This is my first post on this forum, and I'd like to open proceedings by expressing my admiration and respect for everyone who has laboured to keep Supcom alive. As an old-school coffin dodger, I love Total Annihilation and we can probably all agree that Supreme Commander is an object of beauty in so many ways.
This thread was inspired by the (now locked) thread about whether uncompleted shield spam to block incoming tac missiles represents an exploit. I don't want this thread to be a continuation of that one, it was locked for good reason. I do however think that it is a pity since the discussion could be valuable. Please do not continue with the faeces flinging, save it for the battlefield, guys.
I'd like to point out that I've never played FAF online, only retail FA with my two lads during our rare LAN sessions when they visit. They are still unable to beat me even when teaming up
Youth and talent are no match for age and treachery 
, but please keep in mind that I'm the quintessential newbie if I say something that is obvious bollocks in the scope of FAF.Anyway, I digress.
Is it an exploit to block with unbuilt structure spam? My personal opinion is that it isn't, for the very good reason stated by others that it is entirely sensible and desirable to be able to destroy structures that are under construction. It is also very often the case that it is entirely unintentional that the unbuilt shield will block the tac missile, since obviously shields are built to protect structures and whether the shield is unbuilt or not is a matter of timing, pure and simple.
That said, in the cast referenced in the other thread, it is patently obvious that the aim of spamming up the shields was not to have a working shield, but to have a means of nullifying an (expensive) tactical missile at little cost to the opponent being targeted.
An argument can be made that it is unsporting and beardy gameplay, since it is arguably against the spirit of the game to abuse a game mechanic to nullify your opponent's advantage at that point in the game. Granted, it takes skill and the presence of a T2 engineer, but it also takes skill to be prescient enough to antipate the eventual arrival of tactical missiles knocking at the door of the resource you want to protect, and in any case that same T2 engy should have been building TMD. So it boils down to having been outplayed in that microcosmic battle and resorting to a cheap trick to nullify the disadvantage. But that's my opinion and really it's an entirely different topic and I don't want to get embroiled into a debate about it or have the thread descend into chaos because of it.
Nevertheless, it is clearly a sore point for some (I would personally be annoyed if it was done against me but it wouldn't be a game breaker, flaming plasma victory will be sought one way or the other). To that end, I'd like to talk about the behaviour of the missile itself.
Since we can agree that they must be able impact unbuilt structures, would a suitable compromise not be to change the "ballistic" behaviour of the missile so that it travels in a higher arc and descends vertically onto the target in the same way that nukes do? In this way, you get the best of both worlds - that T2 mex, or fatboy being built, can be targeted effectively and spamming up blocking structures becomes ineffective. Some tuning of the projectile speed might be necessary to keep the effective time to target the same.
But maybe I'm also getting ahead of myself. Is this modification even possible to do in the first place? Also, what other unforseen effects would this have? For example, suitable terrain would block TMs as it stands now, and utilising the terrain to your advantage is clearly A Good Thing.
Any insights from you lot would be very welcome
Thank you!
Ryan
