OMGGzz FASTER U n00b !!!!11 My grandma is faster than U

[Ares106]

This is what I get on the chat bar (although a bit exaggerated) about 1/3rd of the games that I play online. This is before I completely Obliterate them.

I have noticed a schism between players that like to stay around 1X to 5X and others disable those speeds and or quit the game when someone is using them. If you are like me you must have realized by now that there is a LOT more to this game than pretty explosions.

I've been keeping a score and out of about eleven 1vs 1 games I played online I have lost two (and those were really close in score). A lot of people ask me how I win. The secret is MICRO MICRO MICRO Everything.

Micro managing units *effectively* requires a Lot of real time, it can also be done at x5 once in a while but x10 and x20 it's Impossible. Most 1vs1 games I play last about 1 - 1&1/2 hours of witch 75% of the time is spend at x1.

You may ask but what is it?? that you are doing all this time. There is not that much to move around.
The truth is that there are a LOT! of orders.

Lets for example take fighter jets and bombers fighting a naval battle. The game's auto-targeting system is on a first come first serve basis. That means that any enemy unit that comes into the attack range first, is targeted. This means that upon defcon 3 all the autolaunched fighters will target the first unit that comes into range, that is usually a battleship. This is a HUGE mistake, since the priority targets for fighters should be: Bomber>Fighter>Sub>Carrier>Battleship (with some variation depending on situation)

Bombers do the same thing (and although targeting a battleship that is a good choice) they all target the SAME Battleship. In a game where everything has 1hp and bombers have a high probability of success for a hit, a Much better approach is to target 1 ship with 2 to 1 bombers.

Than there is the fuel problem, once something dies or runs off radar and disappears into fog of war ( turns grey) fighters love to fly to it's last location and than autotarget something else, instead of running back to the carrier to refuel. I don't know about you but I am really anal about loosing fighters, due to lack of fuel, especially when they can play a very important part in the end game intercepting bombers.

There are so many other examples, like at defcon 3 there are so MANY orders to do I wish I had a pause button, ex: launching bombers into enemy territory or half way round the map, switching subs to sonar, launching fighters and microing the fleets, changing some carriers to anti-sub etc etc etc. Don't get me started on coordination sub+bomber+ICBM strikes, where the sky needs to be supersaturated with nukes to the point where the AA silos are rendered useless.

Anyway to get to my point, I am not telling you how to play this game. There is a 15 minute option for those that just like to see things blow up without much strategy or planning. But I guess what I am trying to say is PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE!!!! don't let this game (that I have been obsessed with ever since I first played and love so much) turn into a RTS CLICK FEST like so many popular games where almost everyone plays " FAST FASTEST UBBERR FASTEST speed possible". Yes! I am talking about Starcraft Warcraft Tiberium Sun Red Alert AOE RON and many others. (and I am not saying these games made bad just the speed issues).

I really hope it never comes to the point where real time and x5 are disabled by everyone. I will be the only one left hosting games called. No NEWB x1 x5 speed

PS: I do use X10 but only after the victory timer came on.

[unknown]

I am in 100% agreement on everything you just said. In fact, I was this close to making this thread myself.

[dazDEFCON1]

lol same i have played 12 games won 10 all because of micromanaging ok well at least 3 of my wins where because my opponent sucked big time but against most decent opponets you have to micor everything from navy battles to combined nuke attacks

[Rotluchs]

/agree 110%

[hellcatv]

I wish the land units would be given similar priorities to silos...
Personally I have RSI and clicking so much just makes the problem worse---ideally the computer would be smart enough to manage this stuff and I could worry about overall tactics and when to hit cities and where to put my fleets rather than clicking every single bleeding thing...

when there are lots of incoming nukes I feel like I'm playing missile command, ordering each defensive emplacement to fire on the nuke most parallel to it, rather than shotting deflection shots all the time---ideally silos would prioritize things coming in at very narrow angles so they could be hit rather than making the player click all the time...

personally I'm not as much a fan of the click fest bit--but love the strategy---I would love to give orders, sit back...and watch them either play out or cost my my civ...You don't see the commander in chief micromanaging bombers---each unit should do its best to do good tactics---
this would help reduce number of clicks in game--and also make it less easy to trash newbies all the time---if their units do the right thing then you have to outPLAN them rather than outCLICK them

[GoldenShadow]

No way, micromanging is what makes this game what it is. Its already fairly simple. removing any micromanagement would be a disaster and make the game a lot less fun and the appeal to play again and again would vanish.

[Red Horse]

Well said, Ares106. It is funny how you can title your room "Slow Game" and the first thing they say at game start, after "hi", is: "Speed Up", even when I havn't placed all my units yet! I might have to start hosting only "Big World" or "Office" games. I loath button smashing, uber non-stategy loving, twelve year old freaks more than I do the "quitters". Lets hope they weed themselves out (after they buy the game ), then find a faster, more mindless, shootemupfest more to thier liking.

-Red Horse

[Corbeau]

I've only played a couple times, but...

I actually like choosing *exactly* how my military will attack targets. Yes, there's a little more micro than is really necessary, but it's not that bad IMO.

[Neuroleptic]

I wonder why there`s a feature called "SPEED DEFCON"!

I agree with you in all opinions, if somebody wants to make a quick blast he should play this one. Ok, i dont play quite a lot, maybe 2 or 3 games a day but mostly all the peolpe i played against were really nice and enjoyed playing like i do.

[Talesin]

Fortunately, I've never been in a game with that kind of opponent... usually everyone is very polite about it, with requests along the lines of 'Would you mind popping up to speed 3, or are you still dealing with unit placement/orders?'

I can see how that'd get annoying though. Sadly, that's the down side to distributing a game about large scale explosions through Steam... you're going to get some of the CS kiddies curious. And then clans start coming along, taking most of the diplomacy and social strategic element out of the game. But that's an entirely different topic.

No worries here though, you'll have at least one more person to play with once they're all playing Speed Defcon.

[Bamelin]

I've been playing mostly with my Penny Arcade mates, and we tend to run games like this ... real time during defcon 5 - 4 until everyone has their shit placed. Then we move to X5 for the rest of the game.

Occasionally somebody will go to real time ... Personally I have no problem with that, generally it's the signal that somebody is about to do a massive launch, so I prepare accordingly.

Today I played on random metaserver games and I noticed the "Sp33d pl33s3" freaks whining. I just ignore them and keep the game at whatever I feel comfortable with.

[Seb06]

The last 2 guys I played against were some sort of speed freaks ! (but very nice guys beside that)

1/ The first one laughed at me when he saw me going 1X for the naval combat, next thing he knows is that his fleet is completely gone, and I just lost 5 battleships. Then came DEFCON 1 and he was like "oh shit"

2/ The second one took me for a newbie, since he saw "[DEMO]" and me going 1x again for the naval combat. But just for as long as it took to send my little bombers in the air then since he complained a bit, we went again for 5X...he lost everything. But he then tried to nuke me...too bad for him ! 1X again, surfaced the subs, targeted all his silos and going to 5X again oh man I'm still laughing at what he typed when he saw that

Conclusion : it's like the rabbit & turtle thing, ne need to hurry, as long as you know how to play

[Zarkow]

For two diplo/survivor-games in a row I have had someone complaining that Defcon 4 isn't raced through at 5x+-speed. Obiously the concept of strategi or 'placing units last' is something very odd for a few people out there.

[Bamelin]

The worst are the people that drop out just because things are going badly for them ... notably these people are usually the speed freaks.

I never really realized how spoiled/sheltered I was in the Penny Arcade games ... on the metaserver it seems like you have half a community of nice mature people and half a community of kiddies. People dropping out is REALLY annoying.

[Rymdkejsaren]

We should start a list of mature players.