Supreme Commander - Base building

SideWinder

SideWinder

SideWinder

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Hey,

Bit of a random thread. I'm still learning SC and i can't play online at the moment so i'm playing the map with 4 islands just to get used to the units and gameplay.

Now i tend to build 1 Land, lots of power plants and a few T1 Engs and then promptly upgrade to a T3 Land as fast as possible before building a lot of T3 Engs...i skip the Naval AND Air on this map but i'm sure if i was playing online i'd need to change slightly. I have played one other map where there isn't any water and i have stuck to basically the same routine except building T2 artillery a lot quicker and normally end up with 15 or so.

Either way, i'm curious to know what everyone's bases look like? How much power/mass you have? Number of units on this map and more importantly other maps?

Edit: Adjacency bonuses - bit confused... :o

CAN PEOPLE POST SCREENSHOTS PLEASE :)
 
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tray playing a land map or downloading the jaws AI as the default AI is terrible on water.

Adjacency bonus means that if you have power plants next to a factor/connected by that little line, then it uses less energy, If you put storage next to mass/energy producers they produce more.
 
Tefal said:
Adjacency bonus means that if you have power plants next to a factor/connected by that little line, then it uses less energy, If you put storage next to mass/energy producers they produce more.
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Oh i knew about those...is that it though? Also with Mass Fabricators, do they HAVE to be placed in a certain place? Same with Mass Storage and Energy Storage?
 
I normally build mass fab's adjacent to a T3 power generator, to reduce the power demand. Just to make sure you know, its energy storage that helps power generators, not mass storage.
 
SideWinder said:
Oh i knew about those...is that it though? Also with Mass Fabricators, do they HAVE to be placed in a certain place? Same with Mass Storage and Energy Storage?
Click to expand...

nope you can place them anywhere, just its best to place them net to at least on t3 pg (if its a t3 fab)
 
Surrounding a T3 mass fab with mass storage gives you a 50% boost in production (don't bother with the corners, they won't link up).
 
sr4470 said:
Surrounding a T3 mass fab with mass storage gives you a 50% boost in production (don't bother with the corners, they won't link up).
Click to expand...

indeed, adjacency bonuses really help, i just fill the corners with T3 AA battery, you can never have too much AA :)
 
Yeah, the mass storage round mass extractors and mass fabs gives you a huge amount of extra mass, as said above 50%. On a map like Setuns Clutch with half the mass points you can have an income of over 800 mass without even building mass fabs. With that income and enough engineers you can build, for example, the Aeon collossus in about a minute.

I rarely use T2 artilery, guess you must be playing a small map.

Another thing, you want to build lots of T1 engineers and get them out claiming the mass points as early as possible, and get your first few mass extractors upgraded as early as you can since your economy is very sluggish until you start getting T2s.

I don't play ranked though, just against mates, my brother or AI. I can beat supreme AI regularly but I'm sure I'd get wasted in ranked games. I hear ranked games rarely reach experimentals - that's not the sort of games I want to play TBH.
 
Or play as Aeon and get their experimental resource gen ;)

As tron said, if you want to learn the best way, watch replays. Some people spend way too much time working out to the second what has to be built, and where. I just play how I see fit.

Build order is usually 3 mass extractors, 3 T1 power, T1 ground factory, the 4th extractor and gen. 3 or 4 T1 engineers, surrounding the factory with power plants, and the extractors with mass storage, as well as some small base defences. Get to T2 ASAP, one engineer, then up to T3. T2 engi builds a T2 power, since you wouldn't have the power to get a T3 one otherwise, while everyone does whatever, start upgrading the commander with the engineering arm upgrades so he can build bigger things. Get to T3 and get a T3 power, and mass fab if needed.

From there, it depends who you play as. I prefer UEF, so I surround my base with AA (as T1&2 AA are both rubbish), the T3 defence, T2 artillery and shield gens. A couple of fatboys also make a great defence thanks to the massive range.
 
Is this Forged Alliance or Vanilla?

Either way their is a couple of things you MUST learn in order to learn 'Win' in Supreme Commander!
(I will call Supreme Commander FA because that is what I play and it represents the true up to date representation of SupCom)

  • So the first and most important is that FA is NOT Sim City because FA is not about building your base up to be the ultimate design in symmetry.
  • When your under heavy attack it helps to be able to throw a few shields up in the right places or if you get to late T3 then to know where to put shields and to have placed structures so as to minimise damage, but I would trade a shield for a few tanks any day.

  • which brings me to the third point that units are more important than buildings and by this I mean if you have spent the first 8 mins working only on your economy then you are about to die.

  • Teching up is NOT something you should do without CAREFUL consideration and should only be done when you NEED something more specialised in that Tier and you cannot obtain the firepower or say range to do it in your present tier. Don't tech up unless you know what you need or are in a position of control
So to start off I would suggest you stick with Tier 1 (T1).
T1 is where most games end and is certainly where most of the major action is!

a lot of people see the videos and have played and been brought up on C&C style RTS and so they think that the mammoth tank rush is where its at and so they try to make this uber adjacency bonus structure where everything gains significant reductions from one another and then they tech up ASAP.
but I am telling you from bitter experience that this is made of fail!

The ONLY thing I use for adjacency is mass storage around mass extractors at T2 and T1 power around radar and air factories.
I may put up a shield next to a PGen, but this is only for its protection and not for the bonus.
Infact throw adjacency out the window
The ways I personally found to win in FA were to relearn all that I knew and to drop all that I thought I knew. (sounds stupid, but playing a real RTS like supcom requires new skills from the ground level)

  • Don't expect to win by base building, but Know that you HAVE TO win by walking your units on mass up to the enemy ACU and blowing him away!
  • Don't be defensive because defence is fail, be offensive as a means of defence and ALWAYS take an opportunity to slow the enemy economy down with the exception of when you are killing his ACU
  • You ACU in your base has the power of 4 T1 engineers, but on the front line it has the power of 20 T1 tanks....so go figure!

As I say in all these threads.
  • Read the Supcom GPG.Net forums
  • Read the gamereplay forums
  • Watch replays
  • oh and take a look at the unit stats at supcomDB

You will not believe how much you will learn from doing so and your skill will more than quadruple in doing so (no word of a lie!)
 
yeah but the thing is t1 rushing is just boring, most people don't give a flaying **** about being top of the ranking and just want nice epic battles like in the advertising videos we want Collosusses and spider bots fighting it out while cybran destroyers merge epically from the see and fighters and gun ships fight over head.


Not 20 minutes then little tank number 149 finally ends it.
 
If you're a good player, you'll be at T2 about 6-7 minutes in, and still have a decent force\engineers scattered around building extractors. I got wiped out against a top 10 guy in 10 minutes using several T2 tanks\mobile missile launchers.
 
Tefal said:
yeah but the thing is t1 rushing is just boring, most people don't give a flaying **** about being top of the ranking and just want nice epic battles like in the advertising videos we want Collosusses and spider bots fighting it out while cybran destroyers merge epically from the see and fighters and gun ships fight over head.


Not 20 minutes then little tank number 149 finally ends it.
Click to expand...

thats exactly how i like to play SC FA
 
Lobbing everything I've got at the enemy ACU is generally how I play, particularly a lot of air power and just bomb the bejeezus out of it, having first turtled for quite a while and used a lot of artillery on their AA. Unfortunately this doesn't work half the time as some inconsiderate so and so rushes me at the very beginning.
 
If you get a balanced 3v3/4v4 custom game you are most likely going to see exp weapons in the field after about 20minuites easily. Tactical missles will be going everywhere, skys will be filled with planes and just general carnage on the ground without fail. Nukes are often turned off but they do put a nice end game twist on things.
 
I only play against the AI - on-line is too serious for me, and I haven't got the time or inclination to "master" the game. Recently my tactic is to build a couple of T1 bombers (I nearly always play as UEF) as fast as I can and fly them over to the enemy starting base. The AI never seems to build AA early on, so the bombers fly around for ages completely stalling his initial economy building. By the time he does anything about the bombers I'm usually ready to take him down. T1 bombers are far too fast/cheap to build now compared to early versions of the game - you can just spam the AI to death with them :(
 
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