Hawkei wrote:
Being safe and predictable is going to be the nominal position with you aim for in 95% of games. Though, I do notice that most players builds are focused around delivering a certain type of threat at a certain stage of the game. Of course this type of play is favoured by Sytris Major. Because of the terrain. It is much easier to keep your side of the map secure than it is to attack.
Take for instance your own replays Blodir. Your game style consists of a relatively constant pro-forma set piece which you use all the time. Essentially you have an opening mex, hydro, power spam, edge build. You have your ACU late to the middle, with a fairly defensive positioning of T2 tanks. You hold the ACU back for an early T2 upgrade after the middle mass, and then push to do a cliff T2 PD build in enemy territory along with a timing push with Pillars. Thus denying your opponent mexes, structures, and often killing them outright... The problem with having a predictable defence is that players need to incur expenditure in defence is driven by the possibility that an attack could happen anywhere at any time... But if they know you will not be doing this, or know when your timing push will happen, then they can make minimal expenditure in defence, and go for something which might defeat you directly.
The impetus for changing things up is to keep the opponent on their toes. Sitting back and being passive is simply allowing them to out eco you - because you are not presenting a viable threat.
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Every player's replays are available to the community. So if you play predictably every game you are giving your opponent all the information necessary to "meta-game" you.
Being safe and predictable is going to be the nominal position with you aim for in 95% of games. Though, I do notice that most players builds are focused around delivering a certain type of threat at a certain stage of the game. Of course this type of play is favoured by Sytris Major. Because of the terrain. It is much easier to keep your side of the map secure than it is to attack.
Take for instance your own replays Blodir. Your game style consists of a relatively constant pro-forma set piece which you use all the time. Essentially you have an opening mex, hydro, power spam, edge build. You have your ACU late to the middle, with a fairly defensive positioning of T2 tanks. You hold the ACU back for an early T2 upgrade after the middle mass, and then push to do a cliff T2 PD build in enemy territory along with a timing push with Pillars. Thus denying your opponent mexes, structures, and often killing them outright... The problem with having a predictable defence is that players need to incur expenditure in defence is driven by the possibility that an attack could happen anywhere at any time... But if they know you will not be doing this, or know when your timing push will happen, then they can make minimal expenditure in defence, and go for something which might defeat you directly.
The impetus for changing things up is to keep the opponent on their toes. Sitting back and being passive is simply allowing them to out eco you - because you are not presenting a viable threat.
***
Every player's replays are available to the community. So if you play predictably every game you are giving your opponent all the information necessary to "meta-game" you.
You are taking it way too far. Of course whole gameplan for the game is not set in stone from the beginning, but rather its about reacting to your opponent. Predictability implies that opponent doesn't know what you are doing, but can guess it. Turns out in supcom combination of scouting + radar + game balance ensures that, given enough skill, you can practically always tell what your opponent is doing. What you are talking about is simply plain bad un-reactive play. While learning you will encounter situations in which you get caught offguard and feel like your opponents unpredictability was their strength, but once you learn to defend against this particular strategy they will need to learn a new trick to catch you offguard. Ideally you will eventually end up in a situation where you can manage to get ahead in every situation you are facing by choosing the most efficient (and usually very predictable) route.
If you are at a large skill disadvantage in a tournament, you might want to try to get that lucky win by catching your opponent offguard however
So let's have a quick run through this predictable play
Essentially you have an opening mex, hydro, power spam, edge build.
This is the starting buildorder, no surprise it doesn't change, it's the most efficient one I have figured out so far. First bomber is not worth it here because of hydro, second land is relatively unsafe (you might outright die to a bomber, though this is arguable). No point trying to do things differently just to feel unique
You have your ACU late to the middle
ACU defends the right side from raids, units on the left. If enemy moves their ACU toward middle you run by on the left and kill their expansion, if enemy didn't send units to the right you follow your enemy to the middle etc. there's more stuff to consider here, but you get the idea. No, it's not so black and white as to just "send acu to mid late"
with a fairly defensive positioning of T2 tanks.
Basic unit management stuff here, you use tanks where you can, avoid giving enemy mass tho. Nothing special whatsoever
You hold the ACU back for an early T2 upgrade after the middle mass, and then push to do a cliff T2 PD build in enemy territory along with a timing push with Pillars
Simply a very fast way to push your advantage to a victory. Obviously should you do this at a disadvantageous position you would probably die
Thus denying your opponent mexes, structures, and often killing them outright...
Ideally always killing them outright, otherwise don't do it (if enemy is able to defend you have just donated an insane amount of mass). If I recall correctly on all games I did this in I did kill them outright
The problem with having a predictable defence is that players need to incur expenditure in defence is driven by the possibility that an attack could happen anywhere at any time... But if they know you will not be doing this, or know when your timing push will happen, then they can make minimal expenditure in defence, and go for something which might defeat you directly.
As mentioned earlier in this post, the combination of radar, ease of scouting and game balance make it entirely possible to devise the perfect response to anything your opponent might be doing, predictable or not. Trying to surprise your opponent is relying on them doing a mistake, which works less and less the better the players get. As opposed to Starcraft 2 where it's much harder to read your opponent and you can even hide tech in random places on the map, sometimes you may be able to surprise your opponent even if they are a vastly superior player.
Dare I say that my "predictable" play has brought me considerable success in supcom
Statistics: Posted by Blodir — 14 Jul 2016, 10:20
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