Anyone play Supreme Commander yet?

[msmith537]

Anyone pick up Supreme Commander (http://www.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/supremecommander/review.html?sid=6166152&tag=topslot;title;2&om_act=convert&om_clk=topslot) yet? Looks pretty sweet but I hear it's a real resource hog.

[smiling bandit]

I played the demo. It looked quite good, but not fantastic. It was a resource hog, and unfortunately, it became harder to control the action once you got too many units cranked out. You wound up zoomed way out, which wasn't terrible but lacked any detail. It looked like a text game with a few dots zooming around.

[anamnesis]

Beta tester, demo player, and retail purchaser here. Been playing since the day it went into public beta and brought the game home this afternoon.

It's certainly one of those rare games where the demands from the software exceed the current threshold of most computer hardware ... kinda like Windows Vista. It'll be some time before the processors catch up to the level required to really get this game to play smoothly. Well, the processors exist, but by that I mean, it'll be some time before they're reasonably affordable (i.e. less than $700).

Can't argue it isn't a resource hog. My CPU's a bit lacking in the horsepower department ... it's about the cheapest Core 2 Duo around and I knew this game would bring it to its knees. It's only 1.8 GHz and it's definitely the bottleneck in my system so far as this game is concerned. My graphics card is an nVidia 7950GT and I've got 2GB of 800MHz Corsair XMS2 memory as well as dual 10,000rpm Western Digital Raptors in a striped array, so my system's up to snuff for even the most current games, but the unit control, physics, and AI demand significant juice from the processor and anything less than a dual core just won't cut it. Even the trajectories of your units' projectiles have real paths that can miss their targets if the targets move fast enough to get out of the way. All this detail chokes the processor more than anything else in the system. I thought about upgrading to a 2.4 GHz with 4MB cache just for this game and after playing it, it's probably not a bad idea because I know my graphics card is no slouch and could handle all the rendering quite well.

As far as gameplay goes, I can't think of any RTS that lets you strategize on such a grand scale like this. The point is to zoom way out to coordinate your forces, and then zoom in to enjoy the visual fireworks. Chris Taylor's entire objective in developing the game was to be able to view things on a grand scale like a real general would, as opposed to having your view restricted to a "sandbox" which forces you to pan the camera around or click on a minimap. I barely pan or use the minimap at all ... the mouse wheel takes up that role by allowing you to zoom all the way out to reorient your view. Saves time and it's much more accurate than panning. The game even takes advantage of dual displays and widescreen displays by allowing you multiple views of the battlefield at different altitudes. It looks breathtaking on my 24" LCD. :D

If this style of viewing the battlefield somehow turns you off to the gameplay, then I guess the game isn't for you.

I think the last big RTS to beat was Company of Heroes, but I think most will agree this is the new king of the hill. Whereas most strategy games will restrict you to a unit cap of 100 or 200, this game lets you command up to 1,000 mechanized warriors across maps that are hundreds of square miles in size. You need to constantly expand and consume more power and resources because if you just hole up in your starting area, you're dead because your opponent will outproduce you. The focus is on resource management, production queueing, and coordinating the flow of your units on the map, and it sets the benchmark pretty damn high. My biggest complaint outside of the steep processing requirements is that the most powerful units and structures in the game (like nuclear missile silos and those giant Spiderbots) take an absurd amount of time, builders, and energy to produce, but it's understandable since they are absolutely lethal when put to use.

[msmith537]

That's what I was afraid of. Fortunately I'm in the market for a new PC (mine's about 5-6 years old)
Compaq Presario
2.5 GHz Pentium IV
1GB Ram (max)
nVidia card

I may just pick up the game and get a new PC when I get back from vacation.

[anamnesis]

Yes, your system's a bit lacking, but then again, I don't know what your video card is. Saying you have an "nVidia card" is like saying you drive a Ford product ... is it a Mercury, or an Aston Martin? I guess the anology doesn't really apply anymore since Ford is selling AM, but getting back on point, I would assume your nVidia card is probably a GeForce 5 or 6 series based on the specs you gave.

You could run the game on that system, of course, with all the fancy details turned off. But then what's the point, right? It's kinda like, um ... getting an Aston Martin with a V6, no air conditioning and no CD player. :)

[diku]

Beta tester, played the demo, grabbed the final version and have been playing it non-stop since. In fact, I'm having a hard time being at work, cause I really want to be at home playing it.

One thing you have to get used to is that the average game is going to take a while. For example, I had a skirmish against the Balanced AI that lasted 8 hours. Luckily, I could save, so I played it over a few evenings (this was the demo). If you played Total Annihilation, it will feel like coming home.

System hog? Yeah. I had planned to upgrade my computer this year anyway, but I moved it up to the beginning of the year cause I knew I wanted to play this game. You can change a few settings and get great performance though. I'm getting great performance, but I've got a decent hefty system (Core 2 Duo E6400 OC'd, Nvidia 7950 GT card, 2 GB Ram). I turned off shadows, turn off AA, but I've got everything else on high, and it runs great.

anamnesis, one tip to increase your build speeds, upgrade your Commander. Seriously, playing the Cybrans, I upgraded my Commander to the Tech 3 level of building, and I could crank out a Spiderbot in about 3 minutes. Uses a ton of resources doing it, but worth it. I had an army of six demolish an AI bash in no time flat.

[anamnesis]

Woah. Six Monkeylords? Heaven help the guilty! :eek:

Yeah, uh ... I know about upgrading the ACU but it takes so long to build enough power generators and power storage units to supply the kind of juice needed for the Tech 3 upgrades. The commanders suck it down at an astonishing rate.

Is there a good site with build order strategies for maximizing/balancing economy growth and productivity in a short amount of time?

[msmith537]

Yes, your system's a bit lacking, but then again, I don't know what your video card is. Saying you have an "nVidia card" is like saying you drive a Ford product ... is it a Mercury, or an Aston Martin? I guess the anology doesn't really apply anymore since Ford is selling AM, but getting back on point, I would assume your nVidia card is probably a GeForce 5 or 6 series based on the specs you gave.

I forget which GeForce card is in it. The card I bought about a year ago, maybe two. Either way, I do want to get a new PC in a few weeks.



I actually prefer a nice long RTS game so I have no problem with an 8+ hour match.

[diku]

Is there a good site with build order strategies for maximizing/balancing economy growth and productivity in a short amount of time?


Check out the Gas Powered Games forums. http://forums.gaspowered.com/.

I'm just mostly using my build strategies from TA.

[diku]

Check out the Gas Powered Games forums. http://forums.gaspowered.com/.

I'm just mostly using my build strategies from TA.

Since I can't figure out how to edit my post, I'll add this in:

http://episteme.arstechnica.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/39309975/m/562001543831

Good thread on Ars about build strategies. Guy has a good handle on adjacency bonuses.

[sturmhauke]

Do you think the retail game has significantly greater requirements than the demo? I hear the largest maps tend to chug quite a lot when there are a lot of units about, but I didn't have any problem running the demo with some stuff turned down. Here's my specs:

Intel P4 3 GHz processor
Intel 865 PBZ mobo
nVidia 7600 GS AGP video card
2 GB PC 3200 memory
SoundBlaster Audigy 2 ZS sound card

Don't remember the exact specs on my hard drives, but they're fairly old - no SATA or 10,000 RPMs or RAID arrays or anything like that. They're big, anyway; I have about 400 GB total space.

[Elendil's Heir]

The guy living in the White House plays it every day. After six years' practice, though, he's still not very good.

[anamnesis]

You know what's really interesting ... I just got a Dell XPS M1710 notebook and installed the game on there. Lo and behold, it runs faster on the notebook than it does on my rig. The specs are admittedly pretty close (both machines have 2GB mem and an nVidia 7950 video processor, but the laptop only has a single 7200rpm drive), and I'm shocked at the difference in performance and quite honestly, I think I know the real culprit.

Windows Vista.

The notebook is running XP and it is a lot smoother. The CPU is only a slightly faster Core 2 Duo running at 2.0GHz whereas my rig is 1.8GHz. The difference makes me angry. Creative still doesn't have finalized Vista drivers for my sound card, and nVidia is still in beta with nVidia Forceware drivers for Vista, so the game pops, glitches, scratches, pauses, and gets unbearably slow later on.

Some are saying (hoping) that DirectX10 support patches will accelerate gameplay in Vista in months to come. Yeah, maybe. What do we do until then, and why the hell haven't huge companies like Creative and nVidia had enough time to develop the software for Vista in time? Did they just get Vista last month too?

[msmith537]

You know what's really interesting ... I just got a Dell XPS M1710 notebook and installed the game on there. Lo and behold, it runs faster on the notebook than it does on my rig. The specs are admittedly pretty close (both machines have 2GB mem and an nVidia 7950 video processor, but the laptop only has a single 7200rpm drive), and I'm shocked at the difference in performance and quite honestly, I think I know the real culprit.

Windows Vista.



Therein lies the irony. If I buy a new PC, the fucker will be stuck with Windows Vista. :mad:

[Carnick]

Is it necessary to keep lower tech engineers and buildings around? I noticed that the level 2 engineers can't build walls, and the level 2 navy building can't build subs...

[Montgomery0]

Woah. Six Monkeylords? Heaven help the guilty! :eek:

Yeah, uh ... I know about upgrading the ACU but it takes so long to build enough power generators and power storage units to supply the kind of juice needed for the Tech 3 upgrades. The commanders suck it down at an astonishing rate.

Is there a good site with build order strategies for maximizing/balancing economy growth and productivity in a short amount of time?

I'm no expert, but I've noticed I do a lot better when I don't produce on a deficit. Often, I get too stuck on building my defenses that I put way too many things into production and get stuck at -100 mass.

If you don't know yet, there is an adjacency factor to placing buildings. When you place a power generator next to a mass extractor/fabricator or factory, it's power consumption will go down (you will notice that there are lines connecting the generator and extractor.) When you place an appropriate storage unit next to the appropriate producer (energy/energy, mass/mass) you will get an additional bonus to the producer, up to 50% I believe if you surround the production building.

You can upgrade the ACU's first level of engineering pretty early on, it only costs a little mass and a few 100 energy. The second upgrade requires a lot of mass and about 5000 energy, meaning tons of level 3 energy and mass producers, but it is a huge, HUGE upgrade in fabrication speed. Something like 10 or so level 3 engineers (very helpful.)

Is it necessary to keep lower tech engineers and buildings around? I noticed that the level 2 engineers can't build walls, and the level 2 navy building can't build subs...


I just click the engineers to my ACU or an important factory and forget about them, no point in wasting a good engineer.

[sturmhauke]

Is it necessary to keep lower tech engineers and buildings around? I noticed that the level 2 engineers can't build walls, and the level 2 navy building can't build subs...
Higher level units can still build earlier level stuff. On the left is a selector thingy for choosing which tech level you want to use. The top is level 1, and below it are level 2, 3, and experimental. To the right of all those is the upgrade selector, but not every unit is upgradeable.

[Quartz]

Therein lies the irony. If I buy a new PC, the fucker will be stuck with Windows Vista. :mad:

I can't find the original article, but I've read somewhere that they're recommending 4GB for Vista. The article, IIRC, said that all MS's demo machines go with 4 GB.

[Quartz]

If you have two monitors, you can keep one zoomed in on the action while the other gives you the strategic view
Come to daddy!

[Quartz]

Unfortunately I don't think a 1GB P2D-2.6 with a Geforce 7600GS will cut it.

[diku]

I've been playing with a strategy of combining mass fabricator's and energy producers in a matrix, to reduce the amount of energy each mass fab uses. Got this from the Gas Powered forums.

At T3, a mass fab uses 1500 energy and produces 24 mass. But, if you surround them with T3 energy units, they only use 300 energy. And then you can build off of that with more mass fabs. I had a production of around 250 mass and 11k energy going at one point. You have to be careful though, since one of the energy produces blowing up will kill the whole matrix. Works really well though.

[Quartz]

Well, I'm a sucker for RTS games so I went and bought it anyway. Memory will be ordered shortly. The dual-monitor thing is really neat, but seems to severely impact scrolling the view panel. Up and down is fine, but left and right isn't. Of course, I've only had it up 5 minutes. I'm also using a trackball rather than a mouse (no mice for me ever again), which adds to the fun.

[msmith537]

Well, I went and got it. Works fine on my PC. Not awesome, but certainly playable.

And I'm pretty much not that impressed. It's basically Total Annihilation with better graphics. I've only played up to the 40x40 maps but I'm not feeling like it's all that massive or "strategic". Feels like Age of Empires II when you play 2v2 on a 8 player map. Shit, it doesn't even feel that much bigger than a large TA map.

And speaking of maps, what's the deal with the geometric patterns? How about a few maps that look like actual mountain ranges and coastline? I know people will eventually create downloadable maps but WTF.

And I have to say, like TA SupCom, lacks the human element. I want to see flaming soldiers screaming and running out of blow'd up tanks and robots like the C&C games! I want towns of resource collecting villagers like AOE! With Supreme Commander, there's no love lost between these armies of emotionless machines!


And this isn't specific to SupCom, but I'm still wating to see something truly revolutionary in RTS games. Something that goes beyond the standard sandbox full of tank factories and resource collectors.

[anamnesis]

What? Supreme Commander is Total Annihilation with better graphics? You mean all the publicity and reviews that open with "Supreme Commander is Chris Taylor's spiritual successor to Total Annihilation" were actually right?

Why, I never.

[sturmhauke]

And what's wrong with "TA with better graphics"? TA was entirely too awesome.

[Red Barchetta]

And what's wrong with "TA with better graphics"? TA was entirely too awesome.

Total Annihilation may very well be the finest RTS ever made, but therein lies the problem. While Super Commander may objectively be superior to TA, it will undoubtedly fail to capture the magic of the original, due to it merely evolving the concept instead of redefining it.

This can already be found in many of the reviews; it has solid mechanics, but the collecting of resources feels tired, as it should given TA came out a decade ago.

Zelda's latest adventure, The Twilight Princess, ran into the same problem. Arguably, it refined the series, but it came at the expense of new experiences, which left many disappointed.

[RickJay]

And what's wrong with "TA with better graphics"? TA was entirely too awesome.
TA is still one of my favourite games ever, and IMHO it's

1. The best RTS game ever, and
2. One of the four best PC games of ANY kind ever. (the other four: Civilization, TIE Fighter, and World of Warcraft.)

But just doing it again is... well, it's just doing it again. It's nice to have, but it's like watching Revenge of the Sith; it's got space battles and light saber fights and that's all well and fine, but I saw it in 1977, so the magic's not there. Or it's like the PS3 and the XBox 360 - they're just the PS2 and the XBox with better graphics cards, really. It's the Wii that's breaking new ground.

The next TRULY great RTS will be something innovative. Something that isn't just a race to collect resources and build factories and units.

[anamnesis]

Not every game has to be genre defining and revolutionary. What more do you want it to do, make fresh-squeezed orange juice? SupCom has all the ingredients of a top shelf RTS and it pushes the genre envelope hard. Was Chris Taylor supposed to not capitalize on TA's success with a modern successor? That would be a great business decision. "Nah, it's just like TA, who wants that when they can just play TA? Hell, why remake anything when the original was such a success? We shouldn't improve anything unless we improve it radically. Why the hell did Ford ever stop making the Model T? It got us around alright!"

Supposing all the critics of genre-defining game elements got together and actually did something besides criticize, I wonder what this great new genre-defining RTS they'd make would look like. What would the revoutionary new resource model be and how would it work and stay balanced? Would introducing new aspects of gameplay detract from it being an RTS? Will it be a hybrid genre? Will this decision affect gameplay balance, add too much micromanagement, or slow down the pace of the game? If you add too much detail to an RTS, it ceases to be an RTS and becomes a strategic clusterfuck. Turn-based games address this micromanagement aspect of strategy gaming. If there's one thing that the people who make games and the people who finance and publish them can agree on, it's that radical formula change for change's sake in a specific gaming genre is rarely an improvement.

SupCom is a damn good RTS and an improvement on TA in many ways while still maintaining excellent production values, good gameplay depth, pace and excellent replayability. The RTS formula has always been about capturing ground and building units until one side gets an advantage and SupCom is a great example due largely in part to the amount of units in play. There is a flow to unit production and movement patterns on a grand scale, and the sheer number of units that can be in play is something no other game has.

On second thought, maybe I see the point of all the griping. After all, Half Life 2 was just Half Life with prettier graphics. Why even bother? :rolleyes:

[Kiros]

TA is still one of my favourite games ever, and IMHO it's

1. The best RTS game ever, and
2. One of the four best PC games of ANY kind ever. (the other four: Civilization, TIE Fighter, and World of Warcraft.)

But just doing it again is... well, it's just doing it again. It's nice to have, but it's like watching Revenge of the Sith; it's got space battles and light saber fights and that's all well and fine, but I saw it in 1977, so the magic's not there. Or it's like the PS3 and the XBox 360 - they're just the PS2 and the XBox with better graphics cards, really. It's the Wii that's breaking new ground.

The next TRULY great RTS will be something innovative. Something that isn't just a race to collect resources and build factories and units.

While I disagree strongly about your taste in games (give me Starcraft, Civ II, and Everquest, thanks), I am mostly with your sentiment about the RTS genre. When I was a teenager and I picked up Warcraft II and C&C, they were excellent games. When I picked up Starcraft and TA a few years later... well, one of them was an obsession, one of them was technically amazing with (as someone mentioned upthread) no soul, and no matter which one you liked, you had to agree that they were seminal games which would define the genre going forward. Then, Warcraft III came out, and it was a near-perfect refinement of the small-scale tactical RTS, to the point where I don't know if they'll ever need to make a Warcraft IV. I think at this point, SupCom has the correct idea - the next seminal RTS game will be on the grand scale, at least as much strategy as tactics. This isn't it. This is a solid eight out of ten, but it's not that 9.5/10 game that is going to hang over the genre for the next ten years.

I mean, don't take that as too much of a criticism. If you were one of those depraved souls who liked TA more than Starcraft to begin with, goodness knows you've waited long enough for your sequel. Then again, I'm not sure when we decided that we were looking for revolutionary here, either, as opposed to just "a solid game, even if it is a bit of a resource hog".

I guess you could say that's my review - TA 2.0, pretty decent game but not really my thing, happy for you guys who enjoy it, and nothing at all wrong with that. :)

[Carnick]

My main problem with SupCom (and TA) is that it lacks soul. No unit voices, no humor, dull unit designs, sides that are largely the same... it's missing all the elements that made the Westwood and Blizzard games great. I like SupCom, it has great grand tactical gameplay, but it's pretty much artistically bankrupt. Mechs you say? With lasers? Gimme a break, Chris. If the units were somewhat interesting to look at the heavy use of processing power might be more justifiable. If he hires some real artists for his next game we'll have a perfect RTS. We're halfway there, at least.

[RickJay]

My main problem with SupCom (and TA) is that it lacks soul. No unit voices, no humor, dull unit designs, sides that are largely the same... it's missing all the elements that made the Westwood and Blizzard games great.
I always found the voices and "plots" (such as they were) of Starcraft and Warcraft irritating. I wanted to get in there and plan some battles, and TA did that far, far better than those games.

[anamnesis]

Yeah, I agree. The Spiderbot needs more cowbell. And a cute voice. And a cute soundbite of robotic banter when you abusively click on it a bunch of times.

The itsy bitsy spiderbot, smashed through the Aeon's base,
Down came a nuke, right in the spider's face,
Out came the engineers, to clean up all the junk,
Then another came through and it was a slam dunk.

[smiling bandit]

I'd like to see a more defined srategic component and *ahem* longer games. To my eye, games at this point don't really need so much in the way of resource management. That's a micromanaging issue for a very different kind of game than what SupCom wants to be, right? But capturing resources, and making the strategic decisions required to do so, assault the enemy, and finally conquere a planet, could be pretty cool.

[msmith537]

What? Supreme Commander is Total Annihilation with better graphics? You mean all the publicity and reviews that open with "Supreme Commander is Chris Taylor's spiritual successor to Total Annihilation" were actually right?


Apparently "spiritual successor" = "same exact game on larger maps with a third faction.


Carnick hit the nail square on the head. TA and SC have no soul to them. It really does feel like two robots landed on an empty planet and started cranking out automatons to fight each other with. There's no human element. It's like the new Star Wars movies. I don't care about the outcome of war between droids and clones in faceless battlearmor.

These are supposed to be colonized planets, right? I think it would be nice if there were a ton of destructable buildings and cities and whatnot. One of the coolest things in Command & Conquer Generals is setting off a nuke in the middle of town. And World in Conflict looks awesome in this area.

I agree with smiling bandit. It SHOULD be more about capturing strategic objectives - cities, resource points, supply centers, logistics routes. Not like I want the game to consist of micromanaging logistics or anything. I just think it would be cool to have more realistic logistics. Company of Heroes does this pretty well.

[Slacker]

This game is just plain MONEY. I played it every chance I got over the weekend, and I'll really enjoy it once I get a new system built next week. Unfortunately I suck pretty bad, so I've been getting routinely stomped on GPGnet so far, but I'm getting better. :D I'm slackercs online if anyone wants to /finvite me and throw down sometime.

I've only had two really disastrous online matches so far. In one I didn't build any air defense whatsoever and my opponent bombed me back into the stone age before I had a chance to develop any kind of response. In the other I accidentally built mass fabricators instead of power generators during my initial build out. I realized what I had done when my first factory took FOREVER to build. By the time I corrected things it was way too late for me to recover and I got rolled over with a quickness.

The dual monitor setup is greatness. I keep the second view zoomed out all the way so I always have an overview of the action while I control things on the main screen. I can also give commands on the second monitor if I want, which is great for sending out scouts. Here's an ugly picture (http://boards.slackercentral.com/showthread.php?p=1370512#post1370512) of what it looks like.

Anyone up for a game? :D

[sturmhauke]

So I bought the game. It runs pretty well on my system so far - better than the demo, actually. I'm having trouble figuring out the ferry command for transports though. Can you use it on ground units that are already built, or only on fresh units out of the factory door?

[diku]

So I bought the game. It runs pretty well on my system so far - better than the demo, actually. I'm having trouble figuring out the ferry command for transports though. Can you use it on ground units that are already built, or only on fresh units out of the factory door?


Either way. If you have units already built, set the ferry point for the transport, then click the units you want to ferry, then right click on the transport beacon underneath the ferry. The transport will fill up, ferry, then come back and get all of the rest.

For new units, you can also set a transport to assist a factory after setting a ferry point. Then all new stuff will be moved.

[sturmhauke]

What if I have a squad of transports and existing ground units? When I try to ferry with multiple transports, it seems like only one of them actually does anything.

[diku]

What if I have a squad of transports and existing ground units? When I try to ferry with multiple transports, it seems like only one of them actually does anything.


Set up the ferry point with one transport. Then set the other transports to assist that main transport. At that point, all of them will move units across the map until done.

I'm finding more and more depth in orders on this thing as I go along. I was never one to build too many factories until I figured out the factory assistance thing. Now I can build a small army in one click.

[sturmhauke]

Thanks, I think I got it now. Some of the commands seem a little too finicky.

[Slacker]

So who's still playing this badboy? I'm Lovin' It. The new GPGnet features are very cool too - especially for stat fans like myself. You can see your record broken down by faction and map. You can also see what units you build the most, how long you've played, and a few other things. Here's my page on there:

http://gpgnet.gaspowered.com/scstats/player/ByGametype.aspx?PlayerID=53865

[msmith537]

Thought I'd bumps this thread since I've just got back into playing SC on my new Dual Core PC. Well, new like six months old.

I've found that cranking up all the graphics settings but lowering the resolution to 1440 x whatever maximizes my graphical experience. And sometimes I like to throttle back the game speed so I can watch the vehicles move at a realistic speed (-4 seems about right).

Pros:
Good robot destruction action. There's something very satisfying in seeing one of those Czar disks careen into the ground like a track&field discus and explode
I always liked the long-range artillery action of TA

Cons:
It's still a resource hog
Some of the experimental or Level III things take 4 EV R to build, even with the game accelerated.
The AI is pretty lame. I'm going to try going online
Most of what I mentioned before. It would be nice if there were civilian buildings and infrastructure and whatnot to destroy. It would be very satisfying watching two uncaring robot armies fighting in the middle of a city or demolishing farmland and crops.

[control-z]

I enjoyed Supreme Commander, but I had more fun with World in Conflict. Artillery is really fun in WIC.

[Tool of the Conspiracy]

I finally finished the campaigns a month or two ago, so I'm ready for the expansion. (As soon as I finish the tower defense game Protector, which has been my gaming obsession lately.) It's a great game, but there are a lot of things that are non-obvious and might have made it even more fun, if I had found them earlier. (Manual? What's that?)
I didn't know that you could customize your command unit until I was nearly done with the second campaign. It's so horribly expensive that I didn't do it often anyway, but it would have been nice to know about.
I've never played it multi-player, so I never used GPGNet, so I didn't know there were patches until I was finished. I still haven't bothered with them--I figure they'll be on the expansion disc.
I never got the hang of transports. If there was no way to avoid using them (such as when retrieving the Black Sun part from the island), I considered them disposable.

[Sailboat]

I always found the voices and "plots" (such as they were) of Starcraft and Warcraft irritating. I wanted to get in there and plan some battles, and TA did that far, far better than those games.

One game reviewer said TA gave him what he came to RTS games to find: "Large ordnance downrange."

:)

Sailboat