Forged Alliance Forever

Re: Looking for advice as returing casual FA players

2014-06-05T19:58:30+02:00

sasin wrote:
ax0lotl wrote:I'd say it's not about trying to abuse things that the opponent may not know, but about trying to surpise. Which is a fun aspect of the game. If you get sniped by a ghetto gunship, the concept is probably nothing new to you, you just didn't prepare for it, maybe you even could have expected it if you scouted.

That's fair, but I still think it's a little different. If you build 3 GGs, you hide it from your opponent by shooting down his scouts etc., you scout and find his com unprotected, you go in and escort with interceptors so he can't shoot you down, he's dead. If you go for a TML snipe, you're basically just gambling I hope my opponent isn't a good enough player to see the blips coming at his com. If you snipe mexes, you're gambling I hope my opponent doesn't understand how to build tmd. With GGs or gunships or whatever you're trying to guarantee a win through skillful play, with a tml snipe it's a bit more of a roulette wheel spin of opponent knowledge and ability. Also, transports gunships etc. are units that can be used for much more than just GGs. They're units that you can use for a lot of things including a sneaky com kill if the opportunity presents itself. When you make the decision to build a tml it seems much more of "this is a roulette wheel spin with probabilities based on how well my opponent understands sup com and if he plays zoomed out reasonably often (whether or not he scouts me). I can spin the roulette wheel and either be at a huge disadvantage or win the game." Brnk is a good player so against him there may be a 4% chance that your tmls shot at his com hit him. Maybe you have a 20% chance against me. It's just like substituting a game of chance for a game of skill.

All this is only for team games since I don't play 1v1 or understand it and it's just my impression.

Looking back, I could see that a super quick GG rush at the expense of the rest of your economy could be considered cheese, I was thinking of a t2 gg kill.

Also, to Ionic's point earlier, I think the chess comparison I made in the other thread here really speaks to it!

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=7554&p=74631#p74631

Statistics: Posted by sasin — 05 Jun 2014, 19:58

Re: Looking for advice as returing casual FA players

2014-06-05T16:33:30+02:00

ax0lotl wrote:
I'd say it's not about trying to abuse things that the opponent may not know, but about trying to surpise. Which is a fun aspect of the game. If you get sniped by a ghetto gunship, the concept is probably nothing new to you, you just didn't prepare for it, maybe you even could have expected it if you scouted.

That's fair, but I still think it's a little different. If you build 3 GGs, you hide it from your opponent by shooting down his scouts etc., you scout and find his com unprotected, you go in and escort with interceptors so he can't shoot you down, he's dead. If you go for a TML snipe, you're basically just gambling I hope my opponent isn't a good enough player to see the blips coming at his com. If you snipe mexes, you're gambling I hope my opponent doesn't understand how to build tmd. With GGs or gunships or whatever you're trying to guarantee a win through skillful play, with a tml snipe it's a bit more of a roulette wheel spin of opponent knowledge and ability. Also, transports gunships etc. are units that can be used for much more than just GGs. They're units that you can use for a lot of things including a sneaky com kill if the opportunity presents itself. When you make the decision to build a tml it seems much more of "this is a roulette wheel spin with probabilities based on how well my opponent understands sup com and if he plays zoomed out reasonably often (whether or not he scouts me). I can spin the roulette wheel and either be at a huge disadvantage or win the game." Brnk is a good player so against him there may be a 4% chance that your tmls shot at his com hit him. Maybe you have a 20% chance against me. It's just like substituting a game of chance for a game of skill.

All this is only for team games since I don't play 1v1 or understand it and it's just my impression.

Statistics: Posted by sasin — 05 Jun 2014, 16:33

Re: Looking for advice as returing casual FA players

2014-06-05T10:49:30+02:00

I'd say it's not about trying to abuse things that the opponent may not know, but about trying to surpise. Which is a fun aspect of the game. If you get sniped by a ghetto gunship, the concept is probably nothing new to you, you just didn't prepare for it, maybe you even could have expected it if you scouted.

Statistics: Posted by ax0lotl — 05 Jun 2014, 10:49

Re: Looking for advice as returing casual FA players

2014-06-05T01:15:40+02:00

Ionic wrote:
Nearly all games are won or lost (under 2k rating) by someone knowing more things about the inner workings of Forged Alliance than the other person. Take micro as the most obvious example... in nearly all situations (besides beams, torps, air related missiles) you can reduce the damage to your units by 25%+ just by moving them around right.

I remember when I was even more noob facing a high rated player and I had maybe 3x the units and the pro still won with nearly all of their units... I was baffled for the longest time. Then I watched one of Colonel Sheppard's video's and bam, I was beating people 500 rating higher than me. In fact, I even beat Sheppard in a team game not too long after that video.

Or when my ACU would always die to T1 artl, lol. Now I zig zag and none hit me.

How is TML any different? It's not, learn or die, either way your rating will reflect your knowledge of the game and how often you study/play the game.

This should really be in a different thread, and I wanna reiterate that I'm not demanding changes or anything, just having a discussion for the sake of discussion. Anyways, I think the main reason why it's different is that none of those other things explicitly rely on "I hope my enemy doesn't know how to play the game." To me, that's what differentiates cheese from non-cheese. The ACU Tml investment seems OP in certain situations, and in any other one it explicitly relies on your opponent not understanding it. You don't build t1 arty to blind rush a com and just decide "well, I hope the other guy doesn't know how to play!" In a certain circumstance, maybe you would do such a rush, but that's not the primary purpose of the unit and it's not why you built it. To me, that's a really, really key difference. One strategy is deciding "if my opponent doesn't know how to play, I win, if he does, I'm in a big hole." Instead of skill you're just making a bet on your opponent's understanding of sup com, or a bet on your opponents ability to look at his acu in that moment.

Statistics: Posted by sasin — 05 Jun 2014, 01:15

Re: Looking for advice as returing casual FA players

2014-06-04T23:24:19+02:00

Nearly all games are won or lost (under 2k rating) by someone knowing more things about the inner workings of Forged Alliance than the other person. Take micro as the most obvious example... in nearly all situations (besides beams, torps, air related missiles) you can reduce the damage to your units by 25%+ just by moving them around right.

I remember when I was even more noob facing a high rated player and I had maybe 3x the units and the pro still won with nearly all of their units... I was baffled for the longest time. Then I watched one of Colonel Sheppard's video's and bam, I was beating people 500 rating higher than me. In fact, I even beat Sheppard in a team game not too long after that video.

Or when my ACU would always die to T1 artl, lol. Now I zig zag and none hit me.

How is TML any different? It's not, learn or die, either way your rating will reflect your knowledge of the game and how often you study/play the game.

Statistics: Posted by Ionic — 04 Jun 2014, 23:24

Re: Looking for advice as returing casual FA players

2014-06-04T22:47:58+02:00

sasin wrote:
It just seems to me like a strategy that relies on a moment of stupidity from your opponent or lack of knowledge, and not a deep strategic thing.

Well to me (talking about being sniped with tml) people are quite ignorant of their ACU at times. I think a lot of people while playing the game at least can forget that the whole point is to kill the opposing ACU. They get wrapped up in ecowhoring or killing the opponents base but forget to protect their ACU. Yesterday I won a game on EOTS with just a destroyer, a cruiser, and my ACU I had almost nothing else on the map. My opponent had the whole map basically but he had nothing to defend his ACU so he lost. Certainly not quite the same as a tac missile snipe but to me its in the same vein.

BRNKoINSANITY wrote:
I think of it like this. If they are stupid enough to A. Not protect their commanders, B. not scout, and C. Not think through the fact that you have not sent units -> therefore -> you are up to something, then they are stupid enough to deserve to be tac missile sniped.

I think this applies to basically all the strats that some people call cheese strats.

Statistics: Posted by Reaper Zwei — 04 Jun 2014, 22:47

Re: Looking for advice as returing casual FA players

2014-06-04T20:02:44+02:00

BRNKoINSANITY wrote:
It may qualify you for a jerk of the game award, but TMLs win games..... I think of it like this. If they are stupid enough to A. Not protect their commanders, B. not scout, and C. Not think through the fact that you have not sent units -> therefore -> you are up to something, then they are stupid enough to deserve to be tac missile sniped.

I say this as someone who was tac sniped recently. Was I mad? Well hell yeah...... mad at myself for making an idiotic mistake, not mad at the other person for doing it.

Haha, yeah that's fair. I was mostly saying it in jest brnk, no worries! Just a little reference to a previous thread.

This is probably not the place to have a longer conversation about it, but I'll stand by it being a silly strategic option that changes the game from a game of skill to a stupid "does my opponent understand how tml/tmdd work and/or are they playing too zoomed in. If you're going for a com, it's an all or nothing are they paying attention move. When going for mexes, it's either kind of OP (your tml launcher can reach so many mexes it forces the other team to build more tmd than the cost of a missle, so it automatically pays for itself), or it's really obviously counterable if your opponent understands how tmd work. They see the first mex go down and then spam tmd, as you mentioned in the last thread. It just seems to me like a strategy that relies on a moment of stupidity from your opponent or lack of knowledge, and not a deep strategic thing. This isn't a perfect comparison, but it's almost like if there were a rule in chess where instead of taking a move you could say "siege" and your opponent gets 2 seconds to say "defend," or they lose. It's like a distraction from the main game and a dumb way to win, but it might work if your opponent doesn't know the rule.

I can recognize that people disagree and find it a good addition to the game, so I'm not even really suggesting it be removed. I guess I'm just giving my take on why I don't like it and won't use it.

As to your point. I'll grant your framing of the issue of them not doing a, b, and c, therefore deserving to die. The thing is it's a whole strategy where you decide up front, I hope my opponent doesn't know how to do A, B, or C. Rather than having a game of skill and actions and reactions etc., it changes to a gamble of does my opponent suck or not. And, yeah, when I get tml sniped I'm definitely mad at myself not the other person ... totally in the same boat. I can't really demand that people not do it because it's still in the game. I guess I can just choose not to do it and hope that eventually other people feel similarly and decide it should be removed!

Anyways, I think your post was really spot on and I was just worried we were going to have too much of a bromance if I didn't make fun of the TML suggestion. I'm obviously interested in the subject so if you wanted to talk about it further I'd be happy to but I suspect we'd want to move it to another thread .

Statistics: Posted by sasin — 04 Jun 2014, 20:02

Re: Looking for advice as returing casual FA players

2014-06-04T18:45:47+02:00

It may qualify you for a jerk of the game award, but TMLs win games..... I think of it like this. If they are stupid enough to A. Not protect their commanders, B. not scout, and C. Not think through the fact that you have not sent units -> therefore -> you are up to something, then they are stupid enough to deserve to be tac missile sniped.

I say this as someone who was tac sniped recently. Was I mad? Well hell yeah...... mad at myself for making an idiotic mistake, not mad at the other person for doing it.

Statistics: Posted by BRNKoINSANITY — 04 Jun 2014, 18:45

Re: Looking for advice as returing casual FA players

2014-06-04T16:13:39+02:00

BRNKoINSANITY wrote:
Sasin is right. My team mates and I have close to an 85% win rate on Gap of Rohan (before we stopped playing it because it is a boring map ) and it is due to the fact that almost the entire time people on Rohan go for early tech and a small firebase at the middle, and then experimental rush. If you do something out of the ordinary, then they don't know how to react and it literally destroys the entire game for them because they don't know how to recover when their standard game plan is interfered with.

You should think about, for example -
--- Assist a friend to gun upgrade very early, and then gang up on one of the enemy coms and get an early KO
---Drops, engy or combat
---Rush a TML ACU to knock out eco
---Go all in on air
---Don't build a firebase if they have no units, allowing you to produce more units and steamroll them
--- go t3 mobile arty and shields as early as possible, and prevent them from getting a firebase up

You could probably come up with 50+ game plans involving two people working together that do not involve a t4 unit, and most of them will win

100% agree. I like how both brnk and I are just assuming you are playing Rohan. The same line of thinking applies to other maps, too. If there is something that your opponents are doing everytime, just think of how to disrupt it rather than doing the same thing.

Just don't tml acu because that's douchey .

Statistics: Posted by sasin — 04 Jun 2014, 16:13

Re: Looking for advice as returing casual FA players

2014-06-03T17:13:54+02:00

BRNKoINSANITY wrote:
working together

^
I think that is the essential part.

Statistics: Posted by Gorton — 03 Jun 2014, 17:13

Re: Looking for advice as returing casual FA players

2014-06-03T14:03:37+02:00

Sasin is right. My team mates and I have close to an 85% win rate on Gap of Rohan (before we stopped playing it because it is a boring map ) and it is due to the fact that almost the entire time people on Rohan go for early tech and a small firebase at the middle, and then experimental rush. If you do something out of the ordinary, then they don't know how to react and it literally destroys the entire game for them because they don't know how to recover when their standard game plan is interfered with.

You should think about, for example -
--- Assist a friend to gun upgrade very early, and then gang up on one of the enemy coms and get an early KO
---Drops, engy or combat
---Rush a TML ACU to knock out eco
---Go all in on air
---Don't build a firebase if they have no units, allowing you to produce more units and steamroll them
--- go t3 mobile arty and shields as early as possible, and prevent them from getting a firebase up

You could probably come up with 50+ game plans involving two people working together that do not involve a t4 unit, and most of them will win

Statistics: Posted by BRNKoINSANITY — 03 Jun 2014, 14:03

Re: Looking for advice as returing casual FA players

2014-06-02T21:33:27+02:00

Kasai wrote:
One quick question regarding the T4 balance of the factions.

At least in our games, since, other than one or two people, we are generally not very aggressive early, a lot of games are focused at least somewhat around one team member per side quick teching and getting a fast experimental up.

Obviously, the fatboy doesn't really play the same role as the other assault bot exps and given the right circumstances it can level a base with incredible quickness, but I often feel that it doesn't pack the same oomph as the other factions. Granted, I'm not at all at a level of skill that would allow for me to make any serious claims about actual balance, but I'm mainly wondering if, given a position of rushing a quick experimental, would another faction be more worth while than UEF? Or is it simply a case of not providing enough support for the fatboy?

You'll often find people pursuing these strategies, especially in lower rated games, depending on the map. Rohan etc. sees a lot of experimental rushes. I think a fatboy rush is not nearly as effective as another experimental rush. However, I think you're wrong to conclude that it's imbalanced... it's just that fatboys are used in a different circumstance. They're great defensive units, and they're great at laying siege to a base that's too well defended for a normal experimental to get through. They're cool units that have their moment, but they aren't a good unit to rush and go for a quick win with.

As deering said, a ML rush can be pretty strong because it's cheaper than the other experimentals. However, a colossus is much stronger against t3 land and I believe it crushes in a straight up fight. So, a ML is strong as long as you get it done before your enemy has built up too much, otherwise a colossus is a stronger play.

As an aside, my biggest piece of advice as someone who plays a lot of team games around your level is to try to think out of the box a little bit. If you're playing Rohan and noticing that the enemy tends to rush experimentals, rather than trying to outrush experimentals, maybe consider strategies that will just beat that strategy. I got to 1400 even though I'm really bad at micro, APM, etc. just because I get a little more creative with my gameplan. I mentioned in my first post that building cybran t2 fighter/bombers (corsairs) is extremely powerful and imho underutilized. A rohan game where your opponent is just ecoing is a perfect opportunity. Alternatively, even if you want to tech to tech 3, you can still go with strat bombers. For example:

1 GC: 27,500 mass
12 strat bombers: 25,200 mass

So, if you forego the GC, you could have the same number of ASFs as your opponent with 12 strat bombers. On rohan, you're pretty much guaranteed a com kill at that point. Many other maps you're in a similar situation, although one of the nice things about sup com is each map has its quirks. So many rohan games have been won just by exploiting that situation. Even if you don't have as many asfs, you're almost definitely killing a com.

Statistics: Posted by sasin — 02 Jun 2014, 21:33

Re: Looking for advice as returing casual FA players

2014-05-31T16:48:17+02:00

The best experimental to rush is probably the monkeylord. Its 19k mass compared to 25k for chicken, 27.5k for GC and 28k for the fatboy.

Statistics: Posted by Deering — 31 May 2014, 16:48

Re: Looking for advice as returing casual FA players

2014-05-30T14:30:38+02:00

Fatboy needs some escort to be useful. First, if you lack air superiority, you need some flak. Second, UEF's actual direct fire experimental is called "massive Percival spam", which rolls over any experimentals, especially considering the cost, IIRC. Fatboy should be actually used to support percivals and not so much as vice versa.

Statistics: Posted by da_monstr — 30 May 2014, 14:30

Re: Looking for advice as returing casual FA players

2014-05-30T14:16:11+02:00

One quick question regarding the T4 balance of the factions.

At least in our games, since, other than one or two people, we are generally not very aggressive early, a lot of games are focused at least somewhat around one team member per side quick teching and getting a fast experimental up.

Obviously, the fatboy doesn't really play the same role as the other assault bot exps and given the right circumstances it can level a base with incredible quickness, but I often feel that it doesn't pack the same oomph as the other factions. Granted, I'm not at all at a level of skill that would allow for me to make any serious claims about actual balance, but I'm mainly wondering if, given a position of rushing a quick experimental, would another faction be more worth while than UEF? Or is it simply a case of not providing enough support for the fatboy?

Statistics: Posted by Kasai — 30 May 2014, 14:16