Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance

[8BitNinja]

Hello

I have recently become an avid player of Supreme Commander forged alliance

What is your favorite faction, strategy, and/or anything else

My favorite faction is the United Earth Federation, because of the tanky play style, even their units are mostly tanks

[shadow_archmagi]

I'm a big fan of the Cybrans! Their high tech aethscetic is awesome. They're also easily the most "good" faction, given that their only goal is not to be killed by humans and go be cool robots somewhere.

[Triaxx]

I love this game, but I suck at it. A lot.

I do absolutely adore the Cybrans. Speed, stealth, cool amphibious spider units? What more can you possibly want. Gyle on Youtube is a huge proponent of Forged Alliance Forever, which is the community supported server system setup after GPG shut down. They even do a Galactic War.

[Sean Mirrsen]

I mostly like SupCom and SupCom:FA, but honestly I find them lacking in character. I mean specifically compared to their predecessor, Total Annihilation, which is, btw, available on Steam now.

In TA, I have to say I like both sides for different things. ARM and CORE are simultaneously very similar, and different enough that they have significant strategic differences.

In SupCom, I typically play UEF, probably because their general aesthetic appeals to me more, and the whole thing with ridiculous-range artillery feels a little more like TA than the other sides.

[Vinyadan]

I love this game. I don't really have a favoured faction: I previously liked the Cybrans the least, but they grew on me when I used them to beat the campaign in Hard mode (I hadn't played it before and I felt swarmed). Plus, they have seriously nice experimentals.
I think the best part is how the game is complicated, but, at the same time, wants to give a satisfaction through general coolness - the Czar, for example, or the Fatboy firing hell from far away. I can tell it's good, because it's one of those games in which I had fun when I lost, like Conquest: Frontier Wars and AoE II.
When I go to my parents, they have this huge 4K monitor which I use to play. I finally can use the minimap :smallbiggrin:

[Triaxx]

Who needs a mini-map? Zooming out is far more useful. Full screen and with a fast wheel, you can almost instantly jump between any two areas.

[Vinyadan]

It's true, but, to me, the minimap is useful for keeping an eye out to the general situation on the whole map. The one in vanilla SupCom was almost useless because it was too small for the scale of the game, and I couldn't use it in FA before because it would take too much room on the monitor. To me, it felt like being blind in an eye, because, each time I zoomed in a bit to give orders, the rest of the map would completely disappear from my sight.

[Triaxx]

I typically spend the game about 40% zoomed out. That's close enough to let me issue orders to most things and far enough I have a good idea about what's going on.

[NEO|Phyte]

Best part of SupComm is the dual monitor support. Dual viewports! (or three if you use the option to split the main screen in half)

[shadow_archmagi]

Personally, I feel like there are exactly three modes to Supcom:

1. Zoomed out to a medium distance so you can see your whole base and plan it appropriately
2. Zoomed out really far so you can select all your units and tell them to go to the enemy base
3. Zoomed in really close so you can watch the battle

Supcom is not very micro intensive. You win the economics game, make more bots, and then watch the battle at your leisure.

[Ashen Lilies]

While it's not micro intensive in the same way as the Blizzard FPS games is micro intensive, where you're basically controlling individual units in order to kite them around and juggle wounded units in and out of the fight, good micro/APM is still valuable for managing several squadrons at once, fighting on multiple fronts, or controlling precision strikes like ghetto-gunship rushes, commander snipes, and the like.

[Gnoman]

I've played multiplayer a ton, but my games always wind up ending in a bug of some sort - suddenly my dozen giant experimental robots become impossible to select and run around in circles completely invulnerable, firing copiously at nothing while my conventional forces are massacred by the ten giant spiders my giant robots were supposed to be countering. Some were worse than that.

[8BitNinja]

It's been a while since I responded here, so I'll put in my two mass points

First off, people say that the Cybrans are the most good, I believe that the UEF is, because they are trying to unite the people and ensure justice, and the symboyants are voluntary

Then again, I never played the campaign

We can all agree Seraphim is evil, right?

[NEO|Phyte]

Wasn't the reason that Cybrans are trying to break away that the UEF is literally enslaving them with some sort of control code stuff?

[Triaxx]

Yes. Stripping away their personalities and using them as slave labor. Where the Aeon want to annihilate them. And yes, the Seraphim are candy stealing, puppy kickingly evil. They only want to annihilate everyone.

[Cikomyr]

Do all Seraphims do, or only the extremist faction?

[Triaxx]

All Seraphim. The peaceful ones from the first game that gave Aeon their superpowers were a splinter group of alien hippies. The rest think they should be the only sentient race to exist. The military sever themselves from the 'Way' the others follow before attacking other species. It's a little confusing.

[8BitNinja]

Aren't Cybrans robots?

Robots don't have rights

(waiting for the crap storm)

[Ashen Lilies]

Nope. They're cyborgs. Humans with computer augmentation. The Earth Empire created a mindvirus to enslave them, so Dr. Brackman + whoever he could get picked up and ran to form their own independent state. The UEF intro cinematic shows mindslaved symbionts operating their computers.

They're not perfect, since they're more decentralized so they ended up with their fair share of extremist and terrorist factions, but their end goal is 'only' to avoid being enslaved or destroyed, compared to the UEF who want to run/conquer everything, and the Aeon (except for the PC's faction) want to convert everyone and destroy everyone who won't convert.

I think the Aeon canonically win in the first campaign, though, since their ending is the only one that works with Forged Alliance and SupCom 2. UEF campaign ending involves blowing up the Cybran and Aeon homeworlds, and the Cybran ending results in interstellar gate network being shut off by a computer virus. The Aeon campaign only ends with the factions forming a peace treaty, iirc.

[Olinser]

Hello

I have recently become an avid player of Supreme Commander forged alliance

What is your favorite faction, strategy, and/or anything else

My favorite faction is the United Earth Federation, because of the tanky play style, even their units are mostly tanks

I was into it for a bit, then multiple game-breaking exploits failed to be addressed in any kind of a timely manner, way too many people started doing them, and I just quit.

[shadow_archmagi]

Nope. They're cyborgs. Humans with computer augmentation. The Earth Empire created a mindvirus to enslave them, so Dr. Brackman + whoever he could get picked up and ran to form their own independent state. The UEF intro cinematic shows mindslaved symbionts operating their computers.

They're not perfect, since they're more decentralized and there are of course extremists among them, but their end goal is 'only' to avoid being enslaved or destroyed, compared to the UEF who want to run everything, and the Aeon (except for the PC's faction) want to convert everyone and destroy everyone who won't convert.

Aww yeah plus their leader is a genteel brain in a jar what's not to like?

[Ashen Lilies]

Oh yes. Dr. Brackman is the best. Hmm. Oh yes.

[Olinser]

Aww yeah plus their leader is a genteel brain in a jar what's not to like?


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxWd4Rf4H6k

[8BitNinja]

Bes part of the game: If you can't breach enemy defenses, the nuke will

[Triaxx]

Nukes have issues with shields I've noticed. Scathis, Mavor, and GC have less.

[8BitNinja]

Nukes have issues with shields I've noticed. Scathis, Mavor, and GC have less.

That's why my friends made up the game mode nuke rush

It's not a real game mode, still assassination, but you get the idea