@Wainan It is a fascination of mine to watch games and how different people react to his strategy so I have seen a number of different approaches.

I've seen people try MML spam, but by the time they realise that they are facing a determined turtle, he is usually up to T2 build power already and can build T2 static arty which renders MMLs a complete waste of resources as it loses hard to artillery+shield.

I faced him once more since starting the thread, on Vulcan's Reach. Due to my clumsiness, I allowed him to get established in the upper right corner of the map, but otherwise I took complete map control essentially unchallenged and instead of trying to invest any serious effort into breaking down his front door, I kept him occupied with some small T1 land armies as "bait" for his radar (he rarely ever scouts anything at all, least of which your main base), as well as some "annoying" with UEF Sparkies while I spent all my mass on upgrading to T2 mex, ringing them and starting T3 mex upgrades; while investing the rest into power, engineers and a T3 air factory to just put an end to the grindy game with 11-12 Ambassadors to his ACU. This takes time however, and is not really what I'd call an entertaining way to play the game.

He played as he does every single game. Starting out with expanding, totally unprotected engineers out of his first factory, and if they reach their intended expansions, he builds a single T1 PD and T1 AA before factory making it extremely open for a swift denial if you just pay attention with your early raiding units. If you fail to take it down early, he will build Lobos (practically never tanks) for scout-less harassment and defence, until he can fill that base with T2 PD, and T2 artillery if you try to kill the base. His end game is practically always shield SACUs point defence creeping across the map and a Novax followed by a Duke. My strat snipe came shortly after he plowed all his resources into the Novax.

@Wainan It is off topic, but I feel the same. I end up just playing 1v1 because I am not used to general team games, and thus I underperform from what my global rating should suggest, which I achieved simply because I did some lazy-games on Setons or Gap on occasion, which actually further adds to the issue. Low amount of custom games with a global rating of 1100 makes people suspicious and typically won't let me play in others hosted games. It is a bit of a negative spiral

@arma473 For his rating, that is pretty much a perfect response.

@Wainan I've done it on Open Palms, and seen it happen from time to time too in replays. The early engineers are never protected, so if you manage to raid them before they reach expansions that is a major win. If this fails, make sure your answer is not tank-spam but instead precision with T1 mobile artillery to kill the PD, and, hopefully factory lock him if he gets one online.

You can break the main base early, but only if you manage to harass him quickly enough that he does not reach T2 with his ACU. Do mind his T1 PD placement, air scouts are great to use here. Once he reaches T2, he will be free to build Triads and Klink Hammers to fend of whatever you have into the T3 stages and this is where most people fail by trying to break in with landspam and MMLs.

There are probably much more fancy tactics to throw him off that much better rated players than I am can manage, but for an equal rating... I don't think it is too bad of an approach.

Hey!

First time posting on these new forums.

So, yesterday I just got into playing FAF again after a long-ish break; I eventually broke my anxiety and jumped into ladder. Lost my first de-rusting game, won my second, and then upon my third I faced a guy named derek_bobjack, some roughly 900 ladder rated player. My game against him was on Open Palms, and I ended it after just over 7 minutes as he ctrl-K'd as I had 80% map control and came knocking on his front door with mobile artillery and Mantis. The game played very odd prior to that though, because I faced essentially no combat units at all. Just an endless stream of engineers attempting to expand (out of which I caught the majority of them with lone mantis/mole squads).

I felt intrigued and went looking at the local replay to see it from his point of view. Apparently, he went all out of trying to expand while basically walling his main base in. At his expansions he often prioristised building T1 PD and T1 static AA, going as far as often neglecting both factories and sometimes delaying mexes. Then he goes for an extended turtle, upgrading his ACU to T2 and T3 as soon as possible, neglecting expansion almost entirely unless successful in the early stages and prioritises upgrading his mexes to T3 ASAP, all while filling his base with static defences of all tiers and kinds. The endgame plan then deviates a little bit from game to game, but it generall invovles SACUs heavily point defence/klink hammer creeping, Novax satelites or plain rambo SACU/percivals steamrolling.

Okay, sure. Sometimes you might feel like trying some silly strategy in a game. But, I went through the FAF Replays vault on a number of his games and found that he does this exact thing on almost every single round he plays. Except when an "incompatible" map comes up, in which he ctrl-K's within the first 20 seconds. Sure, okay, some people just aren't that good at the game I guess, right? Well, here it what irks me. A disturbing amount of time it does work for him. 5x5 km maps being dragged out way longer, up towards an hour+.

Now I am hardly a "good" player. I watch a lot of casts and POV games on YouTube though and have a fair bit of an idea how the game is, ahem, supposed to be played. And thus I feel fairly confident to say that:

1. This is not exactly normal 1v1 ladder gameplay.

2. This flies in the face of what good gameplay should look like. Hard turtling should not beat map control.

3. While being aware that this is not high ranking ladder; why does this work as consistently as it seems to do for him? What would a consistent way of beating such a strategy be, if you really are not up for playing an hour of artillery war, if you were to end up in a situation where he manages to secure his main base against more straight forward attacks?

The issue still persists. Someone please advice, I am locked out of playing the game as it stands for now.
I attached the log file the client creates when it fails.

client.log

Having this issue as well, exit code 53 really is not very descriptive, for me anyway. @psyrg s post above did not help.

Help? Anyone?

@Wainan I've done it on Open Palms, and seen it happen from time to time too in replays. The early engineers are never protected, so if you manage to raid them before they reach expansions that is a major win. If this fails, make sure your answer is not tank-spam but instead precision with T1 mobile artillery to kill the PD, and, hopefully factory lock him if he gets one online.

You can break the main base early, but only if you manage to harass him quickly enough that he does not reach T2 with his ACU. Do mind his T1 PD placement, air scouts are great to use here. Once he reaches T2, he will be free to build Triads and Klink Hammers to fend of whatever you have into the T3 stages and this is where most people fail by trying to break in with landspam and MMLs.

There are probably much more fancy tactics to throw him off that much better rated players than I am can manage, but for an equal rating... I don't think it is too bad of an approach.

@arma473 For his rating, that is pretty much a perfect response.

@Wainan It is off topic, but I feel the same. I end up just playing 1v1 because I am not used to general team games, and thus I underperform from what my global rating should suggest, which I achieved simply because I did some lazy-games on Setons or Gap on occasion, which actually further adds to the issue. Low amount of custom games with a global rating of 1100 makes people suspicious and typically won't let me play in others hosted games. It is a bit of a negative spiral

@Wainan It is a fascination of mine to watch games and how different people react to his strategy so I have seen a number of different approaches.

I've seen people try MML spam, but by the time they realise that they are facing a determined turtle, he is usually up to T2 build power already and can build T2 static arty which renders MMLs a complete waste of resources as it loses hard to artillery+shield.

I faced him once more since starting the thread, on Vulcan's Reach. Due to my clumsiness, I allowed him to get established in the upper right corner of the map, but otherwise I took complete map control essentially unchallenged and instead of trying to invest any serious effort into breaking down his front door, I kept him occupied with some small T1 land armies as "bait" for his radar (he rarely ever scouts anything at all, least of which your main base), as well as some "annoying" with UEF Sparkies while I spent all my mass on upgrading to T2 mex, ringing them and starting T3 mex upgrades; while investing the rest into power, engineers and a T3 air factory to just put an end to the grindy game with 11-12 Ambassadors to his ACU. This takes time however, and is not really what I'd call an entertaining way to play the game.

He played as he does every single game. Starting out with expanding, totally unprotected engineers out of his first factory, and if they reach their intended expansions, he builds a single T1 PD and T1 AA before factory making it extremely open for a swift denial if you just pay attention with your early raiding units. If you fail to take it down early, he will build Lobos (practically never tanks) for scout-less harassment and defence, until he can fill that base with T2 PD, and T2 artillery if you try to kill the base. His end game is practically always shield SACUs point defence creeping across the map and a Novax followed by a Duke. My strat snipe came shortly after he plowed all his resources into the Novax.

@Wainan I think this can easily happen if you don't recognise what is going on quickly enough and instead just continue producing land armies that ends up obsolete before they can get used. Or worse, feed the obsolete units into static defences.

It became rather fascinating watching his 1v1 replays against others; because what he does shouldn't work, yet it does work a lot of the time against many different players in that rating range.

@harzer99 Yes, that is a common mistake I've observed in many of the replays I watched. People either attacking pointlessly (no pun intended..) into PDs and feeding mass; OR simply leaving their factories on infinite build, but only piling up hordes of T1/T2 units instead of spending their mass on more useful things.

Perhaps a lot of it comes down to scouting too, no need to keep guarding armies of units around if your enemy is not going to attack you any time soon. But then I feel like it becomes a rush to who can tech up fastest, and an escalating T1 PD -> T1 mobile arty -> T2 PD -> MML ->T2 static arty spam -> ????

Hey!

First time posting on these new forums.

So, yesterday I just got into playing FAF again after a long-ish break; I eventually broke my anxiety and jumped into ladder. Lost my first de-rusting game, won my second, and then upon my third I faced a guy named derek_bobjack, some roughly 900 ladder rated player. My game against him was on Open Palms, and I ended it after just over 7 minutes as he ctrl-K'd as I had 80% map control and came knocking on his front door with mobile artillery and Mantis. The game played very odd prior to that though, because I faced essentially no combat units at all. Just an endless stream of engineers attempting to expand (out of which I caught the majority of them with lone mantis/mole squads).

I felt intrigued and went looking at the local replay to see it from his point of view. Apparently, he went all out of trying to expand while basically walling his main base in. At his expansions he often prioristised building T1 PD and T1 static AA, going as far as often neglecting both factories and sometimes delaying mexes. Then he goes for an extended turtle, upgrading his ACU to T2 and T3 as soon as possible, neglecting expansion almost entirely unless successful in the early stages and prioritises upgrading his mexes to T3 ASAP, all while filling his base with static defences of all tiers and kinds. The endgame plan then deviates a little bit from game to game, but it generall invovles SACUs heavily point defence/klink hammer creeping, Novax satelites or plain rambo SACU/percivals steamrolling.

Okay, sure. Sometimes you might feel like trying some silly strategy in a game. But, I went through the FAF Replays vault on a number of his games and found that he does this exact thing on almost every single round he plays. Except when an "incompatible" map comes up, in which he ctrl-K's within the first 20 seconds. Sure, okay, some people just aren't that good at the game I guess, right? Well, here it what irks me. A disturbing amount of time it does work for him. 5x5 km maps being dragged out way longer, up towards an hour+.

Now I am hardly a "good" player. I watch a lot of casts and POV games on YouTube though and have a fair bit of an idea how the game is, ahem, supposed to be played. And thus I feel fairly confident to say that:

1. This is not exactly normal 1v1 ladder gameplay.

2. This flies in the face of what good gameplay should look like. Hard turtling should not beat map control.

3. While being aware that this is not high ranking ladder; why does this work as consistently as it seems to do for him? What would a consistent way of beating such a strategy be, if you really are not up for playing an hour of artillery war, if you were to end up in a situation where he manages to secure his main base against more straight forward attacks?