A big shout out to Gyle, who is my favourite caster by far. You have the gift of the gab, young man, and well do you employ it in service of Queen and Country.
Anyhows, my secret shameful dirty Youtube habit used to be watching metalworking vids. Blacksmithing, CNC machining, turning and so on. I'm like freaking Raymond staring at washing machines with that stuff.
But a new usurper of the crown has emerged - FAF casts! My wife hates me because I suck up all our bandwidth watching casts and respond to something she says with "pardon?" much too often.
And what I've learned is that I suck. Hard. I'd make Monica Lewinski look like an amateur. I marvel at the way the pros like Zock and company can keep a handle on so many things at once without getting their attention bogged down. I will never ever reach that level, and it's what keeps me rivited to the youtube screen.
I've learned that unit micro is a good thing. I used to simply gang up a load of units and go charging in. Often effective if forceful and numerous enough, but not efficient, and efficiency is the name of the game.
I never used to do any upgrades on my com, I've learned how effective gun upgrades can be while waiting for that T2 land to start rolling off the production line. I've also learned the value of veterancy and how it's a resource that should not be wasted willy nilly either by killing spam just because you're able to. And imagine my amazement the first time I tried a Cybran Telemaser snipe.... it was beautiful.
I've learned that air play is actually useful. In Vanilla Supcom, I never bothered with early bomber attacks because I had the wrong strategy - I targeted structures instead of build power. That said, I still prefer to only play land-based with mobile AA for the anti-air role, or cruisers if it's a naval map (I am strictly, emphatically, always a Cybran player. I like the look, I like the feel, I like the challenging finesse they require). If I ever did play air, it would only be after turtling up an uncrackable (for an AI) base, and spamming a dozen rippers or a tonne of gunships and getting it over with. Switching over to FA, I still stayed away from air power, until I watched my first casts and grokked that the synergy between A2A and A2G is real and significant.
But I'll probably never bother with air micro, it's just too much to handle for me by the look of things and is a bit too clicky when I'd prefer to use the attention to analyse weaknesses in my opponent's setup.
My cojones are not quite ready on the Mohs-o-meter for com drops, but I'll give it a shot at some point. My trouble probably stems from the above lack of air supremacy play, so it's a risk I'm rarely in a position to take because enemy fighters are always buzzing like flies overhead.
I've learned how useful TMLs are. I always figured they were rubbish because they cost bucks while not being able to auto-lead or track targets and so I didn't bother. But, like early bomber, I had the strategy and role all wrong.
The basics of intelligence gathering, resource denial and raiding I learned while playing TA, and much of it mirrored the stuff taught to us in the army back in my day, and so it's always been a core skill of mine which I exploit to the full when playing against my two sons (who are both computer geeks in their 20s and accomplished gamers in their own right, and yet they always lose). I'm waiting for their light bulbs to go on in that respect. They haven't grasped the beautiful synergy of Supcom between land, air, sea, information, time and territory.
I've learned that my 3G internet is not going to cut it, because hot damn sonny I want to give it a shot online and get shown how it's done good and proper.
I've learned that great things happen when people share a passion. Like FAF.
Thanks, everyone!
