by Demo » 22 Oct 2012, 16:09
Seeing as there is no "introductions" thread, I'll post here instead.
I've played TA since it was released for many years (not competitively, however). Later I've jumped the ship on TA:Spring community bandwagon for some multiplayer action, seeing as there was no hope of proper TA sequel and TA became a pretty fringe game except for localised LAN tournaments. Over Spring I've played mostly NOTA, TA-inspired modification with particular focus on flexible strategy, mobility, teamwork & map control.
Then came the Supreme Disappointment (pun intended), ridden with bugs, performance problems and generally poor community support - having played the base game for 2 months and a half over GPG.Net with random people, I've decided to finally shelve the game and forget any and all TA-derived products due to small multiplayer base, non-existent customer support and dwindling interest.
Out of nostalgia, perhaps, I've finally decided to check up on Supreme Commander and see if it got any better, mainly because I got out of the loop with TA:Spring community and found to my horror & surprise that I'm no longer welcome there (let alone scarcely anobody plays NOTA to begin with). My inquiries are as follows:
1. Supreme Commander, Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance. Do I need both of them to play all 4 factions over multiplayer, or is stand-alone expansion enough? I rented my old installation disks to a friend when I was done with the game, and never played FA to begin with.
2. GOG.com vs Steam. As far as I understand it, you need FA patched to 3603 (beta) in order to install FAF. Would GOG.com copy be compatible? I hate Steam with a passion, and sadly physical distribution is not an option either.
3. Game performance, network optimisation. Does it get any better with FA, let alone FAF? Original SupCom left in my mind horror visions of team games played at -6 speed and below, after an hour of multiplayer match. I still remember 3+ hour matches taking forever, until one of the people quit or got nuked.
4. I've heard about some kind of "Multicore optimisation" for FA client, in form of modification of game executable. Is that thing included in FAF already? Is it compatible with FAF? Does it bring any improvements? Where is it available exactly? Any possible caveats?
5. Game widgets and addons. Is there a definitive list of allowed game modifications? Are there any "AI assist" widgets, to automate most mundane tasks (such as building mexes or assisting unit/building production)?
6. I've watched quite a few "high-level" FAF team matches, and universally in all of them the streaming player focused 70% (or more) of his attention to annoying micro-managing of engineers and general economy, commanding armies with most basic move/patrol/hold orders in the zoomed-out view.
On the top-right score chart, "macroing" players seemed to attain highest scores and consequently become a biggest threat by the mid- and lategame, regardless of how little (if any) attention they diverted to the frontline, reconnaisance or diversionary tactics. Frankly speaking, it felt & played like a singleplayer economy simulator, rather than a proper RTS game in multiplayer environment.
Is this how competitive environment looks like in team matches and/or bigger maps? I'm appaled I don't see this kind of thing only in 1v1 matches and small maps (wasn't game supposed to be more interesting with t3/t4 available rather than t1/t2 spam? why is macro actually "microed" instead of the actual combat action?).
7. Aeon. My brief impression is that they're considered a "gimped" faction with broken experimentals and extremely micro-intensive combat units. Is that actually true? Out of all factions, their line up of available units & tactics seems most diverse and interesting.
I'd like to play them exclusively and improve, yet I'm given a rather negative vibe that I'll soon learn to regret this decision (Cybrans come as my second favourite, and I hear similar criticism about them).
