A Topic of Dumb Ideas!

Mvk_-

Rather a Siege or Assault Tank or whatever, by name sake would seem relevant in say Supcom FA, FAF or just the Seraphim why that might have specific attributes to it, mostly from some storyline say aspect buy could just be more technical also.
Herb reclaim can be a say priceless feature but debatable for its say utility to function.
I've heard several times Engineering Stations are not as efficient as mobile engineers. Rather a reduction of build power is not, im not certain, but if applied they should gain an initial build capability. Rather a full t4 or just t3 is whatever for a question.
Mexes seem reasonable already, no need to change, perhaps adding where max Mex output is variable based on Mex location. Out of a total of say 4 maxes, 2 might end being lower valued outputs despite build.
T2 Scouts would be nice but to what effect?? Seems to be a lack of support by all factions for such a unit.
Unit veterancy may be a gameplay breaker but still offers gameplay changes. Solving some better way of calculative than ridding seems better off.

Photek

I agree that 'siege tank' might not be the right name.
You don't use it?
not an informed opinion
idem
I feel like adding t2 scouts is gonna create a different air play dynamic, which could be good but also bad.
Yes, you got my vote!

ZLO

t2 or t3 land scouts!

The_Janitor

t2 or t3 land scouts!

while on that note, how about a proper uef land jammers with proper unit formations

Azraaa

@ZLO said in A Topic of Dumb Ideas!:

t2 or t3 land scouts!

How'd that even work lol

Azraaa

Mobile Radar!

Pearl12

Just make siege tanks really good at killing walls. 1000 dps vs walls. Then they are siege tanks. Problem solved.

deletethis

mobile smd!

Photek

cybran T3 stealth sniper

Azraaa

@deletethis mobile smd would need assisting, so like basically has no Buildpower itself

@stealth9 just Cybran t3 Mobile Stealth instead

deletethis

@Azraeel you could think about sera battleship/t3 nuke subs only they make smd instead, the land equivalent would probably end up as t4 tier, or maybe extremely limited range...

ZLO

@Azraeel said in A Topic of Dumb Ideas!:

@ZLO said in A Topic of Dumb Ideas!:

t2 or t3 land scouts!

How'd that even work lol

More HP, much more speed, much more radar range, more vision, maybe tiny omni range, improved versions of abilities of lower tier units... like t1 arty-like thing for UEF scout, stealth+cloak for cybran, ability to traverse montains and walls for aeon, short range teleportation for sera or maybe some EMP ability to disable single unit for 10 seconds for 5000 E or something like that... or maybe that ability would only work against buildings idk

arma473

@Pearl12 Give siege tanks an engineering tool same as a t1 engineer, except have it auto-reclaim on nearby unfriendly walls, and don't allow it to be used for other purposes. Call it a "siege drill"

moses_the_red

I actually don't think this is dumb, but I imagine its the kind of idea that people will just hate.

I think that reclaim micro needs a nerf, particularly in the case of map based reclaim.

So... what is the purpose of putting reclaim on a map? Its there to give players busy work. I'm not so much talking about large reclaim points or wrecks... those aren't so bad. I'm talking about small rocks and trees.

Small rocks and trees are an APM sink. If you're good and you have the APM you can sink a portion of it into collecting tons of little rocks and little trees to gain an eco advantage. If you're bad at it you can lose matches because fuck you, reclaiming little rocks mindlessly is hard baked into the very core of the game.

And its a significant enough eco advantage that your opponent must try to match you in order to have a chance at winning.

And you can do attack move or set up a circular path if you want, but you'll be at a significant disadvantage if you do against the clicky high APM types. The higher you go in ladder, the more critical clicking those little rocks become.

So now you have this APM race to the bottom set up where both players are forced to repetitively click rocks... forever... or at least through the early game.

Its a dumb idea, a dumb thing to do.

Rocks and trees should not be reclaimable. If you want to add reclaim to a map, add wrecks. Lets not add something that is repetitive, boring and gives you an artificial advantage that's not based upon the choices a player makes, but is instead based on the speed with which they can repetitively click the ground.

I haven't brought this up, because its so fundamental a part of the game, and because the ladder folk will balk (they've invested a lot of time raising their APM so they can be the clickiest players of all).

But its a bad mechanic. A terrible mechanic, and maybe if people started to see how stupid it is, we'd slowly be able to pull ourselves away from it.

FtXCommando

Clicking tiny rocks really fast doesn't decide ladder games, even when you're 2200. It matters in the first 5 minutes when you're doing some refined BO on a map. Beyond that, there are vastly more important things to take your attention. Like really, would I rather be microing my tanks for mass efficient trades while attack moving reclaim or attack move my tanks into the fow while microing my engies?

In fact, it's actually teamgames where such "boring" things matter due to the lack of actual gameplay elements to focus on in most popular teamgames maps. Take it away, and now I can treat FAF like an idle game in teamgames. Some maps have already done it!

By the way, your suggestion would destroy the ability to convert bp into e. This is a fundamental relation in the game and losing this interaction would do nothing but harm the complexity of the game.

moses_the_red

@FtXCommando said in A Topic of Dumb Ideas!:

Clicking tiny rocks really fast doesn't decide ladder games, even when you're 2200.

Oh.. then why the fuck does everyone do it?

In fact, it's actually teamgames where such "boring" things matter due to the lack of actual gameplay elements to focus on in most popular teamgames maps.

Do you really think people that read through these posts are going to buy that?

By the way, your suggestion would destroy the ability to convert bp into e. This is a fundamental relation in the game and losing this interaction would do nothing but harm the complexity of the game.

You could just replace current reclaim with smaller amounts of reclaim with higher energy values. Remove the mindless click spam, and if the map is intended to provide an early exchange of BP for e, get it from a source that doesn't require spamming.

The spamming itself is lame, it is something of an APM sink on some maps.

Another solution would be to make trees only passively reclaimable. You can set up an attack move or patrol and reclaim trees and tiny rocks that way, but not through click spam. Then it would be worth it to pick it up, while not incentivizing microing a million little precise clicks.

I expected this to be a controversial opinion - something that wouldn't be taken seriously - which is why I posted it here. That said, I think I'm also correct, its a lame mechanic.

moses_the_red

I also think its worth it to point out...

@FtXCommando said in A Topic of Dumb Ideas!:

Clicking tiny rocks really fast doesn't decide ladder games, even when you're 2200.

...

By the way, your suggestion would destroy the ability to convert bp into e. This is a fundamental relation in the game and losing this interaction would do nothing but harm the complexity of the game.

Admittedly these statements aren't exactly contradictory, but one minimizes the importance of manually clicking little rocks and one claims its a "fundamental relation in the game".

And I think its important to bring this up, and even warrants a second post, because if it really is so important that its a "fundamental relation in the game"... then should it be?

Should such a fundamental part of the game be dependent on individually clicking dozens or hundreds of little things? Is that good gameplay?

I think its clearly a bad mechanic. Is it worth changing? Is it worth pissing off lots of players to change? Perhaps not, but its still a shitty mechanic.

Jip

To me the main mechanic of Supreme Commander is where you put your attention at. Whether that is a micro in a fight, queueing buildings and / or expansions or manually clicking to speed up the reclaim process - it is all part of the game. Changing it would mean changing the game. And that would be a waste of such a good game since this is, among other mechanics, what makes Supreme Commander what it is.

FtXCommando

There is zero contradiction between saying a broad relation of the game (which can be handled manually or automated) is imperative to the depth of the game and saying manual rock clicking isn’t impactful at min 15 in high level competitive games.

You thinking these two are at a tension makes me think you have no idea what you’re talking about. And yes, this aspect of the game is good for the game. If you think it’s clearly bad, feel free to make your own sim mod to dumb down the game.

moses_the_red

@Jip said in A Topic of Dumb Ideas!:

  To me the main mechanic of Supreme Commander is where you put your attention at. Whether that is a micro in a fight, queueing buildings and / or expansions or manually clicking to speed up the reclaim process - it is all part of the game. Changing it would mean changing the game. And that would be a waste of such a good game since this is, among other mechanics, what makes Supreme Commander what it is.

I'd argue that the main thing that separates FAF from other RTS games is the degree to which the importance of high APM is minimized.

FAF is the RTS where its your decisions that matter, not your ability to spam out 300 APM.

Compare FAF to starcraft, and the main difference in my view is the quality of life improvements that FAF has that Starcraft does not. Its been a while since I played Starcraft, does it even have paths, or do you have to guide each unit along its route if you don't want the AI to solve the problem of getting the unit where you want it to go?

The economy of FAF allows you to queue things up indefinitely. You can set up your first factory at the 1 minute mark and have it still producing at the 25 minute mark. May not be a good idea in all cases, but you can do it.

The reclaim of tiny objects, it goes against this central theme of Supcom. Supcom is about automating minor tasks to the extent possible to free the player to focus on more important things. Other RTSes make the minor tasks a central part of the game.

In short, there is no change that is more aligned with the heart of this game series than removing mindless repetitive busywork for the player.