Common supcom sayings and translations

"My partner sucked (and that's why we lost)"

Translation: If one of the top 5 players had been my partner, I would have probably still been alive when he finished pasting you to the floor

"(favorite race choice of the top seeds at the time) is so overpowered"

Transation: I have no idea how to play to a races strengths. I presume that because a bunch of people who practice every single moment of their waking lives, and who micro just about everything, find an advantage in a particular race, that this race must therefore provide me with some compelling advantage.

"I am a decent player"

Translation: I have been playing for a week! I can beat the AI!

"I am a great player"

Translation: I have been playing for two weeks! I sometimes win team games!

"Lame t1 rusher!"

Translation: I have no idea how to play

"That's such a lame tactic"

Translation: please let me win...please?

"My partner sucked (and that's why we lost) (2)"

Translation: I have no idea how to play in a team, and believe that my partner should look after himself. The fact that there was no resistence to me claiming a useless piece of ground clearly implies that I was the better player.

"Rematch!"

Translation: Beat me again!

Phi vs Sicarius

A 1v1 ranked game on Sentry Point (3 player)

Final result, Victory for me at 27 minutes.

The game was plagued with a fairly high but consistent lag, so it seemed to take much longer than it did, giving me a constant feeling of being "behind", in the sense that my economy and tech didn't feel as advanced as they should be for any given moment.

General Strategy

I opted for a ground-centric approach. I also determined right from the start that I wanted to take the 3rd starting point if I could. Initially I conceived of it as a resource base, however it became the linchpin of my final assault late game.

Sicarius had a more balanced approach, with both ground and air, and managed to maintain an economy that matched mine despite the lack of the 3rd starting place. Most interestingly this seemed to be achieved by the production of a small number of t1 mass fabs as a substitute for the extraction points he couldn't reach. Since I never upgraded most of mine past t1 it worked fine.

My tactics

My primary failure was my very light-handed approach to anti-air. I came too close several times to having insufficient AA to deal with what was eventually a t2 gunship threat, although never in large numbers.

I did have particular success in my use of terrain however, with a significant part of the game spent south of my base in a forward position that had a number of compelling qualities.

The first, and major one was that it was the main choke between the two bases. While there was a possibility of a strike via the western entrance forces could be easily diverted.

Other benefits were that it was in easy range for solid T1 radar coverage, the civilian outpost provided additional fire over part of the access way, and a unique twist in the terrain meant that I could place artillery units "below" the hill, allowing them to fire without receiving fire.

My dual-sided approach paid off, with both bases finally acting in concert to deliver a pincer on his only base. Sicarius showed a limited ability to identify weak points and continued to hammer on my strongest fortification for the majority of the game.

Sicarius

Of interest was his build order (1-2-1 Land which I haven't seen before), and his light but appropriate use of mass fabs to keep his economy even (or in some cases, ahead).

His most significant practical issue was that he failed to deploy any kind of radar. While his visual intel was superior to mine, the lack of radar put his units at a serious firing disadvantage and often caused him to make poor judgements about my range.

At a more strategic level, he simply failed to adapt to the position I created. The forward position was not close enough to provide a significant threat (with the exception of artillery), and my (numerous) weak points went utterly unexploited until late in the game, at which point it was too late.

He also had a tendency to send him small, unformed batches of units (possibly through a lack of familiarity with the formation commands) where a larger, more disciplined force with radar might have been sufficient to push me off my "hill".

Overall

The game was remarkably fast paced for all the lag, constant attacks meant that construction at the "front" was slow and units needed replacement regularly. The need to keep Sicarius focused on the front position and the imaginary "threat" it represented meant I had to push forces forward several times into uncomfortable positions to force him to react.

Watching the replay, it was clear from reasonably early on that I was going to win, but it certainly didn't feel like it until near the end.

Replay

Unlikely tactics that worked

In what is likely to be some kind of rare series, "Unlikely tactics that actually worked"

This is my opponents base, from his view.



This is my view.



Needless to say, things went poorly for him from this point on.

Replay

More supcom notes

Hills and Artillery

Hills are both useful and a pain with regard to artillery. They're useful, because you can place important buildings or units in the lee of large hills to avoid long range artillery. They're a pain because if you're the one with artillery, you need to make sure you build away from hills you need to fire over, and of course your opponent can build in the lee.

This becomes particularly interesting in the desert 2v2 map, where tech2 artillery is of sufficient range to target between choke points, but insufficient to get over most of the hills. One possible tactic to deal with someone who is pinning down the chokes in this fashion is to build a tech2 tac nuke in the lee of the hill nearest. The tac nuke is a rocket so it doesn't have the hill problem and you may be able, with sufficient cunning, to temporarily push back an artillery crawl before they build tac defense (by which time hopefully you have done an artillery crawl of your own to wall them off).

Sacrificial Dual Role

A slightly more extreme version of the Dual Role strategy outlined below, after the offensive player has constructed enough base to produce engineers, the commander is slaved via assist to the econ players commander, providing an immediate and enormous construction bonus which should allow the econ player to tech both factories and extractors at high speed.

2v2 blockade buster

It appears, that in a 2v2 assassination game, the players lose only when both commanders are dead, they don't lose independently per commander. This needs to be confirmed. If it is the case, a Combomb returns as a blockade buster strategy, or as support for a Heavy Drop. It also permits the option of upgrading one commander into a mobile tac launcher or equivalent assault support without risking the entire game.

Forward tac station

A formalism of the anti-artillery strategy outlined above, the forward tac station, placed in the lee of the middle hill on the desert map, would (likely) provide reasonably heavy fire to both the chokes north and south, as well as the forward part of the enemy base choke. Equiped with tac nukes, one anti-tac plus t2 anti-air and radar, the tac station would be untouchable by anything short of overwhelming force or a very carefully executed drop.

It would be very effective in preventing an artillery crawl, as well as preventing staging of enemy units forward of the choke, causing longer travel times and reducing the enemies ability to perform ground assaults with the element of surprise. It can later be upgraded with point defense, t3 AA and omni as required.

Phi + Pozz vs Wobbler + Deigobah

Strategic analysis

Wobbler and Deigobah adopted a turted strategy right from the start. Given a review of the replay, it is clear that they both a) had planned to do so and b) had practiced and executed this strategy previously. The map choice was one of the few that permits a turtle to this degree.

Phi and Pozz failed strategically on a number of counts, most significantly on a failure to have a strategy determined initially, and subsequently failing to recognise the lack and adopt one.

We also failed to correctly determine the enemy strategy, while we did recognise the symptoms of a turtle, previous executions of a turtle by the same player (Wobbler) in a game vs Phi and Pozz resulted in abysmal failure for Wobbler, partially due to his partner failing, an partly due to very poor air coverage (remedied this time).

Tactical notes

The opponent deployed air immediately, as part of the initial build order, with all other attention focused on economy. Wobbler was either detailed, or volunteered to build the choke entry point defense but in comparison to Phi and Pozz a remarkably small percentage of absolute resource was focused on weaponry.

A low-level artillery crawl with supporting units was utilised to ensure no static offensive units were brought within useful range of the choke. A growing horde of intercepters backed by t2 anti-air walls provided serious air-assault deterant.

A relatively early and comprehensive focus on the construction of a t3 artillery ensured the traditional seige breaker was ineffective, Phi's t3 artillery was destroyed at 60% complete.

The end game was achieved by the use of heavy air cover for a sacred bot and a break-through swarm of t3 seige.

Counters and options

Given the situation, the number of available counters were nearly limitless, the most serious problem was the failure to choose one and go for it. That said, some major options seem attractive:

Option 1: Heavy drop

While the interceptor swarms were intimidating, during the early game their effectiveness was actually quite limited. A light dropship almost made it into Wobblers base, if it had had any air support at all it would have.

A focused version of this approach would be to load up 3-4 light drops with sufficient land weaponry, plus a couple of engineers, assisted by as many interceptors as possible. A scout or two deployed forward to distract the covering air would allow the drop to happen almost without contest. Once deployed, the land force could engage production or economy while engineers attempted to build production capacity inside the base, and further drops via ferry could be maintained to increase pressure.

The most likely end-scenario of such an assault would be a commander suicide in an attempt to stomp on the infiltration, but close placement of units and production to the enemy base would result in the destruction of their base as well.

Option 2: Dual role

Probably the best as an early choice, and one we have often previously adopted. One partner takes responsibility for early engagement and defense, with a focus on keeping the enemy off balance rather than inflicting damage. The other partner is tasked with getting to, and staying on top of the economy leaderboard. The idea is that if someone is going to be first to build anything advanced, it will be you rather than them.

It is likely that a small degree of experiment with this approach could lead to a drastically faster build than either of a more balanced pair - a greater number of extraction points could be dedicated to the econ player, and the offensive player could dedicate some build capacity to speed up construction by using assist, a favor that could be returned later in the game as the offensive players capability to attack reaches minimum.

Summary

It will be necessary from now on to enter games with a clear strategy in mind. Load time should be taken to decide on one to utilise, and then resource should be dedicated as fast as possible to its execution, with scouting to determine if the enemy actions are likely to hit a strategic weakspot. More games will be required to determine what precise weakspots Dual Role or Heavy Drop may have.

New Supcom strategies

Today I learned (the hard way) the following two supreme commander strategies:

Tech 1 bomber overload

Requires: lots of tech1 factories, decent economy, an enemy who is reasonably far away from you and is significantly less air focused.

Counter: large numbers of tech1 anti-air is only marginally successful, sweeps of bombers will quickly demolish static defenses. Interceptors are a risky counter, anyone building this many bombers will have more than enough margin to add in piles of interceptors as well. Most effective counter appears to be to race for tech 2 immediately and deploy 4-8 tech2 flak cannons, which will demolish both the bombers and any likely subsequent air strike short of masses of t2 gunships, or t3.

Implications: Air-only is a risky strategy for all except UEF, no air unit short of the t3 broadsword is actually capable of withstanding significant fire, and only the broadsword and strat bomber are capable of delivering serious damage.

Conclusion: Unless you are nearly certain that the enemy is going to sit at tech1 for a while (history of, say, frigate rush), or you're UEF and plan to head in a reasonably straight line for broadswords, this strategy is unlikely to work if they are paying any attention. On the other hand, if you manage to keep all their scouts off, or it's a random-position ffa, it might work.


Tech1 stand-off artillery assault

Probably works best (only?) with Cybran. This is a modification of the classic mantis rush for dealing with a player who has successfully deployed point-defense diamonds (pd surrounded by walls) in suficient density to make a straight mantis assault uneconomic.

Requires: Same as mantis rush, needs an opponent who can be contained to ensure sufficient economy superiority to defend artillery, relatively small map with direct land access to opponent.

Counter: Uncertain. It is not possible to deploy sufficient numbers prior to a possible tech2 upgrade by the victim. A properly balanced t2/t1 mixed assault (say, shields + t2 heavy tanks + whatever t1 you can get) may be sufficient to break the force defending the artillery. Air superiority (bomber rush) or t2 point defense + radar may supply sufficient ranged assault to keep the artillery out of effective range.

Implications: The main implication is that the evolution of this tactic renders the previously solid pd diamond strategy ineffective as a sole method of preventing mantis rush. A rapid escalation to tech2 is the logical progression from the initiation of a diamond defense, along with a heavy focus on increasing exractor tech levels to ensure relative economic parity.

Execution: Rapid expansion with numerous land factories, it is imperative that a large economy advantage be gained and maintained, failure to do so will result in a rapid reduction in the effectiveness of assaults, and eventual out-teching by opponent.

Conclusion: Most effective for Cybran, a tactic likely to give success on small/medium land maps against a single opponent. Many ranked players appear to utilise this or similar variations.