Pacing and Raiding

[BLITZ_Molloy]

I haven't had much time to play, or even watch replays, since my son was born a year ago. However I still love watching matches when I can.

I enjoy watching TA matches as well.

SupCom has gone from being vastly inferior to superior in almost every respect but I feel that the one area where TA still excels is in the raiding and attacking play. Things get started a lot more quickly and the battles move a lot more quickly.

I'm wondering if in the next couple of years this is where the game could make some major improvements.

At the moment it takes a very long time for an attack unit to get across the map. The engineers take a long time to get to the mex positions and construct the mex. Both attacker and defender have very substantial losses if things go wrong. This makes people conservative, unless they're very good at the game.

In TA the raiding units get to the enemy location a lot faster (either tanks or bombers) and the engineers have more armour and can replace mexes a lot more quickly. Attacking enemy economy is cheap and replacing it is cheap. So you get a lot of disruption of established builds keeping things different every match.

I think this can be true at higher tech levels too. I don't know why you'd want units like Bricks and Percivals being so effective because they're so slow. Is this not the reason we made experimentals less of an emphasis? The late game should become about more units, in more places, moving quickly not less units, of higher value moving slowly.

Of course the pathfinding and slowdown is an issue. Maybe what I'm looking for would only slow the game down not speed it up? Still if it was a case of 20 fast moving game enders running about rather than 20 slow ones that'd surely be a bonus. TA matches in the late game can be very one dimensional affairs but at least with Big Berthas all your high ticket game enders and fusion reactors are getting destroyed and rebuilt constantly keeping the position of high value targets continually shifting.

[Korbah]

Great post. Agree on many points.

Personally I think making transports more robust and thus safer to use in t2 makes raiding and rebuilding easier and faster to perform.

As the game progresses base defences with high damage and range combined with air makes weak hp land plodding less and less efficient forcing players to rely on bricks etc as you suggested. Being able to deliver large numbers of cheaper units quickly closer in to those base defences without being picked off as much by the air support.

I've modded this concept for people to try in my air leverage v5 mod available in the vault. Critism welcome.

[Reaper Zwei]

At the moment it takes a very long time for an attack unit to get across the map. The engineers take a long time to get to the mex positions and construct the mex. Both attacker and defender have very substantial losses if things go wrong. This makes people conservative, unless they're very good at the game.

In TA the raiding units get to the enemy location a lot faster (either tanks or bombers) and the engineers have more armour and can replace mexes a lot more quickly. Attacking enemy economy is cheap and replacing it is cheap. So you get a lot of disruption of established builds keeping things different every match.

I haven't played TA in a very long time but what I remember of it I don't remember the units being any faster than in FA. What size map you thinking about when you say it takes a long time?

How long does it take for an engy to build a mex in TA? In FA it takes 12 seconds(6 seconds for the com)

I think this can be true at higher tech levels too. I don't know why you'd want units like Bricks and Percivals being so effective because they're so slow. Is this not the reason we made experimentals less of an emphasis? The late game should become about more units, in more places, moving quickly not less units, of higher value moving slowly.

Of course the pathfinding and slowdown is an issue. Maybe what I'm looking for would only slow the game down not speed it up? Still if it was a case of 20 fast moving game enders running about rather than 20 slow ones that'd surely be a bonus. TA matches in the late game can be very one dimensional affairs but at least with Big Berthas all your high ticket game enders and fusion reactors are getting destroyed and rebuilt constantly keeping the position of high value targets continually shifting.

I think that why you arnt going to see such a change from percies and bricks to other more numerous and faster moving units is that would mean quite a big rebalance of the game that nobody is willing to do at the moment. Not to mention I doubt that there is widespread support for such a move(though maybe I'm wrong about that).

[rxnnxs]

It is very micro intensive to check the map about lost mexes.
Then you have to send en angy there and again cllick at all the sports and so on.
This is true and affects both beginners as pros.
after a while the players get lazy or tired rebuilding all the mexes all around the map.
the one that keeps doing this still after one or two hours has an advantage but also a bigger headache...

In the new beta patch, the new transport (ferry) feature was added:
If the ferry that defines the route, dies, the route stays still intact.
Right after the introduction if this great enhancement, somebody wrote that it would be nice to have this feature also for movement and patrol order and such forth.
"- Ferry orders are now persistent, even if the original transports die. Remove it by shift-ctrl right click the first beacon"

Thinking this to the end and why I am writing this here is:
When you could set a route how and where Mexes shall be built which stays even after they are built,
one could take a bunch of engies after the destruction of them, and rebuild them by clicking on the route.

What works right now (Patch 3652 (beta)):
"- Order repair on a wreck to rebuild it if possible by some of the selected engineers. Those not able to rebuild the wreck will assist after the build starts."
With the new beta patch, destroyed buildings can be rebuilt by using the repair icon.
This way, the intensive work of rebuilding of frontline mexes is reduced by half and is kindof a problem of the past.

[theeggroll]

Once you learn how to play zoomed out or mostly zoomed out this task is simple. I use idle engis button (vanilla UI) and I use mexes in hotbuild (integrated into faf UI, I have it bound to shift-1 since I use my own personal keyboard setup) takes me about three seconds to que a destroyed mex. Also if you play any 10x10 or 5x5 then units will get across the map fairly quickly, and in most games I play raiding happens within the first minute or maybe the 2nd minute, everything progresses quickly and a 10 minute match on a 5x5 is very common

[Morax]

Like anything in this game, the mix of everything is key and it takes time to develop. I played a game the other days on Open Palms where someone had 1-2 labs at every expansion and every path to an expansion. This frustrated and worried me, but once I finally got a scout up I say my opponent had just gotten his comm to start walking from the hydro at minute 6.... That is pretty late on OP and meanwhile managing the raids my comm was securing the right expansion and holding those resources. The match went downhill for my opponent pretty fast and by minute 12 there were about 15 ilshavohs razing his main base.

Best practice is to use your raids and early bomber with more efficiency. Rather send it straight to the main base try and place the labs / bomber paths around and take out time-consuming expansion paths. This will slow your opponent down way faster and you can get an edge much quicker...

[Epson]

If FAF was any faster paced I wouldn't have joined. And from personal experience with introducing the game it is already too 'fast' for them. There are many many things going on and the slower pace of the game is - in my opinion - essential to grow to the community.

This is a huge thing to consider. If we make raiding more effective, a faster paced game, and generally more APM required we are NEVER going to new players out of Gap of Rohan or Thermopylae. And will scare other players off.