimes tends to be to much about T1 spam. Another thing I noticed is that T1 arty now is useful to have in a mix with your tanks which is a very welcomed change. Well I should say that a T2 upgrade is really cheap and T2 is by no means excluded from the game play. It is just that you need to fight for the map control before you start pumping out the T2 tanks. The T2 units are useful later on to get a edge on the attacks and they can vet up pretty easy with the new veteran system. I love how the new veteran system currently works, because you can now use your ACU longer on the battlefield since it also got a increased OC range. The new OC is great for killing tough units but sucks vs. buildings. In my opinion a very welcomed change which I heard is more like the Dgun from TA. The ACU brings me to another very interesting new feature. It is the new cheaper ACU upgrades. Your commander gets double dps and longer range with a upgrade for 800 mass, which can be very useful against hordes of units and pd. It also gives the commander a chance to vet up easier, and we will probably see ACU monsters on the battlefield. All commander upgrades seem cheaper and more useful now.
In the T3 stage there is a lot of new units and strategies. We got snipers, monsters like the Percival and faster assault units like the loyalists. I cant say i have tested it very much yet but I love to play with combinations of units like shield disrupters combined with harbingers and sniper bots. I also love the new TML. It got a huge range which makes it perfect for sniping upgraded mexes and stuff against a bad scouting player. All the new units makes it so much more interesting and all tiers seems to be useful later on but with different purpose. As a example its good to have flares or auroras shooting at a Percival, because the Percival got a slow reload and will overkill when shooting at the T1 units. To kill in the most cost effective way you need to mix, mix, mix and more mix the units.
All i have to say about the experimentals is AWESOMENESS. They are cheaper and faster built. For instance you can build a Monkeylord in 3 minutes with -120 mass per second. I made 3 Monkeylords in ten minutes with my ACU which I upgraded to T3 engineering suite. My opponent was suprised when he saw the Monkeylords walk into his defence and I just sat with a fat smile. All over the late game play has so many opportunities and paths that its very hard to chose to go for a Czar or a nuke. That is exactly what I want with the late game. I want many alternatives to chose from, and I certainly got it in FA.
Have a good time mixing units and finding new great strategies, because that is what FA is all about.
October 5th, 2007 at 6:28 pm
Also fabs suck now.
October 5th, 2007 at 6:30 pm
The OC is NOTHING compared to TA’s Dgun man :P TA’s Dgun could be done continously as long as u have enough energy and was useful against buildings and units.
October 5th, 2007 at 6:35 pm
fabs suck?!!?! thats FUCKED. woo limited resource income… BURN
October 5th, 2007 at 10:07 pm
do you think that the t1 spam will die down when specific tactics are introduced?
October 5th, 2007 at 11:29 pm
from what ive heard… havent plaid the beta yet,…. fabs are LESS usefull but RAS on the SCU is the same…. so it means less mass farms and more SCU’s
also think the aeon get some supper fab/fusionn reactor that when it blows up like a nuke! like a single building farm!
any way flaws or not i cant wait for FA to come out!
October 6th, 2007 at 12:59 am
This is awesome! I can’t wait to play this game! I do hope that they buff the fabs a bit, to take a little less energy.
October 6th, 2007 at 4:00 am
I think the RAS on SCUs also got nerfed. From what I’ve heared only the RAS of the ACU stayed the same.
I welcome that the ACU-Upgrades are cheaperand more useful now. Most of the time you had your ACU without an upgrade until you were T3…
Anyways: Great statement from Sir_Loui; I can’t wait to play FA! (still ~2 months left -_-)
October 6th, 2007 at 6:04 am
I just have two things first one OC doesn’t work against tougher units as well i checked it on SCU and it needed like 10 shots or something. The other thing is veterancy for experimental’s. Once i attacked with my monkeylord and as it was getting past the defensive line it got really low on health so i thought oh noes i lost it only to find it a little while later sitting in my opponents base with green health.
October 6th, 2007 at 7:01 am
[...] For those of you with very high expectations on FA you can get a gleam over at SupCom Talk, where Sir_Loui posted his first reflections about the game through the [...]
October 6th, 2007 at 10:40 am
All excellent news! Remember the game is still in Beta guys… so the exact energy cost for fabs, etc, will probably still be tweaked with. The new unit and faction balancing sounds AWESOME. I’m a huge fan of the new ecomonic balance as well, yay for map control. I hated RAS spam so I’m glad thats over. Cheaper ACU upgrades, better vetrancy system, improved air combat, all sweet.
I guess its a good thing that experimentals are cheaper since its fun to get them into the game, but are they also weaker as well? GPG said they would balance them out when they made them cheaper, so I’m wondering if they have less DPS, HP, or something.
October 6th, 2007 at 12:30 pm
Maybe I’m wrong, but doesn’t open beta mean anyone can download it instead of an elite few? Last I heard you had to have been in 10 SupCom tourneys, and I doubt there’s a lot of people who’ve done that. :/
The changes sound pretty good, though. Hopefully FA will keep my attention longer than SupCom did (~4 months). I’ll also have a new computer by the time it drops, so I’ll finally get to enjoy the game on something other than low details. :]
As far as the nerfed fabs, it’s probably for the best. As it was, the T1 fabs were better to use to quickly tech up than expansion, and that’s silly. Certainly the T3 fabs will still be viable as a means of turtling.
October 7th, 2007 at 6:55 am
@ Engineer:
The experimentals are cheaper, yes, but you have to remind that you get less res as well. With RAS nerfed and less cost-effective Fabricators you need map control to get enough mass. So building an experimental will stay more or less the same I think…
@T2A:
The beta is pretty “open”. You can post screenshots of it and talk about the units… ;-)
I think GPG just doesn’t want “anyone” to test it, but more experienced players so they get a good feedback about the gameplay and the balancing of the units
October 7th, 2007 at 4:54 pm
TiberiuS, good point. So it is more balancing to keep experimentals affordable in the new economy, not to get them into the game earlier or more often.
I guess my two big questions on the FA economy are this:
1. How did they choose to “nerf” RAS? If the upgrade is made less effective but also cheaper, it would still be a spam tactic. If the upgrade is made equally effective but more expensive, or if the cost is kept the same but the effectiveness is reduced, then it would depend on actual numbers of course, but there could still be a “break even” point where it is still worth it to spam RAS support commanders provided you have the time and resources. Perhaps they could have done better to remove RAS entirely, what do you guys think?
2. Also, if T1 mass fabs are now T2 mass fabs and cost 150 energy to create 1 mass, does this mean that T3 mass fabs now cost more e to run or produce less mass to be in-line with those numbers? Or are they identical to the original T3 mass fabs.
I suspect there will be a lot of complaints from folks who are used to playing certain maps with “runaway economies” where no one fights for 30 minutes until they each have +500 mass and then they start throwing experimentals at each other. FA should encourage a lot of earlier fighting, which is good, but some maps which aren’t suited well for rushing, such as White Fire or Seraphim Glaciers, might end up playing very differently.
October 7th, 2007 at 6:32 pm
Hi Folks!
Can anyone please tell the guys at GPG that full health bars are not interesting?! I hate all the neon green bars and disabling them isn’t a solution either. I want them on damaged and/or selected units. Progress bars should be visible all the time. Should be easy to program.
An option for harvesting wreckages and attacking enemy groups by drawing a rectangle around them would be a ‘nice to have’-feature, too.
Please tell them, esp. if you’re a beta tester for FA, cause I have no idea how to contact them …
Thanks a lot! :-)
PS: Nice review. Sounds great so far …
October 7th, 2007 at 6:45 pm
^^^
Best solution would be like in TA, where you can distinctly assess a units build/health status by it’s appereance … and all the bars only on selected units. This could also partly redundantize the blue frames.
October 8th, 2007 at 6:53 am
Nice to see a write up from a top player :)
October 8th, 2007 at 7:37 am
I second what spike is saying, also FA needs a ‘unit disabler’ like in TA, you know?
October 8th, 2007 at 9:04 am
FA has a unit disabler à la TA according to recent previews (in PC Gamer and the like).
October 8th, 2007 at 10:29 am
Great Write up the T1 spam is a joke if you lose map control 2 minutes into game it is over!!! no turtle option at all!!!
October 8th, 2007 at 10:36 pm
I got the numbers on the mass fabs if anyone cares. The new T2 mass fabs are 150/1, and the new T3 mass fabs are 3500/12 (this is info for the Aeon faction, but you get the general idea). This means that T2 mass fabs are almost TWICE as efficient as T3 mass fabs. However, the adjacency bonus possibilities with T3 mass fabs somewhat cancels this out. Either way, Mass fabs cost about 4 times as much energy to run and are more expensive to build as well.
As far as RAS goes, apparently it hasn’t really been nerfed in the long run, it just has stages now. A level 1 RAS upgrade provides something like +6 mass and +700 energy, while the level 2 RAS upgrade is closer to the original numbers of about +15 and +3000 (these are very approximate numbers). So RAS is still very much available, it will just take a lot longer to build it up and get the cycle going.
By the numbers, and including adjajency bonuses, a mass fab farm can apparently out-produce RAS support commanders overall by a thin margin. I’m not in the actual beta though so all this is conjecture.
@Jesus, there is an awesome new and easy to use unit disabler in FA, I have seen screenshots of it. I think it works by categories though, such as “no experimentals, no naval”, etc, but there were a ton of categories.
@ HorseRadish, turtles generally lose in Supcom anyways and now they will lose in 15 minutes instead of 45. There is of course always the “no rush” option, but with the new mass fab numbers it will take a heck of a lot longer to build a massive economy during the no-rush period, so it will likely not eliminate the usefulness of mexes unless it is very long. But really if it isn’t worth fighting for something outside your base then the game is probably broken. I think FA is moving the whole game in the right direction and T1 spam is, after all, quite fun while it lasts, as there is enough variety and maneuver to keep things interesting.
October 9th, 2007 at 10:20 am
Best news I’ve heard in a long time, I’m a HUGE TA fan and Supcom was dissapointing for all the reasons which are now being addressed in Forged Alliance. Bravo to the GPG team for listening to their players/customers. That’s what makes a game trully great. Supcom’s engine etc always had the potential for a true TA2-esq sequel and they are headed in the right direction now with FA. Bring it on!
October 9th, 2007 at 4:15 pm
Just one more thought I had to add on to my post above, don’t forget that with the new building template system base building will get a heck of a lot easier. You can plop down big mass fab farms, or a mex with mass storages around it, or a small firebase, etc. with just a few clicks now and then leave your engineers to do the work. So players will have a lot more time to directly manage their offensive forces and waste less time back doing base building. I think this will mesh well with FA’s increased focus on maneuver warfare and combined arms tactics.
I would be particuarly curious to hear what Sir_Louie or other top players have to say about the template system and how it has (or hasn’t) effected the play style of the top players.
October 9th, 2007 at 5:29 pm
I just played the beta and I gotta say Forged Alliance is everything SupCom should have been.
October 9th, 2007 at 6:35 pm
THANK GOD!!! TA2 – YEY!!!
October 11th, 2007 at 9:32 am
T2A` :
It’s an open beta. I never played in tournaments but I’m in the beta through Fileplanet, though I haven’t actually played it any, and probably won’t. I barely had time in the spring and summer to play SupCom, there’s no way I’ll have time for FA with school, work, and trying to figure out what university to go off to next year. Not to mention that other fabulous games coming out before Christmas.
October 11th, 2007 at 5:24 pm
Baddox, give me your key! I have time to play FA…
October 11th, 2007 at 7:57 pm
Baddox ill take ur key or anyone else’s key that they arent useing!! id love to get on the beta but ive only plaid like 3 torneys cuz most of them are on US time and thats like 2-3AM local time!
PLEASE email me a beta key!!! meddish@gmail.com !
October 12th, 2007 at 7:57 am
I heard an FA-beta key was available for those that pre-ordered the game?
October 12th, 2007 at 12:36 pm
Is that really true? I don’t think I’ve actually seen that rumor confirmed anywhere. I could be wrong though.
October 15th, 2007 at 12:28 am
it is true IF u orders it from EB USA….
if not… well…. bad luck….
if THQ or GPG did the beta keys them self that would be nice for those of us that arent in the USA!
October 15th, 2007 at 4:07 am
well i saw some fa match’s in quadTV. what i saw was building factories like hell pump t1 units like hell. and thats it.
its hard to believe that players like loui really like that spamm gameplay insteed of supcoms gameplay. witsh need more skill.
maybe it need more then spamming t1 units but it look’s so.
is that really fun ?
October 15th, 2007 at 7:47 am
I disagree with above comment. The gameplay last night seemed to me to be faster and more dependant on expansion and control of territory/resources, not just spamming of mass fabs and ridiculous porcing up for ages with the occasional skirmish we see now. The veterancy system seemed exciting too and the upgrading through techs much more of a difficult tactical choice, as it should be. Also, the UI looked great.
October 15th, 2007 at 11:12 am
I also watched some matches on QuadTV (which is great by the way). I loved getting to see FA in action, and also getting to see the Seraphim in action. I especially enjoyed watching the large Emerald Crater game as well. Unfortunately, it is hard to appreciate the new graphics on the low-res video but the announcer guy did a pretty good job.
I completely agree iwth Fing0lfin’s comment. The new FA gameplay greatly rewards map control, has renewed emphasis on raiding and controlling mexes, and greatly diminishes the power of stationary defenses and mass fabs which have previously dominated most Supcom games. This has been said a lot but watching the game replays really showed this in action.
I do have some concerns though… I personally would rather see the game decided at T2 or T3 rather than T1. The T1 phase of the game should reward the player who uses T1 more effectively, but ideally shouldn’t decide the game by iteslf, or 70% of the game’s units and buildings never really get to be used. Of the games I saw on Quad TV, T2 only played a significant role in one of them, and I saw very little T3 overall.
I’d love to hear more about the vetrancy system changes as a lot of folks have been talking about it. Does anyone have any real information on what is new?
October 15th, 2007 at 12:19 pm
i hope u both r right about the gameplay. i also really like the idea of mapcontrol. but the thing is this. if u had more units u can controll more of the map when u controll more of the map u can build more units. as simple as that. if u lose controll just for a moment u have absolute no chance to get it back. turtel must be an option.. less effective but an option. so drill down the energy for massfabs from 150 to 100 and everyone is happy.
October 17th, 2007 at 12:16 pm
Strikers and Auroras feel very powerful from what I’ve seen at quadv. The comm upgrades look amazing. ACUs have a significant attack range improvement already; give them double range and score some frags. The variety of ladders in FA looks nifty. So many to conquer…
October 19th, 2007 at 10:44 am
There are some more games up on QuadV, including the remainder of the 2v2 tournament games and a 6-way FFA on Roanoke that I highly recommend as it gets into T3 and experimentals for once.
The “Attrition” 2v2 tournament final on Emerald Crater is a good watch. Bluescreen is insanely good at FA and his mastering of T1 (later T2) spam is amazing to behold. Still its a good game and could have gone either way with just slightly different playing by either side. I was rooting for you, Loui!
Some (unfortunately negative) thoughts:
- I am getting more and more nervous about unit spam. I like that it makes for faster, more active games, and I love that map control is so critical. But there seems to be little to no way to “hold ground” anymore, it just becomes armies roaming around fighting. PD have high DPS and decent HP and I like that their range is now shorter than arty. But if all this is true, they need to be cheaper, as it is they are rarely built at all in all the games I have seen
- I don’t like how the Aeon GC has been rebalanced, now it has much lower HP, faster speed, and a much larger range. This to me defeats the purpose of everything the GC is. A slightly faster speed I can understand, but it should not have the insane range and low HP that it has! They truly are making the GC, Fatboy, and Spiderbot all really similar which makes me very angry as this was not the case in retail.
- I really like how many of the old maps have been rebalanced by adding more mass spots in the contested areas and, in some cases, by adding wreckage to the center of the map to get things going a bit quicker and to give more reason to start fighting earlier.
October 19th, 2007 at 5:58 pm
Thanks for your feedback, Engineer. You know the GPG forums are really crappy and Supcom Talk seems to me to be one of the better Supcom sites around (just update MORE!!! hehe…) but it would be cool if it had a forum. This place seems to attract top players and people who seem to actually know what theyr’e talking about and have a sense of strong Supcom community (like TA had.) Supcpm-live is similar in this way; it would be better if they would actually post some news/updates! It doesn’t mean posting only when there’s a major patch release or crappy IGN preview or something, it means simply discussing current Supcom issues, talking about top replays and beta development, arguing over PD hit points and range and other neurotic aspects which only passionate Supcom players would argue over! The little things… ;) Anyway the QuadV videos are a good example. It would be nice to see more people recording/broadcasting matches and blogging about these things. Sorry to rant. I see your points about the FA rebalancing but overall I think it is a positive evolution for Supcom if only for the encouragement of expansion and territory control. Keep us posted.
October 19th, 2007 at 9:33 pm
http://www.quadv.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=46&vs=bbcbb1e844266f4abdfc29b3d8a64628607fa47e&Itemid=61
For anyone interested.
October 19th, 2007 at 11:15 pm
Yeah its nice to know I’m not completely alone… I think Supcom Talk actually did have a forum at one point, but not enough people to keep it active. The comments system works fine anyways, though it would be very nice to have another update, especially from someone who is actually in the beta… I do actually visit the FA section of the GPG forums just because there are so many folks posting info about the beta that I couldn’t get anywhere else. But I agree, Supcom Talk is much nicer to actually post in!
The community is quite depressing actually. I read somewhere that supposedly the big flaw of the Supcom community was its lack of a single huge fansite that people could gather around, and in a sense this is probably true. There needs to be a single, large, multi-functional and frequently updated fansite that people can really rally around. That said, I think FA will revive a fair amount of interest. Bigger isn’t necessarily better either, a smaller community tends to avoid a lot of the morons that flock to the uber popular games. I played TA Spring for a long time and talk about a small community, only 40 or 50 people online at a time but it was a good group.
One thing to remember when watching those QuadV games is that those tournament players are some of the best in the genre, and will generally play differently from your average Supcom player. So just because we aren’t seeing a lot of PD now doesn’t mean we won’t in retail, from my experience the really good players tend to avoid positional defenses in general in favor of mobile armies. This would probably be worth a whole post in and of itself, but generally follows the patter that turtles lose and the good players don’t even attempt to go that route. Against less capable players turtling may be more viable. So we will see, in my opinion making arty useful against PD was a great design decision, and giving them better tracking makes them more useful against slow-moving commanders as well. I just hope that positional defenses are useful in at least some situations once the game comes out. I’d love to see that UEF T3 PD in action at some point, along with the Fatboy the UEF certainly have the most turtle potential.
Thanks for putting up the link God. There will be yet another FA tournament (SGL Concussion 5) on Sunday that will be broadcast on QuadV (replays should be up by Monday or Tuesday) so those of us not in the beta should get to see some more FA action for analysis.
October 21st, 2007 at 3:36 pm
As far as I know, there was never an active forum here. If you look at it, it was posted in about twice a month.
We had about ten people that regularly posted comments, though.
October 21st, 2007 at 8:07 pm
Fairly big news, a free use public FA beta key has been released.
The good news is that the key can be used by anyone. The bad news is that it will only let you watch live replays, which are linked to by “Replaybot” in the main chat rooms. I just got my copy up and running (its over 2GB to download) and have yet to see Replaybot link to anything…
So I was pretty disappointed, at first read I expected to be able to view replays from teh FA beta, which would very much help me pass the time while I wait for it to come out. Instead now I feel like I kind of got ripped off, though of course I applaud GPGnet doing anything to let folks who don’t have real beta keys get in on the action. In the meantime, I will hope that someone will find a way to make downloaded replays (such as from gamereplays.org) work with the new beta key. And maybe I’ll see replaybot actually post something.
The key is: J3V3-J38K-YK KK-YK83-GA4R , the download link is from Filefront I won’t post it but it shouldn’t be hard to Google or from another fansite. You will need a Filefront account.
October 21st, 2007 at 8:12 pm
Ryan, you can download replays for FA at gamereplays.org forum (reg required)
October 21st, 2007 at 8:17 pm
By the way, if you wanna play FA beta skirmish with a demo key, just make a shortcut to the ForgedAlliance.exe and edit Target
“C:\Program Files\THQ\Gas Powered Games\Supreme Commander – Forged Alliance Beta\bin\ForgedAlliance.exe”
to
“C:\Program Files\THQ\Gas Powered Games\Supreme Commander – Forged Alliance Beta\bin\ForgedAlliance.exe” /map [map] /faction [1-4]
example:
“C:\Program Files\THQ\Gas Powered Games\Supreme Commander – Forged Alliance Beta\bin\ForgedAlliance.exe” /map SCMP_033 /faction 3
1, UEF. 2, Aeon, 3. Cybran. 4, Seraphim.
HOWEVER, the opponents will have no AI :(
October 22nd, 2007 at 10:18 am
Ryan is Engineer by the way! Engineer is my Supcom handle so I usually use that…
God, thanks for the tip on skirmish mode, I’ll definitely try that out. Even just playing sandbox would be quite informative.
Regarding replays: Yes I can download the replays, but I can’t open them. The FA Beta doesn’t seem to have a replay folder I can find. The readme lists one, but when I navigate to that location it doesn’t exist. I tried creating it but that didn’t work either. I tried directly opening the replay files but that also didn’t work. So its not a matter of finding replay files, its a matter of opening them using the beta. But if you figure this out as well, then I will certainly be very grateful!
October 22nd, 2007 at 10:11 pm
Well I can verify that what God says actually works. Inserting that text at the end of your shortcut target field lets you play basically a sandbox game as any race on White Fire. The other five starting points all have random dummy commanders that don’t do anything.
For anyone really desparate for any FA they can get, this is a great way to check out the Seraphim and all the other new units, as well as the new graphics, UI, etc.
I can say right away that the new graphics look REALLY good. The unit poly count has definitely gone up, the textures look better, and the overall feel of the effects is really quite amazing. The new UI is a huge improvement, the old one seems incredibly clunky by comparison. The new one is also much better suited to high res monitors (I play at 1600×1200). I did notice a slight perforance hit over regular supcom, especially with the “bloom render” thing on, that cut my FPS almost in half. And my grahpics card is no slouch either (640MB 8800 GTS). But that is to be expected, you don’t get something from nothing, and I’m sure the increased poly count alone has a cost. At least in Supcom you can change grahpics settings on the fly, so its not too hard to find settings that work. Its also a beta so there is probably some more optimization to come.
As I suspected, many of the units look and feel much better in game than they do in the screenshots. For example, the new T3 UEF missile launcher looks kind of dumb in screenshots (I think anyways) but looks pretty awesome in-game. And the Seraphim shields and nuke explosions really rock. The Seraphim in general are very well done, I really like their style. Definitely not the Aeon rip-off that a lot of people suspected, they are truly alien and bizzarre. You can kind of see how the Aeon are a blend of Seraphim and UEF, which makes sense.
The template system is so darn useful its hard to believe that wasn’t in standard Supcom. Another feature that I definitely won’t be able to live without (yes I know mods did this but its not the same).
There’s not much more I can say, I messed around with all the new experimentals but there is only so much fun you can have blowing up dummy commanders and your own units. Still, I’m glad I got the chance to see the new game in action, and it has certainly increased my anticipation for FA to come out.
October 23rd, 2007 at 1:13 pm
Sounds awesome…I can’t wait.
October 23rd, 2007 at 4:53 pm
I’m wondering what the Novax (Novak?) is like. It sounds sort of rendundant in function with the Mavor but perhaps it works differently from what it seems. It sounds like a possible game ender like the long-range artillery but is it as destructive as the Mavor and as expensive (therefore rarely used) as well? I haven’t seen any screen shots. It might be cool but, maybe not. I kind of wished UEF had gotten a new battlefield set-piece to tussle with the other big bots…maybe a quadruped bot like a big Fido or a flying Experimental.
On a related note, is it true that the Fatboy can now spit out all T3 units? A nice upgrade if true.
October 23rd, 2007 at 7:00 pm
Well, EbolaSoup, all you have to do is download the beta client, use the public key, and follow God’s instructions above to find out for yourself how they feel in-game. But I went ahead and got the numbers for you:
Under the current beta, the Novak costs 37,200 mass. The Mavor costs 299,700 mass. Overall the Novak costs 8 times less than a mavor, and can be built about 4 times more quickly. So they are hardly equal, the Novak is actually a fairly cheap experimental, considering the fatboy costs about 25,000 mass and an Atlantis costs about 12,000.
On the other hand, its abilities are somewhat limited. While it can’t be shot down, it does only 3,000 damage per shot and has a long reload. It gives a free LOS but only to a very small area right under the satellite. It seems to have some kind of ability to shoot through shields which might make it more powerful, but I’m not entirely sure how that works and it was hard to test in sandbox.
Overall I would agree with you that it is a disappointment to see the UEF get yet another stand-off seige type experimental while there are so many other heavy battle experimentals in the other factions. However, it does give the UEF a very distinct feel and playstyle which I think is a good thing. They also seem to be heavily favored in the tournament matches at QuadV so I think the UEF will do fine in retail FA.
October 25th, 2007 at 10:35 am
Oh, and just to answer Ebola’s other question, yes the Fatboy can now build all T3 units (and quite quickly too). However, I think it is still restricted from firing/moving while it is building and vice versa. I don’t see this as a big deal, though some people seem to think it is a huge limitation. I think of the Fatboy as being in either “factory” mode or “battle” mode.
October 25th, 2007 at 1:20 pm
It would make sense that the Fatboy would either have to shunt its power toward its weapons, or toward its factory systems. Perhaps there could be a switch letting you send it half/half, but that would just be too complicated.
October 25th, 2007 at 7:03 pm
I read somewhere that it is actually an engine limitation, the game engine can’t cope with a moving factory. I still think it doesn’t really matter, you could easily consider it a feature rather than a limitation. Think of the siege tank in Starcraft for example.
October 26th, 2007 at 7:36 pm
i think it should be able to move… or build…. and the guns be inderpendent either way… so it could be put down as a forward firebase (what its intended to be) and then on top of that be able to build units wilst fireing (auto fire only no manual control)