I agree FN does wacky tactics and rushes but hes not the first to do these kinds of things, he's just the current act. Plus they usually fail when he doesn't have a skilled team, when he does have a skilled team he usually tries more bold rushes that usually work out. Hell even I do dumb shit commanding when I have the skill stacked team. Like no research, or jeep rushes.. But HSM invented early game and late game epic rushes and Opie invented boom tanking. They just don't really play anymore.
I don't think you can invent 'rushes' or 'boomtanking,' but FN has a catalog of empires-specific strategies that he can claim ownership of.
Well, "invent" or "first to do it". Whatever you want to call it.. They did it first, and I think best. HSM helped mold the game into what it is today because of his rushes ending games so fast and opie was boom tanking before you could get road kills. He would just pin whole squads(before they were limited to 5 ppl) under the CV while his team would move up and fortify the land. I remember being the person who either had to tell everyone to lay walls or watch the fuck out for opie and also being the person who layed mines all around the main base to stop a HSM rush.. This was back in 1.7 days..
Truth be told, I've never seen that many "original" strategies from FN, simply because there aren't really any. Sure, a different research path, or "buying jeeps/apc to rush at the start" are sometimes different, but I've never really seen much else outside of that from him. Never really from anyone to be honest. Maybe they're considered new and innovative to some people, but I'm probably going to side with Dubee on this one. As much as I think HSM is a retard, he pioneered rushes long before most of us even picked up this game, and Opie is known for the boomtanking, something I myself do a hell of a lot (often with bad consequences, but I still enjoy it). But I genuinely wouldn't say I've seen anything "innovative" produced in a long time. Last and probably one of the only things that wouldn't have been predicted is bioplasma tanks in 2.24d. Before, and after that, everything I saw seemed pretty obvious.
You're welcome. I agree with this statement that there aren't many original strategies left. This is, I believe, one of the major design flaws of the current research tree. With that said, even within the limited tools we players are given to deviate from the standard, I have seen a small elite group of commanders manage to be trailblazers even when the major research paths have all been trivialized. 2.24d Elect rushes on BE w/ Istd (no other weapons) and 12 plates of reactive on an AFV. Moving your base to middle and sniping all the buildings from the middle on mvalley w/ ranged or UMLs. These are just a few things that I've seen FN do that nobody else was doing at the time and I've subsequently copied. My strategy on most maps when I started to learn commanding usually revolved on my interpretation and criticism of how I observed FN commanding these maps. I don't expect everyone to have the attunement and game sense to be able to detect the subtle deviousness and cleverness with which the elite commanders create and execute strategies in general. A lot of the commanders listed here I would consider to only be mediocre comms who are only capable of covering the basics. With that said, keep in mind that FN was banned from the major servers for a very long time. I suspect that he is not fresh in the memories of most players. I tend to believe that this perception will change over time. I don't give a nod to players lightly. There are only a very tiny minority of players who I acknowledge as truly skilled in their field of expertise. I believe FN is one of those few.
Honestly speaking, those aren't really that "new" or anything though, or at the very least obvious. It was evident within week of 2.24a/b/c/d that it was overpowered, and it was raised in the middle of those hotfixes, but not fixed. And it's always been that you can get full reactive and a cannon. And missile sniping from the centre of maps, specifically mvalley or the duststorm hills, and sniping with uml/salvo (looked scarier and lagged the server a bit) has been in since I started the game. Like I said, there's not much that isn't obvious but is usually deemed too much effort to direct pubbers with usually. That's certainly the reason I try to keep my strategies simple with pubbers, at least with a high Amerifag density in my team. After that, I see semi-decent commanders trying the "less obvious" fairly often, purely because it's viable with the team they have. Strategies ranging from simply rifleman sticky bomb rushes, to fairly organised 3 pronged attacks with layers of strategy. Once you're able to dissect that and work out the parts to it, you realise how dependant it is on the team actually listening. So in some ways, I just see some people (such as FN198, HSM, yourself etc) who are more patient (yes, HSM, irony), to deal with pubbers to some extent, or are willing to do that shit with a larger majority of pubbers. I personally never try anything out of the ordinary unless at least 60% of my team is known to be competent.
not quite recon: if your team is less skilled and doesnt listen well then you're best off taking the typical commander approach - researching, target spamming and telling people where the enemy is. if your team is less skilled but will listen then you better employ an unexpected start strategy and micro your units to gain a strategic advantage.
Craig.gates commands with an iron fist. Yesterday we were versing some stax and some idiot went into the command vehicle so he kicked him off the server.
I never ever seen any fancy tactic work in any scrim that I took part in or that I heard of, those bullshit only works if your enemy team sucks and cant response in a controlled and efficient way = public games. All those fancy tactics are based on luck/hope that the enemy team cant kill your rush / flanking or whatever bevor you manage to take the position or kill the cv. Ive seen many commanders using fancy tactics losing in a horrible way because usually such style of playing the game open large holes in the own defense. All those "awesome tactics" usually work only with a stacked team. FN take a average team, play with "tactics" and I bet that a commander that knows what to do and only uses armory spam, targets etc. will destroy your team. Most of those commanders that think they are responsible for winning the game forget that their job is serving the team. I bet if someone writes a script that does the standard commanding things like spamming targets, placing buildings on the right places, spamms ml's around the cv and researchs the most efficient tree it would be the best commander possible. And why are the teams of such "fancy tactics" commanders always stacked? Because the majority doesnt want to command and is happy that theirs someone on their team that does it. The average vet thinks hey I join here because it means I dont have to command myself.
but it was totaly overpowered. My rant was more about that a commander has not as much influence on the gameplay as most people think. (assuming that he actually knows how to play the game)
Every game I command, I make sure the game is shaped around my will. The plasma AFV rush was a perfect example. If I hadn't done the rush, the game wouldn't have taken the path that it took (HSM dumping the comm into the water). The game before that, I had walled off the S bend and had 2 people in arty tanks. That wasn't JPL's strategy. That wasn't the team's strategy, and it wasn't even a few select members that developed that strategy, that was MY strategy, reacting to the current situation. I'm not saying that I "created" the wall/arty strategy (though I did, in fact, create the plasma AFV rush strategy), I'm saying that other COMMANDERS before me developed that strategy. As in, not players, not squad leaders, COMMANDERS. This is a thread talking about elite COMMANDERS, and those commanders who shape the outcome of games (especially in scrims, as I have done and many before me) are most undoubtedly among the best.
2 arties is a standard strategy and to be honest you have to admit we would have won that game without plasma, but we couldnt have known that bevor trying the plasma rush.
Mayama hit the nail on the head. Most average commanders just facilitate research, targets, and bases, nothing else. They know that they have to order people around to get to refinerys and stuff, but the skills of tactics always falls on the players. The players have to know how to get their ass up to the location without dieing.
Your entire point in this conversation has thus far been that commanders don't mean shit, especially in a scrim. I provided evidence to the contrary. Now you're backpedaling and somehow trying to state that because one of the strategies I used during a scrim was standard for slaughtered, the commander contributes little or nothing to a round other than the standard attack order spam and building placement. It should be obvious to any rational human being why this is untrue, but I shall explain why anyway. I shaped the outcome of both of those matches. One of the reasons why we were destined to win both of those matches was because I was commanding them. Whether or not 2 arty + wall off S-bend is a standard strategy doesn't change the fact that at some point I decided to run with that strategy without anyone's permission. You guys didn't just spontaneously start walling off the S-bend and got 2 guys in arty tanks, I instructed you to do so and you did as you were instructed. Was that the only strategy, or even the best strategy in that circumstance? Maybe not, I don't know. Nobody can know. That's not the point. The point is I shaped the progress of the round, and therefore, the outcome as well. But I digress. This isn't about my ego, it's about the fact that any competent COMMANDER in my shoes would have had the opportunity to shape the round in the same way, or in an alternate way that would have brought the same level of success. It can therefore be said that the COMMANDER on one or both teams was the most influential individual in both of those rounds. Nobody else in that scenario had the power to shape the outcome of the match on the same magnitude.
hmmm I dont say that a commander cant shape the outcome of the game but think about it, a good flexible team would change/respawn as grenadiers if they face a plasma rush. The 2.25 gren should be able to keep the plasma tanks at bay. I dont try to target you personaly in this thread its just that I personaly think that the commander isnt as important as some people think it is. In my book a really good commander gets the best out of his team by adapting his commanding to the style the team plays and supports it not forcing it in one direction. This means the commander doesnt shape the game, the players on the ground do it. EDIT: dont talk about bad commanders cause thats basicaly griefing the team
Maybe a good team would respond quickly to a plasma rush, but a good commander would also forcefully bring the enemy plasma rush to the team's attention and demand them to spawn as grenadiers and spam wall segments. An even better commander would consider the plasma rush as a very strong probability and inform the team that they should be ready to counter it before it even happens. A legendary commander would have caught the rush in the middle of the S-bend with walls, had them slaughtered by grenadiers that were lying in wait, wait for the enemy team's resources to drain, and countered the rush with his own rush, or transitioned into a long-term victory by leveraging a decisive technology and resource advantage against them. It is a pointless question to ask whether a commander is more important than his team, as both are required to win. The commander is part of his team, after all. However, it can be undoubtedly said that of any single person on a team, the commander is generally the most important, and has the most influence on the outcome of the game.
