After spending the weekend with YC and Pozz out of town, I was forced into playing with partners of somewhat reduced quality.
Each had their own particular issues, beyond the fact that we could not coordinate as well as I can with people whose play styles I know well. In most cases, if I had a good partner, the other team had no chance, and if I had a poor partner, they just had next to no chance. The only exception to this was my first loss in a team game of supreme commander since release, where I found myself fighting a close-quarters game with FkR. he kicked my butt.
Of particular interest however, was the poor grasp of concrete tactics. Even the good players had a very linear approach to the problem of defeating the enemy. Un4Seen exemplified this. His approach was pure speed, with total focus on overwhelming ground forces to the exclusion of every other consideration.
He was on my team at the time, and the other side was not quite up to the task, so of course it succeeded. However even so he left himself dangerously exposed, and as a consequence of his pattern of attack required me to move forces in support when I was not ready to do so. It never really posed a problem but only because we had so much capacity to spare.
The crux of the issue is the idea that penetrating the front is all that is necessary to gain ground. I have commented before on the need for defensive depth in any situation. The benefits of having ground between you and the enemy are enormous, however simply depriving them of ground is not the be-all and end-all of supcom tactics, as one team discovered when they successfully penned myself and YC in on Isis. It was a desperate situation, no question, but it is not the same as victory - as they discovered when their commanders exploded.
The key failure exhibited by Un4Seen and other linear strike players is overextension, running units forward subsequent to a successful breakthrough in an attempt to reach an area where damage can be inflicted before the enemy constructs sufficient units to resume the defensive.
Even against a player who places all their units at the front, this is a risky proposition - as you reduce the distance to the enemy construction yards, so you reduce their supply lines and increase yours. Unless you have a significant force, you have no chance of inflicting any telling damage.
Things get worse however in the event that the enemy maintains a strategic reserve. Where possible, I maintain a force of 25-30% of my operating units "close to home". Often this force comprises of older units since competitiveness at the front is of paramount importance. However the benefits of maintaining this force are significant. It is much harder to lose due to an "oops". The force-magnification of shorter supply lines means the reserve is much more effective than its relatively small size might suggest in an engagement.
More importantly in the event of over-extension by your opponent, the strategic reserve can retake ground that would have otherwise been lost to a more properly cautious enemy. Units running full tilt across difficult ground tend to string out. This, combined with shorter supply lines allows the reserve to chew through the incoming units at significantly greater ratios than 1:1. Bringing the reserve into formation to maximise its fire, and moving it steadily over the lost ground with new units joining in can often retrieve much of the lost ground at significant cost to the opponent.
Even better, in many circumstances, the ground is now just as useful as it was before. The strategic reserve becomes the blocking or assault force, a new reserve is built up, and the game continues with no real advantage to the opponent.
It is these reasons why I do not make my "dead ground" valuable. I rarely build forward bases, and I almost never move my commander forward. While the benefits of both these concepts are obvious and have their place, they have the effect of turning ground which can be sacrificed for advantage, into ground that must be held or risk losing critical assets. It concretes your force into place, and makes it less agile in the face of enemy threats.
