Is this a cheat or not?
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It's quirky behavior for sure, but such is FAF.
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@maudlin27 Fair question. One of the overall design goals for Supreme Commander was to allow players to be commanders without requiring them to micromanage units. Given that you are in a large battle, I guess you could divert your attention to just your subs in one spot. But if you miss it, you will lose the sea faster than anything...
The question isn't whether both players can cheat; the point is that people shouldn't be able to. Two wrongs don't make it right... The fact that it works highlights a flaw in the game's logic and people may exploit it, as it only sees one sub in that spot. I would say a cheat is something that takes advantage/quick in the a deficiency within the game's logic that people may exploit. How is it not a cheat? Just because two people can doesn't justify a cheat? And just because one player did and the other not because they were busy elsewhere and exploiting a flaw in the game they get a HUGE unfair advantage. Oh that would be a cheat...? Explain how it is not a cheat?
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Because it's an advantage that comes with an even bigger downside: if those subs get ground fired they ALL die.
My opponent attempting to sub stack has even single handedly won me a game, because I made 2 Corsairs, ground fired the stack, and he went from a slight advantage in navy to being able to do nothing but watch as I right click his HQ.
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I also wish this wasn't a thing. Not to mention not all units have aoe (take t2 destros) so its not even like you can always counter this. And its not like such a feature cant exist (i think) because land units have collision and cant "merge" into each other.
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It’s a fallacy to say that just because FAF is a macro focused rts that it means you don’t have to micro manage units. This isn’t an auto-battle game.
A cheat is by definition getting an unfair advantage through malicious means. None of that applies here. This is a hotkey that exists and a unit interaction that is intentionally kept. Factory attack move has a more reasonable argument to be a cheat than shift+g of navy units.
It’s a gameplay interaction that you think makes the game worse, so just explain that and how the counterfactual makes the game better instead of throwing extremes out that make your argument way worse because it’s just wrong.
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Is it a unit interaction that is intentionally kept? I hope not! I would think that if this is fixable it wouldnt be in the game for navy units. Why not have this for land units aswell then?
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Of course it’s intentionally kept, it isn’t very difficult to give navy units collision like land units. I’m even pretty sure it used to be part of old balance mods a decade ago like equilibrium if I remember correctly.
I imagine a lot of the reason it applies for navy is because of the dynamic of navy unit buildpower/infrastructure. A land factory with 50 assisting engies creates an unsolvable traffic jam unless you force create a path, navy units need even more room. If navy units had collision then it’s also going to be extremely painful to get navy units to move especially in tighter corridors that are much more common relative to unit size than land units see. Land units can already be incredibly painful in terrain where only like 3-5 units can move through at a time.
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You are talking like navy units have no collision at all. They prob have the worst collision. Its only the shift-g command that enabled them not suddenly move onto the same position. I very much doubt its kept for the reasoning its a good feature, but because there is no better alternative because especially navy pathfinding is fucked. That is fine to me as long as the reason isnt "its a good feature so we keep it"
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Because shift+g is a solution to bad pathfinding, it’s used all the time both in land and navy for that. Likewise with navy you can have 15 destroyers/battleships sit in the same spot after being made, but with land you’re going to create a traffic jam that stops your factory from producing and the units will also not be able to leave and likely lose their order due to perpetual engie bumper cars. It would be significantly easier to run into the issue of idle navy facs if they had land unit collision and required their own individual space like that.
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Yeah so some with land facs you have to think how to place them to not create a jam.
Also naval armies are usually smaller than land. -
The problem is the jam just sort of always exists for big navy production because it’s much more of a given to have 60 engineers on a factory while land factories don’t run into that. This is especially true for something like ie skadi where you could be building navy in a cove or something like flooded tabula too.
While armies are smaller on a unit basis, the actual unit box of a battleship is closer to a t4 than a t3 unit and a destroyer is also like 3 t3 units in size as well. It’s really easy to run into a problem with pushing units through in a map that doesn’t have a senton style wide, obstacle free ocean to position in.
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I'm honestly a bit confused by your arguments. Thats kinda how navy works right now. Batteships are so fat everything collides with them and gets stuck. It is only shift g that can circumvent this. Why cant normal move command do this then? According to that logic we should remove all collision from navy so that normal move command can do the same.
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Normal move command obeys the collision box, subs aren’t any different
If you fully remove all collision then things like tempest are monstrously op because you now need to manually babysit everything so you don’t take quintuple dps from a random tempest or bs or exodus shot when you didn’t intend it.
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@FtXCommando I would disagree. You obviously sound like you don't know what you are talking about as it isn't just me reporting it and other confirm it...
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@FtXCommando Ya i use shift-g for attacking other units, with subs it is different as one may stack the subs into one spot. If the group now attacks an enemy they only see one sub so 80 vs 80 subs the ungrouped will always lose. Generally it will be the grouped may lose 5 or 10 units. Sure seems like a cheat.
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You can do the same with gunships - group them up with distribute orders, and you can stack 80 gunships in one spot! If the group now attacks an enemy they only see a few gunships, so 80 vs 80 specter gunships the grouped will always lose. Generally it will be the ungrouped may lose 10 units.
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Yes, I remember such moments. Especially in the Total Mayhem mod, which featured pseudo-experimental gunships. These gunships were wildly imbalanced in huge numbers precisely because of this effect.
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Wait till you hear about air units
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The recommended direct counter is groundfiring the stacked subs with ships that have splash damage, such as destroyers.
Only exodus has enough splash out of all the destros to groundfire subs (1.4 instead of 1), and even so it's barely enough so I wouldn't recommend it. Battleships with 2 splash radius are the usual groundfire unit, although by that game stage it's a bit irrelevant.
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does it? I have never seen exodus damaging subs
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