Things missing in Forged Alliance, Session 4
Session 4: Build/move/fire
Fix the engine problems with units not being able to build, move, and fire all at once. And add land/sea transports as well. This strikes me as a rather large oversight actually, and seems to be similar to the problem on how the engine upgrades structures (it doesn’t really, it just replaces the old structure with a new one). Just think of all the possibilities that could open up as far as unit design! An experimental that takes t3 bots as boosters, that can be customized by which ones you put into it! Mexs could be upgraded with their own PD and AA (that is, a branching upgrade path, like with SCUs)! And carriers could build aircraft on the move! Holy cow! Amazing!
December 9th, 2007 at 11:41 am
I’m really not familiar with the engine issues that prevent units moving and constructing at the same time, so its hard to say just how difficult this would be to implement. It would be nice to see in the next expansion though, since GPG has already shown they are willing to make engine changes in expansions (albeit minor ones).
While we are on the subject of upgrading mexes, etc., can I just say why the heck can’t we upgrade hydrocarbon power plants? These are tremendously useful structures at the very beginning of the game, and then they rapidly lose their value until one T2 power plant is worth 5 T1 hydrocarbon power plants. One excellent idea TA Spring had was to allow for T2 and T3 geothermals (equivalent to SupCom hydrocarbon) that provided massive amounts of energy at a very cheap cost. This meant these sites maintained their value even late into the game, thus adding another element to map control. This seems to me to be an annoying oversight, these absolutely should be included in SupCom. And to make things even more fun, you could create special weapons systems that harness the hydrocarbon energy and can only be built on hydrocarbon spots, or different factions could upgrade their hydrocarbons differently to add some more diversity, maybe the Aeon ones are shielded for example.
December 9th, 2007 at 1:16 pm
More geothermal structures would be great, if I remember correctly there was a powerful artillery battery in a TA mod that could only be built on a geothermal spot. Anything like that would keep those points valuable later in the game.
The lack of a transport ship is fairly poor, they’re almost universal in RTS games with naval units and considering the amount of water on some SC maps… There’s always the air transports but they’re mostly fragile and low capacity. They just don’t fill the same role.
December 9th, 2007 at 2:57 pm
I’m not so sure I miss naval transports. SupCom has made air transport so viable and easy that naval transport seems to be unnecessary. The naval transports in most games are clumsy and usually require a lot of micro-management. If there were naval transports in SupCom (or Hover transports, as some TA mods had) then they would need to be beasts, huge capacities, tons of hit points, this is the only way they would be useful. Even then I’d rather have a few UEF T3 Continentals any day.
December 9th, 2007 at 6:59 pm
a large hover transport built from a quatum gateway would be nice (also makes the gateway a little bit more inportant) being hover it great for both land and water, to top it off behind only a hover unit other stuff could get on to it and be able to shoot out of it (rather then with air transports units are locked in and cant shoot back)
i can imaging it a hovercraft that holds 4×4 units with SABS around the outside and MML’s in the center blowing the crap out of anything that comes near
Also i should note being thats its a hover craft and close to the ground IF its destroyed then the units should be able to suffer 50% damage then keep moveing
i can see it now fields of Isis 8 hover transports moveing in with units stacked on them for a quick strike the transports being taken down by arty and PD just for the units moveing in for the final strike to the heart!
December 10th, 2007 at 3:39 am
make air constructors.
land and sea transports would be cool.
December 10th, 2007 at 10:49 am
I see no need for naval transports. First off, they’d have to be huge, and still probably wouldn’t hold very many T3 units. And since they’re naval I assume they’d be expensive and slow to build, and I can’t imagine them being as fast or as sneaky as air transports.
December 10th, 2007 at 2:36 pm
Large submersible transports, maybe?
I do like the idea of water transports with lots of HP and capacity, as well. I think it’d have to be T3, otherwise it doesn’t really offset the usefulness of air transports…
December 10th, 2007 at 4:01 pm
The way i envisioned naval transports working is have them cheaper to build and have more capacity than air. they could be of the fast “beach assault” variety. give them a capacity of, say, 12 t3 bots, and maybe one faction could have one that handles 18 or 24 (2 or 3 of those showing up behind your base where you don’t expect them could be devastating). if you really wanted to get nasty they could even be submersible.
My main point was, of course, that not being able to build and move (and have land transports) was an oversight with the original engine. i mean, even excluding the fatboy (maybe they did not have a concept for that when they were designing the engine) you had to think about aircraft carriers. who though it was ok to not let those build while moving? and sup com was also supposed to be the “most modable game ever.” come on, you just know someone is going to want to make a land/sea transport. to purposefully exclude that as an options seems a bit shortsighted. Meddish’s idea sounds like a good candidate for a community designed t3.5-4 transport, for example.
and whats with the whole “building upgrades via replacement” deal? thats how we got the whole problem with the dual mex exploit. and it seems to have happened with factories as well. it just doesn’t seem to be the best way to handle an upgrade. it limits your options for future building upgrade paths. seems like something they should have realized would cause problems down the road.
December 10th, 2007 at 10:21 pm
Funny we got all sidetracked by the naval transport idea. I guess I can see a useful tactical niche for them given that they can’t be intercepted by fighters or shot down by AA. On maps like White Fire they could certainly come in handy.
Overall I think the main point of Lucus’ post is a pretty much given, no one would argue that the lack of simultaneous move/build capability is a flaw in the engine and reduces both the effectiveness and the fun factor of units like the Fatboy. Time to move on to session 5.
December 12th, 2007 at 1:33 am
Except for the move/build/fire, this is all possible with a lil modding effort of your own.
The replacement upgrade unit limits nothing, it just requires a little more thought when programming the structure.
How about you guys learn to mod sup com before you start saying all sorts of incorrect things.
move/build/fire would rule for carriers.
December 12th, 2007 at 3:15 pm
So the sea transports is currently possible? i thought (from reading the forums) that it was an engine limitation. and another question related to moding, what about directional shields?