Anyone on here still playing TA?

I actually recently reinstalled TA a couple of weeks ago.

However playtime has severely diminished due to Skyrim, SR3, BF3, Forza 4...

Don't tempt me. I'll end up with like a gig of mods for TA

I've installed it 3 months ago and played the game 2 weeks

I actually just bought it on Impulse for $5 a couple weeks ago, having played it many many years ago on a roomates computer at college, and it served as the motivating factor for me getting Supreme Commander. I played a few games on it after downloading it, and found that even leaving aside the fact that it lacks strategic zoom that SupCom has, the interface and ability to control units is vastly inferior to that of SupCom, to the point where I didn't play it for long. No infinite build queue for factories, can't move building placement while holding down shift, when I drag a box it selects everything and not just combat units, and other little stuff combine to bug the heck out of me. Perhaps I'm just not used to the control scheme and would be fine if I just stuck with it a while. Kinda like my hatred for Macs is based on the fact that I am so used to how things work in Windows that when I try to use a Mac I feel as if I am doing things with one hand tied behind my back, but if I were used to Macs and knew the various tricks and shortcuts it wouldn't be so bad.

I'm fine with the graphics for TA, it just is so unwieldy trying to control stuff that I very quickly went back to FA. If there are mods that improve the ability to control units for TA, I might get back into it though...

Just hold shift and click as hell on the unit you want to build! remember, this is from the era when you it was more regular to build 1 unit per click. You couldn't bbuild any queues at all.

I'm used to the ability in FA to build 5 tanks, 2 T1 arty, maybe a scout, and repeat that build queue ad infinitum. I also like when I have 5 factories, selecting 4 of them and telling them to assist the build queue of the 1st (Why on earth did they leave this out of SupCom 2?!). Not having that in TA feels crippling. Yes, I know, no other RTS did what I am describing then either, and that TA was revolutionary for it's day, but it still doesn't take away from the fact that I miss some SupCom features terribly when I play TA these days.

Just as a general strategy question for TA, in case I do fire it up again, is it better to build a few factories and assist the heck out of them with many engineers like in FA, or is it better to have multiple unassisted factories?

i generally just made a bunch of unassited factories, mainly because the vehicles and bots assiting said factories slow down the process by getting in the way of the unit being built. better to have them on patrol reclaiming and repairing stuff imo.

It depends on what you're building. The most expensive units from advanced factories could use some assistance, but the standard factories never really need any more than 1 builder helping at most.

Flying engineers for the win. They don't get in the way and you can have an unlimited number assisting a project. Watch out for fighters.

And flak of any kind, including your own.

oh yea forgot about the planes lol, a single fighter will ruin your day however

How about spring?

Spring is pretty much supcom with crap graphics....

As for rushing/plant stuff, with vehicle/Kbot for storm/samson massing you just want to build as many plants as you can afford, and have them all spam units. However, if your going for Hawks or bombers your gonna want to rush with as many cons as u can fit around the plant.

Also, with the flying con units... Once i had a swarm of a hundred, took 80 seconds to make a vulcan. (I already had 80 fusions and 50 moho metal makers) of course it was Vs. an AI, real players would never let you get far enough for that... Unless they are complete noobs.