A Blast from the Past… Kind Of
It pains me to see this site with so little activity, as it was my favorite during the time I played Supreme Commander (from about February through June or thereabouts) and got the most visits. Not even two weeks ago I built myself a new computer and bought Forged Alliance, so I’m a bit behind, not only in SupCom playing but with the improvements FA brought to the table as well. Even from playing the campaign (I’m currently on the last mission on normal difficulty; go me!) I can tell there are a lot of subtle differences that on the whole make FA a totally different experience.
Back in “the day” when I played SupCom, overall strategy was fairly shallow regardless of the supposed depth of the game due to the incredibly high number of units and structures. The goal was simple — reach T3 assault bots before the other guy. Maybe a tactical missile snipe or a secret engineer drop would work, but by and large the game was all about spamming economy and reaching T3 on land as quickly as possible. All posts and reports I’ve heard about FA say this doesn’t work anymore, and it’s kind of obvious that something major has changed when you look at the unit stats and see that a T3 mass fabricator only produces 12 mass at the cost of 3500 energy. Yikes!
Since I’m behind the times, I don’t know exactly how these innumerable minute changes affect online play. Between taking time to finish the campaign and having other games to play like Unreal Tournament 3 and Call of Duty 4, I’ve yet to take FA online, though I have watched a 1v1 replay. Yes, just one. To keep this post relatively succinct, what kinds of strategies work best in online play with all the changes in gameplay? What does a player new to FA but not SupCom need to know about the units, planning, tactics, and strategies before venturing online? These are the types of questions on my mind at the moment. I know the basic overarching idea is “map control,” but what about everything else that leads up to attaining such control?
January 7th, 2008 at 10:04 pm
http://www.supcom-live.com/nc/news/details/article/supreme-commander-forged-alliance-strategy-guide-249.html
this would be a good place to start.
January 7th, 2008 at 10:12 pm
The “cheap” experimentals are very handy and deadly at the same time. But the “real” big guys clearly creates a now-or-never moment, either your T4 crushes the enemy’s everything he’s got, or otherwise :) The new race, the Seraphim is a little more different from the others, and has some special habits.
I’ve found that using the right units at the right time is a very important thing in FA. To counter the enemy’s battleships and uber-sized fleet of anit-air cruisers, for example, I’ve used those innocent-looking amphibious tanks. They die easily, but because it’s cheap, you can just produce more, than the enemy kills. Thus the “if” is now “when”, and when those little tanks reach the fleet, they’ll wreak havoc on those poor ships :)
But then he got some air support and plain and simple just grinded the tanks, and most of my base with them, because the BS fleet evaporated my defenses with a very high efficiency.
In an other game I’ve managed to take map control. My enemy was Seraphim and had a big Yottha (or whatever is that big mech’s name) T4 unit, and a hell of a defense line, but I’ve got a lots of T3 gunships. So I kept him in and he kept me out. I was bombarding his base constantly, and just sending in everything that was expandable on ground, but my advance wasn’t fast enough. He built a T4 bomber and just laughed while simply eradicated my presence from the map in a matter of few minutes.
Well, today the closest to a real strategy simulator/game is FA. And it’s super-fun too :P And GL with the campaign.
January 8th, 2008 at 9:54 am
I’ve seen some fantastic FA replays recently in the top rankings, especially involving Loui. The game has a depth and character “vanilla” did not. It’s also faster and more action packed and less prone to turtling. Frankly I think most of the really ‘advanced’ strats that the top guys use are still being refined and perfected, which is a good thing: it shows just how much FA has opened up the gameplay for the better. I know we always talk about TA, but it took years of evolution for the top players to achieve the levels they did and there are were still regular quirks and surprises in later competitive play which is the hallmark of a great game. Anyway I promise not to go into my usual rant about “emergent, dynamic gameplay mechanics” now…
:-P
January 8th, 2008 at 7:26 pm
Good stuff, Fingolfin. I remember seeing SupCom strats evolve over time, so hearing that FA will allow for more of that is great. I remember seeing tactical missile sniping come into the “mainstream” as far as a viable strat and then seeing it lose favor because people started building missile defenses wherever they sent their ACU. And then offensive engineer drops with mobile shields started popping up. I actually used that to win a duel or two on Winter. :]
January 9th, 2008 at 9:45 pm
T1 has changed. A lot. Cheaper, faster mainly, as well as factories being cheaper as stated. I still haven’t gotten the hang of it myself, high level replays seem to be all about effective use of T1 units + offensive use of your Commander. Commanders now have veterancy at much lower levels, and they’re very effective vs T1 units = push them to the front early. Also, I believe a couple of the Comm upgrades are cheaper than they were in vanilla, and this makes early upgrading a viable option.
…to name a couple. All in all, I like it a lot. Supcom was great, FA is greater, but I”m still getting used to how VERY different they are.
January 13th, 2008 at 4:43 pm
If you want to learn the mp balance while playing the campaign — try this.
http://forums.gaspowered.com/viewtopic.php?t=24922
January 19th, 2008 at 10:04 pm
Did you guys have some downtime recently? I tried surfing to supcomtalk.com a few times last week and I got Wordpress error messages come up. Thought I’d let you know anyway just in case, got worried there for a sec, thought you guys had packed up and left all of a sudden! :-/