Fabs are hardly the cause of exponential growth in FA. In FA, it's the fact that a T1 mex produces 2 mass, while a T3 mex with storage produces 27 mass, and that a T1 bot costs 50 mass, while a T3 AAB costs 1300, or a T1 radar consumes 50 energy, while a T3 consumes 2000. This is completely ridiculous.

So they only learned half of the lesson from vanilla SC1 - when you can just spend mass/energy to create more mass/energy, you get a runaway economy. Except instead of curtailing this AND the need for ridiculous amounts of mass, they kept in the need for ridiculous amounts of mass at T3/T4, and moved the mass production to the mexes. This made map control important (which is good), but also made the transition from T1->T2->T3 even more difficult, and the addition of even better T3 AABs and bigger experimentals (the latter of which only come into play on 20x20+ maps of course) to soak up kills and stack veterancy levels made this transition even more important.


This isn't anything that hasn't been hashed over dozens of times in the FA forums and even here-- I don't think I've ever seen someone here disagree with the assessment that higher tech tiers completely replacing lower tech tiers is a Bad Decision. Likewise, few people have disagreed with the sentiment that SC2's upgraded universality, e.g. Rockhead AA upgrade, was an equally terrible decision.


The choice to use unit/structure-based tech tiers or global upgrades is neither a good nor a bad decision. Both have things going for them, and I could see either or a mix of both being viable in KaC. The Supreme Commander games certainly both have many problems that rely on these mechanics, but that are not necessarily a direct result of them.

That may have been the sentiment on the Supcom 2 forums early in its life, but I believe the reaction is much more mixed now that the game has had time to mature. Personally, I think it has some downsides, such as making a strategy-switch that much harder, but I do believe it's much better at eliminating the T1-T3 exponential curve you discussed.

I'm not talking about the global upgrading system itself, just what some of them do - e.g. massively boost AA output of primary ground units, which is a terrible balance decision even if it is convenient for the player getting the upgrade.

In essence, they just need to get the numbers right, and then everyone will be happy.


Balance FTW

I'd say both games' biggest problems aren't about numbers, but about philosophy.

In FA, it's the fact that high tech obsoletes lower tech. Even if they got the mass 'numbers' right, SABs and AABs simply replace lower-tier bots, unless they're made significantly less mass-efficient than all preceding bots, at which point nobody would use them because it would be easier and better to just to crank out T1 endlessly. Likewise, build power was so cheap that the sheer strategic agility provided by having 1000+ build power in even a T1/T2 game was always well worth its mass cost.

SC2 got these things mostly right, but then they botched some of that with the versatility upgrades that allow massing of one type of generally-effective unit to the exception of specialized units.


So I guess they're improving? SC2 was a little more balanced than FA which was a lot more balanced than SC which was a little more balanced than TA. It's just a very, very slow process. Hopefully enough lessons have been learned by now, but the devblogs' mentions of things like item stores are not encouraging (especially considering how abysmally horrible Demigod's item lineup was, I mean sweet jesus, they could not have screwed that game's items up any more if they had specifically tried).

The problem with SupCom or FA was that there was no reason not to just build whatever did the most damage and had the most health for it's cost. There were very few utility units, like transports. When the game fundamentally doesn't have the mechanic of unit mixing, then how can anyone be expected to balance it so you mix units across tiers?

They clearly tried to achieve some amount of unit mixing (within tiers), but failed because they were relying entirely on speed, muzzle velocity, range, and ROF for unit vs unit balance. The only examples I can think of that sort of succeeded in spite of this are units that excelled enough at their specialty to be worthwhile, like the Trebuchet or Hoplite/Mongoose.

you guys turn every thread that finally could have some new discussions into threads with very old discussion.

Lets talk about how Europe is better than US

Yeah, and Australia is better than them both combined. XD

We really, really want them to learn from those particular mistakes, ok?

Plus, there's only so much speculating about DLC that can be done before it devolves into to the crap that started clogging up page 2. Yikes.

The blood running to your head is clearly affecting your brain.

Amen, Spuddy.