Alternatives to FAF

[Kamui]

Are there any alternative communities/open source like FAF out there for competetive play? Me and many others dont really like the FAF balance nor some of the overpowered mods but really want to play competetive and push the limit of the skill.

[banthor]

No

[SchnitzelTruck]

So far the only people I've found who dislike FAF balance are those who rode on the backs of a few absurd vanilla units and bugs.

[Kamui]

Balancing OP units and bugs is always appreciated. Changing the whole gameplay and dumbing it down isn't.

[PhilipJFry]

guess you'll have to push the limits of your skill on steam then
or you fork the faf server/client project and host your own community with not dumbed down gameplay

[Kamui]

That will do it then, the last part got my attention and is something i will look into. It's sad since casual gameplay and gaming always kill good competetive games.

[Bolt]

Seriously don't try fixing Supreme Commander. It's too broken to mod it to work. The game has some serious issues that can't be fixed (water surface units' visibility / targeting (both sides: attacker and attacked); air units outside of map borders being safe from detection and enemy defenses unless projectiles are already on the way; individual units randomly get stuck sometimes; units bumping into other units to the point of pushing them outside a shield area; units not checking line of fire properly which sometimes makes them attack the terrain constantly while trying to hit a target, utterly failing; ...), the AI basically doesn't exist and needs a setup for everything because it does nothing without being scripted to, the UI only has 3 good useful features: range indicators,multiple orders and construction patterns for multiple structures at one while it's worse at everything else than any other strategy game.

The game also disappoints as "Supreme Commander": Neither are the ACUs cool mechs but instead slow, vulnerable and clunky as hell - no matter their upgrades they are always slow moving, slow turning, have bad detection ranges, bad mobility and bad weapons - the overcharge doesn't save that poor unit design beyond T2, nor can the "Supreme Commander" assign specific orders for specific actions - instead a single unit action can mean multiple totally different things, a change of the aggression stance on units (like T3 air units...) or any unit's or weapon's target priorities and active state isn't possible.

Most mods just throw in a bunch of units for more interesting gameplay, fix some bugs or visually enhance the game. None tries to make sure all units in the game stay relevant, even in late game, or any cool gameplay can actually happen, as in other strategy games, where units actually have some strengths and weaknesses or interesting active and/or passive abilities or at least research options to stay relevant. Here units just have a damage value on their weapon so that what matters is range, damage and rate of fire, as there's no specialization what certain unit types are good or bad against. I haven't found a single mod that made it possible for upgraded factories to produce lower tech units in greater bunches as the faster concept doesn't work well with the leave-the-construction-pad delay for land units. I believe only the LOUD mod fixes the population flaw, so that finally an experimental costs more on the population cap than any unit that isn't an experimental; don't know if the population price on T1 vs T2 and T3 is balanced too.

Now I don't know what you're trying to design but with the high amount of issues the game suffers from it'll come with broken, unfixable parts because that's how the game is. Imo the game would be playable with few huge units, faster base building and some actually interesing unit-based gameplay opposed to resource- & construction-focussed gameplay.

[SchnitzelTruck]

Sounds like you simply dont like supcom or games of similar styles. You want another rock paper scissors RTS. Let supcom be supcom, the fact you prefer something else doesnt mean this game is "beyond fixing".

[Kamui]

The game is fine, what isn't is casuals ruining good competetive games because it's "too hard" and they have to make it more simple and dumbed down. It's not only Supcom.

[Angel]

Hollow, you sound like u hate Supcom, and Fractal Warrior. There many ways to play FAF, how is the balance terrible. I, myself dont like the balance, but its focused in a PvP and Competitive way. Indeed its not for casual play but FAF is stated as a PvP - Competitive Community Client for SFCA.

Anyway, Hollow, Lemme just destory every point u attempted to make. First, Everything u pointed out has been fixed or attempted fix. There are many AI out there, FAF or LOUD. That are extremely good. FAF Fixed UI Lag so many years ago, its not even funny. No, ACUs are command units not front line fighting units. Upgrades make him good at different things. Upgrades aint suppose to make him Experimental Level. The closest commander, that gets to that level is the Cloak Laser Cybran Com or Full Seraphim Rambo Com. They are suppose to be slow, and bad late game. The lore even points that out. Mods do a lot of things and dont just throw in units. Units do have strength and weaknesses....

Units like Illsavohs which are the best T2 Land Combat Unit out of all the other T2 Land Combat Units. Units have tons of specialization like the Aeon T3 Torp Bomber and etc. Nothing about this supcom is unfixable. This entire game is fixable if we have the source code... Even as we dont have the source code. A CRAP TON OF ISSUES HAVE BEEN FIXED COMPLETELY.

[Bolt]

Supreme Commander is one of the games I want to like but then things like stated happen.
All of the issues I stated are things that still happen within FAF despite all the fixing that has already been done by their team.

To be clear on the unit strengths and weaknesses: I want unit weapons to take into consideration what armor- & shield-type they hit. Currently that's mostly not the case so most unit weapons are equally usefull vs everything. Most units also only have a single type of weapon and *maybe* 1 active or passive ability. Damn disappointing for a future warfare game. So most units have no strategic profile other than that their weapon(s), production speed and price define.

The ACU:
The Cybran ACU is already the one that can operate at an experimental's level by combining cloaking, an experimental laser and and overcharge within a single unit.
That aside all ACUs feel slow, clunky and only functional when it comes to construction: slow movement and turn rates (unit and turret). There are no servo upgrades that improve any of that somehow. Later on they also lack any T3-worthy mobility upgrades, like a jetpack or a short range emergency teleport, that costs a lot of energy, like the overcharge, but also has some cooldown. Also all ACUs should have a T1 radar installed at least, with the same range as covered as a T1 scout's, because it's a commanding unit and thus should have access to radar intel. The thing I'm currently seeing issues with isn't the unit's combat value but how damn clunky it is and how it doesn't feel like a functional unit for it's role. For example the initial resource production should also be enough to support at least a tiny unit production purely on it's own as it's the first field unit, meant to construct all of the others and that resource production the ACU has in it's unupgraded state is a joke.

[SchnitzelTruck]

Acu is supposed to be a complete joke in its stock state. Imagine how ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ games would be if they werent. PvP on smaller maps already has lots of ACU skirmishing, if they were stronger it would be absurd. If you want them stronger in endgame just get the ACU mod.

Honestly it seems like you would prefer supcom to be a starcraft/C&C clone

[Jack_Jack]

Forged Alliance has been heavily tweaked, fixed and balanced.
But I have my criticisms regarding the FAF, I played a lot with Seraphins and what made me most angry was:
Scout T1 cannot use "GG" as weapon does not shoot down only 30 ° angle of movement. So Seraphins has no option to use Gunship T1, to make worse the only Gunship T1 of the game is Cybrans, more logical would be this were the seraphins, several mods made Gunship T1 but FAF never linked this error.
Destroier T2 has a laser weapon that does not reach slightly elevated structures in the coastal area of ​​most naval maps, something could be corrected but the FAF never cared about it, they do not know how bad it is to play with naval seraphins.
Another annoying thing about balancing, often some faction gets super OP, last year was the Aeons, then they were weakened and we currently have Cybrans as the best faction, most players prefer to go cybran ...
Really what FAF needs better faction diversity. You have to see not only balance, but diversification and that we see less and less.
I would really like someone to mess with SupCom 2, mod 'Revamp' was abandoned, someone should continue, was doing great, already had T1, T2, T3 and T4, adjacency bonus, new commander designer was being made and photos were amazing, suddenly everything was abandoned, sad that ...

[Kamui]

Azraeel: Auto overcharge, letting the game target priority units for you, removing other micro positiblities. All these things are micro, micro seperates good players from bad players. Sure the game isnt about 100% micro all the time, but it's a part of the game, removing skill rewarding actions removes the competetive aspect of it. So i really dont agree that they balance it to be more competetive. FAF is no more than a MOD of the game.

[Max1066]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Fractal Warrior:

The game is fine, what isn't is casuals ruining good competetive games because it's "too hard" and they have to make it more simple and dumbed down. It's not only Supcom.

lmao, what a whiny manchild

[Bolt]

When it comes to strategy games where you actually have large armies: forcing more micro-management isn't really what you want to do because you'll end up with more units than you can control. If the game is then designed in such a way that units that aren't supervised and instructed automatically act as stupid and useless as possibe it's more like a facepalm simulator than a strategy game.

If you enjoy extensive micro and some macro rather play Dota / LoL and the likes.

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In my opinion a strategy game should bring a good amount of unit types and game mechanics for an interesting strategy mix but Supreme Commander does the opposite, as most units become obsolete later on:
-T2 & T3 radars that can't just only detect units of their own tech level but every unit; Sneaking in vs such with T1 units ? Not possible.
-Population cost: any T1 unit costs equally as much population as an experimental of choice; total nonsense
-Factory drive out time: not an issue for aircraft so T1 bomber spam is a thing; an issue for ground units, yet nothing to counter this has been implemented, not even bulk-production of lower tech units (the lower the more)
Also the game plays very little with the terrain as it's only relevant for build space, ground movement and line of fire and otherwise totally obsolete from any tactical point of view.


On the other hand things that are there, like the adjacency bonus, unit experience and unit upgrades aren't fleshed out enough.
Adjacency doesn't work on assisting units (with no fix / workaround to that) and using low tech structures for an adjacency bonus isn't working well on high tech factories because the low tech structures can't be upgraded with improved transfer modules for a better adjacency bonus (and becoming more explosive along with that). Also only resource production structures matter for adjacency, not the storage units.
Unit experience only awards generic bonus stats instead of something that makes the unit more effective or adapt better. I'd love to get some extra benefits and installable upgrade choices on units that each have their own experience level that needs to be unlocked to become available, with some actually relevant and interesting choices per experience level (or at least with level 1 / 3 / 5).