What if land units could shoot at realistic range?

[Badsearcher]

Consider this, an M1A1 Abrams Tank can accurately fire a depleted uranium anti-tank shell at a range of more than two kilometers. This is something you never see main direct fire combat units do in any RTS game for the sake of balancing them with the very low ranges of infantry weapons. But Supreme Commander doesn't have infantry.

So, what would it do to the game if, let's say a m1 striker had a maximum range of 2 kilometers and all other land direct fire and artillery units had their ranges adjusted proportionally?

I think it would add a lot of strategy to the game and shake things up quite a bit.

Terrain would play a MUCH bigger factor and ambushes would be a much more viable tactic.

Artillery would play a larger role. (Did you know that most combat casualties in World War 2 were from indirect fire?)

Assuming you didn't significantly increase radar range then you would need to build and upgrade radar more quickly.

Larger maps would have more relevancy because of increased distances and wiggle room.

Shielded firebases would be perhaps more resilient because if units had to cross more open ground to reach them then driving under the shield dome to knock out the shield generator would be more costly because the swarming units would be under fire for a longer period of time.

5x5 maps would never be played in such a mod because if you can be sniping with t1 arty in the first few minutes then it makes the game kind of pointless.

Air would be a much trickier thing to balance because in reality airplanes are very good at countermeasuring long distance missiles.

I'm not saying I would always enjoy a long distance mod but since it's something you rarely see in RTS's and because in a lot of ways Supreme Commander sets the bar pretty high for plausibility, it's fun to think about.

[Arx]

You can scale down unit size and imagine the map is larger.

[Mycen]

This is something you never see main direct fire combat units do in any RTS game for the sake of balancing them with the very low ranges of infantry weapons. But Supreme Commander doesn't have infantry.

Right.

So, what would it do to the game if, let's say a m1 striker had a maximum range of 2 kilometers and all other land direct fire and artillery units had their ranges adjusted proportionally?

I think it would add a lot of strategy to the game and shake things up quite a bit.

Wrong.

Did you ever consider that the ranges already are, more or less, "adjusted proportionally" precisely because there are no infantry? Things don't appear exactly to the scale one would see in real life, but that's because it's a game meant to run on home PCs, not a simulation meant to run on high powered supercomputers. You can push the ranges out, but unless you rebalance things in some as of yet unjustified/unexplained way, the only thing it would change is that the maps are all triple the size and quadruple the lag.

Personally I've never even considered the whole "km" to mean anything other than to provide a sense of epic scale, certainly not as something to be taken literally.

Considering that most people seem to refuse point-blank to play anything larger than 20x20 already, there would hardly be much point. If you play on a 40x40 or 81x81 there is already plenty of "wiggle room," and no one seems to want that, so...

[MushrooMars]

Actually, this would be really cool.

You have Bots and Tanks already, just exaggerate the difference between them.

Tanks would get the range of a small Artillery piece, have a much lower rate of fire and higher damage. Bots would be slightly smaller, much faster, and might have automatic Stealth.

Then you could have different kinds of tanks and bots. Tank Destroyers which deploy a directional front-end only shield and heavy armor piercing guns, IFVs which would be armored on all sides with MachineGuns and Flamethrowers to deal with bots, and MBTs with both heavy machineguns, heavy armor and a big gun, but high price and low speed. Then you could have Tank Hunter bots which can deploy cloaking fields while standing still, Sab bots which can plant booby traps and observation equipment on enemy structures and vehicles, and Ranger bots which have good vision and detection equipment, with cloaking and a good anti-infantry weapon.

Intelligence war would become much more crucial, many more bots would have stealth and cloaking, Radar, Sonar and Omni would be far more expensive.

Aircraft would have longer build times, ammo limits and less fuel, so they are more so support units than direct-attack units, taking out swaths of infantry bots with rockets and machineguns, and Gunships tearing up tank battalions from afar.

Navy would be primarily an intelligence war, no big naval battles or destroyer/Sub Hunter spam like in the current FA, more about counters and stealth. Naval units would be devastating vs. Land Targets though, having FAR more slower-firing weapons than they do now. They would be useless vs. Infantry though.

Structures would be heavily fortified against infantry and air assaults, but would cripple and fall to tanks or navy, so all defensive strikes against tanks or navy HAVE to be preemptive, less you loose structures.

You could also have a lot more factional diversity, UEF with really sexy tanks and navy, but poor infantry and average aircraft, Aeon with superior tanks and infantry, most importantly with more firepower and range, but less health. Hovertanks would also be MUCH more deadly as well. Cybran would have kick-ass guerilla warfare, so better elitist infantry and aircraft with bad tanks and a fast navy meant for ground support. Cyb structures would also be on the more disposable side. Seraphim would have a lot of multipurpose units, like amphibious tanks and Fighter/Gunships. Nomads would be ultramobile, focusing on fast moving infantry tanks and aircraft, but having paper navy as a result.

Nomads and Cyb would also have sapper units which funnel some of the enemy's mass extractor/power generator income into their own, to make up for their lack of ability to hold the front line. They would also have better mass storage.


But I'm getting carried away. Would there be any interest in a FAF mod based on realistic 'Technology War' or 'Shadow War' type combat? I'm certainly interested, FA but with more tactics and less eco.

[Badsearcher]

Personally I've never even considered the whole "km" to mean anything other than to provide a sense of epic scale, certainly not as something to be taken literally.

Just speaking for myself, the fact that maps are measured in kilometers and that from that you can break down the size of the different units has been a major source of fascination for me. It helps me ground it in reality so much better.

For example, the strait of dover, the narrowest part of the English Channel is 34 kilometers wide.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Strai ... _MODIS.jpg

You're gonna tell me you don't want to imagine the challenges of a crossing as a strategic and tactical simulation?

[rootbeer23]

You're gonna tell me you don't want to imagine the challenges of a crossing as a strategic and tactical simulation?

yes

[Plasma_Wolf]

Scaling proportionally won't work. A battleship should have a firing range of almost 40km, 20 times that of the tank you want to use as a comparison. In SupCom, the factor is 8.333... (Striker vs Summit). This is a problem you have with every inter-unit comparison.

Additionally, the Cybran laser weapons would all have infinite range. The tactical missile launcher would out range the map size, the UEF billy will become a cheaper version of the Ylona Oss and the Ylona Oss, will lay waste to the entire map even if you strike at a corner...

Should be fun

[Valki]

Additionally, the Cybran laser weapons would all have infinite range. The tactical missile launcher would out range the map size, the UEF billy will become a cheaper version of the Ylona Oss and the Ylona Oss, will lay waste to the entire map even if you strike at a corner...

Should be fun

Laser weapons do not have infinite range, the air slowly disperses the beam leading to blooming.

The Yolona Oss destroys armored vehicles in a 1.2 km radius, to achieve this you need 5 megatons - Pretty realistic for a nuke intended for short range, do note that the radius in which a nuke kills humans is much larger than the range in which it kills armored vehicles.

The Tsar Bomba (100 megatons) has a radius in which it will probably destroy armored vehicles of 4.4 km.

These numbers are for ground bursts, as we see in supreme commander, and ground burst have a bigger radius in which they destroy armored vehicles than air burst.


Edit: revised numbers for ground burst fireball instead of air burst air blast.

[FunkOff]

Laser weapons do not have infinite range, the air slowly disperses the beam leading to blooming.

And then there's the curvature of the earth that also prevents a land unit from having line of sight with more than a tiny section of the surface...

[IceDreamer]

It would be EXACTLY what you said: A change which shakes things up. Personally, I'm all for it, as I love things that shake stuff up for the sheer hell of it, but I think the greatest challenge to this idea working is that you would need custom maps for it with more realistic terrain. Face it, none of the hills in SupCom are more than about 300m high, which is TINY.