cRPG

Other Games => ... and all the other things floating around out there => Topic started by: Teeth on January 22, 2014, 01:02:19 am

Title: Supreme Commander Forged Alliance
Post by: Teeth on January 22, 2014, 01:02:19 am
I recently got myself to buy this game when Corsair showed me some videos of it. It's a large scale futuristic RTS from 2007, featuring some really neat concepts like zooming out until the game looks like a map, while also being able to zoom in and watch single units duke it out. Another cool feature are enormous units called experimentals, think 100 meter tall robots with big lasers. It allows for many types of strategies and plays and gathering information about what your enemy is going for is essential, as there are dozens of ways to mess you up, each requiring its own counter.

All in all a really interesting multiplayer RTS that has grabbed me and I want to share the love. The official multiplayer servers have been taken down, but there is a decently sized dedicated community which has created a really neat multiplayer client called Forged Alliance Forever which works very smoothly. They have further balanced the game and are actually developing a Strategus esque factional war thingy. There are probably a few hundred people playing on weeknights with about 12 lobbies open at all time, but as far as I have heard player numbers have been growing, so here I am doing my share of spreading the word. This game is alive and kicking and pretty damn cool.

There is this guy Gyle who does a really good job commentating SupCom games and I find it pretty entertaining to watch. If you are in any way interested in multiplayer RTS's you should give it a glance, although the game specific terminology might dazzle you a bit. Here is a full game cast, these are top class players:



You only need to buy the Supreme Commander Forged Alliance standalone to be able to play the entire multiplayer, which is 10 euros on Steam. Then you need the Forged Alliance Forever client and you are good to go.

http://www.faforever.com/

I have played 10 games so far and attained a glorious rating of 69, which is low as hell so if anyone wants to give this a go, search my name on Steam and we can play some games together or against eachother.
Title: Re: Supreme Commander Forged Alliance
Post by: Tibe on January 22, 2014, 06:13:30 am
Its a good game, been playing it over LAN for years now. Its really playable in MP once you customize the gamerules a bit. One minus about the game is that it has a shitton of different superweapons that can destroy everything in large areas with ease, so trying to stop them is pretty close to impossible, unlike for example Red Alert.
Title: Re: Supreme Commander Forged Alliance
Post by: Teeth on January 22, 2014, 10:14:29 am
Its a good game, been playing it over LAN for years now. Its really playable in MP once you customize the gamerules a bit. One minus about the game is that it has a shitton of different superweapons that can destroy everything in large areas with ease, so trying to stop them is pretty close to impossible, unlike for example Red Alert.
There are only like 3 weapons in the game that are considered unstoppable and they cost outrageous amounts of resources and they rarely ever get built because they are hugely cost inefficient. If you allow your opponent the resources and time to built one of these, you would have lost anyway even if he used convential units. They are in the game to break turtling. All the other super units called experimentals are strong, can tip the balance of a game if built at the right time, but can be countered by a variety of things.
Title: Re: Supreme Commander Forged Alliance
Post by: [ptx] on January 22, 2014, 10:33:46 am
I'm playing through Forged Alliance SP campaign right now, great fun :)

What i love about this game is how it has a number of really cool features that not a lot of other RTS games have (but should) - such as ferrying orders for groups of transports or the way you can queue orders for everything and see it represented visually or a number of other things to make the game so much less of a chore.

This looks interesting, might give FAF a try.
Title: Re: Supreme Commander Forged Alliance
Post by: Kafein on January 22, 2014, 10:37:35 am
Unless it has an active pause, in the name of all strategy games please don't call this strategy
Title: Re: Supreme Commander Forged Alliance
Post by: Logen on January 22, 2014, 10:42:16 am
lol,  nice sneaky spiderbot in the end of that match
Title: Re: Supreme Commander Forged Alliance
Post by: Teeth on January 22, 2014, 10:54:34 am
Unless it has an active pause, in the name of all strategy games please don't call this strategy
I don't see why you need the ability to freeze time to have strategy in a game, but if we are going to discuss semantics than this game is indeed a real-time tactical game, but not because it does not have pauses.

I'm playing through Forged Alliance SP campaign right now, great fun :)

What i love about this game is how it has a number of really cool features that not a lot of other RTS games have (but should) - such as ferrying orders for groups of transports or the way you can queue orders for everything and see it represented visually or a number of other things to make the game so much less of a chore.

This looks interesting, might give FAF a try.
True, some very nice design to streamline the experience. You can play the entire FA and SC campaigns coop as well through the FAF client, but yeah multiplayer is great fun as well. Might seem a bit overwhelming at first, but if you just play noob teamgames it doesn't get so crazy.
Title: Re: Supreme Commander Forged Alliance
Post by: [ptx] on January 22, 2014, 11:13:15 am
Unless it has an active pause, in the name of all strategy games please don't call this strategy
SupCom is a strategy game.

a strategy game

a strategy game

a strategy game
Title: Re: Supreme Commander Forged Alliance
Post by: zagibu on January 22, 2014, 12:07:58 pm
It's the best RTS, period. There are so many different angles of attack. Defense actually works, because of harvestable wrecks, scouting is top priority, everything is perfect in this game (in which other game can you do a combined ground forces/bomber strike without having to manually time everything?). We regularly play it on LAN parties, and it's always a blast (there's a 16 players mod and we played with 12 players this christmas...works great).
Title: Re: Supreme Commander Forged Alliance
Post by: korppis on January 22, 2014, 12:51:53 pm
Ahh yes, that is by far the best RTS I've played. We used to play it in LAN, allied against AI teams (enhanced with Sorian AI mod which is very challenging). The nuke spam and T4 artillery in the end is just insane though so we always played with those things disabled. But overall they managed to make the game nicely balanced with cool unique units.  :)
Title: Re: Supreme Commander Forged Alliance
Post by: Latrinenkobold on January 22, 2014, 01:55:17 pm
Ahhh supreme commander my old love

I was pretty sure i´m the only one on this planet who likes this game, because i could never get any friends into playing it with me :(

Disc is broken so i will probably buy it on steam with the prize money from the Panos tournament hueheuehueheu
Title: Re: Supreme Commander Forged Alliance
Post by: Tibe on January 22, 2014, 03:05:45 pm
It's the best RTS, period. There are so many different angles of attack. Defense actually works, because of harvestable wrecks, scouting is top priority, everything is perfect in this game (in which other game can you do a combined ground forces/bomber strike without having to manually time everything?). We regularly play it on LAN parties, and it's always a blast (there's a 16 players mod and we played with 12 players this christmas...works great).

What PC-s did u use? Did it run flawlessly? I generally played it 1 vs 1 with my buddies. We once planned to do a 2 vs 2 but they sorta dropped the idea, when they watched the youtube gameplayvideos and saw the massive numbers. I mean it can run smoothly on our custommade proper desktops, but we sorta intended to do a LAN party at some guys house and obliviously with laptops. Very average laptops with around 3gb of videomemory. I cant even imagine a 12 player game. I always assumed everybodies PCs would spontaneously combust at even 6 player matches.
Title: Re: Supreme Commander Forged Alliance
Post by: Nightmare798 on January 22, 2014, 04:20:10 pm
When this game was released, they said that only jews and jesus have enough money to run it on maximum details.


Quote
Very average laptops with around 3gb of videomemory

Yeah sure.

Very average laptops with 8 core 3.4 GHZ processors, GPUs with 3gb of video memory, 16gb of RAM and 20 terabytes HDDs.

Wow thats so average. Srsly, tell them to set their laptops on fire.
Title: Re: Supreme Commander Forged Alliance
Post by: Tibe on January 22, 2014, 04:38:08 pm
Clearly everybody has their own definition of average. You were wrong about the cores, RAM and HDDs btw. 3gb of vidmemory is pretty average. Unless you buy a laptop with a completely crappy onboard, but why would you do that when you know for a fact that you are gonna game with it. Better to save up on ram, CPU and harddrive then GPU, dont you agree?
Title: Re: Supreme Commander Forged Alliance
Post by: Teeth on January 22, 2014, 04:54:47 pm
I have a 3 year old pc which was a game pc on a tight budget when I bought it and I have been playing 5 vs 5's no problem whatsoever. If you have anything that below 5 years old that was intended to be able to run video games at some point, you should be fine. Poor performance probably depends more on CPU than GPU anyway, thats the price you pay for having a game in which every shot fired is an actual physics based projectile instead of just an animation like in gay RTS games like Starcraft.
Title: Re: Supreme Commander Forged Alliance
Post by: Nightmare798 on January 22, 2014, 05:08:09 pm
Clearly everybody has their own definition of average. You were wrong about the cores, RAM and HDDs btw. 3gb of vidmemory is pretty average. Unless you buy a laptop with a completely crappy onboard, but why would you do that when you know for a fact that you are gonna game with it. Better to save up on ram, CPU and harddrive then GPU, dont you agree?

What the hell? 2GB graphics are usually considered high end man. Laptop with 3GB GPU is usually going to cost around 1000+ dollars. If that is average for you, you have pretty high standarts.

Quote
Better to save up on ram, CPU and harddrive then GPU, dont you agree


No I would definitelly not agree.

CPU and GPU are the muscles of your pc. They are the ones that make everything look nice and go smoother.

BTW more than 8GB of ram is not going to do shit, and only moron would spend more money for RAM than gpu.

I have a 3 year old pc which was a game pc on a tight budget when I bought it and I have been playing 5 vs 5's no problem whatsoever. If you have anything that below 5 years old that was intended to be able to run video games at some point, you should be fine. Poor performance probably depends more on CPU than GPU anyway, thats the price you pay for having a game in which every shot fired is an actual physics based projectile instead of just an animation like in gay RTS games like Starcraft.

Starcraft 2 is horribly overrated. Like seriously, I dont get people who say it is best RTS ever. It is Halo of RTS gaming.


Title: Re: Supreme Commander Forged Alliance
Post by: Tibe on January 22, 2014, 05:33:46 pm
What the hell? 2GB graphics are usually considered high end man. Laptop with 3GB GPU is usually going to cost around 1000+ dollars. If that is average for you, you have pretty high standarts.
My average is based upon what ive seen people have around me. And they are not rich, not even close. And 2GB? High end? Lolwut? And no it doesnt cost 1000+ dollars if the other specs are average or even below, which they are.

Quote
Better to save up on ram, CPU and harddrive then GPU, dont you agree
I admit I fucked up here. My engrish is not so good atm. I ment to say get shittier CPU, harddrive and ram but get better GPU.
Title: Re: Supreme Commander Forged Alliance
Post by: zagibu on January 22, 2014, 06:52:11 pm
SupCom is largely CPU-bound. If you have only 1 PC that struggles, it will reduce the speed of the whole game. Also, it's better without AI, and can be really bad with AI on some maps.

All that said it ran pretty well with 12 players, 6 vs. 6. A bit slow, but stable.
Title: Re: Supreme Commander Forged Alliance
Post by: Nightmare798 on January 22, 2014, 07:25:18 pm
My average is based upon what ive seen people have around me. And they are not rich, not even close. And 2GB? High end? Lolwut? And no it doesnt cost 1000+ dollars if the other specs are average or even below, which they are.

AMD Radeon HD 7950 3GB GDDR5 PCIe - Suggested retail price: $1,112
NVIDIA Quatro K4000 - $1,249.00

512-1024 MB of video memory is currently considered average, with 2gb being high end, and 3gb being super-uber-awesome graphics.

There are few specimen of 4gb GPUs, but overall, 4gb CPUs are considered experimental and not ready for wide public distribution, due to the fact that they cost a fuckin fortune.

I get the horrible feeling, that you mistake video memory for operating memory, also known as RAM, in which case 4gb is considered average.

I admit I fucked up here. My engrish is not so good atm. I ment to say get shittier CPU, harddrive and ram but get better GPU.

Oh ok, no prob.

However my priority would go like this (excluding motherboard)

GPU>CPU>HDD>RAM

RAM is not really that important. practically any 4-8 gb stick will do.
Quote
SupCom is largely CPU-bound. If you have only 1 PC that struggles, it will reduce the speed of the whole game. Also, it's better without AI, and can be really bad with AI on some maps.

All that said it ran pretty well with 12 players, 6 vs. 6. A bit slow, but stable.

Yeah why I said on release, nowadays any decent pc can run it fine (but you seriously need Chuck Norris of a pc to play 6 vs 6 with no fog :D).

Title: Re: Supreme Commander Forged Alliance
Post by: Armpit_Sweat on January 22, 2014, 08:42:56 pm
I think i have the CDs somewhere on the shelf... I would totally rip your asses apart in pvp! I often resort to all-in sneaky plans, involving moving-shield units, radar jammers, assault bots in mass, combined with a vicious frontal strike to divert attention :D

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Title: Re: Supreme Commander Forged Alliance
Post by: Teeth on January 22, 2014, 08:53:59 pm
Not sure how to cope with the middle aged woman and the large fish on a blanket, but if you, or anyone else, wants to play some games we definitely should. Just search Teeth on Steam and add me.
Title: Re: Supreme Commander Forged Alliance
Post by: Armpit_Sweat on January 22, 2014, 09:00:18 pm
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oh damn! it's GOO-OOO-NE!! :(
Title: Re: Supreme Commander Forged Alliance
Post by: Nightmare798 on January 22, 2014, 09:11:03 pm
I think i have the CDs somewhere on the shelf... I would totally rip your asses apart in pvp! I often resort to all-in sneaky plans, involving moving-shield units, radar jammers, assault bots in mass, combined with a vicious frontal strike to divert attention :D

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You would stand no chance against my ghetto gunship spam.
Title: Re: Supreme Commander Forged Alliance
Post by: zagibu on January 23, 2014, 12:45:13 am
Meh, Gunship spam. I always have interceptors, lots of them.
Title: Re: Supreme Commander Forged Alliance
Post by: Piok on January 23, 2014, 08:46:38 am
Spring NOTA is nice free alternative. In my opinion even better and more epic then SC.
If you can go over worser graphic. But it is TA.
Title: Re: Supreme Commander Forged Alliance
Post by: Armpit_Sweat on January 23, 2014, 03:11:04 pm
Spring NOTA is nice free alternative. In my opinion even better and more epic then SC.
If you can go over worser graphic. But it is TA.

Looks interesting actually, especially since i dont know where my damn SC CDs are... Will definitely have a look at it, when back from work.
 
http://nota.machys.net/
 
The more i read, the more i like it!  Can't wait!
Title: Re: Supreme Commander Forged Alliance
Post by: Nightmare798 on January 23, 2014, 03:13:23 pm
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oh damn! it's GOO-OOO-NE!! :(

Where is the forged alliance sub-title?
Title: Re: Supreme Commander Forged Alliance
Post by: Garond_PL on January 23, 2014, 03:14:33 pm
Meh, Gunship spam. I always have interceptors, lots of them.

1st technology bomber spam is better imo ;]
Title: Re: Supreme Commander Forged Alliance
Post by: Nightmare798 on January 23, 2014, 03:19:11 pm
1st technology bomber spam is better imo ;]

I dont think so.

My first instinct at the start of the game is to build up air and land defense. T1 bombers get ripped to shreds by flak cannons pretty easily.

T3 UEF gunships have shields, so they can easily hit and run, while also having on-board weapons. One of best non experimental unit in my opinion.

They take long as hell to prepare though.

Oh and I like mech marines :)
Title: Re: Supreme Commander Forged Alliance
Post by: Piok on January 23, 2014, 03:40:37 pm
Looks interesting actually, especially since i dont know where my damn SC CDs are... Will definitely have a look at it, when back from work.
 
http://nota.machys.net/
 
The more i read, the more i like it!  Can't wait!
Just fiddle with setting a bit.
Also some custom made AI are better then Default.
Title: Re: Supreme Commander Forged Alliance
Post by: Latrinenkobold on January 23, 2014, 05:20:12 pm
The best thing to do is to steal other factions engineers and get the best from everything that way
Title: Re: Supreme Commander Forged Alliance
Post by: Armpit_Sweat on January 23, 2014, 06:18:05 pm
Where is the forged alliance sub-title?

No idea. I had 2 of them. But i am pretty sure i had to install the original first.. Or was it a stand-alone?
Title: Re: Supreme Commander Forged Alliance
Post by: Garond_PL on January 23, 2014, 07:24:38 pm
I dont think so.

My first instinct at the start of the game is to build up air and land defense. T1 bombers get ripped to shreds by flak cannons pretty easily.

T3 UEF gunships have shields, so they can easily hit and run, while also having on-board weapons. One of best non experimental unit in my opinion.

They take long as hell to prepare though.

Oh and I like mech marines :)

Im starting with take fast mass ecstractors then some energy/mass storage, fast T3 and im building tech 2 land defense points with t3 anti air turrets with T2 artillery and then T3 shield generators. Fauvorite faction: Cybrans - they are looking like Sith Empire. Best non experimental unit imo are UEF gunships and T3 bombers ond land i preffer mix with heavy tanks assault bots shield generators mobile artilery and mobile AA artilleries  ;]   
Title: Re: Supreme Commander Forged Alliance
Post by: zagibu on January 23, 2014, 08:19:59 pm
I always build a factory first, that way you can build engineers that swarm out and claim new mass ASAP. If you build 1 fac, 2 power, 1 mass, more power and go from there, your start is ideal, IMO. I'm not sure which patch version I'm usually playing, though, because I remember this plan once failing hard, because they tweaked building costs, either in a previous or later patch.

Also, before you have T3 gunships, I have already ripped you apart in a T2 land rush.
Title: Re: Supreme Commander Forged Alliance
Post by: Teeth on January 23, 2014, 09:45:11 pm
How about you guys put your money where your mouth is and play some matches?

Not an expert yet but I think currently the optimal starting build order is land factory, 2 pgens, 4 mass points and then the hydropower plant with your ACU and the first 2 engineers, other engineers can be sent to the other mass points, probably going to want to have 1 engineer building additional pgens in the meantime. From there on out you can do whatever, as long as you make sure you dont stall on mass or power or get overrun by the enemy. The balance between eco-ing and teching and spamming early units is probably my biggest problem. Overdo either and you are in trouble.
Title: Re: Supreme Commander Forged Alliance
Post by: Nightmare798 on January 23, 2014, 10:34:04 pm
The balance between eco-ing and teching and spamming early units is probably my biggest problem.

T1 spam can be deadly when pulled off right. But that warrants rushing and rushing is for my old friendgets,
Title: Re: Supreme Commander Forged Alliance
Post by: zagibu on January 23, 2014, 11:26:59 pm
T1 spam can be deadly when pulled off right. But that warrants rushing and rushing is for my old friendgets,

Depends on the map. Spamming T1 is useless on 81x81 km islands map.
Title: Re: Supreme Commander Forged Alliance
Post by: kinngrimm on January 23, 2014, 11:55:05 pm
Spring NOTA is nice free alternative. In my opinion even better and more epic then SC.
If you can go over worser graphic. But it is TA.
i was more into the BA/TA games/mods when i used the spring engine  (http://springrts.com/wiki/Games)but yes, the engine rocks!

Played it for 3 months every day a few years back when i had a cRPG pause  :rolleyes:
Title: Re: Supreme Commander Forged Alliance
Post by: Piok on January 24, 2014, 09:24:17 am
i was more into the BA/TA games/mods when i used the spring engine  (http://springrts.com/wiki/Games)but yes, the engine rocks!

Played it for 3 months every day a few years back when i had a cRPG pause  :rolleyes:
Nota is slower paced and most similar to SC. So things I prefer.
To watch carnage and not micro as mad. But yes other mod are also cool.
It is only matter of preference :wink:
Title: Re: Supreme Commander Forged Alliance
Post by: Teeth on February 01, 2014, 11:48:07 pm
Bump, a little disappointed that there was all this talk about who would use what and nobody bothered to play a game. I am still playing it and still having a lot of fun. Rating going up slowly, starting to get a little better. If anyone wants to play hit me up on Steam, just search for Teeth.
Title: Re: Supreme Commander Forged Alliance
Post by: Latrinenkobold on February 02, 2014, 04:51:11 pm
I´m definetly planing to play this soon

Sooo hang in there teeth :D

Title: Re: Supreme Commander Forged Alliance
Post by: zagibu on February 02, 2014, 05:08:46 pm
The problem is that I have a custom version for LAN play that doesn't work with regular versions. I will have to go to the attic and dig out my originals sometime.
Title: Re: Supreme Commander Forged Alliance
Post by: kinngrimm on February 02, 2014, 06:18:08 pm
if you are interested in spring engine game, take me onto your steam list and i give it another try, but will need to install first  :mrgreen: again
Title: Re: Supreme Commander Forged Alliance
Post by: Teeth on March 04, 2014, 12:06:35 am
Hey ho, time for a bump. Apparently Supreme Commander Forged Alliance is on sale until 10 March. It goes for 2,5 euros now which is nothing for such an amazing game. I played 85 matches now and still enjoying the hell out of it. Corsair and Phoenix also play it.

Here is another good match cast by Gyle, give it a glance if you like RTS games.
(click to show/hide)

Here is a really amazing game, but it is one and a half hour long.
(click to show/hide)
Title: Re: Supreme Commander Forged Alliance
Post by: [ptx] on March 04, 2014, 11:27:11 am
So bought :)
Title: Re: Supreme Commander Forged Alliance
Post by: korppis on March 08, 2014, 09:35:34 pm
Had to buy it, and it's just as awesome as I remembered. It's very challencing in co-op against AI's too.

I actually managed to capture a fatboy with one T3 engineer in last game! That poor bastard tried to flank into my city submerged, but got stuck to wreckage just before being able to surface. It couldn't shoot or be shot at while still underwater, so I sent one engineer and it spent good 15 minutes to capture it, but it worked!  :lol:
Title: Re: Supreme Commander Forged Alliance
Post by: Nightmare798 on March 09, 2014, 05:37:00 pm
Hey ho, time for a bump. Apparently Supreme Commander Forged Alliance is on sale until 10 March. It goes for 2,5 euros now which is nothing for such an amazing game. I played 85 matches now and still enjoying the hell out of it. Corsair and Phoenix also play it.

Here is another good match cast by Gyle, give it a glance if you like RTS games.
(click to show/hide)

Here is a really amazing game, but it is one and a half hour long.
(click to show/hide)

I would love to play this again, but my laptop fucked up, and now I have to work my ass off to buy another pc....
Title: Re: Supreme Commander Forged Alliance
Post by: Teeth on June 05, 2014, 10:05:16 pm
Time for a bump to do my part in promoting the most underappreciated piece of brilliant game design of our generation. Still absolutely loving this game, played 160 games so far. It's cheap, 10 euros and regularly on sale for like 2,50, either price is a complete steal. If you like RTS games you just need to try this. It's not about clicking 400 times a minute, I probably barely pass a CPM of 60, it's a thinking game. Chess with giant robots. If anyone wants someone to play with or if you need some basic tips and tricks search for Teeth on Steam.

Here is a good cast of a high level game, check it out.

Title: Re: Supreme Commander Forged Alliance
Post by: Rico on March 21, 2016, 08:00:34 pm
Time for a bump, I am playing this too and got to recommend it.

Forged Alliance is a space RTS (=real time strategy, meaning it's not turn-based) which has a higher focus on decision making and is less about APM (=actions per minute, the speed at which you give commands) than most other RTS games out there. Imagine Starcraft, but spend most of the time thinking instead of micromanaging your units. The game has a unique mechanic called reclaim, which allows you to recycle fossils, trees and wreckage of destroyed units and structures to boost your economy. You can recover 80% of the mass invested into a unit from its wreckage, which means losing a fight close to the enemy base is punished hard, for the enemy will use the dead units he lost and the dead units you lost to reassemble a huge army to throw back at you. Make careful decisions and exploit the mistakes of your opponents.

Some of you might know the concept from Total Annihilation, the spiritual predecessor of Forged Alliance.

Where to get it:
(click to show/hide)

Find out which faction you belong to:
(click to show/hide)

Get started:
(click to show/hide)

Proceed at your own risk:
(click to show/hide)

Edit: Sorry for redundancy, I made the post before using the search function, and then found this thread :oops: