Supcom Expansion

[TheRegisteredOne]

no, the quoted post.

[AF]

Andrej, you dotn get it. Supcom doesnt use the sm2 map format. Its a texture splattering engine! Double the map size and you dont half the detail, you just increase the number of times the texture is drawn, so a map square at double the size gets 4x as much texture drawn.

Imagine a box with a screen on each face. There are 2x2 pixels in each 1x1cm square regardless of the faces size. Lets double the dimensions fo the faces. Ech faces now has 4x the area.

By your logic this is means the number of pixels is the same and the detail of each square cm is now 1x1 pixels not 2x2. This is an effective analogy of tile based systems such as sm2 or OTA.

By my logic, the number of pixels per cm is still 2x2 but the number of pixels on the entire face has quadrupled. This is an effective analogy of texture splattering, sm3 or supcoms map renderer.

Because supcom uses texture splattering the only way to know if the map has gotten bigger or smaller is by looking at a before and after.

It may be that internally all supcom maps are the same size and the units are just scaled up and down accordingly. It could be that a 2x2 supcom map is 10x the size of a spring map and the units arent small, they're infact gigantic. The end results are identical.

I've seen this in practice. I scaled up my sm3 test map from 8x8 upto 128x128, doubling the size of the map each time. It looked almost identical with the exception being it took ages to zoom out and I could tell only tell ebcause of the difference in unit sizes.

As for n# of triangles. How do you not know wether its a small map blown up huge or a huge map with simple geometry? Perhaps that small detailed map your comparign too is a huge map with lots of gigantic units? Or that gigantic map with the low tri count is actually a hidetail map thats been ran through algorithms to optimize performance?

[Caydr]

I don't think even the most negative reviewer would deny that it's groundbreaking, and the first RTS in a long time to really try to break the standard formula,

It is not groundbreaking. It is merely a TA II. It appears to break the standard formula only because all other RTS followed into the StarCraft steps, and none but SupCom the TA steps.

True enough. After 10 years, one game with comparatively "different" gameplay is very unusual and a welcome change.

Its system requirements are high, but not as severe as some people would believe.

It is so high that if it was any bit higher no one could plays it. Heck, it can give trouble to even the best PC of now.

But I complain not just about the steep requirements, but mostly about how such raw power is wasted. Despite the marvelous promises Chris Taylor made during developpment, if you look at facts, SupCom doesn't have bigger battles than TA. I have played TA games with 500 units per player, on gigantastic epic map, on my old Duron 800Mhz, and it ran well. SupCom unit number is not higher, maps are not bigger, graphics are more 3D but less pretty (especially the maps). And yet it requires top of the line multi core processor. To do nothing more than a 10 years old game!

TA did not run well with 500 units per side, even assuming there were only two players. The big problem was pathfinding, just like in Spring. Play Eastside Westside - heck, even the memory of pathfinding on that map should be stuck with you. Other RTSs avoid this problem by having small battles, ie, CNC3, so they can dedicate lots of resources for each unit's pathfinding.

I'm not enough of a technical guy to be able to say that SupCom does or doesn't make decent use of a computer's power, but one part about it that I do appreciate is that it isn't as severely bound by one aspect of the system as many games are. A fast CPU improves performance, more memory improves performance, a fast GPU improves performance. It also takes full advantage of dual-core processors IIRC. If nothing else, this is an example of good programming as far as I can tell.

SupCom has many flaws at launch, like any other game. A disproportionate number of these affected the game's performance. Balance has also been improved a little since then. Maybe you'd like to give it another try.

SupCom's requirements aren't steep in the truest sense. Many of us have computers that were "decent" about 2-3 years ago. Nowadays, as I've demonstrated in several threads, the amount of computing power needed by SupCom doesn't cost as much as you'd expect. We've just crossed the gap between two major generations of technology, with the beginning of DX10 cards and Intel finally getting a clue how to develop CPUs. What I mean to say is, a full system upgrade to play a brand-new game at the highest detail level (such as SupCom in this case) is nothing compared to the full system upgrade you'd need a few years ago in order to buy the latest equipment, price-wise. The cost to upgrade your computer to something top-of-the-line is about $300-$500 depending on the configuration you choose and if you get a good price. A few years ago, that was about the price of a good graphics card alone. In my view it's not so morally offensive to require people to have a new computer now, given the broad benefits. It's disappointing that there's no "low graphics" way of playing the game, that much is true.

I have to wonder how many of SupCom's detractors here have actually played it

I played the demo, it was such a disappointment I didn't even finish it.

I won't say your argument is useless, but the game's been improved a lot since then. I hope they make an updated demo or a demo patch or something, I can see why you'd dislike it.

Better yet, explain to me how a unit that needs to unfold its guns can be ready to fire at an enemy at split-seconds notice. SupCom's aircraft move fairly quick compared to other RTSs, especially the scout planes. This is necessitated by the fact that the maps are so large. In large engagements, the opening shot could probably destroy at least a tenth of your aircraft, and Aeon couldn't go through any kind of fast enough unfolding process without it looking silly.

I would have much rather had instaopening animation than no animation at all. Plus opening up was supposed to remove their stealthness, which added some tactical element.

I'll make a full post on the subject.

So you'd need at least 10% more aircraft than your opponent in order to not be at a disadvantage, because the aesthetics appealed to you. Uhh-huhhh... Maybe make them cheaper?

Well, if it affect the gameplay (which it should, I dislike when graphics are disconnected from game mechanics), then take it into account when balancing, what's so special about that?

I'll make a full post on the subject.

Just because Gundam gets away with crazy stuff like legged robots fighting with swords in outer space doesn't mean that it makes sense in a realistic setting to have completely idiotic design decisions.

Yeah, sure, battlecruisers with legs are teh realism! The Aeon Colossus and its weaponary is teh realism! Totally unlike that fantasy Gundam stuff! I mean, geez, Gundam has those legged robots fighting on the surface of planets, this is pure idiotic design! SupCom, on the other hand, has legged robots fighting on the surface of planets, NOW that's realism!

Take away the fact that they have no means of getting onto a planetary surface without significant additional cost, are at a major disadvantage once they get there, cannot go back to space without the aid of a carrier, and have no practical use for their appendages while they're in their intended environment, and OK, it's starting to make sense.

Gundam, at least in the "cosmic era" universe (IIRC), are space-based battlesuits. One character even remarks about the fact that they're unsuited to land-based combat compared to units actually designed for this. Since, in space, which is their intended arena, there is no reason to have legs, etc, this part of it makes no sense to me. Remove the legs and use the unused material to make mechs that are designed for fighting on the ground. Anyways, we're arguing about giant ninja robots with energy swords...

Battleships with retractable legs can make some amount of sense though, since things like canals wouldn't be necessary to build, and the unit would be able to retreat onto land in the case of an unwinnable naval battle, etc. This is compared with space mecha with legs, which cannot even enter the area where they can use their legs without the significant added cost of a dropship, and cannot go back to space without boosters or a carrier.

The giant aeon cyclops thing uses all its appendages and if it used only tracks it would be at a disadvantage because of its reduced height, less stability, and the inability to climb such steep slopes - not that SupCom really has a lot of steep slopes...

In the SupCom/TA universe, giant walking robots are common and make sense since they can take full advantage of having legs by climbing steeper slopes. They don't fight in outer space, where they have no need for any appendages. That's what I mean to say.

Icon war is a problem inherent to all RTS engines that implement huge zoom.

However I see just as much of it in spring if not more.

Not true. Spring has a very powerful zoom too, yet when I play Gundam or Expand & Exterminate, I see the icons on my main map nearly never. When I play 1944, however, I see icons even more than in SupCom. This is not a problem inherent to the presence of a zoom. First of all, there's the icon distance: in SupCom it is too early <snip>

Only on low LoD levels, where they serve the purpose of lowering system requirements. On high LoD levels, they only come into view then the units are already indiscernibly far away.

Supcom was all about breaking the boundaries of the genre

And it failed, by being just a TA II.

Your opinion's your opinion, I can't make any argument against it.

not about revolutionary new graphical effects and unit uses.

Duh, re-read the preview. We were promised DX10 graphics, and Chris Taylor kept talking about the possibility opened by his revolutionnary units such as flying aircraft carrier, and nuclear missile fired from submarine, and units so big they crush anything under their feet, and ... well just reread those preview, revolutionnary unit use was supposed to be a huge part of SupCom.

You cannot have DX10 graphics when DX10 graphics hardware does not yet exist to be tested upon. They cannot add support for theoretical hardware and software during development, unless you want them to add them at the very last opportunity, just before the game came out. There was one month between Vista being released and SupCom. You're thinking, but there were betas. But do you build the entire graphics subsystem of a game upon a foundation that may change significantly, and then risk needing to make hacky adjustments to the system when everything's finally decided upon and Vista's been released? It was clear months before Vista even hit RC that it was going to be a garbage OS. Nobody in their right mind would use it over XP. This part of your argument, if not any other parts, has no reason behind it.

As I said, supcom is the closest to spring the rest of the world can have

Yes. However a bigger proportion of the world can have Spring, considering Spring is free and works on older computer.

No arguments here, you're correct. But unless you want to endorse piracy, they'll need a copy of TA as well, which isn't necessarily an easy thing to come by.

However I disagree on effects. They have a consistency and theme with enough variation to look nice, there's no huge array of different colours and effects and there are many people who would prefer that to your rainbow of explosions, better suited to your anime themed mod.

SupCom effect is only one single effect: the pouring of whiteness. Every unit, from the level 1 to the experimental, die the same way: blinding whiteness engulfing it from the inside, so as to hide the lack of proper death animation (proper death animation are very complex and time consumming to make for something that player barely see for half a second, so I guess they went the lazy way).

I can't comment on the death animations, since as you point out, I can't see them very well. How much better would I be able to see them if there was a TA-style fireball though? I think the current system actually allows for more showing off of a death animation than a huge fireball would.

Actually, since games are in development for so long, people CAN have the same idea as each other and not know it till the other games come out. It's not like they swap ideas daily.

Maybe not daily, but at least weekly. There was a time when each new feature appearing in SupCom teasing previews & interviews was followed by the same feature appearing in Spring. Stuff like icons or strategic map for instance. It's harder to know, but I would be very interested to know what feature were copied the other way around, from Spring to SupCom. Maybe the repeat button?

True true, SupCom has borrowed a few ideas as well. I don't know whether the repeat button is one of them, but I've noticed a few things.

However, I do not play in TA view in spring, I play in fps view where I can see my whole battlefeild and icons are only on half of the map, the far half.

I fail to understand how that is possible, and ask again a movie of you playing in FPS view. Playing, not replaying. In replays I can use FPS view too because there's nothing but the camera placement to control. But if I had to give orders, keep in check everything, be more effective than the enemy, etc.. it would be impossible in FPS view. However, I could use a tilted, rotatable overhead, if only it zoomed and centered along view axis.

I heard, from Chris Taylor's mouth, that they intended to greatly enhance stuff about AIs. You know, that stuff about AIs with some personality, which they intended to have in the original.

LoL, the gullibility of the human race, you can promise the very same thing over and over, they get all thrilled up and forget you never delivered in the past.

I haven't had much of a chance to play SupCom or any other game for that matter, AA's consuming most of my free time. But in the few games I've played, Iv'e been torn apart by SupCom's "balanced" AI. It's actually pretty decent, post-patch.

I'm saying the design makes little sense in the real world, the same way aircraft that must unfold before they fight makes little sense in the real world.

Smoth already told you that US latest/upcoming aircraf fold/unfold its weaponary. Not for aerodynamic, but for stealthness reason. Exactly like aeon craft were supposed to be! So not only it makes sense, but it's actually what real life future aircraft do!!

Alright, let's assume for a moment that a split-second fold/unfold animation wouldn't be ugly as roadkill. I'll make a post on the subject shortly.

Robots do not need legs or a head to fight in outer space, fighter aircraft would not make sense to fold and unfold when they need to be able to fire at a moment's notice.

a) SupCom's robots have legs and head too. SupCom backstory and movies involve lots of space too.
b) Smoth's Gundam does not take place in space. He stated it repeatadly: There isn't and won't be any of Gundam's space robots in his mod.
c) Opening a hatch quicker than a human eye can see is easy for such an advanced alien technology as the Aeon.

Don't be so petty, you're attacking a game's graphics, when any gamer knows graphics are unimportant.

You never read any comments for general gamers, do you? Nor check sales figure?

I have more respect for Smoth than to call him a "general gamer". Disagreements aside, he's not an idiot that goes after shiny things, and this is why I felt it was so uncharacteristic of him to even mention something like that.

Regarding "glowy bloom" - It's a design decision to keep things consistent with the universe the game is based in. Units don't all explode, they more often melt down like any good nuclear-based thingie. Every game has explosions, SupCom has a different effect. Take it or leave it I guess, but it has no effect on gameplay.

LoLz, fanboy manual, lesson 27: how to defend an undefendable defect: label it a "design decision". Game's ugly, retarted, and reek of laziness? It's a design decision! It defies any kind common-sense? Pretend it's because it's sci-fi / magic! A single effect for all explosion? But admire how it's consistent with itself! And beside, nothing else in the fluff indicate units have to explode like that.

Oh and Spring explosions, on the other hand, have effect on gameplay:
* Goliath recevied 60dmg from peewee explosion schnarpel
* Goliath recevied 60dmg from peewee explosion schnarpel
* Goliath recevied 60dmg from peewee explosion schnarpel
* Goliath has died.
* Fusion recevied 200dmg from goliath explosion splash.
* Fusion has died.
* Half of razed was razed from fusion explosion.

So, I don't care about adhering to wacky fictionnal tech you just pulled out of your hat solely to explain the bad explosion, I don't care about being similar to the real life weapons of real life 20th century armies, all I want is that it makes sense and feel coherent on an intuitive level, that's it's varied enough to keep me entertained, and pretty enough to live up to the standard of a 2007 AAA game, and that the pretty graphics go in hand with the gameplay mechanic.

Alright, you got me. I was pulling it out of my hat. I don't know why explosions are depicted the way they are, but I don't see how they can be considered unattractive. On the other hand, although as I mentioned I don't get much time for games, I don't think I remember all the explosions being identical either. Besides all this, it's fully moddable, which is why I'm willing to forgive some of SupCom's minor faults.

A valid suggestion was made before this was posted - why not have the aircraft faster/slower when they're folded/unfolded? It creates an unpredictable balance concern. For instance, suppose you make it faster/slower depending on open/shut. It can now much more easily bypass anti-air. The power of anti-air must be a constant in order for balance to be achieved. For anti-air to be useless or even just less effective for aircraft in some configurations, this means that they can slip past your defenses and attack things that cannot be defended. It means that fighters cannot be used to defend either, since they'll be outrun. Etc etc etc etc. I can go on like this and analyze the effects that differences to firepower, armor, etc depending on open/close would have on balance, but if you've ever balanced something (speaking to the newcomer, not you smoth, I'm not slighting your work) you'll know what I'm talking about. If not, I'll come back later and try to explain better.

Yes, making Aeon plane faster when closed would make the balancing more interesting and less bland.

Even after having chosen which plane to build, they would still be choices and decisions to make about your air forces.

All very good points, that could have rendered SupCom a better game.

... nano-assisting ...

I like nano-assisting too. It makes the growth more explosive. It makes the game more scalable. It makes the gameplay more fluid.

As for the SupCom expansion pack, one of the three promotionnal screenshot they handed showed units so ugly and blocky even the Core Can is a beauty next to then. If that the best they can come up with, well, that doesn't bode any good.

Somewhere in there you point out that Smoth's Gundam mod has nothing to do with what I said - he has no space-based units. I already said my argument had nothing to do with his mod - I'm using Gundam as a whole to illustrate the point of how much sense having folding-unfolding on an aircraft that needs to be ready to fire within a split second, life-or-death. It makes about as much sense as robots with heads and swords.

[Neddie]

Space warfare is NEVER realistic. Space travel is a waste of resources. You're fencing over fiction, next thread!

[Caydr]

So, long time coming... The post about why folding-unfolding on all aeon aircraft would be a bad idea. I'm almost certainly wrong. I haven't really given this a lot of thought, but here goes.

It is my intention to prove that these would be impractical or virtually impossible to balance a game around in any efficient manner with good gameplay.

Stealth. First let's decide whether this will affect transports. If it does, how does it make up for this massive strength that allows aeon to move forces at will anywhere on the battlefield? You can either raise costs or lower statistics This is the foundation of all balancing. In the case of transports, it's probably doable, and this this case I'd agree that a stealth transport would be something interesting. Perhaps give it lower HP. The problem here is relatively minor - how do you make up for the fact that Aeon now lacks a cost-effective T1 gunship? It also cannot make combat drops as effectively because of the risk of being shot down. You could try reducing its speed as well, but this gives the side effect of reducing aeon's mobility as a whole, really harming them in the long run. You can increase costs, but transports aren't cheap to begin with. A moderate combination of higher costs, lower speed, and lower HP would probably be the best choice, and it could probably be balanced reasonably well.

Stealth fighters give you the ability to project air control anywhere. It adds the nuisance of having to chase enemy fighters manually rather than have the computer do it, and this kind of micromanagement is irritating and shouldn't be necessary in our age. In order to make up for this, you'd need higher costs or lower capabilities, but this would put aeon at a massive disadvantage when using fighters for defense, since the aeon player can't have as many for the same cost. In short, cost for cost, Aeon would always lose a defensive air encounter. Since fighters are primarily used as either scouts (if no real scouts are available) or for defense, Aeon is therefore at a disadvantage despite having the advantage of stealth. Let's assume they are just slower, or have less firepower or health. The least damaging of these would be a slower speed, but these are fighter planes! They need to be able to react extremely fast to any threat and be able to at least keep pace with enemy fighters to be effective. Less firepower would be worse, and less HP would be the worst. In any situation, in order to put stealth on aeon fighters, they'd be crippled.

Stealth bombers. Holy cow. They can't be detected before you're about 2 seconds away from losing any target they're told to attack, and that's assuming you have a good fighter screen. This can be adjusted for by making them extremely expensive or extremely weak. Take your pick. If they're too expensive, they can't be built in any significant number if at all, and if they're too weak, they the number you build them in doesn't matter in the first place. Aeon loses.

Stealth is basically out of the question, since it would be virtually impossible to balance in such a way as to not either make aeon unstoppable or useless in the air.

Moving on, let's have the units have different firepower depending on whether open or shut. First, let's ask, why.

Er... Why? Really. You want an aircraft to be simply incapable of firing when closed, and opens when firing. So it's just a graphical effect. Now we're back to, figuring out how to make a split-second open/close animation wouldn't be concentrated trifuglium. It *must* be literally done in a split second because:

TA, SupCom, and virtually every other RTS uses WWII-style aircraft. What I mean is, a pilot doesn't push a button and then wait to see if his target explodes when the missile reaches the target 10 minutes later on the other side of the country. This is purely for aesthetic reasons, since modern fighters are boring as hell. There's very little actual combat except in movies. They push a button. Not very tense or exciting, certainly not in a game.

For this reason, aicraft must be capable of firing with no notice. They must go from cruising along on patrol to firing with no delay. It is my barely-educated guess that this would look ugly. Assuming I'm completely wrong, ask yourself, why do you even care whether it's open or closed or not? It's a purely visual thing, and we're not children that need to be enticed into things by shiny animations. We're thinking gamers in the genre that requires the most brain power, not AWP whores.

So why not have aircraft go faster/slower depending on their open/close state. When open, go slower like other fighters, when closed, go faster. Seems reasonable enough. Except that aircraft are difficult to destroy in SupCom as it is. You require about 10 well-placed anti-air guns just to have a middling defense against aircraft. Even then, scouts still shoot across your borders unscathed much of the time. Fighters are your best bet, but even they have no means of attacking something much faster than they are. In other words, these opening/closing aircraft would be capable of dashing through front lines, opening, laying waste, closing, and getting away before any counterattack could take place. All anti-air, including interceptors, would be less effective against aeon than any other race, meaning that you'd either need specialized units just for fighting them, which is hardly an elegant solution. Aeon would need to have lower HP and/or speed, or higher costs. In any case, aeon loses.

And that's the whole point: in order have two-state aircraft, another compromise must be made or Aeon wins in every situation. The trouble is, that's only in one state, open or closed. In the other state, it is just a regular unit, and when you make adjustments to make up for its comparative strength in the other state, you affect it in it both states. No matter what, Aeon loses.

Am I wrong? Show me some examples to see if I can't show you their downside. If I really am wrong and I'm overlooking something, by all means say so, I can use the idea in AA

Space warfare is NEVER realistic. Space travel is a waste of resources. You're fencing over fiction, next thread!

That's completely beside the point, I've got nothing against Gundam or unrealistic stuff. My point - which was lost posts and posts ago, and is no longer even relevant - is that SupCom, while being unrealistic, at least attempts to incorporate things like physics and sensible unit design. I don't mean to say it's realistic, I mean to say that it's not crazy-ridiculous. Tanks don't have heads, for instance. To have such pointless, stylized things like aircraft that fold-unfold just for the sake of it, while having no real function, and to say that the lack of this folding-unfolding is actually the game being stripped of a feature, is... I think that sentence stopped making sense about 3 commas ago... it's silly, that's what I mean to say. But we're not discussing that anymore, we're talking about what sort of practical use the folding/unfolding could have given the game's setting and choice of air combat style...

ugh, I use up all my english. I can't make sense anymore... I need a break from this debate for a bit. Thanks everyone for remaining respectful and dignified, I think this has got to be one of the longest threads on this forum ever not to degrade into a flamewar.

[Zoombie]

Space travel is a waste of resources.

Interstellar, or intersolar?

Or, in other words, travel between star systems, or travel between planets?

[Caydr]

Supcom doesnt use the sm2 map format. Its a texture splattering engine! Double the map size and you dont half the detail, you just increase the number of times the texture is drawn, so a map square at double the size gets 4x as much texture drawn.

Easy to use too!

[Zpock]

During development, supcom seemed to have some interesting information warfare stuff going on all over the place. Aeon was supposed to have cloaking for pretty much all their units (this was the real function of the folding units I think). The cybran were supposed to have stealth, and UEF radar ping spamming tech.

Of course all this would be really hard to balance. So they pretty much trashed the whole thing, some of it is still there but it sure isn't noticed much. The UEF radar spamming is supposedly available on their frigates, the cybran have some stealth tech that worls exactly like it did in TA.

To make it all work nicely they would have to implement some countermeasures of varying strength. Caydr you seem to me thinking that cloaking/stealth has to be an absolute thing, that you can't gradually adjust how powerful it is. But if the game mechanic were made suitable to allow it, there could be different strength's of radar and other kinds of detectors so that cloaking, stealth and all could be nicely balanced out to make for some interesting stuff. Of course this would take a lot of thought and wouldn't be easy at all to get right so might not be worth the effort.

[KDR_11k]

Since, in space, which is their intended arena, there is no reason to have legs, etc, this part of it makes no sense to me. Remove the legs and use the unused material to make mechs that are designed for fighting on the ground.

[Zoombie]

. The UEF radar spamming is supposedly available on their frigates,

Don't knock it, I've won more than a few battles that way. Send five or so frigates in one direction, the real navy in the other. If the enemy guesses wrong, you hit them hard in the nuts.

Hehe...that's fun.

[Caydr]

Since, in space, which is their intended arena, there is no reason to have legs, etc, this part of it makes no sense to me. Remove the legs and use the unused material to make mechs that are designed for fighting on the ground.

Oh awesome, you can kick. Really, that's great. Personally I would've put guns on instead of legs, and atomized my opponent instead of denting him, but kicking's cool too.

We were done talking about gundam pages ago and you missed the point. I've explained why I brought up gundam at least 5 times and it's got nothing to do with Gundam specifically.

[1v0ry_k1ng]

No matter what, Aeon loses.

if i recall, Aeon is considered OP and the top players are all Aeon. Cybran always loses.

[AF]

Aeon is the easiest, whereas UEF and Cybran require a little more in how they're used. Aeon are best at conventional RTS tactics, whereas UEF and cybran have their own methods which most users have yet to figure out.

I do think the aeon superunits are better though because all 3 are offensive, the cybrans dont have a good sea platform and the uef carrier isnt that good tbh, and the 2 arty superunits take far too long to build and use. the tier 4 strategic arty of the UEF isnt good enough to justify the cost when you can spam tier 3 arty for less. The rapid fire arty cybran has just takes ages to build and is too slow and vulnerable to attack.

[Bhaal]

the tier 4 strategic arty of the UEF isnt good enough to justify the cost when you can spam tier 3 arty for less. The rapid fire arty cybran has just takes ages to build and is too slow and vulnerable to attack.

Wrong wrong wrong :/

If you can complete the UEF t4 strategic artillery it means you have won the game because it s unstoppable by shields. You can easily stop 3 t3 arty with shields but it s impossible to stop the mavor and they cost the same.
The rapid fire cybran arty takes less time to build and less resources than t3 arty and has the same dps is moveable and has lower range and has ~ 17k hitpoints. Other t3 arty has 4k hitpoints so please dont tell it s vulnerable to attacks.... Most people comment on supcom and don t have a clue how to play it....

[smoth]

"COSMIC ERA"

wow no wonder you think gundam is all about emo and farting lasers out of their asses.


BIG HINT! GUNDAM RTS DOESN'T EVEN EXIST IN THAT REALITY!

seriously, there is a big difference between:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6lh5aTB-BE (UC)
and
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HgSVCTwNdS0 (CE)

*notes how much he hates seed

[KDR_11k]

the tier 4 strategic arty of the UEF isnt good enough to justify the cost when you can spam tier 3 arty for less. The rapid fire arty cybran has just takes ages to build and is too slow and vulnerable to attack.

Wrong wrong wrong :/

If you can complete the UEF t4 strategic artillery it means you have won the game because it s unstoppable by shields. You can easily stop 3 t3 arty with shields but it s impossible to stop the mavor and they cost the same.
The rapid fire cybran arty takes less time to build and less resources than t3 arty and has the same dps is moveable and has lower range and has ~ 17k hitpoints. Other t3 arty has 4k hitpoints so please dont tell it s vulnerable to attacks.... Most people comment on supcom and don t have a clue how to play it....

Heh, a post stating that noone knows how to use UEF and Cybrans getting a reply "you don't know how to use UEF and Cybran".

[Caydr]

"COSMIC ERA"

wow no wonder you think gundam is all about emo and farting lasers out of their asses.


BIG HINT! GUNDAM RTS DOESN'T EVEN EXIST IN THAT REALITY!

seriously, there is a big difference between:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6lh5aTB-BE (UC)
and
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HgSVCTwNdS0 (CE)

*notes how much he hates seed

BIG HINT! I WASN'T TALKING ABOUT GUNDAM RTS!!! Holy cow, this is 6 times now.

I'm not talking about your mod! I never was! I referenced Gundam since it's a familiar sight to anyone who reads this forum, since you love huge release posts! Nobody here doesn't know what a gundam looks like! It's a huge humanoid robot with V-shaped communication arrays! They typically have two or three slits where the mouth would be!

We all know what gundam is. That's why I use gundam as a reference. It would do no good if I referenced, for instance, Eureka 7 or Code Geass, seeing as how those aren't even heard of in most of the world! One more time, say it with me everyone: I'm not talking about your mod. Get over yourself. Just because someone uses the word "Gundam" doesn't mean suddenly you need to come hither and start some righteous crusade against the infidels that can't comprehend the glory of gundam.

No matter what, Aeon loses.

if i recall, Aeon is considered OP and the top players are all Aeon. Cybran always loses.

Awesome, read the last line of a post and assume that it's a summary of the whole post's contents. Read the whole post, or at least skim it, then prove me wrong. I'm already pretty sure I must be wrong, so show me.

I'll make one more attempt at summarizing why Gundam was brought up in the first place. Notice how it has nothing to do with Gundam specifically or Gundam the mod. It's about mecha in general. The point is:

Aircraft which open and close for the sake of looking flashy, despite possibly even putting them at a disadvantage, could be considered similar to having a giant robot with legs which is designed to fight in outer space - an example being Gundam.

Next I make a comparison:

The legs are just there for flash. There's no reason for them to be there. If the legs were removed entirely, the unit as a whole would be many times more maneuverable if its legs were removed, or better yet replaced with sensible equipment.

This state of affairs is comparable to this one:

WW2-style aircraft (which ALL RTS games use, as opposed to modern-day aircraft which never actually do any fighting), which have opening/closing wings for no apparent reason but to look flashy, and which put it at a disadvantage because of their needing to open/close before firing. A split second lost to opening/closing is significant, as you know if you've ever played TA. An enemy aircraft can destroy one of yours very quickly, and in a large engagement a good percentage of your units will be lost before they can even fire if they can't shoot immediately.

I then went on to explain in my second-to-last post the reasons why hit points, speed, firepower, and stealth are probably not good choices for stat modifiers on open/close either.

Now, please prove me wrong. I'm not being cocky. I haven't dedicated a lot of thought to this. If I'm wrong, I'm wrong. Surely there's another modder or even just an average user out there with more experience who can point out my ignorance.

[DandyGnome]

A lot of this discussion seems to miss the differences between the workings of all RTS's (AFIK) information gathering systems and that of the real world. In RL radar works by bouncing radio waves off everything around the radar station. Radio waves having large wavelengths means that the resolution of the resulting image is low and so other methods than just looking at the resulting image are used. How much radio returns to the receiver depends on the distance to the reflecting object, how reflective to radio waves that object is and how much of that object will be reflecting radio waves back in the direction of the reciever. Thus steath planes use low radio reflectivity materials and lots of curves. Additionally radar also uses the doppler shifts on the reflections from moving objects to determine what is stationary (landscape) and what is moving (planes, cars, trucks, tanks...). So something moving slowly close to the ground is liable to be filtered out. Finally the factor of distance means that even if you are totally invisible at 40 miles you might be as visible as a bright red fire truck at 1 mile.

So in RL a large, fast, high altitude, radio reflective object will be detected before a small, slow, low altitude, radio absorbent and scattering object. This is the basis of stealth. As such things like weapons pods which are typically large flat radio reflective objects or landing gear (same), are a liability for a plane that doesn't want to be detected and so are retracted. If the RL properties of radar are removed then a reason (there are others) for retracting objects is remove.

Active sonar is a little bit different in that it uses sound instead of radio waves. The radio spectrum is fairly quiet compared to the audio spectrum under water. Additionally on a living planet like earth there are lots of things other than subs in the water such as large animals that have to be filtered out. As such it is more work to filter out the sonar signals than the radio signals so sonar tends to be shorter ranged though similar things apply from radar in terms of what shows up and what doesn't.

Passive sonar is further different in that instead of sending out audio and listening for the bounces, one simply listens for the sounds that the enemy makes by moving. For example the sound of the propeller or the sound of active sonar.

One can do a similar thing with radio waves and look for radar posts.

Jamming is done by filling the audio or radio spectrum that the enemy is listening or looking at with static so that they can't see any details and hence can't see you. This is equivalent to pointing a very large flashlight in someones face or turning up the volume really high and then trying to talk to a blindfolded person. However they can probably tell the general direction of the jamming source and if there are multiple of them then they might be able to triangulate the position of the source with a modicum of accuracy.

I would love to see a large scale RTS game that used some of this, especially the interaction of signal strength and reflectivity and jammers giving off their position. However I know that it probably is impractical as of yet.

[smoth]

"COSMIC ERA"

wow no wonder you think gundam is all about emo and farting lasers out of their asses.

You do mention gundam to barb me. Don't try and pretend otherwise

caydr, the point still remains
this is crap, gundam seed ZOMYGOSH SUPER MECHS! This is not very representative of gundam



Gritty, stompy heavy mechs, that is more what gundam is about.

THE AIRCRAFT BEING closed up WOULD MAKE them MORE AERODYNAMIC WHICH WOULD MAKE SENSE! the weapons being stowed away IS REALISTIC! IT LOOKS GOOD AND HAS FORM AND FUNCTION. Part of the reason a tomcat looks cool is because it is functionaly interesting.

[Ishach]

suckcorn