Main problem of Supreme Commander

[thinkerx]

I learned about this game a few years ago. My first impression was very strong. I thought this game had the potential to be way ahead of everything I had seen. But over time, I began to notice that the game had serious problems, primarily related to the linearity and monotony of the gameplay, as well as the dominance of economics over war (actually, this is one of the main reasons for the linearity, but more on that later), when everything comes down to upgrading extractors and creating super units. But at the same time, I still had a feeling that the potential of this game is much, much higher. For about two years, I tried to find and solve the problems limiting the capabilities of this game through modding. And today I have a more or less complete understanding of the problems of global balance, the main one of which I want to explain here. So...

Build Time.
In my opinion, this is the main problem of the game. This problem literally DESTROYS the gameplay. What's the matter? The Build Time for different branches of the military is different, but the most important thing is that the Build Time of buildings, including economic ones, is several times less than the Build Time of units. This creates a huge imbalance between the economy and the war. The prices of units and buildings themselves are quite balanced, but the fact that with a comparable price for a T2 extractor and T3 mobile artillery, the latter takes more than 4 times longer to build with the same Build Power, leads to the fact that investing in the economy is much more profitable, simply because it is faster. This is what leads to linearity and monotony, because war cannot compete with the economy, and the economy is always the same. As a possible solution, in the "Advanced Bases" mod (available in the FAF repository), the Build Time increased: fleet - by 1.5 times, air - by 2.5 - 6 times, buildings - by 5 times, and the Build Time of some individual categories of units additionally adjusted. Moreover, the adjustment was made taking into account mass cost and energy cost.

Remember that the most important resource in game is TIME. I suspect that if this problem is solved, Supreme Commander can become better than Starcraft 2. I am not exaggerating at all.

[IndexLibrorum]

If I look at the right player, you have played 13 games, over half of which were with your mod. I'm not sure if you have seen enough of the game to make a good point about core issues of the game.

[Sainse]

It’s pretty common for absolute noobs to overflow both mass and energy because they barely understand what icons are moving on the screen

[thinkerx]

@IndexLibrorum So instead of thinking about what I wrote, you just looked at list of my games? Constructively. It's probably just a habit that helps save time.

[thinkerx]

@Sainse It seems like people have forgotten how to read.

[Razana]

A good chunk of what your mods does is just making the game clunkier with added restrictions and increased costs. What can I do in-game with your mods (Advanced Bases or others) that I can't do with the current FAF balancing?

[thinkerx]

@Razana With vanilla balance you can't have good balanced gameplay on large (20-40 km) maps. That's why the percentage of games played on them is very small. If players could play on such maps, they wouldn't crowd into tiny squares of 10-16 people. You can't have good battles because spamming megaliths, stationary artillery, nukes and shields is not gameplay. You can and do get "turtle" gameplay because game-enders and shields are imba in relation to all other units. I can't claim to have solved these problems, but I am trying to solve them.

[Deribus]

It's highly map and playercount dependent. There are some maps where people will get full T3 mex before their first combat unit, and some maps where getting their first T2 mex before a T1 tank is basically an auto-loss. Perfect balance for both situations is impossible.

[KnownSniper]

If you know how to play the game well then this poses no issues. Even if you were to half the buildtime on eco buildings you would just use that extra time gained to scale your unit production faster with the extra resources so you can raid your enemy sooner.

Funnily enough increasing the bp like in your mod will just make it almost impossible to properly balance your eco at the start because a single air fac will drain like 300-500 e/s with your proposal. It will make early game aggression insanely strong because u can rush out the units so much faster, which btw is the complete opposite thing that sc2 went for when they increased the starting workers from 6 to 12 to make the game not be 80% earlygame 15% midgame and 5% lategame

[IndexLibrorum]

@thinker No, I've read your post. I am saying that your lack of experience playing the game (with or without mods) means you have not seen enough of the game to make any sweeping statements. Moreover, your inexperience is a big part of the problems you're facing. As Theweakie and Sainse explained, we suspect that a big part of your issues is your inexperience with the game, rather than any part of the design of the game itself.

This is not meant to be dismissive or insulting.

A comparison between a T2 mex and a T3 mobile Arty for example, makes no sense, if only because one of the two can move. If you take from this that it's 'more profitable' to invest in economy over units, you're not considering that mexes don't shoot and an enemy that made 20 tanks instead of a T2 mex will kill your mexes. Sure, in a vacuum it might be better to just invest in economy, but that works only when you get no pushback.

You're welcome to come play a few games against me where you can show me how "investing in the economy is much more profitable" and "war cannot compete with the economy". I predict that you'll find that having enemy tanks in your base does few wonders to your economy.

[thinkerx]

@TheWeakie Are you sure you understood correctly what I am suggesting? I am suggesting not to increase bp, but to increase build time. The construction time of everything on the contrary increases several times with the same bp.

[thinkerx]

@IndexLibrorum Theweakie got my idea the wrong way around. Sainse simply didn't read it and saw something of his own.

[thinkerx]

@Deribus I only consider the second type of maps. And what I propose will make economic development even more difficult.

[maudlin27]

@thinker I don't see the benefit of slowing the game down significantly as a blanket change - there are already many maps where the game is decided at the tech1 stage (e.g. 5km 1v1) where someone who eco's early is likely to be punished.
Where slowing down gameplay might have a beneficial impact is on larger maps (40km+) since the FAF gameplay on those strongly encourages focusing on a game-ender or experimentals (due to how long it takes for units you build at your base to reach the enemy/do damage - so there's far less point to T1). I could see the use case of a mod that adjusts FAF balance to work better on such maps by making the T1-T3 stages more important, although I'm not sure what the precise changes would need to be (as a 'finger in the air' I'd guess doubling costs and build times for all HQs and eco buildings might help). However from the description of your changes I dont think it'd help much - you're increasing only the build time, meaning you have a slightly larger cost to build some engineers to assist those buildings with upgrading (e.g. 8 T1 engineers mean a t1 mex upgrades at the same rate to t2 as before; you only have to build those 8 T1 engineers once though, and it shouldnt take that long to get; meanwhile t1 mexes build fast enough that even with 5x you could probably just have 2 engineers build t1 mexes in pairs and quickly get your initial mexes in your base area to fund more engineers). I.e. since the mass cost isn't different I feel like it'd only slow down things slightly, and still lead to 'rush experimentals/game-ender' on an 80km map.

[thinkerx]

@maudlin27 For balanced gameplay on large maps, I created another mod - "Gameplay Scaling". It increases the time and cost of building everything by 2 or 4 times. This helps to get good gameplay on maps 2 or 4 times larger, respectively. But we pay for this by increasing the duration of games. I tested M28AI on the 81 km Debris map with 4x increasing, and got the same game logic as when playing on a 20 km map, only the game develops 4 times slower. The same number of units on the map, so there are no brakes.

The increase in build time described in this topic has a different purpose. For example, if in this case a T3 generator (or anything) is destroyed, then it will take 5 times more time to restore it, which will lead to the loss of much more energy income. Or you must have 5 times more build power, but this is an additional expense. That is, battles will affect the outcome of the game much more strongly. This is what I meant when I wrote about "dominance of economy over war". In vanilla balance, the economy is too strong, because the one who has gained an economic advantage, in the vast majority of cases, simply "crushes with mass" his opponent. The game develops like a snowball. And the one who is lagging behind has almost no opportunity, from a strategic point of view, to stop this avalanche. And in the vast majority of games, everything happens according to almost the same scenario. Linearity and monotony. And my assumption is that it is the build time that is the reason for this. The linearity of the gameplay was discussed, for example, here: https://forum.faforever.com/topic/5552/title-a-time-for-change-faf-community-balance-team

[jcvjcvjcvjcv]

So you basicly try to make the map smaller by slowing down everything... except units moving.

I have played Betrayal Ocean, the 80x80 maps... and it took half a day.

[thinkerx]

This seems like a joke. It feels like a bunch of people read my post the other way around. I'm not suggesting increasing build power. I'm suggesting INCREASING BUILD TIME. That is, I suggest TO NERF ENGINEER. Engineer is the main imbalance in the game. And it seems like no one has even tried to consider this problem. Engineer is imbalanced in relation to other units, and even in relation to factories, since it uses resources much faster. It is the engineer that makes the game so linear and predictable. It is the engineer that sets the trend of the game, which cannot be fought with any strategies, any moves. In FAF nerfed bombers, nerfed other units. And you did the right thing. So consider this too.

[magge]

@thinker I have merged your other thread with this main one to keep the discussion organized. Let us keep the conversation respectful, please.