How Does T1 Fare Against Higher Tiers? | Supreme Commander Science
2024 ж. 22 Мам.
5 770 Рет қаралды
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I think you're neglecting a few big advantages of lower tech spam. These advantages may help explain your different anecdotal experiences as a player, where you had success with rhinos against a player who went t3, or whatnot. 1.) In a big team game on a relatively tight map, ACUs are central in combat, and their overcharges are dramtically more effective as you move up tech levels. So, it's more efficient to fight an ACU with lower tech. I'd rather have a gun ACU + 25 t1 tanks against a gun acu + 8 pillars, or some such. 2.) Teching up costs significant mass... so your rhino spam that you've found effective, for example, should have a big window when your opponent has sunk their resources into the tech 3 upgrade itself. In that window, you could be taking map control and killing their economy while boosting your own, you could be upgrading mexes so your economy is better, etc. So, on some level, going back to Gun ACU + 25 t1 tanks vs. a gun acu + 8 pillars, that's neglecting both the mass cost of the t2 upgrade itself, and the time you had to exploit your opponent while they were doing it. 3.) There are some very powerful army compositions that complement each other and perform far better than they would on their own. All in all, it's a solid analysis! You just left out some of the big advantages of the lower tech units.
Short advice, if you move that many units around: Try to rightclick the location and then press shift+G, this will give the move command to every unit individually and they will walk at the same time. Shift+G also allows for splitting targets: Select multiple units, press shift and give attack command to multiple enemies then press G (while holding shift) and they will get evenly distributed. Quite useful for bomber vs multiple mex.
Nice. Do you have any more life changing tips like this? I'm a new player learning this complex game and it's a bit daunting.
I think that is only for FAF, as a heads up. Still a really useful addition, though.
Bit late here but I think the more important thing is that T2 units often shore up the weakness of the T1 and vice versa. Aurora function much better when you have heavier tanks infront of them, Percivals are trash units on their own vs most armies but super good for killing enemy high prio units when mixed in with high rof units. I think for these tests you didn't calculate that T1 units lose models and therefore lose dps much faster when fighting vs same mass T2 units.
Just to throw a different picture in here. Think of higher tier units as a greater concentration of mass in one point. Cause essentially thats what they are. A greater concentration of mass usually comes with a greater concentration of damage. Especially in this game, where its hard to keep all your strikers in one place, teching is a way to reduce the room that you need for mass in units. That comes with advantages and disadvantages. You might not be in all the places at once, but where you are, you are likely to win battles.
Did you remember to account for vision of some units being shorter then range? Also dont forget speed, as it is one of the bigger advantages of t1. Lastly maybe doing this test with a better composition. A standard t1 army vs t2 army vs t3 army since composition improves each tier.
One non obvious reason people stay longer with lower tech spam is the fact that you stay in a very close contact with enemy. This contact gives you additional clue about what you enemy is doing behind front line. It really feels like judo. Other thing is ability to split force to put pressure to other sides of the front and conquer more map and resources.
That actually make sense. Experimentals are amphibious, and they have decent range. They don't need factories, and sometimes they come with some utility. So they can't be too cost-efficient. T2 and T3 units, however, need to be more cost-efficient to justify the cost of more advanced factories.
Ever heard of Lanchester's laws? Larger health pool and better range means more dps time. Small advantage in dps in the beginning can lead to huge difference in result. How quickly you can reduce the enemy's dps is actually important. Same argument can also apply to t4 vs t1 where overkill and turret traversal time drastically reduce t4's combat efficiency against t1.
Spamming frigates on Setons is a time-honored tradition. Hell, I would spam interceptors on setons if they were fast enough to catch a strat bomber.
Nice one here, thanks for this. Recommendation to take or leave - any chance of a science vid on tech mix vs pure T3?
I’ve wondered about this since supcom came out and my basic assessment was the same; efficient or not theoretically, lower tiers die faster so the dps of that army drops whereas t3 or experimentals stay at maximum until they die and may even increase due to veterancy. Obviously percivals are an exception but they compensate with their effectiveness against units where their damage isn’t wasted on overkill.
Yeah, that even has a name, Lanchester's Square Law. Which means that a force that loses damage from being damaged will perform worse than a force that doesn't against an equal force.
I thought about this a little. You correctly see the ability of higher tier units to concentrate mass and firepower, but you don't develop enough : this gives a unit a resistance to attrition. A swarm of T1 units, when fighting, will lose many units in the fight, so mass for mass it might win, but it's left with a fraction of its initial power. A high tier unit, when it wins a fight, still have all its firepower. It certainly is damaged, but it's still as dangerous, especially if you can leverage range. A higher mass density is better overall to make an assault on a fortified position. Small mass density will die on enemy defenses while a high density force can break through, and pierce through the defenses and actually inflict damage. The second point you miss is range : usually, higher tier units have more range, and range is not a granular parameter. Either you outrange your oponent, or you don't. And a very powerful ability of range is to multiply the power of your firepower by making a death wall somehow. If enemy units die before they get into range, your hp/mass ratio doesn't matter. That's why sniper units are so particular : if you analyse them with your usual dps/mass and hp/mass, they're absolute trash, the most worthless in the game. Yet, if you have enough of them, you can make a death wall that the enemy will need a lot of concentrated mass to go through. That's where all these parameters relate : range makes speed, firepower, hp, and the number of units relate to eachother. Another, hidden parameter is the density of unit on the map : considering their range, you can only have a limited number of T1 units attacking one target, and considering their speed and fragility, they probably won't even be able to reach this number, so the actual dps of the group is very limited in practice, but this limit depends on the enemy range. Finaly, and this is a big flaw of your benchmarks : the percival is an extremely bad benchmark point. Because it is effectively a tier 3.5 unit in the UEF roster that compensate for their lack of combat experimental unit. It actualy have more everything compared to other races combat T3 : more range, more powerful shot, and more hp. It's not representative of other races and of most in game situations.
other factors that are hard to calculate but still matter are regen, terrain height, projectile type/parabolics water, and micro
I used to play TA way back in the day. Never online (too young). Played supcom when it came out online tho. I used to t1 spam as hard as I could to take the map while putting pressure on until I could start tac missiling stuff. Did ok.
Create idea ... i will try to play with it. I think the most benefit of low tier unit are dps/mass, but also that you get more unit (also map control in some case) and use the overkill damage from your opponent higher units. For example. * 10 Percival or 5 Percival and 200 Laps. Sure could build 400 Laps but, than you loss the benefits of the percival. * Or Sniper bots ... send some 100 Laps and you win. * Or t2 point defense with low fire rate. In case higher tier units with fire rate and shooting vial moving. A Galatic Colossus will be killed easier than a monkey lord that can move away and shoot.
Well as a new player I also stayed too long with my T2, but I simply was not familiar with T3 units and their capabilities. It takes a little bit of time to get to know your units.
After watching that cast I tried the exact same thing and it worked lol, it was so much for the enemy to handle / spend on firebasing that my team was able to outtech / win the game
I’ve had the please in a gap game to kill a GC with Cybran t1 anti air. It took a horde that nearly surrounded it but they got the got the job done
That’s why t1 bombers are the go-to for me
The most efficient unit composition most likely uses multiple tech levels. You want to deal damage constantly to avoid overshooting on weak targets, that is what you need fast shooting units for, maybe even t1. You also need range to outrange hard hitters or point defense. Then you need health to tank through longer range units and get your shots in. Finally some hard hitters to take out large targets quickly. It takes every tech level to get a truly unstoppable spam. But how to weigh which unit depends on the units and the situation.
Have you done a video comparing the different T3 mobile artillery?
LOL, my instincts made me use my randomly scroll wheel to try to zoom, when viewing this video.
Did the hoard win w/ the lab spam? From the footage looked like he was putting in a lot of mass but not making much headway.
If you changed the game so experimental dps reduced as they took damage, I wonder if anyone would ever build them.
I think the key point you are only tickling is target prioritization vs. numbers. When you pit t1 vs t2 without micro, each t2 targets and kills several t1 while t1s might micro to prioritize targets for best effect. If you were able to micro the t2s to focus fire each t1 it would be much less efficient due to overkill & time to switch targets as every t2 would target each t1. This is why exper. suffer so bad against mass t1. Opting for tech is not just about dps/mass but also unlocking utility whether shields, or better artillery. In some situations, using numbers rather that highest tech and trying to micro an advantage is the better counter to a threat, or more effective at an objective. For instance if you're on the back foot and a ML or Colosus is in the works against you, and you have the choice to pump a few more T3 vs a lot more T2 and even T1, numbers are probably the better option to intercept and harass it from many directions. The time it needs to kill each individual unit and switch targets means those units have more sec alive to dps.
While the difference between each tier has been quite obvious to be stats, each unit is different enough that they serve almost a unique function in the game. The efficiency of the stats is not nearly as important as what function can the unit do and whether it can achieve the objective or not. Sometimes, having too much t1 can help dealing with t4 since they won't be able to kill all of them. This is a match of t1 spam in experimental phase. watch?v=ArVOp4brA-4
6:40 About your question, I think maybe you need to focus fire, so the firepower of higher-tier units will drop faster.
I did actually test that as well. It was worse lol. Felt the video was long enough so I didn't include it
@@TheDuelist It is worse? That doesn't make sense....
@@rystiya7262 that was the theme of my research lol
Aren't you ignoring time to build? Like with same income, have a factory build t2 and another one build t1(or maybe even multiple ones, depending on how the resources are used, 1 t2 factory, or t1 factories for the same cost), then fight each other
Disable range indicators for massive performance boost
Higher Tech will always be better because you have, like you said "more condensed DPS" which means you maintaing your higher DPS over more time. The advantage of Low Tech is not the cost of the unit, but the cost of factories. Rhino/Pilar vs Striker/Mantis is clear winner, however, 1 Rhino/Pillar + T2 vs Striker Mantis is different. This difference will however slowly disappear.
you forget the time to switch target :)
build time and map control are a big reason why spam beats tech. you might beat my army in a fair fight, but I'll spread your lines so thin you can't defend any 1 location well enough.
Then he just goes directly into your base / main expansions and you can't really stop it since your units are spread around the map.
@@sladow5975 goes both ways, I guess
Id be all for a graphics engine change with proper multicore and 64 bit support and no change to the game mechanics or factions as a whole.
Some serious toxic chat in the example game you chose there. A real shame such small minded idiots are over-represented in FAF. Otherwise an interesting video.
Unfortunately yes.