Hi I'm new here and Gentleman's Agreement games

[Shigoshi]

Hi. I'm new to the forum but have had and loved supreme commander. Kind of had a happen chance upon supreme commander FA first by it being lent to me by a friend's friend who let just let me keep it then years later finding a group who played it (mentioned the game in passing) and we thus played many games but not standard I would think many of you would play by. Great game but I think the rules I played under may be viewed as...extremely casual

So the rules for this had purpose: to focus on battles and unit building rather than having nickel and dime wars over mass extractors so a simple set of rules were drafted under the idea of them being a 'Gentleman's agreement'

According to how many players were in the game, the map's mass extractors were divided as appropriate to each player, each player getting their own mass extractors. Since the games were ether 1v1 or 2v2 it often was spilt nice and evenly. These extractors were allocated according to the map and each players location.
NO INTENTIONAL ATTACKS ON MASS EXTRACTORS. This is part of the gentleman agreement. It was agreed that sometimes it can't be helped under certain circumstances (large kabooms or a turret who is JUST in range).

These rules (short and sweet) were drafted for the group as so we could play games and focus on larger battles and have more interesting games as they found prior they would just be fighting over mass extractors 24/7 and it never lead to anything interesting. So what are the thoughts on this?

and again: Hi!

[biass]

basically most of the game at least in 1v1 relies on the complexity of balancing mass upgrades to units and trading off advantages (for example making more units while an enemy makes mex should let you attack him for a map control advantage etc)
it sounds like if you win a large fight and then reclaim all of the mass into mass upgrades you should just spiral out of control, there are not a lot of ways for the opponent to catch up to your superior income unless you make a big mistake tbh

also, welcome

[ZLO_RD]

There is an a standart mod, that makes ACU produce fixed amount of recources and makes anything else produce no recourses. so you will have no need in ecoing. tho it might be not enought for t4 battles that casual players like, so can also apply 2x resources mods or something like that.

[MayorDamage]

would take away all I personally like in supcom 1v1. I want to punish exposed mexes or win by having the oponent neglect building certain units aside from straight up killing his acu. I also find that the game is more interesting for me before it goes to the late t3/t4 stage. the t1-t3 phase allows for more dynamic than the set conditions of developed ecos against each other with maybe 4 viable units to build for each faction.

[PhilipJFry]

if you want to play without having to worry about mex/raiding eco you could make a small mod to give mex 100% armor

[Farmsletje]

So basically thermo

[tatsu]

yeah @Shigoshi. nothing every new FAF player hasn't done a billion times before becoming a bit better and deciding it's time to have a bit more challenge.

thermo rules are exatly what you described. to a certain extent Phantom (mod) and Muder Party (mod) as Well.

but without the hopes that people will stay gentlemanly : they're forced to by the game. which is much better because there'll always be immature assholes (especially among the casuals as you call them)

I think you'll enjoy these game modes and mods. you should try them.

for reference thermo is:

• choosing Battle of thermoplaye as map (preferably whatever version is newest)
• In the unit disabling menu : disabling air, (there's no water on the map so no need to disable navy), teleportation, Mavor, satellite and paragon (possibly nukes according to your preference, and commander drones so you can't "cheat" and build on the plateaus)
• and possibly enabling Black Ops mod (according to your preference, but going by the fact you're going for late stage huge experimental battles I'm guessing it is your preference)

a similar map to thermo (to a certain degree) if you want navy as well is flooded isis (bigger version)

(I used to fucking love thermo now I've grown out of it.... way... way out of it. but you'll love it)

[PandaCuddles]

yeah @Shigoshi. nothing every new FAF player hasn't done a billion times before becoming a bit better and deciding it's time to have a bit more challenge.

thermo rules are exatly what you described. to a certain extent Phantom (mod) and Muder Party (mod) as Well.

but without the hopes that people will stay gentlemanly : they're forced to by the game. which is much better because there'll always be immature assholes (especially among the casuals as you call them)

I think you'll enjoy these game modes and mods. you should try them.

for reference thermo is:

• choosing Battle of thermoplaye as map (preferably whatever version is newest)
• In the unit disabling menu : disabling air, (there's no water on the map so no need to disable navy), teleportation, Mavor, satellite and paragon (possibly nukes according to your preference)
• and possibly enabling Black Ops mod (according to your preference, but going by the fact you're going for late stage huge experimental battles I'm guessing it is your preference)

a similar map to thermo (to a certain degree) if you want navy as well is flooded isis (bigger version)

(I used to fucking love thermo now I've grown out of it.... way... way out of it. but you'll love it)

"Rush Me More" also falls into the same category. I actually still like to play it from time to time

[Shigoshi]

So not a unique circumstance then!

The main thing about the rules was no units were really off the table bar what i said about mass extractors. Unless we played handicap matchs (3v1 because one of the group was far better than the rest of us) we didn't have a unit ban. To be honest I saw and even showed several things. Despite being one of the best, the best of our group didn't know cybran shields upgraded and the cybran T3 scramble missiles (so my 10 t3 sent back an armies worth of mobile missile launchers back at him!).

So I guess the question for me now is: What are actual games like then? How many times do games ever get to a late stage or do they normally end at T2? How common are experimentals? In our group they were regularly seen but never large numbers of them as we did actually fight (except when we agreed to such a thing).
If I were to begin playing, what tips would you give me when starting to play (Cybran as my favourite, UEF on second)? What sort of a 'opening' would be a solid path to go that won't see me rolled immediately?

[JoonasTo]

There's a couple of maps that lead to that kind of games without too many deviations.

Seton's Clutch(some tryhard drop play may be present)
Battle of Thermopylae/The Pass(though these games tend to be limited units/options)
Gap of Rohan(early units through the mountain pass can happen)
Rush Me More(though attacking main mexes here is very common with an early strat bomber)
Wonder(TMLs are a thing though)
Canis with at least 8 players(there's mexes out on the map but not that many)
Hilly plateau with at least 8 players(quite a few mexes out on the map but attacking is kind of hard due to the terrain)
Open wonder(if you don't play side position)
Astral Craters(also has a tendency to be unit limited)

and probably a million more regular teamgame maps as most FAF players tend to prefer low intensity games like that.