Supreme Commander HelpLine

If you have Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance, the standalone expansion to the original game, make sure to download the community-run Forged Alliance Forever (FAF) client.
A lot of quality of life changes, optimizations, better network code, mod support, custom maps released almost daily by the community, and it's still actively played online even after twelve years.
All it needs is a copy of the game to verify, and it goes regularly on sale on Steam.
I like to play against the cheating AIx with one of my friends, and it never seems to get old.
- Don't forget the Co-op variants of the old single player campaign maps FAF added.
- How does one do that on Linux ?
  
  I've got it working on Linux but I'll have to check to see what I did.
  
  Presumably it does run through Wine.
  
  I'm not sure, I've only ever run this on Windows.
  
  I remember reading a thread about this on the FaF forums and I think one of the FaF clients does run on Linux. I think this is the current method of choice, but there are multiple ways to get it working and I probably used something else years ago, so its definitely doable.
  
  Yes via Wine/Proton it should work.

This game was so crazy good. The only thing I would've like would be more meaningful tier one and two units. Our in-houses more or less skipped those and went straight for tier three. Dunno what the competitive meta looks/looked like though.
- [SC2] Gunships are also OP as far as I'm aware. Had to ban them in our PvP games
  
  Ah, we only played Forged Alliance. I loved doing funny spec ops with transporters and cloaking devices.

My preferred flavour of Total Annihilation is Beyond All Reason
- Does BAR have infinite zoom and the strategic view? I love that stuff so much from supreme commander, my favourite RTS ever
  
  Yes. Blade of grass to orbit.

Remember to purchase the building construction discount BEFORE building your initial mass refineries/energy plants.
.... I forget every time
- What's it called for the respective factions ?
  
  Talking sup com 2 here - Not all of the factions have it as an early research, I think 2/3?
  I don't play often

Love the art style of sup com.

I was so excited when this game was released as I was a massive fan of Total Annihilation.

I got to play FaF with a top ranked player Vs 8 of us low-mid tiers (and one total novice)
We were still pottering about setting up defences and he had filled his half of the map with factories and quickly killed 2 or 3 of us. We won but only because one of us had a gunship squadron going around the map edge and found his commander.
It's quite astonishing what he did in such a short time.
It did kind of kill my enthusiasm for it though, an excession event where you realise you are just a pathetic minnow. Humbling

I bought this game for $100 (Aud) when it came out, and my computer wouldn’t run it.
I never got to play it 😭
- That is, indeed, a super meme

I would like some advice for SC1 here in this thread (I'm talking tactics, etc....)
- If your mass storage is full, any excess is wasted, so you should always try to make sure that it is being spent on something useful. SC1/FA incentivizes a constant balancing of your economy.
  You can reclaim mass from dead units (even civilians), buildings, rocks, trees etc. Trees also give a bunch of energy which can be useful very early on. A failed attack will quite often turn out to be a mass donation that gets recycled into an army for realiation. All of this might be balanced differently between the different versions of the game, so I can't be sure that it applies all that well to base SC1 vs. FA or even FAF.
  Don't build all your energy reactors in a big cluster if you can help it. One well placed attack will blow the whole thing up in a chain reaction. On the other hand, sabotaging your opponents power grid is often a solid strategy.
  If anyone is interested in FAF and wants to take a look at some different levels of gameplay, check out GyleCast on YouTube.
  
  Any good let's plays/Walkthroughs on SC1 ?

Next up, someone tell me/us the strengths & weaknesses of the different factions

Hand cannons be like

BUILD ORDERS & ADVICE
1st thing I'm gonna explain is the maps, depending on the map will determine the build order.
 
If the map has close spawns it would make sense to go for a land factory as the land factory is the least expensive in terms of unit cost.
 
If the map has quite a bit of distance between the spawns it doesn't hurt to go Air Factory first as you wouldn't have to worry about being outnumbered and contained early on.
 
The map will depend on the strategy, the amount of mass, the chokes, even reclaimable objects come into play for build orders. Survey the map and see whats most acceptable.
 
If you aren't sure you can play it safe and build Land Factory first
Land Factory = Mass focused
Air Factory = Power Focused
Naval Factory = Mass+Power Focused
No matter the map always build a factory first, never build power or extractors first in forged alliance, you lose time and will fall behind. Land Factory is the most common first structure; it takes 2 power generators and 2 mass extractors to have the land factory self sustain. In most cases I will Build with my commander:-
Land Factory
2 Power Generators
2 Mass Extractors
Thats a basic startup, as soon as the Factory finishes queue up some engineers and start capturing more extractors and building more power generators
 
If there is a Hydrocarbon near your spawn, order an engineer to start building it, after the commander finishes doing the startup build tell him to assist in constructing the Hydrocarbon generator, as soon as he starts helping, order your engineer to do something else.
 
Once the Hydrocarbon generator is complete, having support for an Air Factory is easier (since its power focused the hydrocarbon will compensate for the lack of T1 Power Generators)
Adjacency bonus is also something to keep in mind in the early game as it can help reduce costs of unit production (building a power generator beside an Air Factory for example would reduce the cost of its power)
You can learn more about Adjacency bonus

BUILD ORDERS & ADVICE