Phantom X

[uberge3k]

Since there's been some interest in playing it and not everyone has GPGNet, here's the Phantom X mod.

Download it and unzip it into your Documents\My Games\Gas Powered Games \Supreme Commander Forged Alliance\Mods\ folder.

Any and all feedback is welcomed too; currently planned features are:

- Options to set the time between phantom reveals
- Improved GUI; so the "phantoms revealed" text isn't visible until it's needed, etc

Download:

Phantom-X.zip

(2.66 MiB) Downloaded 521 times

[Nizar89]

What's the difference with the Phantom N mod?
Google wasn't very usefull this time .

[uberge3k]

It's identical, save for one important feature: Phantoms are revealed to everyone at set times. At 15 minutes, the first is revealed, and then the rest at 3 minute intervals.

I made this mod because after playing a lot of Phantom N, I noticed that when playing to win, the single best way to maximize your odds of doing so was to continue to turtle. Essentially, whomever moved last had the best odds of winning. If you're a phantom and can slow your eco to match the average of other players, you could outlast everyone else by refusing to involve yourself in any skirmishes, aside from stealing mass and wreck fields, until someone eventually got bored and started attacking someone else. If several players adopt this strategy, games can stalemate for over an hour - and then they usually crashed when 600 ASF from each player come out.

With Phantom X, both innocents and phantoms are spurred to action:

- Innocents can attack phantoms without needing to worry about their allies staying neutral. If everyone knows who the common enemies are, there's no reason to play selfishly, and it becomes a team game more quickly.
- Phantoms can attack early without risking that the other Phantom(s) stay neutral. They know that they can't hide for long, and so it's best to rush early instead of waiting.

[Nizar89]

Thanks for the answer, I'll try it!

[Gunseng]

Is there any way you could make a slot in the game lobby under settings that lets you change at what time the phantoms are revealed? I think 15min is too soon, it would be nice to be able to change it to 20, 25, or 30min at the most. I'd use this mod over Phantom N every time if so.

[Brandon007]

What's the difference with the Phantom N mod?
Google wasn't very usefull this time .

Instead of an N, theres an X =p

[TA4Life]

This seems like a great improvement on the regular phantom, which is a great improvement on a regular FFA game. The winning strategy in FFA is to be the most passive turtle possible. My only FFA win came when I started a base, where I upgraded all mexes to t3 made a few t3 pgens then set my navy to spam shields cruisers and destroyers, built nukes and anti nukes then left for 1 hour. When I came back I moved the navy to the only surviving opponent(I have no idea what happened), followed by a nuclear barrage. The FFA mode is even more turtle happy than 20 minute no rush games, unless of course idiots like me start attacking their neighbor immediately, which ends up leading to both of us losing to the turtle.

[thygrrr]

I used to play a lot of Phantom N. I think the autoreveal of Phantom X is a boon and would have prevented a lot of bad vibes in our most recent phantom games.

[Harpagon]

Sorry but I dont like so much phantom X , the fact we know when phantoms are reavealed turns the phantom into a quite usual team vs team game (you have a certain amount of time to prepare your forces and then fight..).
But that is true phantom N can be quite boring when everybody turtles. Personaly I would have set a system which reveals randomly the phantoms with a probability increasing while the times passes (I dont know if it is technicaly possible). Or make the phanom bonus decreases slowly to become a huge malus if they dont attack.. something like that..

[ExamplePrime]

Would it be possible to create a Phantom mod that switches the Phantoms every 15 minutes instead? ...

Also I've yet to play this mode but it sounds like the innocents would still have a high chance of winning due to the fact that some phantoms would gang up on other phantoms to have them finished off

Will have to try this once Ive finished Mass Effect