/v/ - Video Games

>>16011936

Which is better for an entry to the franchise. This or forged alliance?

>>16011973

This had a better story, FA had better gameplay, both are decent.

UEF best faction.

Reminder that Chris Taylor is developing a fucking mobile RTS

>>16011985

I guess they saw what wonders it did for C&C, and decided to follow it off a cliff.

>>16011936

Am I the only one who dislikes multiplayer in strategy games? I like campaigns and then skirmishes with AI where I can take my time and toy with them.

>>16011973

If you play through FAF you get both the original campaign and forged alliance albeit with a lot of tweaked mechanics. Supcom had the better music, they didn't have jeremy soule do Forged Alliance for some reason.

>>16012008

It's definitely very fun, you get a lot more opportunity to use big cool toys in singleplayer than you do in multiplayer, when the hard reality is that you're often best off with a clean T2 execution. The coop campaign is great, though.

>>16012008

I was in the same boat

Multiplayer kinda gets me tense and anxious and at most I did some coop with some buddies.

But after you understand the meta and get used to it it's very fun to go against other people.

>>16011936

Now were talking!

>>16012008

Multiplayer is the only reason to play RTS, in my opinion. AI is braindead and doesn't feel fun to play against; campaign format just doesn't work for RTS. But it's the best genre of game there is for player vs player.

>>16012028

Seton's will almost always involve T3 units and experimentals, the only time it doesn't is when someone gets themselves killed at mid and forgets to give so the game more or less ends early.

>>16012773

>campaign format just doesn't work for RTS

Is there any way to improve SupCom besides multithreading?

>>16012902

Pathing, embed related

>>16013018

I wish someone would mod the economic mechanics, units etc of FA onto the SupCom2 engine

>>16012934

I haven't actually used it for almost a decade. Sucks if it's gone to hell though. It's nevertheless an impressive amount of autism in the same vein as OpenMW.

>>16013516

It's just an application of 2d fluid simulation, like Starcraft 2 had.

>>16012833

It really doesn't. You can't balance the map for drastically different skill levels so it just turns into AI sending a trickle of units at you or some scripted, fixed attacks, you turtle these and build up safely and then crush the map. This is particularly egregious in SupCom because you can build such absurdly powerful units - you can just sit there, build multiple game enders while fighting off a slow trickle of units, and then clear the map.

>>16011936

Recruiting for FAF arent you? Good luck.

>>16012008

Sane, I can definitely see the appeal of multiplayer but im one of those fags who likes to turtle in RTS and research/build everything.

>>16012008

AI battles are decent in SupCom, but as with all TA-derived games, the absolute star of the show is 8+ player FFA.

>>16012918

>>16012902

SupCom "2" had several improvements, but Chris Taylor decided to also shit all over core aspects of the game, and he somehow managed to go backwards in terms of graphical aesthetics.

Speaking of which, Strategic Zoom spoiled me for RTS games. Completely..

The other improvements would have been formation adjustments wo that mobile shields were biased to the front or towards even disperal.

>>16016294

Strategic Zoom was an innovation. Minimaps are now obsolete and there is no excuse to have them anymore. This was the first thing I noticed SC2 getting wrong.

>>16012918

That looks cool. Some great pathfinding algorithm there.

>>16013516

There is a point taken that algorithms won't be able to simulate one side maintaining formation while the other side loses morale, gets unorganized, etc. The video showed both sides maintaining equal levels of perfect spacing which obviously won't happen, especially when a tank gets stuck/broken mid crossway.

>>16016458

All units in SupCom are robotic except for ACUs

>>16016294

Wargame and Steel Division use a similar zoom function, shame Eugen is such a shit fucking company.

>>16011993

>>16011985

what's it called?

>>16016294

Chris wasn't involved with 2

>>16029122

>want to force everyone under their rule

Considering they have to deal with the bullshit caused by the old empire they don't have much choice.

>want to force everyone under their religious doctrine

Considering their religion seems to come with an empathic hive mind and they only went full crusade after being nuked can't really say they're unjustified, besides their ending is that actually has a credible chance to ed the infinite war

Granted it doesn't matter since FA retcons every ending.

>>16029122

Yeah, Cybrans are just a monarchy led by an immoral lunatic. At least the UEF has elected presidents. Also, whether you're programmed to be a slave or programmed to be "free", you're still deterministic the moment you cyberize your brain.

>>16029300

>immoral

*immortal

>>16028118

>Chris wasn't involved with 2

He was the lead designer, but that deal with Squeenix sealed the fate of the series.

>>16029316

I was one of those ignorant enough to assume Squeenix was a good thing ("Haven't they made a bunch of famous RPG's? It must be a good thing since SC1's story was so lackluster.")

>>16029122

more like a nation of anarchist antifaggots who are incapable of cooperation even in the face of total annihilation and only want to be free to mine bitcoins and fap to cp all day

>>16029300

>opposing monarchy

cringe and blue pilled

>>16013934

You are the first person to mention FAF in this thread you dipshit.

>>16016420

To this day I wonder why no one has tried to copy Strategic Zoom or innovate like SupCom did. It was a perfect example of a game looking to its predecessor, leaving what was good about it relatively untouched and then adding something different on top of that. It seems to me like modern RTS games are afraid to do anything new, much like the rest of the gaming industry or even more so.

>>16031170

Ashes of the Singularity attempted a zoom thing. Deserts of Kharak also had something similar, although the latter was more about the Homeworld games. I think the lod transitions are a difficult thing to do.

>>16031170

Sins of a Solar Empire and Homeworld series also have a good zoom function.

>>16031229

HW was more of a minimap screen than a zoom.

What did Planetary Annihilation amount to? I haven't heard about it in years so I assume it's shit, but why is it shit?

>>16031335

Buggy and unfinished, apparently. Devs tried to kickstart a new RTS without finishing PA and they lost all credibility.

>>16012773

AoE2 hd AI is pretty clean. Its a far shot from perfect but can put a really decent fight

>>16031335

>What did Planetary Annihilation amount to?

Nothing.

>>16031335

It's a mediocre TA clone, the orbital mechanics aren't nearly as interesting as they could have made them, being able to turn planets into orbital projectiles is a teensy bit overpowered, there is a grand total of one playable faction in the game, the expansion should have just been a patch instead of being sold as an "upgrade", and it's just overall bland. It's not really worth playing over the games it's trying to be a successor to. I haven't been paying much attention to it, but even the modding scene, last time I looked, wasn't great, with the only notable one being a mod that added a second full faction to the game. The mod looks pretty good, but not worth buying the game for.

>>16016420

>Strategic Zoom was an innovation

Reminder that the first game that had it was a MAC only RTT nearly nobody remembers.

>>16031335

>>16031422

My biggest issues with TA were

>no grid alignment, bases are a complete mess

>constantly have to realign camera, planets have no landmarks, hard to orientate

>units and more importantly unit symbols are hard to differentiate

And in general, nothing in that game has any weight behind it, it feels floaty and low quality. Plus, the few times i played it people never spawned on the same planet and combat was restricted to the orbital fighter fuckery until someone had a doomball of units or some game ender.

>>16034315

>TA

PA

>>16032805

Reminder that Ambrosia's website finally went offline. I think I still have an EV Nova installer backed up.

>>16012008

Yeah, playing against other people in RTS games isn't comfy at all. I do it from time to time, though. The competitive aspect is good in moderation.

greetings fellow cerebrates

>>16029122

>>16030744

In the vanilla SupCom campaign there's a nigger Cybran. Whereas every UEF character is either European or Japanese. UEF is pretty clearly the white man's faction.

>>16041971

its also the most modern faction. modern is shit in theme and function

>>16042021

Better than having to live amongst literal niggers (or purple haired dykes in the Aeon's case).

>>16042030

nice try, those are also a modern thing so very likely prominent in the uef.

>>16042043

Zero evidence of them. The UEF has visual characteristics that are utilitarian but their society is described as basically a fascist utopia. Meanwhile the cybrans have been shown ingame to include niggers in their ranks.

Find me a nigger UEF character. Oh wait, you can't, because there are none.

>>16042048

>based on modern american military

>which is not full of niggers

>and most certainly not operating in favor of the jews

delusional

>>16042053

Where are the niggers then? Why are they all cybran?

>>16042062

probably playing sports and starring in movies alongside white people for lots of shekels, just like today

>>16031365

>>16031335

Shitty and boring game with uninteresting meta. Me and a friend played it quite a bit when it came out. We quickly determined on any match that had more than one planet that rushing orbital was the best choice, and it also frequently was even on single planet matches. The game has no collision on orbital units and they generally seem really unpolished. One of the orbitals is a laser satellite that can zap anything at any location. Build about 5 of those and you can destroy almost anything even if you lose a couple in the process. Build 10 and send a scout first and you can probably just zap their commander, there is no hiding.

TLDR orbital units are poorly thought out as fuck and basically ruin the game.

If a player was to go through the supreme commander campaign and be taught how to play, he'd be taught to play like a turtling idiot. Is this why most people who play multiplayer are so bad? Because they get used to scouting being useless when the game will just spawn units at points that make no sense? And are taught by the campaign that using your ACU for anything other than building power generators is liable to get it blown up by a map trigger?

I am upset at how bad the vanilla supcom campaign is (at least it is on FAF, I'm starting to think they may have messed with it because I refuse to believe it was this bad on release).

>>16045805

Pretty much, but be careful that some mods will affect the campaign without you knowing about it

I remember discovering that having the Sorian AI files would make the early parts of Mission 2 in FA an absolute pain, although on the other hand you really do learn how to use your commander when you're getting pegged by T1/2 land groups every 15 seconds while trying to build a base all with a soft time limit because they start sending T2 air fairly soon.

>>16045805

It's a truism of all RTS games that the player has to unlearn basically everything the campaign teaches before they can be competetive in multi.

>>16045805

Every RTS does that. Even playing against an AI in skirmish tends to teach bad habits. SCFA is just worse in this regard because it has a better economy and building system that works somewhat differently from most RTS and if you play it like a typical RTS you'll be severely handicapped. Examples of this:

In other RTS sometimes you want to save resources for an expensive unit as resource costs are paid up front. In SupCom you use mass as you build; there is no advantage to saving it and if you hit your capacity you start to waste it. Whereas a mass stall in SupCom is generally ok because it means you're using your resources fully.

In the exact opposite case, power. In most RTS running out of resources just means you can't build units. In SCFA running out of power has negative consequences ranging from wasting mass to outright losing all your shields and sensors, which can lead to loss of fortified areas.

SCFA has dynamic build force; you allocate more of it to spend resources and build faster. If a new player doesn't realize this then they could take a very long time constructing things. Dynamic build force isn't totally unheard of; Age of Empires had it for buildings although the cost was still up front. But it's a very important mechanic in SCFA. You want, for example, to surround a T3 air factory with a couple hundred T1 engineers assisting it to make ASFs quickly. Bad players don't do this. FAF actually went as far as to implement a factory mod that largely bypasses this because their userbase is so retarded and couldn't handle factory assistance.

Reclamation is another mechanic. Good players send out engineers to harvest forests and recover battlefield wrecks for faster economic development; bad players do not.

There's other stuff like map control that's more standard to RTS in general but those are the SCFA specific things that make bad players do even worse.

But mech marines don't bleed.

>>16012890

there definitely is bias towards aircraft spam… but only if you have enough time to get them up before you get attacked; aircraft are only good in big numbers

bombers are garbage for patrolling, and T2 bombers, iirc, are practically useless for everything aside from the teeny little yellow laser that they get; those things are practically cannon fodder

I liked supcom 2.

It's not supcom. It's not TA either. Its Command and Conquer: You Don't Need To Deploy This MCV edition, but with a galaxybrain tech mechanic and unit cannons.

It was a steal for two-fiddy back in '10, and was pretty fun to play with >friends.

>>16055052

>fun is bad

>having land and naval battles in the same match is bad

>having distinct roles is bad

>people shouldn't give their units when their ACU is certain to die

>posting meaningless ningnong chink shit images as though it conveys information

Hang yourself, faggot.

>>16055728

That's pretty gay though, why'd they have to call it SupCom if they were going to make a shitty CnC style game?

>>16058138

>Dancing around refuting that setons clutch is a mindless slogging fest that funnels all land down the middle, navy is more or less meaningless because you can't hit the back player, and EVERY match is "buy time until your back player has air domination and bomber snipes the enemy"

>Acting as if setons clutch is the only 4v4 map

>Actually defending being as dishonourable as to abuse unit gifting when you die instead of taking your loss like a man

>The same person who is baseless and spineless as to do that, is calling other people faggots

>>posting meaningless ningnong chink shit images as though it conveys information

>Being so young as to not recognize Shoot The Balls Meandering Towards You With The Same Colored Ball

>Getting this defensive about it

Actually I changed my mind, stay on your containment map.

>>16031214

>Oh no!

>>16055052

Zuma is a good game and your gay

>>16012773

I've yet to see an rts AI that wasn't completely overpowered or unbelievably retarded. I think it's just hard for devs to balance it for whatever reason.

>>16064755

RTS' are really complicated. There are tons of variables, units, damages, speeds, tech trees, resources, placements, etc. Compared to an FPS, programming AI and balancing must be a nightmare. I don't know how they actually do it, can all the elements be reduced to mathematics so as to balance an equation? Or maybe is a manual job that is tweaked through many matches. Regardless, making an RTS AI must be a daunting task even harder than balancing the factions. On top of that, players vary a lot in skill.

>>16064755

The hardest part is often making the AI understand the economy. AI often just bankrupt themselves immediatly. That's why the most common boost AIs get is extra resources. The other hard part is making AIs adapt to player strategy. The vast majority of RTS AI cannot handle a rush tactic, ever. If you give it time to build up, it might put up a decent fight.

Any recommended TA mods? This thread gave me a hankering for some TA.

>>16064755

It's retarded either way, when you see an "overpowered" AI they're just giving it massive buffs to outweigh its retardation.

>>16030082

>victim-blames cybrans

>Unity. No matter the cost.

that is why we should obey barack obama, right?

>>16068825

Anyone playing in Com FAF? You can join in one of these slavic tourneys and win few $.

>>16068825

>Cybrans

>Victims

if the earth empire had not responded in the way they had- if the earth empire had fallen victim to the symbiont's conceited, arrogant, and capricious attack against the father that created them, you would see them for what they are, so they are not victims. They are defeated antagonists.

>that is why we should obey barack obama

**There's never been a single nigger in the UEF (and I never saw one in any of the cutscenes about the earth empire). They're all white, in fact its canon that they're all white, genetically engineered ubermensch. Would unity be that bad to you if the society was culturally, racially, and ideologically homogeneous? Why did the cybran feel the need to secede from this society?

They weren't getting the short straw in any way, they were conceited children throwing a temper tantrum because they saw themselves as demigods and believed they deserved to live above the rest of a unified society, and got the Icarus treatment for it.**

>>16072263

Gog released MF on their store, dude. There's now an easily pirated version of the game that you can run.

>>16072497

wow it really is.

Should have checked sooner last time I read they had license issues.

>>16072187

The loyalty program ultimately proved necessary- you can't argue against that, because the same thing which proves its necessity is that which allows the cybran to exist (the original secession). Given its necessity, you can't argue its immorality. That is wishful thinking.

The secession itself was not on ideological grounds, otherwise it wouldn't have been a secession of the symbionts and the cybran race wouldnt be a race of symbionts. The secession was a purely racial secession. The symbionts felt themselves superior (as the original poster in this discussion stated) and they wanted to form a competing force, the ungrateful act of a child which does not want to return the love of the mother which raised him.

These two statements refute the original moral grounds of the cybran nation, once that statement is accepted, we can move onto understanding how the UEF managed to maintain racial unity over one thousand years, and how it relates to the genetic loyalty engineering you hate so much.

>>16074619

>The loyalty program ultimately proved necessary

Necessary for what? Keeping the corrupt empire in power over those that wanted nothing to do with them? What was so "wrong" about secession? When the citizens are no longer satisfied by their government, they have every right to leave it and form their own. That philosophy is the very basis of why the U.S. exists, in the first place. If it was purely a racial secession, why were several other non-symbiote colonies also applying for secession? They were definitely not motivated by race. And said attempt at secession does not justify massacring the entire colony. Your argument just seems to boil down to the idea that those in power should be kept in power, purely because they already are. That the status quo should be maintained, no matter what, for the sake of the status quo.

>the mother which raised him.

You mean Brackman, the man behind their existence, the man who supported them, the man who worked to free them from enslavement? Or the government that simply exploited them, enslaved them, infringed on their unalienable rights, and killed them when they didn't do exactly what they were told?

>>16074710

Might makes right is a universal law, one that is ingrained into reality and is only ever set aside by a gentleman's agreement of morality. The supcom universe exists in a time where access to annihilation is so trivial that the old gentleman's agreement is no longer valid, and where precedents like the United States are antiquated and no longer relevant.

The corruption of the old earth empire is apparent, but its effects in spite of that corruption are unmistakable. Mankind spread across the galaxy, harnessed control of creation at its most fundamental level, and brought all distances in the universe to zero.

The birth of the Aeon and the Cybran are from the same seed as the corruption and collapse of the old order: selfishness. Burke, in his own arrogance, elected to follow his own orders, his own conscience, and as a result infected himself and the whole of his people with what amounts to an alien mind virus – one that, despite its interest in peace and prosperity, nonetheless brought all the same destruction that it claimed to prevent. The symbionts, too, made demands in their own arrogance, to be distinguished, to be recognized. For sure, their advancement is obvious, just as is the advancement of the Aeon, but in demanding their independence they in turn demonstrate their danger. Factitious, individual interest in spite of the interests of billions and trillions of others is intolerable rot, and the symbionts earned the removal of their free will. Brackman, himself driven by his own arrogance and personal interest – personal morality – enabled yet another disastrous division by restoring the will of the symbionts and establishing the cybran nation. Billions more dead, and another limb cleft from the body.

None of this contrasts greatly against the untold faceless skimming bureaucrats of the old earth empire, they likely demanded their own 'fair share' and had their own 'better idea'. All their interests led to the same places: collapse, division, disorder.

Order, unity, and restoration did come back after the fall. The UEF ensured it one way or another, even if unintentionally, even if catastrophically.

I challenge you this: what are cattle? In a world of a few billion, we rarely blink at engineering, consuming, and exploiting a cornucopia of cattle species. Wheat, cow, dog. We grumble for them, sure, but really we do little. They help us more as food and work.

Further, in a world of a few billion, how many of our own do we exploit? One billion? Two billion? Four or more? To that, we grumble still, but we make efforts, but not the greatest of efforts. They to help us more as labor.

What now when we have a billion worlds of a few billion? Perhaps we can let one or two worlds be put under the needle, or to the flame. If all the other are held all the higher for it, why wouldn't we continue to merely grumble and continue on? They help us better as computers and test tubes, or they are better off dead.

>>16076182

>Might makes right is a universal law

>also it's bad that cybrans broke free from UEF slavery

>>16076191

I never said it was bad, I said it was selfish. The Cybrans broke away because they could, but it was in nobody's best interests – and not even theirs. They exchanged servitude for independence, and found that the offer included extinction. The real joke was that the extinction wasn't just for them, but for everyone.

>>16072263

>>16072497

>>16072767

ah fuck the game did aged really badly.

Any of you niggas have played this? https://www.moddb.com/mods/loud-ai-supreme-commander-forged-alliance/features/what-is-the-loud-ai-project how good is it?

>>16072263

who the fuck drew that arm

>>16076291

Cybrans ultimately isn't the brightest faction of the bunch

Just looks at how they planned to use the Black Sun.

>>16076291

>The Cybrans broke away because they could, but it was in nobody's best interests – and not even theirs.

>I never said it was bad

UEF-tier post

>>16077585

Oh, I never said it was bad. Doesn't mean that I didn't mean that it was bad.

But it's a complex arrangement here. The universe doesn't care one bit about whether the humans or seraphim press their supremacy. But, you know, the whole cybran revolt was objectively a bad decision for mankind and for the cybrans. A thousand year war didn't really help anyone, eh'. Like, anyone at all.

Speaking of which, why do the Aeon and the Cybran fight? Like, what dogs do they have in each others race, anyways?

>>16077763

Cybran are individualistic, they won't convert, so Aeon kill them and they retaliate.

>>16077763

I'm pretty sure I remember Aeons referring to Cybrans as abominations so my guess is that they don't take too kindly to symbionts.

>>16077805

>>16077818

Thus, I feel, is the canary in the Aeon coal mine. The Cybran have no interest in the Aeon or even the UEF, they simply want to be left alone. The Aeon want to convert, knowing full well that conversion means annihilation.

The Way is a philosophy of fanatical pacifism, yet one so convoluted that it explicitly allows indirect slaughter - you cannot kill, but your robot can.

The Cybran offer no threat to the Aeon, and yet, they are somehow a target. The Aeon are simply a means of destroying humanity from within. Two plagues weren't enough.

>>16078236

>The Cybran offer no threat to the Aeon

Seeing as the way is some sort of empathic hivemind thing rather than just a religion, and at that it's not adapted to the human mindset at all and as a result people used it as an excuse to forcefully convert or genocide all nonbelievers

I'm pretty sure Cybran are shown to be hermetic to the Way most likely as a result of being symbionts and that in some way could be perceived as a threat, and since they can't be converted they just get genocided instead.

>knowing full well that conversion means annihilation.

How so? I mean besides the fact that it encourages groupthink based on emotional reaction.

>>yet one so convoluted that it explicitly allows indirect slaughter - you cannot kill, but your robot can.

Nah that's just humanity being humanity, Seraphims have to completely sever connection to the Way to do any of that.

Cybrans don't just want to be left alone though. They want to "liberate" all AI powerful enough to run their individualism program.