For me personally, I see this more as people wanting to win as fast as they can so they can move on to the next game, so they can win as fast as they can so they can move on the next game...ad nauseam.

Spamming is a tactic, no doubt about that, but isn't it a tactic that is normally combined with rushing?

And rushing is nothing more than trying to take the win as soon as possible.

For me, I find that less than fun and would think that after awhile it would become boring as the player does step A, B, C in every single game because it normally works and gains a win quickly.

This is why I do not play online. No, I do not play to lose, but I do play to have fun and not try to knock the other player out as fast as possible so I can rush back to the lobby and find another game to do it all over again.

To each his own, but I think I will likely be enjoying the game long after the rushing spammer has gotten bored or sees nothing new in the game and moves on to the next RTS to learn those units so he can once again rush and spam.

Wouldn't a unit type fleet cap make it impossible to build anything? If I couldn't have a single ship type be more than 50% of my fleet, and I built my first LRM, I couldn't build a second one until I built something else first, right? Seems like a bad idea.

Actually the article has false premises.

There is winning and there is winning at call costs.

As someone who has been involved in online competitions over the years (from PGL to Battle.net tournaments) I can assure you there is a very distinct difference in the way I play based on whether I am playing to win at all costs versus merely playing to win.

If my goal is to have a fun time playing the game, I play with a different set of internal rules than if I am playing to enjoy myself during the process of playing.

I know the difference between getting the fun out of winning versus having fun playing the game. In Total Annihilation, I played constantly and was highly ranked on Boneyards.net for about a year, I would often win by doing everything such as moving a flash tank inside an enemy tank factory and getting it stuck there (thereby making the factory useless until a construction unit could - maybe - extract the hulk of my unit to using my commander to sneak over to the other side and wipe out key parts of their base right off the bat.

But were those tactics fun? No. Certainly not for the other player. But if I'm trying to win at all costs, sure, I'm going to what I need to do.

Irconclad Online doesn't include a ranking system. That wasn't by accident. It wasn't an oversight. It was precisely to discourage "playing to win at all costs" style of playing.  If other people want to set up their own tournaments, that's fine.  But I don't want the typical ICO game to consist of one player trying to play a fun game versus someone who has figured out that the best strategy is to quickly bulld 5 light frigates and just harrass the heck out of the other player's home world in the opening 5 minutes.

I agree with the OP completely. Everyone who doesn't play this game exactly the way I play it suck massively. In fact, I'll go so far as to say that people who don't play this game on dual monitors in their PJ's with a glass of scotch next them (just like I do!) also suck.

Jeeze, it's a tactic, get over it.

"Spam" is unsolicited email.

What does "Spam" got to do with building a mighty space fleet?

First off, spamming a single type of ship (especially LRM frigates) is only really effective on smaller or more cramped maps. In larger maps, earlier "rushes" fail largely because your enemy has an extra couple minutes to boost his defensive force, since yours needs to get to him before it can do anything. You'll notice that in other RTS games (notably Starcraft) smaller maps were very prone to rushes as well - Zerglings, Marines/Medics, whatever. Larger maps were not - it was too risky to waste early resources on such a risky move that is quite likely to result in your rush troops getting easily disposed of.

But assuming that we're looking to cut down on even later-game fleets overwhelmingly made of one ship type (which can and do still happen), there are some methods available. The problem is that supposing your enemy comes at you with a fleet of 200 LRM frigates, you're best off producing large numbers of carriers with fighters and flak frigates (which do a good amount of damage to the light armor of LRM frigates), which is simply meeting heavy spam with lighter and more diverse spam. However, this idea that we should put a "hard boundary" in the game is erroneous. People hate "hard incentives" to do anything. Once you reach X number of LRM frigates, you just couldn't build any more? Why? I'd propose a "soft incentive" to diversify fleets. Say that for each ship past the first that you construct, the build cost increases by 1%. It's a miniscule amount that would not add significantly to early to mid game balanced fleets. It would, however, subtly discourage spammers. If you're cranking out 200 LRM frigates, they're costing 3 times as much towards the end as they did towards the beginning, if each one adds 1% to the LRM frigate's build cost. At some point it simply becomes much more efficient to build other types of ships. Sure, this kind of solution would make late-game fleets more expensive (building your 100th Kodiak heavy cruiser, for instance...), but by the late game, most players have far more money and resources than they know what to do with anyways, so it's not a huge problem.

Who are you? lol
If they suck, why do they defeat you? Besides, what do you expect in a game that has only 2 types of normal attack frigates and 1 single normal attack cruiser or capital ship? You expect people to build equal ammounts of LRM and Robotics cruisers? Sorry m8, it wont happen.

Thats the way this game is. To deal damage you build the attack frigates, to have support powers you build support cruisers. Thats it.
There is no variety in terms of pure damage dealing like in other games. (C&C has stealth tanks, medium tanks, mammoth tanks, rocket bikes, etc)
Here there is a single frigate for dealing damage. And if you dont deal damage you cant destroy anything.
Simple as that.

Frogboy:



Maybe this is actually part of the problem. Some people find playing competitively fun and some don't. I find a good game of Sins to play out like a ridicuosly complicated version of Chess. With out the option of playing in a ranking system you have forced both players into the same mold, not gotten rid of the competitive people; what happens is the exact clash [IC]/you (it sounds like) were trying to avoid, and I hope I can illustrate this for you, because we ***NEED*** a change before people from both camps start giving up and leaving. Once a community starts shrinking its hard to rebuild it.

Myself and the friends I play with like to play competitively. We try literally everything we can think of to make sure the people we are playing know this and perferably feel the same. But you know what happens 80% of the time on ICO? We get people who don't actually feel that way, they just want to get into a game and end up quitting as soon as we attack or use a scout to kill an unwatched collony ship, etc. In these cases no one had the kind of fun they wanted, and the current way ICO is set up is partially to blame.

As to the Sirlin article, I don't know how much of his work you have read (you can actually read the book on his site for free, in addition to the origianl articles), but he also does differentiate between winning at all costs and playing for fun. The winning at all costs is done for competition and as part of a path of self improvement. Playing for fun is not the same thing. So perhaps you have not read the whole of his work on the subject? I guess it is kinda like the difference between having a little garden you grow for fun, and having a garden that you need to feed yourself. You are going to be a lot more serious about one then the other.

Even if the primese is false (which I would argue that it is not) I think the part of that particualar article that has the most application here is talking about the framework of artificial rules and limitations that some players set up in their own minds. This thread is an example of this. Someone decided that spamming was not fair and now all the rest of us are expected to play by this made up rule.

The article I think has more applicability to this paricular discussion is:WWW Link

This is an article talking about strategies and counter strategies. My (not as good) example as is applies here:

m= ship spamming
c1= counter ship to the spammed unit
c2= counter to c1
c3= the counter to c3

The spammer has m and c2 and I have c1 and c3.
He wants to build LRms = m
I use Flaks to counter = c1
In the argument of spamming the example is over because he will continue to build Lrms and I will continue to (more cheaply) counter with flaks.

However lets say this is a bit above average spammer.
When I start roling out Flaks he starts spamming light frigites (the games suggested counter). This is his c2.
Now I would have to use Lrms to counter this; which is my c3.
The list goes on.

This is actually a very simplified example made possible because he is spamming and not using a mixed fleet, which makes it MUCH more compecated; this is what I love about the way Sins is made. You can create strategies as simple as Lrms spams and as complicated as repulsing Guardians and Illuminators supported by Drone Hosts to counter a fleet of Kodiaks and Flaks.

I agree with Frogboy that there is winning, and winning at all costs. It is amazing that a developer (I assume he is a developer) was perceptive enough to know about these sorts of differences in players. I have played many games "competitively" in my life, including Starcraft, etc. but I have never played to "win at all costs," and neither have any of my friends or game mates.

I agree with Aspartic that there is a problem when one group collides with the other group. Unfortunately, the "win at all costs" group usually does not do enough (if anything at all) to advertise the kind of play they intend to engage in, because many seem to get off on beating an unwitting opponents' brains in. I will give two examples from when I was playing the game.

In one game I hopped into, it was 4v4. As the game filled up, I noticed that 4 players had [LoS] in front of their screennames, i.e. [LoS]person1, [LoS]person2, etc. Right away I thought that this might be some sort of organization or club (I really had no idea), especially since they all were on the same team. So I asked "What does this [LoS] mean in front of your names?" No answer. I repeated the question again - no answer, and then the game started.

I sent a text message to my teammates that I was suspicious about the group that we were playing with - that they all may know each other, and may have practiced this map, etc. They asked why I believed this, was it because I played with them before? I told them I had not, but their names with the [LoS] thing was suspicious. Within a minute of discussing this I had 3 of the guys on that team crashing into my home system with a coordinated attack, complete with taunts. My teammates just laughed and said "screw this" and quit, and so did I. I mean, like we stood a chance in hell under those circumstances. But what I don't get is why that group of people just wanted to play random people online in the first place. What possible fun could it possibly be, unless they are just a bunch of sadists? I wouldn't have fun physically beating a cripple's brains in, and neither would I have fun practicing the hell out of a map with my buddies just so we could get online and beat the crap out of random players who joined a team game. I mean, maybe they just get off on imagining the looks on peoples' faces. I did tell them (before quitting) that they should find another organized group of players to play against if they wanted a challenge, but all I got was taunts in retort.

Example 2 - I hop onto what is advertised as a free for all. Again, I don't know the map, but when the game started I realized that we all started in one system, and there was a "free" system one could jump to. I quickly researched the long jump tech, and made a small fleet complete with colony ship so that I could get to that other system. While going to the star to jump out of the system, I found that there was one planet guarding the phase lane to that star, and you guessed it - a player (color red) had already gotten to that planet and fortified it with defenses and a fleet. But it gets much worse.

So I actually make it around his defenses anyway, and make it into the next system. In fact, it appeared from my scouting that I was the first person to have made it into the system, amazing since I did not know the map like "red" apparently did. I quickly colonized an iceworld, and then red AND blue, teaming up, came crashing in on the iceworld. I was trying to get a frigate factory up, but they wouldn't let me. No matter where I built it, they'd send a ship to go and try to pop it, forcing me to scuttle. They killed my colony ship too. I was lucky enough to have enough of a fleet to damage red's capship to the point he started running. So he jumps out of my system, so I follow in order to kill that ship. But then he just jumps right back into my system again. So I jump in again, but then he just jumps out again. Meanwhile, blue is still wailing on my planet, etc. and I still cannot build a frigate factory. Bottom line, I could not hold that planet against the both of them. And I scout the "gateway" planet back in the home system and find them both sitting there guarding it, defense and fleets maxed out. I warned the other players playing the game that they should just quit, sent all my money and resources to one of them, and quit myself.

Again, I ask you, what kind of fun is this supposed to be for the players who actually do this kind of thing? Who among you is going to grab his buddy, sit down for a weekend and practice the hell out of the "gateway" map together, and then get online, beating the brains out of random unwitting opponents? Personally, I don't know anyone who would do that, and I know tons of gamers.

My recommendation for anyone who runs into this sort of thing is to quit as soon as humanly possible. If enough people quit enough of the time, their time will be spent more in trying to find a match that lasts more than 3 minutes than it will be actually playing the game. Then maybe they'll run off and actually find a real challenge instead of random people online who have never played together before.

I get Aspartic's point. However, I must say that though I recognize spamming as a strategy, I think it's a poor one. Though this is an extreme example, one should remember the positioning of machine guns on trenches in WW1/2. Two of them set to fire as close to their own lines as possible (such that there is a crossfire in no man's land) will mow down masses of charging infantry. Counterspam? Could be. It is, sort of, unless you think ahead.
See, a combined arms fleet managed tactically could beat a spammer, and more. Though this isn't rock/paper/scissors, there are (to my understanding) general counters... so, in a combined arms fleet, the counters move to take out the spammed ships, keeping the rest, behind. Then, afterwards, the rest of the fleet moves quickly and gains ground, or space, on the enemy. Thus, a tactically managed and well supplied fleet can push back until we get to the enemy homeworld. This is especially useful because if the enemy spams something ELSE, then we still have counters for that in our combined arms fleet. Neat? This is what I want in this game, and how I think it should be.
And on that point, I come around to Aspartic's view - beating a spammer, then, shouldn't be like beating a cripple; but I still think a combined arms fleet should beat any spammed fleet. And, honestly, I think I would enjoy that, simply because of the tactical management.

My point, though, is that a spamming strategy should be inferior to a combined arms strategy. If this were not so, how would this game be different from any spammer RTS? It would all come down to zerg rushes.

No, you guys are right, I think. I've come round. If a spammer can be easily beaten, then beat him. My question is, for those who have played the game, can one beat a spammer with combined arms, or does one use pure counterspam?

And for that other guy who said combined arms in BS and doesn't exist in real life, think about trying to storm a castle. You'd need knights AND trebuchets AND infantry. Knights wouldn't break through the walls, trebuchets would be run down by charges and infantry would be outflanked and taken out. Working in combination, at least a lasting siege could be made.

What do you think?

That's from an Out-of-the-box from IGN.
According to the post info, Stardock itself said:

I think Frogboy himself said that

So there was clearly an intent here to develop the need for combined arms.

Sorry... missed this one.

Agent of Kharma, I know what you mean. This is an unfortunate issue in all online games. I've had it happen just about everywhere which is why I tend to play SP against the AI or bots more often than I play online MP with people. I also actively try to persuade friends to buy the same games I have so that we can play MP games together without having to leave opponents to chance. You just never know what you're going to get when you sign online in any game.

And I also agree with Sibilantae. I think that the counters to spamming are currently sufficient though. Personally, I try not counter-spam. I will send a bunch of countering units, yes, but I will also play strategic positioning with other units and try to manipulate the way the enemy is attacking me. HOWEVER, if I'm being attacked on two fronts, then yes I will counter-spam one front while I micro-manage the other. Sorry, I can't be micro-managing in two places at once. I think that's something to take into consideration because fog of war doesn't allow you to see everything that's going on at all times therefore a spam might just be because of distraction. Distraction plays a huge role sometimes.

Also, something funny when it comes to spamming. I remember playing a game of Counter Strike Source. One person on the opposing team had "combined arms" of an aimbot, one-hit-kill hack, speed hack, and jump hack. I must have been killed 4 or 5 times in a row and then resorted to spamming with the machine gun (the one that has horrible accuracy but holds a ton of ammo). I went into a corner of a hallway and just started shooting knowing that the enemy was coming in a couple of seconds. It worked and some of the funniest things I've ever read online started showing up on my screen. Unfortunately, I was target #1 on the following rounds and mostly everyone left the server. Spamming may not be an ethical or popular strategy, but it does have its merits sometimes.


Aha, now this explains why I'm playing Sins more often than all of the games I've purchased in the past 6 months, combined! It sounds as if people involved with the development of Sins actually play these kinds of games instead of jumping in for a couple of quick publicity bouts or making games because it pays the bills. That's something that is a bit of a rarity these days. I remember years ago reading a quote from the lead developer of Drakken who made a statement about the best games being the ones you (as in himself, the developer) want to play. To this day I believe that is an accurate and essential paradigm for making products that become successful. I'm glad to see that sort of thought appears to have been put into Sins. I really get tired of some developers that mish-mash things and then can't understand what's wrong all while they don't play the game themselves.

For the record, I'm not a win at all costs player. I never liked that much even if I was winning, and sure did hate it when I was losing... I never liked stat-padding, blocking, FPS-smashing (not much of a problem on modern computers and games), and so on. I'm not saying it's bad, but it's just not for me. I like it when games reach out to casual players in addition to the hardcore without penalizing those casual players. Even Battlefield 2 was more fun playing the SP64 mod with weapons unlocks then what I had playing in a clan. That's just me though and in no way a reflection on anyone else.

Agent of Kharma:

Now I don't know any of the clans around Sins, but assuming they are not people who enjoy noob smashing, the problem is actually finding people to play. Another part is that ICO needs a lot of work to facilitate players of similar skill together.

Today was my day off, so I played Sins. I played for a total of ~8.5 hours. IIRC I played 3-4 3v3s and 2 2v2s. For every one of those games we waited 10-20ish minutes to get people to play. I'd say 80% of the people would join, hit my stats button and leave. Now, I would rather they leave if they don't think they can win or at least play to learn, but I can understand the frustration of waiting to play. So ball park we wasted 50-70+ mins sitting in a game lobby waiting to play. That is why some people don't filter their rooms.

There is no system in place to aid doing so either. We label our rooms XvX: Skilled, Advanced, No noobs, and even Pro, but the name doesn't change the general mix of players that join the room. New players just want to play and there are usually only 2-3 games a random person can join (not passworded or friends only). Many times they leave in frustration because we are more skilled then they are, but what can we do? Boot every player out that doesn't meet some requirement and wait to play all afternoon? Our conclusion is that we give then ample warning between the game name and asking if they are sure they are ready for a game of skilled players, but after they say yes - we start.

So conclusion: If you can't change the people, change the system. We need ICO improvements as soon as possible.

I stand corrected, thanks. And by the way, I didn't say that combined arms didn't exist in real life - of course it does. What I tried to say was that spam also exists in real life, and combined arms isn't always best to beat spam.

This part of your post boggles me. Starcraft had one of the best counter systems in rts history. What single unit in that game could someone spam tirelessly that couldn't get them totally owned? I can't really think of any except for maybe a very late game unit like a carrier that you should never have let him get too many of in the first place.

If I were you, I'd strictly play against either 1) your equally "skilled" teammates, or 2) clans. There probably isn't much reason for you to play against anyone else, is there?

Zerglings, carriers, dragoons, zealots, cruisers, tanks, and hydralisks. I tried hard to like that game and find ways to counter, but it never worked out. I just never found my groove with that game, you could say. Same thing happened in most other Blizzard games, which is probably why I had a blast in C&C and Rise of Nations. Personal preference mainly, and I'm also not very good at rushing.

Wouldn`t the simplest solution be to increase the amount of statistical reporting per game to a central database?

Then you can look at a person`s profile and see that the last game they built 100 LRM frigates (and little else) and decide not to play with them.

This will also work for any other issues that come up. Don`t expect the devs to deal with your issues.

Actually, that's really not what he suggested at all. Big difference between massing the same type of unit as your enemy and massing a type of unit that would demolish the type that he is massing while taking very few losses. There aren't many matchups like that in Sins, especially in the early game.

Sounds great, if you're well into the mid-game and have teched up to that level. That's really not the issue though. It's early-game spam-rushing that is what people seem to be having problems with. You might have been able to research flaks by then, but even that's kinda iffy.

A useful tactic I'm sure, but it requires significant micro-management. I don't really have a problem with that and it's certainly doable if you're only having to micro one battle at a time. I think people are thinking that there should be more of a rock-paper-scissors type of counter to a spam fleet in the early game. If a huge LRM fleet shows up 45 minutes into the game, and I only have a small fleet of cobalts and LRMs, even with a few hangars and repair structures, I'm probably hosed. Planetary defenses should be able to help, but they're expensive and require quite a bit of research to get them up to a decent level too. I'm still thinking that those defenses need to be made cheaper and better. Wiping out a planet is still far too easy. As for spamming, I don't think it's as much of an issue as it's being made into.

There are numerous ways to beat spam fleets. Most of the time, people who complain about spammers are simply not as good at managing their economy as their opponent, who is thus able to "spam" (outproduce) their opponent. Luckily for you, there are atleast a few counters available for any time of spam. You can also outmicro your opponent with cap ship abilities if your fleet is close enough in strength to his. Stop whining and start practicing

Spamming = Standard RTS Rush (also commonly called 'Zerging')

A tactic where you build an early unit in vast numbers and jam whatever upgrades apply to that unit and immediately attack your opponent(s) in an attempt to immediately eliminate them from the game.

Because of its speed, it can reduce the defenders options greatly - up to the point where the only valid response is to rush in kind. This is referred to as a 'degenerate strategy' if it is allowed by the developers to dominate the game.

Many games employ a combination of cheap early static defense emplacements and/or RSP (Rock/Scissors/Paper)unit countermeasures and/or combined arms countermeasures to balance against this form of play.

In the case of early defense emplacements, these are frequently outclassed by later high-armor or long-range 'siege' units that render them obsolete, thus opening a determined defender to attack by more advanced units.

In the case of R/S/P unit balance, players are expected to employ a small number of units specifically designed to counter the most common forms of 'rush' unit. Because the unit has special advantages against that rush unit, it allows it to destroy them in a one-sided fashion.

In the case of combined arms countermeasures, various units benefit from each other's presence in a tactical manner that renders them considerably stronger than any homogeneous unit group.

If the developers have NOT included countermeasures of at least one (and ideally two or all three) of the above types, or they have not made then sufficiently effective, then rushing becomes the predominant strategy of the game, and it is time to hone your own variation of it.

Making tech ladders that each focus on a specific ship type is a serious design flaw, as it can make homogeneous ship groups MUCH more powerful than the other types because of the ability to focus all your tech into one deployment. Tech trees should generally branch in ways that affect multiple unit classes and encourage rather than restrict players from employing a wider range of unit types in an RTS.

Bear in mind that all RTS's become more viciously aggressive and rush-oriented as the community becomes more skilled at playing the game, without exception that I can think of.

The fact is, in any directly competitive game you want to give your opponent as little time to think and prepare as possible, and you want to keep them off balance.

Now, in a good game, this rush must be multi-dimensional and fairly difficult to pull off, and the game will tend to be fairly well tilted in favor of defense in the lower tech levels, shifting towards offense in the higher tech levels. Nonetheless, a good player will almost ALWAYS find some way to challenge their opponent and continue to apply pressure in some fashion or other as early as possible.

Only in the very early days of any given RTS do strategies like full tech tree buildups before engagement or massive turtling work very well, when many of the players are still tentative and defensive. Don't get used to it - if the game remains popular, people are generally going to get aggressive and stay that way. The same pattern has held for every RTS released (that had any kind of following at all) - including the more 'casual' games like Age of Empires.

Yes, but if you don't include a ranked vs unranked arena, haven't you just thrown all the win-at-all-costs people into the general population of players? There needs to be at least some kind of matchmaking or other wall of seperation between the general pool of players and those people whose autism spectrum disorder shines brightly through the internet.

There are already fleet caps built into the game and you need a fairly healthy economy to advance to the next level. I agree with most participants in this thread that how you use your available fleet capacity - balanced or all one class - should be entirely up to you. Putting all your eggs in one basket is a high risk strategy. Unless your initial rush overwhelms your opponent and clinches victory you are wide open to counter attack and essentially defenseless because you put everything into that strike fleet.

As a surprise tactic it can be effective but once people learn to counter it spamming will go out of style because it will stop working. The developers don't need to change anything unless there is no effective counter in which case balance adjustments can and should be made.

A few weeks ago there were a lot of posts complaining about pirate and siege frigate raids. Now, most players know how do deal with those threats and we don't hear much about them.

One change that I would like to see would be the ability to control both sides of a 1 on 1 on the same computer to play test strategy.