Hi everyone ! I found that on the web : http://mylambda.free.fr/supcom.pdf
It's a quite big pdf (1,5mo) so it can take time to be downloaded.

Do you know guys some others stuff like this one ?

Sadly that guide is for Supreme Commander, Not forged alliance.

I'm pretty sure it is for forged alliance XD (it's the title, on the first page).

Maybe I'm just insane today I didn't notice that and once I read parts of it they seemed more related to vanilla. I'm probably just going mad.


But yea after checking it a little more it's clearly for FA sorry for the mistake.

This is a MASSIVE work in progress, and looks like it's coming very well. Referring all balance issues in the near future this direction!

I am obsessed with mathematics in RTS games. I'm probably spend a lot of time disecting the data he's got there.

Ok, i read most of it, and he's got some very interesting theories, some of which I do not agree with.

1) He considers 150 energy units per mass unit. While this is in fact the way the mass and energy is converted, and is fairly close to the cost effectiveness ratios of t3 pgens, and t3 mexes with storage (works out to about 154), this ratio is very missleading when trying to explain which things are more expensive early t1, aka factories. The t1 factories are in fact balanced around a 10 to 1 energy to mass conversion factor (if you consider mass costing 1/10 of energy, the cost of an air/land/sea factory would be the same), which is actually a rather large ratio very early in the game.

In early game, a t1 extractor costs mass on a ratio of 18/1, and a pgen provides energy at a ratio of 75/20 (75 mass spent/20 e/sec gained). This creates a mass/energy ratio of only 1 to 4.8. The Hydro carbon provides a ratio of 11.25, so a 10 to 1 ratio of energy early game is more than fair.

2) When he calculates effectiveness of artillery, he doesn't square the damage area radius, and thus his calculation shows aoen artillery as the most effective.

3) He feels that the t4 bomber is difficult to beat, and has therefore never built an ASF in his life. He doesn't list it as a possible counter.

Other than that, a lot of good math done, although most of it fairly useless.

Looks like he also forgot about aa target priorties, and again forgot to mention asf's as a possible counter to bombers. Much of his logic of gameplay comes from the early days of vanilla

Never built an asf during a game ? maybe he just forgot to mention it or simply never face an enemy with an army of asf ready to kill his (her ?) t4 bomber, i guess;

I like the theories about the point defenses in this pdf never see something like that elsewhere.

Regardless of errors;

Your seal is too big.

oh wow, i had acutally thought of doing something like this with a mate from uni (though ours would've been much less n00b-friendly)

congrats to the dude who made it, and the dude who found it.

reading the comments here, it's not perfect yet... that's why it's a WIP.

It's too bad that this guide is based completely off of hand-picked numbers and doesn't consider some important statistics. For instance, he states that the Aeon T3 arty is the best because of it's range/DPS/mass cost. He fails to consider that it also has the smallest area of effect and has twice the reload time of any other T3 arty.

Some parts of the guide are difficult to understand because they are written(translated?) very poorly.

He does consider area of effect, as I mentioned, however, he should square the attack radius in his calculation, cause something with an AOE of 8 hits 4 times the area of something with an aoe of 4. Using his calculation he just multiplied the radius once, leaving the aoen one to be superior.

Well, nobody answer my first question XD Is there other stuff like the one I gave to you ?

Well this is an interesting, to bad he does not use any calculus or differential equations. I always wondered if someone would write a math-based analysis for a game that used higher level math. Guess I will enjoy the algebra. If people have questions about the math feel free to ask me about it. Time to start reading.

Ok, I read it. It was an easy to understand analysis; I liked the fact that the author summarized things nicely. However, some parts of the paper were oversimplified and his basic “cost” unit was based on the least efficient building in the game. This does not matter so much as he only used ratios but would possibly have other effects if he did a more complex analysis or if he wanted to say more about economy structures as his units may not match due to the different constant assigned to each power generator type. (ill check his units later). Also, I am not convinced that his ratio analysis alone is enough to justify some of his conclusions. Assigning all of his parameters the same coefficients may overstate the effects of some parameters in the game. Such as putting the hit points of the physical shield on top and saying it was as important as the shield bubble hit points. Of course, finding coefficients that rate relative importance of any given parameter would be a real challenge. Overall though, it was a simple analysis that should help people understand the basics of why some units/structures work better than others. Also, I liked the analysis of the Cybran T2 PD the best.