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Melth posted:You're right, I forgot that his CO power was in effect that turn. I hope at some point you do a tier ranking of the various COs.
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Nov 8, 2021 00:16
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Mighty Steed posted:Can players replay missions to, for instance get the lab secret if they missed it? No, once a mission is done, you cannot return to it without redoing the entire campaign. So you only have one shot to unlock the lab mission. I had to restart the hard campaign once because in the hard campaign there are no indications whatsoever which levels some of the lab maps are hidden on, and I wasn't aware that one had been changed. And yes, I was planning to talk about spending points- probably at the end of the campaign though, when the most exciting stuff unlocks in the store. Soylent Pudding posted:I hope at some point you do a tier ranking of the various COs. That's a good idea. I was thinking about that, but there's a bit of a problem. There are only a few campaign missions where you get to choose COs to begin with. For the other 80% of the campaign, tiers are mostly irrelevant because you're stuck playing with the CO they give you, for better or worse. In the war room of course there's a lot more flexibility. And then multiplayer is entirely different.
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Nov 8, 2021 18:56
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10: Sea of Hope The yellow comet lab mission. Some AI quirks and luck rolls that slowed me down notwithstanding, I think this is by far the best way to tackle it.
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Nov 11, 2021 16:14
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Bomber spam is one of my favorite ways to play the campaign, so I agree with you there.
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Nov 11, 2021 19:32
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Kanbei bomber spam was always my favorite.
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Nov 11, 2021 21:29
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I'm disappointed the naval part of the game is so bad. I love naval combat in strategy games conceptually. But this game seems to run into the same problems that a lot of games struggle with, naval units are hilariously expensive compared to land and air, there's much less variety with naval units, and air power just dumpsters ships in any event.
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Nov 11, 2021 21:35
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I like the continued insistence on Rock/Paper/Scissors terminology.
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Nov 11, 2021 23:44
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Lustful Man Hugs posted:I like the continued insistence on Rock/Paper/Scissors terminology. I feel like the joke kind of wore thin in the Orange Star episode, personally. Otherwise, quite enjoying the LP so far, and in particular realizing how terrible I was at this game as a kid.
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Nov 12, 2021 00:15
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Soylent Pudding posted:Kanbei bomber spam was always my favorite. It's my second-favorite after one other CO's bomber spam! Cythereal posted:I'm disappointed the naval part of the game is so bad. I love naval combat in strategy games conceptually. I agree. And on top of those typical flaws, they added really boring rock-paper-scissors gameplay. Admittedly air vs air battles are even more boring because nothing matters but the number of fighters, but air units are able to engage with ground units and usually feel like part of the ground game, whereas naval units are in their own separate world of uselessness. I like the idea of naval units being expensive because it feels appropriate, but they're just so bad! I think I would have kept them expensive but made them extremely powerful. Something like scissors get 2-8 range and deal 120% base damage to any ground unit. Paper able to attack all ships for small-medium damage, take small damage from air units, and wipe them out in one shot. Maybe deal good damage to ground units that get next to the water too. Rock is pretty good as-is and would become very good simply by making the other naval units better. Maybe let it launch a single silo missile or something as long as it started the turn surfaced. As with many things, Days of Ruin massively improved the naval unit balance and made it interesting and significantly better, but it really shouldn't have taken 4 games to get to that point.
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Nov 12, 2021 02:07
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Map design is a factor, too. Either a map is designed for naval units or it is not, and even in a map that's clearly intended to be a naval war like this one, ships only have access to chunks of the map. Supreme Commander is, in my book, the only strategy to really successfully do naval combat and integrate it well alongside land and air.
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Nov 12, 2021 03:21
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If I recall, what really makes Kanbei shine is his quality units aren't just stronger in their damage output (a quality many COs have on whatever their flavor of specialty is) but also stronger in their defense, which is not as common (and often situational). I am not sure if its across all of the games or not, but taking less damage is a hugely important property, and having every unit doing extra damage on top of it is insane. I know Colin's economy is probably more useful on most cases, but Kanbei's power just feels more fun.
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Nov 12, 2021 04:43
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Broken Box posted:I know Colin's economy is probably more useful on most cases, but Kanbei's power just feels more fun. Honestly, I think the reason both Kanbei and Colin are so effective (including 20/20 Kanbei together with the 30/30 Terminator) is that both buy more effective HP with their funds. Hard numbers: Colin buys 5 infantry with 4000$ instead of 4, and they hit as hard as 4.5 units. That's directly 25% more HP and 12.5% more firepower, but the latter is diluted. Kanbei buys 5 infantry units for 6000$ instead of 6. 30/30 Kanbei: 0 defense stars: they have ~7.14 effective HP (~19% more) 1 defense stars: they have ~8.33 effective HP (25% more than standard infantry on equivalent terrain) 2 defense stars: 10 effective HP (33% more) etc; defense is hard to judge but the more the better Also about 8.33% more firepower, and it's concentrated 20/20 Kanbei: 0 defense stars: 6.25 effective HP (~4% more) 1 defense stars: ~7.14 effective HP (~7% more) 2 defense stars: ~8.33 effective HP (~11% more) way less of a monster but defense is still non-linear and he still has Samurai Spirit Also same amount of firepower but concentrated in less units
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Nov 12, 2021 07:47
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Cythereal posted:Supreme Commander is, in my book, the only strategy to really successfully do naval combat and integrate it well alongside land and air.
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Nov 12, 2021 13:54
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The thing that makes Colin and Kanbei busted is that they both get access to powerful units for significantly less money than a normal CO. For Colin, he can get a Md Tank for a little bit more than the cost of a regular Tank if he uses his CO Power once, and he can also use his CO Power consecutively to get absurd amount of funds due to the power of exponents. Even a 90/100 Md Tank is significantly better than a 100/100 Tank. For Kanbei, the stat bonuses mean his tanks are nearly as good as a regular Md Tank: On the offense, the damage of a 130/130 tank is comparable to a normal Md Tank except against Md/Neo Tanks. On the defense, his tanks are nearly as durable as Md Tanks against any non-tank/mech match up (and somehow better against the heavy hitting bomber.) The other thing is that Kanbei's defense bonus is pretty potent, it reduces the opponent's efficiency by more than 16% in key matchups. For example, two tanks will normally be enough to kill one tank on a road or plain, but against Kanbei, his tank will survive. Similarly, several matchups that would normally be one shots stop being one shots.
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Nov 12, 2021 14:06
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AW2 Kanbei is indeed busted--but I'd argue Dual Strike Kanbei is even better. Yes, he got booted to 120/120...but that's without skills! Slap on Slam Guard + Slam Shield, and you get an added +20% Defense boost. If that weren't enough, he can earn another +10% Defense, as well as +13% Attack, via Synergy skills from a high enough level tag CO. All that comes to 133/150, without CO powers. But those units on a City, Mountain, or HQ, and the AI will often times not even bother attacking--or if they do, they'll take just as much counter damage as they did regular damage. Stack on Invader (+2 to Capture) and Star Power (1.2x faster charge), and you've got an astonishingly effective HQ capturer. It, in many ways, makes the "Hard" Campaign even easier than the "Normal" one  .
Fionordequester fucked around with this message at 20:16 on Nov 12, 2021 |
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Nov 12, 2021 20:13
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Fionordequester posted:AW2 Kanbei is indeed busted--but I'd argue Dual Strike Kanbei is even better. Dual Strike is the least balanced game in the series. It's not even a particularly powerful combo to buy units for 34% off as Colin and then switch to uber Kanbei to use them compared to the other stupid stuff you can do in that game. Heck, the dual strike mechanic alone destroys any semblance of game balance and ranks among the worst ideas ever put into a strategy game if you ask me. And I agree, the hard campaign is boring and trivial unless you impose artificial restrictions like not using skills or only using bad COs (even then it's easier than AW1 and 2 and arguably DoR). I didn't have any fun playing it (or the normal campaign) for that reason.
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Nov 12, 2021 21:18
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What's your favorite CO combo in that one, out of curiosity?
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Nov 12, 2021 22:21
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Fionordequester posted:What's your favorite CO combo in that one, out of curiosity? Not to be a downer, but I don't think I have one really. When I was just starting out, I was excited by obvious things like Colin/Kanbei or Eagle/absolutely anyone or Olaf/Hawke or whatever. But I quickly came to find that it didn't really matter. In pvp, I found that the first person to get a dual strike won 100% of the time and in singleplayer everything was so brokenly powerful that nothing was very fun. Also, a lot of the COs were much less interesting and had much more uniform abilities than in AW2. I think AW2 had the widest variety in terms of what kind of bonuses COs got, which I quite liked. I did enjoy the combat mode minigame though! Also the survival mode was pretty cool. And if you chose to only use 1 CO and not use skills, the AI was a little bit brighter. Didn't matter in the campaign since the campaign was made trivially easy for some reason, but it made the war room better.
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Nov 13, 2021 06:13
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Against my better judgement, I decided to start playing along. I lost just a few too many units on Show Stopper to hit 300 points (I got 297). I decided to retry. One turn longer, but fewer units lost. I guess that's a fair trade. I'm all caught up with perfect scores as well. Thanks for doing this to help give a nice guide.
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Nov 14, 2021 12:37
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Omobono posted:Honestly, I think the reason both Kanbei and Colin are so effective (including 20/20 Kanbei together with the 30/30 Terminator) is that both buy more effective HP with their funds. In my opinion, it doesn't require much explaining to see why they're really good. Getting a 20% discount in exchange for something 10% worse is an obviously good deal. Paying 20% more for something 30% better is an obviously good deal. It would take a special explanation or a special circumstance for those not to be good deals. Kanbei turns out to be even better than expected because of the additive way defense works in this game, but even if defense stacked multiplicatively he would still be an extremely strong CO. And Colin is even better than expected because he has an absurdly low-cost, very strong CO power. General Revil posted:Against my better judgement, I decided to start playing along. I lost just a few too many units on Show Stopper to hit 300 points (I got 297). I decided to retry. One turn longer, but fewer units lost. I guess that's a fair trade. I'm all caught up with perfect scores as well. Thanks for doing this to help give a nice guide. I'm happy to hear that! With all of my Let's Plays, one of my goals is for them to be useful guides to other people.
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Nov 15, 2021 01:16
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Cythereal posted:Map design is a factor, too. Either a map is designed for naval units or it is not, and even in a map that's clearly intended to be a naval war like this one, ships only have access to chunks of the map. Reinstalled SupCom because this post put it in my head.
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Nov 15, 2021 01:22
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Melth posted:I'm happy to hear that! With all of my Let's Plays, one of my goals is for them to be useful guides to other people. My strategy in games like these normally is to create murderballs, cycle damaged units to the back to heal, and capture every property I can. It makes for terrible speed times, but it's also not exactly a good strategy. On the topic of Colin, I agree that his units are 20% cheaper and 10% worse (10% worse damage, but same defense). However, I'd argue that Kanbei's units are actually 69% better (1.3*1.3) for 20% more money. They have 30% better damage, and 30% better defense.
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Nov 15, 2021 04:41
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General Revil posted:My strategy in games like these normally is to create murderballs, cycle damaged units to the back to heal, and capture every property I can. It makes for terrible speed times, but it's also not exactly a good strategy. It sounds like a pretty good strategy to me, unless you mean you keep slowing down to capture things in the final turns when you no longer need income! I myself am trying to get better about not wasting time on frivolous moves in the endgame, since I always want to kill everything and capture everything up until the game-ending move: 11: Silo Scramble (Kanbei vs Flak, the duel of the fools!)
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Nov 15, 2021 17:09
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I never thought of the strategy of deliberately weakening units the AI was leaving camped on cities/bases/seaports to bleed them of funds in constantly repairing it!
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Nov 16, 2021 00:08
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Yeah, I would have assumed the AI has unlimited funds and just has restrictions on what it can pop out and how often.
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Nov 16, 2021 00:23
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Cythereal posted:Yeah, I would have assumed the AI has unlimited funds and just has restrictions on what it can pop out and how often. Nope, funding-wise they actually play by the same rules! You can even check and see their current funds and their income on the status menu and plan around that sometimes. The sole exception is on the factory missions, which is why the factory levels are such a big challenge, letting them crank out 3 free units of any price in addition to whatever they can build from their bases.
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Nov 16, 2021 01:09
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Black holes backstory got lost on me when I was younger but looking at it all now i just think the standard Black hole soldier is a mass produced clone. Thus they get pushed around a bunch and are treated as disposable pawns. the black hole CO's are just whats left from the first games fake orange star army, and now they don't bother making them look human and just issue their most modern stuff. As to Neo-tanks, the dubious logic of an experimental vehicle pushed to mass production with all the bells and whistles still strapped on. Its got a spherical body, which means in theory its got generous internal space and decent armor slopes, with a weird mobility system still attached. In practice this would lead to a tank that's very tall, mobility that's not much better or even worse, survival issues because all its armor is the same thickness and not that much better than what its replacing, trouble with aiming at all because hull mounted gun, and is very expensive to make because curves are hard and big spheres are harder. The closest real world equivalent for what it kind of represents in stats is a later MBT, faster than the sluggish tanks like the Sherman/Patton stand in orange star starts with and with a better gun.
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Nov 16, 2021 01:11
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Barrel Cactaur posted:Black holes backstory got lost on me when I was younger but looking at it all now i just think the standard Black hole soldier is a mass produced clone. Thus they get pushed around a bunch and are treated as disposable pawns. the black hole CO's are just whats left from the first games fake orange star army, and now they don't bother making them look human and just issue their most modern stuff. As to the clone thing, in Dual Strike Lash states that making even a single clone requires incredible amounts of energy, enough that one has to drain a whole continent of vague life energy in order to make even a few. So I don't think that their army is made of clones, I think they're aliens. What's your thought on that weird handlebar-looking thing on the back top of a Neotank?
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Nov 16, 2021 05:19
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Melth posted:Nope, funding-wise they actually play by the same rules! It also shows Flak's funds when he takes his turn, and you can see them drop really quickly when he buys units at the end of the turn, but it's hard to see due to the AI buying units as the last step as well as quickly ending its turn.
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Nov 16, 2021 05:31
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Melth posted:It sounds like a pretty good strategy to me, unless you mean you keep slowing down to capture things in the final turns when you no longer need income! I most definitely mean capturing every building and intentionally delaying the end in order to do so. It does mean that I'm much less comfortable with force projection and rushing. It's really bad on factory maps, because on a lot of them you really need to get to the doors or the seam ASAP in order to lock it down.
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Nov 16, 2021 07:43
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Melth posted:What's your thought on that weird handlebar-looking thing on the back top of a Neotank? It's for hanging your towels on. These people literally took a drawing of an experimental prototype and put it in mass production. If the ai didn't build them I would assume it to be an elaborate form of sabotage, given how a medium tank and artillery is generally a better option, even for Max. They reach into boat territory and that is pissing your money away range in advance wars. As to the clones cost thing that seems to have been the specifics of the instant replication that the superweapon of the mission was using, after all they had clone Andy game 1, so presumably they got that somehow. In any case, it's some kind of environment suit black hole guys are wearing. The games kind of make up the plot on the spot anyhow to justify why the little army men are fighting. Barrel Cactaur fucked around with this message at 14:41 on Nov 16, 2021 |
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Nov 16, 2021 14:21
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General Revil posted:I most definitely mean capturing every building and intentionally delaying the end in order to do so. It does mean that I'm much less comfortable with force projection and rushing. It's really bad on factory maps, because on a lot of them you really need to get to the doors or the seam ASAP in order to lock it down. Yeah, I'm always a bit concerned trying to rush the factory doors myself because there's such a big risk of the enemy deploying a bunch of strong units at once and catching me flat-footed. Barrel Cactaur posted:It's for hanging your towels on. These people literally took a drawing of an experimental prototype and put it in mass production. If the ai didn't build them I would assume it to be an elaborate form of sabotage, given how a medium tank and artillery is generally a better option, even for Max. They reach into boat territory and that is pissing your money away range in advance wars. I did always think it looked suspiciously like a towel bar. This tank has everything! Weirdly enough the AI usually doesn't build them. It's rare anyway, and I don't think they'll make them in the orange star missions. I definitely stand by the neotank as a great buy in singleplayer at least though.
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Nov 16, 2021 17:08
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Just finished Sensei's Return: 12: Sensei's Return I think this wound up being my favorite video so far. It's a very well-designed mission.
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Nov 17, 2021 16:08
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I seem to recall that APCs are another unit the AI is hard-coded to prioritise, like footsoldiers and transports. I think it probably makes sense in terms of early-game priorities, encouraging it to build infantry and APCs as soon as they can afford them to get started on the early-game captures (even if the AI can't quite figure out how to use APCs properly, it's still the right idea in theory). It's not quite as bad as the lander situation, where it makes them and blocks up its own ports, but it often does lead to questionable late-game plays like this. Sensei is a fun CO to use, and this map is an interesting one (even if the main reason it often goes well is that it seems perfectly made to exacerbate the AI's faults). I think you're right it's one of the better-designed fog maps. Edit: I completely forgot to mention the more speculative theory I had. I wonder whether Adder might be restricted from building more expensive units in this map (the most expensive thing we saw him put out is an AA; as far as I know the HQ rockets are predeployed), and if so that might explain why he kept not building things. I wonder if there's a conflicting tendency in the AI, and it's trying to save funds for things like MD or Neo tanks that it's not actually allowed to deploy here. Explopyro fucked around with this message at 20:37 on Nov 17, 2021 |
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Nov 17, 2021 19:23
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Explopyro posted:I seem to recall that APCs are another unit the AI is hard-coded to prioritise, like footsoldiers and transports. I think it probably makes sense in terms of early-game priorities, encouraging it to build infantry and APCs as soon as they can afford them to get started on the early-game captures (even if the AI can't quite figure out how to use APCs properly, it's still the right idea in theory). It's not quite as bad as the lander situation, where it makes them and blocks up its own ports, but it often does lead to questionable late-game plays like this. Yeah, you're definitely right that the AI prioritizes having an APC. What surprised me is that I thought that was their second or third priority, after always having at least 5 infantry. But in this map it looked like Adder chose an APC when he only had 4 infantry. Not sure! Your other theory may be right! To test it, I just watched a horrifying video of a player who didn't know what he was doing taking almost 30 days on this chapter. Adder deployed vast hordes of artillery, mechs, tanks, missiles, etc. but never had a single unit more expensive than his missile. I actually didn't see a rocket in that video though, so maybe he chose to build that against me? Upon further examination though, I don't think my Adder was sitting on a pile of un-spent money. I'm betting that he was trying to get out an Anti-Air, but couldn't quite afford it because he had only about 7000 income and was forced to spend some on repairs, replacement APCs, etc.
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Nov 17, 2021 22:08
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I just found out a few days ago about a way to play Advance Wars 2 multiplayer, it's called Advance Wars By Web. I'll do a commentary on my first game there tomorrow.
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Nov 19, 2021 17:52
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My first match of advance wars multiplayer on Advance Wars By Web: Advance Wars By Web, Lash vs Kindle
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Nov 21, 2021 02:16
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Enjoyed, you built up a strong economic lead quickly and that seemed to make the outcome inevitable. How long did the match take to play in real time and how long do you get for each turn? Also how did your ranking change as a result?
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Nov 21, 2021 15:55
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That was really cool (also, AWBW is still going, wow), wouldn't mind seeing more multiplayer videos like that.
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Nov 21, 2021 16:16
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Cythereal posted:I'm disappointed the naval part of the game is so bad. I love naval combat in strategy games conceptually. anilEhilated posted:Red Alert 3 managed this to an extent, although obviously nowhere near as well as SupCom. Which is funny because I can't remember naval units being a thing in RA1/2, not to mention the other C&C games... but for RA3 the devs went hard on making naval combat useful part of the game, and it ended up being pretty good.
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Nov 21, 2021 16:21
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