Comments on: Fear the Riptide!

By: Mystiq

Mystiq — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 21:33:47 +0000

I picked up Supreme Commander when it came out due to all the hype about it and honestly I ended up disappointed. All this talk about break through features and the gameplay seemed to boil down to who could make more T3 bots the fastest. I waited until I could read a couple reviews about FA before purchasing and so far I find that it is a far better experience than the original. The rebalancing of the economy is the biggest selling point for me. My background in stratey games is in Warcraft 2, 3, Starcraft, Command & Conquer, AoE, Company of Heroes, etc. and some turn based jobs like Civilizations and Galactic Civ. Because of this I never was able to break the habit of grabbing territory and upgrading Mex’s as quickly as possible for better income. Every time I found out too late that my opponent was building his economy off of mass fabs and quickly out striped my production capabilities. I love that mass fabs come later and are more expensive, now they are supplimental to mex’s which is how I understood they were supposed to be used all along. I have only had the game for two days and haven’t had enough time to feel out the new unit balance but so far I really like it. Only problem is keeping up with the changes.

I would recommend that anyone who likes strategy games pick up the expansion as it fixes all the issues with the original game. Now if only I could get my online act together and win some matches…..

By: MeDDish

MeDDish — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 04:54:25 +0000

yes Cyde go out and buy a copy of FA (or even grab a copy from the net) as just about ever complaint u ever mentioned was fixed (if memory serves me correctly) my ONLY complaint with FA was the release date! ive still got to wait another 10 days to get my copy!!! already pre-ordered! and downloaded my copy to finish the campain’s in the mean time!

By: Cyde Weys

Cyde Weys — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 02:03:04 +0000

I have to say, I love these plans to revitalize the site and keep the community going strong. Let me know if there’s any help you guys need. I totally want the community to stay alive, so I’ll keep paying the hosting bills - you all just do the rest!

By: LucusLoC

LucusLoC — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 00:54:50 +0000

I have already contributed one article already, and it seemed to be well received despited being a little rantish (its the topography post). it also seems that someone at gpg read my post because (so i hear) units range as affected by topography seems to be taken into account. i do not know if this is true or not, because i just bought the game today and have not had a chance to play it yet. if it is it will just drive me to write more articles and get more involved. being able to say something and have a dev listen would be awesome. of course most of my half finished articles are obsolete now, because most of them revolved around map control and balance issues, which all seem to be fixed. i do have a few that are requesting certain mods from the mod community, of which i am not really apart, with the exception of being an avid map editor. unfortunately sup coms map editor was so bad that i only was able to put together two unfinished maps before i got fed up with it. what they really need to make the community take off is a simple map editor for the masses. one that buries all the complex stuff (but makes it still accessible for the pros to use) so that the average gamer can say “hey, i want a map of _______, i think ill throw one together” a la sim city, the warcraft series and c&c 2. they may not all have been elegant, but any idiot that could play the game could make a workable map for skirmish. it also needs to accept grey scale bitmaps. everyone can make one of those with just windows. not some horridly obscure file format that its impossible to find an editor for. some of this may already have been taken care of, idk. wow, did i get side tracked there or what? anyhoo, yeah, ease of access for the community, a central hub, and semi daily articles by whoever wishes to contribute will all go a long way to making fa stick around longer than sup com vanilla did.
/end longer than expected post

By: Fing0lfin

Fing0lfin — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 23:17:08 +0000

*said

By: Fing0lfin

Fing0lfin — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 23:16:17 +0000

I’m down with what LucusLoC regarding more general Supcom community stuff, I’ll try to contribute in any way i can, right now I’m not playing much but I’ll soon be back in the swing of things and hopefully enter the ranking “hundreds” again! I’m not sure how useful I can be other than to lend my support to the excellent work Engineer and the Talk team are doing. I think we need a little more time to really be sure of potential minor IMBA’s in FA, let’s wait and see what the pro’s think in a few weeks or so, especially regarding naval units.
Now that Supcom is confirmed for Xbox (hey Engy maybe make this a topic for your next post?) I’m thinking more than ever it is a perfect time (as Engy said) to “cement” this wonderful if slightly scattered, Supcom community.

By: Engineer

Engineer — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 22:10:02 +0000

It makes sense that frigates can’t counter Riptides, after all frigates are a T1 unit while Riptides are T2. While frigates have respectiable hitpoints (UEF has 2200 I think) their DPS just isn’t large enough (UEF has about 54 if I recall) to take down the Riptide fast enough. Frigates also have built in radar and intel systems so their value is more than just a surface combat unit like the Riptide.

Riptides are very effective against naval units in general and this might be a sign of them being overpowered. Again, however, their short range is perhaps their greatest drawback, especially against the speed of most surface naval units. Most players don’t have time to babysit their naval units against Riptides though.

Regarding LucasLoc’s comments, I think with the release of FA there could never be a better time to contribute to the community, there is so much to discuss and enjoy in FA. Cyde Wey’s was very helpful with getting me started writing for the site, so if you are worried it is difficult to become an author I assure you it is not! The only thing to keep in mind is the trademark of SupComTalk is strong and intelligent writing, so you need to be willing to put some time into your articles.

By: Trozz

Trozz — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 21:36:28 +0000

Frigates are not really a practical counter to Riptides, but it’s all I can think of other than T2 air or T2 PDs. UEF are monsters on RA.

By: LucusLoC

LucusLoC — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 21:16:02 +0000

well, its official, after reading all the posts, looking over the fa forum at gpg, and hearing all the positive things about the balance, i will make the effort to get the game today. ill give it a whirl for about a week (will give my chars in wow a chance to build up that rested xp!) and maybe write an opinion article about what i think (i am very opinionated. . .). hopefully we can revive SCT, and attract a few more writers so we can get content up every other day or so. ill do my best to try and submit a few short articles ever other week or so, and not the big ol’ long rants that i wanted to write about sup com. someone mentioned in a past thread about sup com not having a central community site. maybe all of us still here could band together and make this site the glue that holds it all together. what do you say guys? who’s willing to mix a little work in with the play?

By: Breezy9401

Breezy9401 — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 15:41:21 +0000

another thing about the massfabs being moved to T2 that I’m not sure was mentioned yet, they now also require 150 energy to produce 1 mass, instead of the old 40 per 1 mass.

Great article btw Engy. Keep it up.