The latest weeks the gameplay at the higher ranks has taken a few decisive turns towards a final way of playing. This has become most visible when 2 players of equal skill meet, like in the following replays available on the replay vault.

replay:Sir_Loui/7-12-2007-18-24-20.SupremeCommanderReplay
replay:Unconquerable/7-4-2007-12-44-1.SupremeCommanderReplay

In these 2 matches and many more like it if you've been watching replays and playing. You'll notice that the game becomes quite stale after the first initial 10 mins and the game is mostly won by the guy who lose interested the least. From the constant troop movement, skirmishes, feints, drops and attacks in the first 10mins almost nothing remains. Now if you ask anyone on gpg.net what is slightly off with this game your going to have about 130.000 different answers. Going from "rushing noobs", "Uef T3 gunships spammers", "Soul Ripper is OP", "MML's are to strong" etc...
But when you take a long and deep look at supreme commander all the things above are tweaks, little buffs and well placed cuts that make a rough diamond into a sparkling "OMG i want it i want it, thank you, thank you so much (big wet sloppy kiss)" stone of affection. But when we look close at this marvelous gem thats being constructed we can see 3 small little cracks deep inside of it that form the hurdle between the mediocrity and the halls of the truly great games like: Starcraft Broodwar, Fallout, Baldurs gate, Half-life, Halo etc.. Those true gems that nobody even dares to dispute the greatness of.

Gaspowered games and Chris Taylor deserve a spot amongst those for the dedication that they have shown to this title and the community of it.

So what are these 3 hurdles:

1- Mass fabricators are too efficient.
When doing the math on mass fabricators you'll find that these little units are 100% more efficient then upgrading an extractor to tier2 and when you compare it to T3 extractor it just becomes ludicrous with 50 mass spend on a T3 generator/T1 fab combo vs the 300 from a T2 to T3 mex upgrade. Note that all this is with unlinked fabricators. This means that the loss of the fabricators means very little since the Energy income that supports em goes untouched and thus allows the player to almost instantly rebuild the fabricators.

Now what does this do to the game? Well absolutely nothing in the first minutes. You still see everyone going for mapcontrol to get those mass points or reclaimable rocks and buildings. These minutes are incredibly entertaining to watch as you see players maneuver their troops commanders and scouts to get that upper hand and get that razor thin edge over the opposition. However then the first T2 powergenerator goes up and suddenly mapcontrol becomes almost insignificant cause spending resources on those means you are not spending resources on easily protected Powergen + Fabricator combo's in your main. Hence your better of protecting you base and trying to find a way into the opponents, while expanding your economy and tech.

To close this subject I am gonna give some exact numbers on resource efficiency. These calculation will give the exact mass efficiency you need to spend to get +1 mass, this includes the mass cost from any powergenerator needed to supply the mass extractor or fabricator. So for example a T1 mex will have a -2 drain and a T1pgen supply's +20 for 75mass that means that you have to add 2x75/20 to the mass cost of the T1 mex.

T1 mex:
36 construct mass, -2 energy from a 20 E T1 pgen, +2 mass income
Mass efficiency = (Construct mass + Energy maintenance cost) / massincome
Mass efficiency = (36+(2*75/20))/2 = 21.75 mass spend to get +1 mass income

T2 mex upgrade from T1 mex
900 construct mass, -9 energy from a 20 E T1pgen, +4 extra mass income (this is the difference between a T1 mex and a T2 mex)
Mass efficiency = (Construct mass + Energy maintenance cost) / massincome
Mass efficiency = (900+(9*75/20))/4 = 233.43 mass spend to get +1 mass income

T2 pgen supplying a T1 fabricator unlinked
0 construct mass, -40 energy from a 500 E T2PGen, +1 extra mass income
Mass efficiency = (Construct mass + Energy maintenance cost) / massincome
Mass efficiency = (0+(40*1200/500))/1 = 96 mass spend to get +1 mass income

Glaring numbers indeed wouldn't you say. 96 mass vs 233 mass thats 2.4times more costly.

2- Assisting allows for instant counters
Assisting construction of buildings and units is a unique mechanic of supreme commander and Total annihilation. To my knowledge no other game has it where you can assist anything and everything. But if this is a good thing is something completely different. Most counters in supreme commander are cheaper then the unit they are designed to counter. This off-course is normal cause it wouldn't be a counter otherwise. But this also means that if your quick on the draw and can shift your resources quickly with enough engineers you can get any counter up before the unit gets even close. It also means that you can switch to only building T2 units the second you have the factory since all T1 engineers can help. When you see your opponent build a strategic launcher you can almost wait till its finished before building your own antinukes and have em finished before he launches his first nuke. But you have to be quick on the draw.

It's a problem the developers are aware of though since they already remarked on it in 3223 where the balance team disliked the ability to switch from T1 to full T3 sab production so quickly. It is also the hardest problem to fix.

3- Scouting is too easy.
Scouting in any RTS has always been the hallmark that sets the good from the mediocre and the great from the Gods. Knowing exactly when your opponents Tech2 is at 90% complete helps you to just time that Tier1 attack because you have 8tanks more and he lacks his T2, not spotting that hidden enemy base behind yours on emerald can leave your mainbase in shreds when he moves in. Not checking your surrounding when playing vs Sir_Loui can get you sneak TML ninjaed and not keeping a watchful eye on Thelittleone's dropships will get your dropped in a place where it's gonna hurt a freaking lot. Everyone will go to a insane extent to hide any tech or strategy they are using to get that edge on the opponent. You don't want em to see your strategic launcher so he can build a anti nuke do you?

Luckily for us Supreme commander offers a range of options doesn't it? We have cheap and fast airscouts, cheap and fast land scouts, huge area radars, all seeing omni radars and Omni T3 spyplanes. So all is well here you'd think? Well it doesn't feel right does it? Why? Well I would say it's because the player needs to put a lot more effort into hiding what he is doing then finding out what the opponent has and as long as omni is up you know where what unit is unless he moves em through a stealthfield. This makes planning ahead in supcom very hard to do cause even a decent player will notice that your building a GC and get his stratbombers or T2 artillery ready long before you've finished it and when you get good enough you can probably even tell what kind of unit it is at the speed it moves on the radar. I know i can easily see the difference between a engineer and a mantis early on or a interceptor and transport.

Conclusion
Most of you will ask or flame or yell. If you think the game is so flawed then stop playing it. If you don't like it who's holding you back to switch to c&c3 or starcraft that you like so much? The answer is simple, despite its flaws and shortcomings I still like Supreme commander the most of all modern RTSes. It brought me back to the macro+micro game instead of the micro focused rtses of today like Company of heroes and dawn of war. It made me feel the same way like i did in starcraft when i first played it in multiplayer. I like it so much that I'm willing to dedicate time and effort on my behalf to help make it better. If I truly didn't care about I would quit. But I do care, I do love it and GPG really did a great job on it thus far.

But like all RTSes none of em are perfect. Even the example the industry always uses as the best balanced rts didn't become like that after many years of patching development and even a expansion to put the cherry on top. Now you might remark that all these 3 mechanics have been in play since early beta in November 2006 and this is indeed true. It is also a sign of the constant evolution that RTS players go through and show again that hard path that balancing and making a perfect RTS is.

GPG certainly seems willing to travel across this bumpy road towards a truely epic title. But to really blossom a community needs to do its bit. Site's like Gamereplays.org and supcom-live bring out things like the mentor-program to help the community. Organize showmatches with voicecast or videocast, the ultimate commander or nation tourneys for the community to enjoy. Modders like Saya, Goom, Cleopatra, Sorian and the many others give us custommaps and mods to enjoy and change the gameplay to give us something fresh. And me as a higher ranked player isn't it my duty to use my knowledge of the ingame mechanics to point out the little kinks and rough edges that still need to be polished out?

Istvan “Cauldr0n” Rooms

Read and signed by:

Jan “Prepare” Richter
Viktor “Greystreet” Velthuijs
Ludvig “Sir_Loui” Cederblad
Nate “AngryZealot” Glasser
Keith “Winter” Seidel

Aurel “Thebigone” Wünsch
Mateusz “Matiz_pl_” Kowalski
Luke “BattleMoose” Osburn
Homan “Unconquerable” Leung
Josh “_PINK” Dyck

Wilco “Adlermann” Engelsman
Tero “duris_” Tanninen
Matias “arctor” Ketonen
Sebastian “Bhaal” Schmidt
Dario “TheLittleOne” Wünsch

/signed too.

Good post. I agree with most of it.

cauldr0n, I really like these ideas.

- I do think fabs need to be nerfed. This would ensure map control remains vital throughout the game and that you don't get punished economy wise if your enemy techs to T3 first and starts building a T3 matrix. Growth in economy should be alot less exponential.

- Assisting can be a problem (building an anti-nuke as soon as a nuke in launched), however, assisting definately shouldn't be removed altogether.
possible solutions
- units and structures have a cool down time, where after they are built, they must stay (uncompleted) for a varying amount of time dependant on the unit/structure. This would lower the strength of assists
- limited assists, each structure has perhaps x assist nodes, and can be assisted by x enginneers
- less efficient assisting, assisting works as usual, however the more units you send to assist, the less efficient the assisting is, causing more and more resource to be wasted

oh yeah: /signed

An interesting read and I agree with what you said. I've thought of a few remedies and maybe we can settle on how to solve the problems. These are not thought through. I'm just brainstorming here.

Mass Fabs. Halve their output while increasing their input by 50%? The same for RAS?

Assisting. With every engineer/SCU you waste more mass and energy? EDIT: I definately like the assist-nodes idea.

Scouting. The construction of a Gap Generator, perhaps? Creating a fog of war in a mediocre range.
Reduce the range of radar to make it purely a tool of base defense, not basically seeing the whole map?
Increase the muzzle velocity of AA so scouts get shot down earlier?

Well said.

Signed.

As much as I agree I'd more like suggestions on how to implement these changes.

Instead of changing the efficiency of the mass-fab power gens i'd rather see the power supplies being more fragile instead of just the mass-fabs being fragile. This would introduce more raiding and make it worth while to actually raid someones base while not destroying the commander.

I disagree with the scouting though. This is the one place where ground control is useful and it helps your ability to have intel. If someone controls more land the easier it is to scout deep into the enemy's territory.

How would you propose fixing the "Assisting allows for instant counters" problem?

Fare comments.

I'd have to say that I'd always wanted the mass extractors to become more valuable and maybe lessening the effectiveness a little on the mass makers will help but i'd also like to see more mass produced from makers especially with these newer larger Units comming out in the Xpac.

The way I see it theres 3 options in regards to mass

1. Increase Extractor Income

2. Reduce Maker Efficiency and make unit overall a little less expensive

3. Or a combination of reducing Maker income and increasing Extractor Income

Assists well things do build slowly so for X units its almost a must have feature so maybe after adding 10 units assisting or something along those lines you recieve no benefit from adding any more

As for radar I love the planes and Scouts but Omni is just too good you should be able to put a stealth gen down and have its radius stop your opponent being able to see it on his map unless of course they have a unit within LOS.

Thats my input

But I agree I would definatly like to see some change in these areas.

I think I agree with most of the issues.

I won't give any advice on how to fix things, because I have no good solution (apart from nerfing T1/T3 Fabs a good 50% and seriously capping SCU-RAS economies by limiting their numbers through unassistable gateways)

Seriously, massed SCUs are what amounts for the biggest blitz counters in late game. They pump out Monkeylords, Soul Rippers, Renegades, T2 Artillery, Antinukes, Shields, PD forests, Subs, whatever it is you need - they can deliver in a matter of seconds.

I tend to agree that the mass extractor needs to be the core of mass income, so map control has real meaning. Not so sure on the assisting thing, but easy scouting, well, that's iffy, on large, well defended maps those cheap T1 scouts will die, so you have to use T3 omni-scouts....I'm mixed on this, I do believe hiding things should be easier, but how much so...not sure. GPG seem to think the opposite, as tehy made T3 scouts much cheaper...AND added omni.

BUT, are these changes going to make the difference between a good game, adn a great game, and "epic" game...I don't think so. I still don't think Starcraft is such a great game, it jsut has tremendous support in Korea, where near-maniacal players achieve in excess of 180 commands a minutes..well, that's not my style of game...

http://www.destructoid.com/south-korean ... 0571.phtml

part 1..signed.
part 2..not signed
part 3...not sure

Well I expected this and I and the other off-course all thought about possible fixes. But agreeing on a fix is much much harder then agreeing on the problem. So thats why i intentionally didn't add any.

Nice post

It got me thinking that, while solving problem 2) on its own seems very hard, couldn't a combined change for 1) & 2) be the way to go? Making fabrication less efficient makes the cost for assistance more prohibitive and you have to plan farther ahead what you'll be building?

There are some mods in the mod section trying to deal with the fabrication cost. Maybe analysing them in-depth would be good way to start finding a well balanced solution.

As for problem 3): I very much like to play Cybran. But it's less and less fun as a game progresses, since one of their key characteristic - stealth - becomes less and less useful due to the presence of Omni radar and spy planes. So, signed.

Perhaps those unspecified çounter inteligence'units that supposedly come with FA will help? If it's easier to hide things, than éasy'scouting and the ability to assist a quick counter will matter less.

I also agree on a T2 and T3 radar nerf.

Agreed

While I can appreciate the points you are making, I feel they are based solely on small (i.e. ranked) maps - on larger maps the scouting issue is not at all the case, which in turn renders the 'assisting' point moot, as you can only counter something if you know they have it. Look at scouting and radar radii on the bigger maps and you're hard pushed to provide coverage.

I can see that Omni is overpowered on the smaller maps, so perhaps there is an arguement for scaling radar/LOS radius according to map size?

As far as assisting goes I feel it adds a large amount of strategy to SupCom - otherwise it's just a case of whoever starts building something first wins. If I have the economy, and spot a nuke launcher coming online, then I should be rewarded for a) my strong economy and b) use of scouting to let me throw up a nuke defense very fast, at the expense of the rest of my production.


The mass fab point is valid, but perhaps the answer is in making T3 MEx's massively more valuable?

I would be concerned in limiting the T3/4 mass budget from fabs, as it just means people have to build more of them (i.e. even more base building) to support the huge armies that the larger maps require.

In conclusion: I cannot outright agree with your points on scouting or assisting, but your point with mass fabs is well made. The solution is difficult though.

Cauldron, I'd like very much a replay of a custom game between top rated players where it clearly shows pgen/massfab combo efficiency vs map control and extractors upgrading(along with pgen/massfab).

I'm asking because I've not seen one of these ever and myself I can't decide despite the data provided here.

My problem is that at my level(1900-2000) people aren't really that much aggressive and don't build the 20-30 massfabs allowed by tier 2 pgens so when I decide to upgrade all my extractors(and the opponent mex points too) to tier 3 I've never seen the downside of it in an actual game, althought I'm stongly suspicious it's bad.

I know the data should speak for themselves but as everybody is so defensive minded and don't bother with mexes and map control past tier 2, that would be cool to see how it screw you in a replay.

Xenoc, if you need more structures to build up troops, you need much more of that to build up defenses. That means turtler bases will be easier to get in with fewer units.


I do agree that 20x20 maps have LESS of an easy-scouting-problem, though you still can't build a firebase to level your opponent's base.


The fact that building blips are persistent is also a problem - while it's realistic and intuitive, all it takes is occasional scouting, and you'll have a good picture of the enemy base layout.

interesting post, not much to add, just that assisting has to stay, it's a great part of the game. maybe the "x slots" idea is cool, e.g. a tech1 factory has 2 assist slots, T2 has 4 and T3 has 6 or something like this.

scouts->remove omni, maybe change the way radar works (send out radar waves every x secs instead of constant monitoring?), T3 mexes should gain importance... signed.

I agree that mass fab farms are currently too powerful in relation to MExs, I'm just not sure where I stand on whether it's Mass Fabs that are over powered or Mexs that are underpowered. I agree that more buildings means the turtler has to expend more on defense (a good thing), but the same effect could also be achieved simply by making existing Mass fabs bigger, occupying more space and therefore requiring more defenses for farms of an equivalent output.

By making fabs less productive you achieve the same thing, but also force people to click a hell of a lot more building orders to get their production up to the same point.

Not Signing.


You point out that dozens of people will give dozens of different answers, and then you profess that your answers are the real ones.

Guys, The solution for farm mass fabs it's too simple:

- Increase mass cost to building mass fabs.
- Decrease mass cost of extrators.
- May decrease energy production of T1 generator.

This will make more rush for extrators e less for mass fabricators.

@Jakovasaur, I agree, Mass Extractors need to have a purpose. For the early stages of teh game, they are valuable strategic resources/locations. Once a person is firmly into T3, there is Zero need to expend resources to control mass extractor locations. This promotes turtling and basically indifference in the game.

Mass extractors should have their output doubled or tripled to make them worthwhile strategic locations to Fight and to Defend.

Where was he giving answers? He pointed at three issues he - and those who have signed too - thinks that are currently obstacles to be overcome. The answer would be a description of the solution.

Given the fact that several mods have already tried to deal with issues 1) & 3), I don't think this is only something the high ranking players consider to be in need of adressing.

not sure if any one has pointed this out but they will be adding more intelligence / counter-intelligence units in FA acording to some articles. Might even be getting them at the end of the month with the unit pack!