Anyone play Supreme Commander yet?

The Game Room
21

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.

22

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.

23

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.

24

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.

25

And what’s wrong with “TA with better graphics”? TA was entirely too awesome.

26

[QUOTE=sturmhauke]
And what’s wrong with “TA with better graphics”? TA was entirely too awesome.
[/QUOTE]

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.

27

[QUOTE=sturmhauke]
And what’s wrong with “TA with better graphics”? TA was entirely too awesome.
[/QUOTE]

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.

28

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:

29

[QUOTE=RickJay]
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.
[/QUOTE]

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. :slight_smile:

30

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.

31

[QUOTE=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.
[/QUOTE]

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.

32

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.

33

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.

34

[QUOTE=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?

[/QUOTE]

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.

35

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. :smiley: 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 of what it looks like.

Anyone up for a game? :smiley:

36

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?

37

[QUOTE=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?
[/QUOTE]

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.

38

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.

39

[QUOTE=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.
[/QUOTE]

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.

40

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