A little help?

[AngryAsOatmeal]

I deleted this game a while ago for the reason that I didn't understand the rescources, I loved how the units would line up and a the battles but the resources are confusing. I can never get enough of the mass stuff unless I build a lot of fabricators witch can waste a little time and when I don't have rescources it seems like I can stilll build stuff and I do not understand :(

[shawnhon10]

Have you tried upgrading your mass extractors? Tech 3 mass extractors yield a MUCH larger amount of mass than tech 1 extractors. You can also try building mass storages in the 4 spaces around any extractor. The mass storages will increase the amount of mass produced by that extractor when built in the spaces next to the extractor. In order to have a high mass income, you either have to build many extractors or have multiple tech 3 fabricators. Make sure to build the fabricators near power generators to reduce their power requirements.

[AngryAsOatmeal]

Ok I'll try that thank you!

[mcnoople]

Reclaim, Reclaim, Reclaim. Games are often won and lost over who gets more reclaim. As I recall the reclaim mass value of every unit is approximately 70%. So if a unit cost 1000 mass to build that means the wreckage is worth 700 mass. When you shoot down planes over your base that is free mass just waiting to fuel your own war machine.

[one site.]

any luck ??

[Srednuas]

The reason you could still build stuff is a fairly simple; the displayed income eg. -50 is the total production vs attempted use per second, so say your extracting 50 but want to use 100 it'll average to -50. This just slows the production of units as it must wait 2 seconds to have the appropriate levels of mass, so you can recover from fairly large deficits, but remember that you could be building at a fraction the rate your opponent is.

[AngryAsOatmeal]

I got it! I just opened my resource menus and watched what was happening and canceled the unnessasary stuff and when I upgraded my mass reactors I almost had to much mass THANK YOU PEOPLE!

[one site.]

now go and kill some ai in skirmish

[Sheppy]

maybe you also wanna have a look here:
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWe0mYs3ObwL36zemynMh5G4b-3s5vol0
it's a playlist from some FA players expaining all kinds of stuff

[Yosemite Sam]

ok tip for you
upgrading a t2 mass to t3 cost 3500 mass building a t3 mass from crach cost the same 3500 mass hold of goign from t2 to t3 to got about 2400 mass reclame the t2 mass and get the 800 mass back then buld the t3 mex saving you wast the 800 mass

[CaipirinhaPilot]

SupCom and FA is the most complex RTS in the world, everything else pales compared to it. Just mastering the resources is challenging, you can't do it perfect, even after years. The developers have created an incredible realistic game, where you spend resources as you receive them, not like in other RTSes upfront and in chunks. There is also no tech tree, which I love. RTSes have followed the typical scheme for 20 years now, SupCom broke that.
Unfortunately, being the most difficult RTS to master resources, there are no tutorials worth a damn built in, nobody shows you how it is done. No game would need it/deserve it more, and no game has less of it. Just a little advanced tutorials would have made a ton of difference for so many players that just got frustrated and kept playing.
A thing that tells you: you are producing 30 mass, you are at tech level 1 / 2, you are producing a fat boy experimental: you are shooting yourself in the foot, wait till you are producing 80 or more mass, and THEN start doing that.
Or: if the resources are yellow or red and flashing, you are using way more than you are producing and nothing will more or get done.

Upgrading the mass extractors is kind of unintuitive, nobody tells you really that you can/should do it, that it is essential. Upgrading from T1 to T2 is ok, but usually only do one and assist them with your engineers to speed up. Once you have all of them T2, you can go to T3, but mind you, the T3 upgrade is going to hurt, it takes AGES to complete, yet you have to do it, in order to have much more mass later, it is an investment into the future (or lets say your continued existence, since other players will be doing it for sure, and somebody producing 150 and you half of that will beat you no matter what you do)

One super cool thing that SupCom can do that most other RTSes cannot is assist: you can use as many engineers to assist building something as you want, it will speed up more and more.

Another tip: if your SupCom is damaged, DO NOT FIX IT with engineers, it will use up so much energy that it will collapse all your shields. The problem is that if you assign 10 engineers to assist your SupCom, they will fix him if he gets damaged and you have to stop them doing that.

Anyway, I love SupCom, there is no RTS out there in scale and proportion like it, everything else seems tiny and in no other RTS that I have seen can you actually play offense / defense like in real war. In most other RTSes there are no defensives, no shields or point defenses worth a damn, they are all useless, you can only attack, the defensive playing is non-existent. In real war, defensive play can actually be very powerful, and you will need a multiple in units to defeat a proper implemented defensive position.