Without full share, snipe a single ACU in a 2v2, 3v3, 4v4, or maybe even 5v5, and the game is usually over. For most people, that kind of gameplay is probably not desirable to either play or watch. Go to Gyle's youtube channel and look at the top viewed videos of all time and look at the Epic casts—the vast majority of them would have ended much sooner and not been nearly as good to cast without fullshare.
Why does Fullshare exist?
@archsimkat yeah, I get that, thats what everyone keeps saying, but why fullshare and not simply an alternative victory condition? I understand what it does and I understand why its desirable, what I don't understand is how this goal is not already achieved by supremacy or annihilation victory conditions
Not to drag lore into this, but even lore wise it makes sense an acu can pick up an ally’s units in the event of them dying. Supremacy is very, very different from full share and would be cancerous to play on larger maps.
Outside of lore I don’t really have anything to add to what Arch and FTX said, they’re both right.
@majortrouble Because it's really different from supremacy. I see how they are vaguely similar, but needing to kill 2-6 irreplaceable units is just not the same as needing to kill every engineer, factory, or SACU. Those are replaceable, so I would say it's quite different.
There are other options as well. I have wanted to try some traitors games, and Civilian Desertion could be cool if mass capturing units was easier.
But full share seems fine. It seems like it makes the team as a whole more robust, but there is still this critical irreplaceable resource that needs to be protected and can go down at any moment.
You must deceive the enemy, sometimes your allies, but you must always deceive yourself!
@kalethequick that's a valid point and one I hadn't considered, it also answers my question-thank you
Quick edit/question: how many games do you see where one player is in a position to snipe a com and destroy a base vs games that a player who has the opening for a snipe but not complete destruction
Truly, I understand the point now, I'm just curious about stats now-doesn't even have to be completely accurate guess, just your own experiences
perhaps its just the level I play at but snipes aren't quite as common as slowly whittling away at a defense until you can push right through base defenses
to lazy to read whole thread... but answer is balance and gameplay.
- If you have no fullshare, then game can become all about t2-t3 air ACU snipes
- Therefore you can't use acu in combat, and even then you can get sniped
- As soon one player dies game ends
- people also may randomly disconnect and with fullshare game will not end there
I personally don't really like fullshare as it enables you to suicide acu to kill enemy army, and i also don't really like the "spirit" of it.
and fullshare games can often be about t3 acu drops with TML to cause cancer and at the same time acu loss will not lead to loss of the game
TA4Life: "At the very least we are not slaves to the UI" | http://www.youtube.com/user/dimatularus | http://www.twitch.tv/zlo_rd
I have said this before, but I really hate Full Share in TMM. We are very cautious now about killing the lower rated of 2 players.
Suddenly that 50 eco that was being wasted on a 600 rated strategy, is now added to a 1200 rated strategy.
It is also very anticlimactic.
Lastly, I play with a friend and we want to play together. Unless we are really close to victory game is over after one of us dies. Even in random TMM, I don't like it if I still have a good chance to continue playing for 20 minutes when my ally dies.
@valki therefore you shouldn't invest (too many) resources into destroying the ACU, but instead of destroying his eco / base. Which is to me a lot more fun than sniping someone or being sniped.
A work of art is never finished, merely abandoned
same dudes who sit in discord training channel saying they have no apm
thinking randomly getting double your current unit count is not a big deal
stay classy faf
I'd just like to point out that Assassination is only a thing because it fits in with the silly sci-fi backstory of vanilla SupCom, that the only intelligent being on the field is a little guy operating the commander and once he dies that's it. Do we need to continue to suspend disbelief and play this way? Because full-share is just a band-aid to make losing a commander in Assassination not an automatic team loss. In reality, when my commander dies, I'm still alive, and still have the ability to make (incorrect) strategic decisions. Maybe Assassination as the standard condition in FAF needs to be reconsidered.
@jip said in Why does Fullshare exist?:
@valki therefore you shouldn't invest (too many) resources into destroying the ACU, but instead of destroying his eco / base. Which is to me a lot more fun than sniping someone or being sniped.
Thanks, good idea... I will also apply this when your victory depends on my decisions 
@zappazapper said in Why does Fullshare exist?:
I'd just like to point out that Assassination is only a thing because it fits in with the silly sci-fi backstory of vanilla SupCom, that the only intelligent being on the field is a little guy operating the commander and once he dies that's it. Do we need to continue to suspend disbelief and play this way? Because full-share is just a band-aid to make losing a commander in Assassination not an automatic team loss. In reality, when my commander dies, I'm still alive, and still have the ability to make (incorrect) strategic decisions. Maybe Assassination as the standard condition in FAF needs to be reconsidered.
Very cool thought actually...
But I fear it would work only for T1 and T2, at T3 your commander in the mix of 10 SCU's 3 Exps and 60 Bricks doesn't matter that much.
@jip said in Why does Fullshare exist?:
@valki therefore you shouldn't invest (too many) resources into destroying the ACU, but instead of destroying his eco / base. Which is to me a lot more fun than sniping someone or being sniped.
But the consequence of understanding full share is not to stop sniping, its to snipe the higher rated player and auto-win if there is a meaningful rating-difference.
Even if it's the lower rated player getting sniped, and the better player gets his stuff, it's still often a good idea if you can do it without huge losses. Losing an acu is often devastating, usually either it's at the front where it was guarding something that can now be attacked, or it's in the base, and when it explodes it takes all of the buildpower with it. It also loses any mass and energy in storage, of course you can manually give it away before dying but a lot of players do not.
All in snipes on a weaker player are bad
Logical snipes on a weaker player are good
After an enemy ACU dies you have to take advantage of it before the opponent can stabilize. Full share increases the skill ceiling of snipes because you don't just have to plan the ACU snipe, you have to plan and be ready for the aftermath.
@zappazapper The commander dying resulting in your units dying makes perfect sense, not sure what you mean by silly sci-fi back story. You’re not alive after the ACU dies because in the game you are literally in the ACU. These units are massive in scale and there is a human piloting the ACU (or Cyborg or Seraphim), and if that dies there’s no longer a way to issue commands to the units. Considering QAI seems to be the only powerful enough general intelligence to possibly take the place of people in the game there’s not a backup if the living pilot dies. It also make sense in terms of just pure gameplay mechanics as well as other people have been arguing.
@exselsior It's pretty important as a safety measure that robot armies don't run wild autonomously and you would rather have robot armies self-destruct than allow your enemies to get control of them.
@arma473 Yes exactly. Like I said in my first post on here I don’t mean to bring lore into it too much, but when something makes sense both from the game lore perspective, regardless of what you think about the lore, and from the gameplay perspective at the same time it’s hard to argue against.
In particular, if you have an awkward makeshift alliance of a Seraphim, Aeon, Cybran and UEF ACU fighting another awkward makeshift Alliance... then you really don't want your units to fall under the control of someone who could be your enemy tomorrow.
@biass said in Why does Fullshare exist?:
same dudes who sit in discord training channel saying they have no apm
thinking randomly getting double your current unit count is not a big deal
stay classy faf
I assume this is directed at me and trust me I don't take it lightly, I understand it is a huge deal-just not a big a deal as losing a position and I think you would agree with that