Supreme Commander: Has it ruined RTS for you?
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Supreme Commander, isnt very good.
I picked it up for a fiver a couple of weeks ago, at that price point you cant complain, had i stumped up £25 for it new, i would have felt ripped off.
Its graphically weak, the AI is poor, the camera is extremely limited (other than the full map zoom) you cant rotate or adjust the angle. you cant arrange unit formations easily, unit selection is awkward, unit path finding is poor.......... it just goes on and on.
It isnt as good as a Total war game, or even Ground Control, which must be pushing for being 8 years old now.
I picked it up for a fiver a couple of weeks ago, at that price point you cant complain, had i stumped up £25 for it new, i would have felt ripped off.
Its graphically weak, the AI is poor, the camera is extremely limited (other than the full map zoom) you cant rotate or adjust the angle. you cant arrange unit formations easily, unit selection is awkward, unit path finding is poor.......... it just goes on and on.
It isnt as good as a Total war game, or even Ground Control, which must be pushing for being 8 years old now.
Very well, but I do feel that Starcraft plays much more like artillery beats tank and tank beats ground unit and ground unit beats artillery.
Sure you can set up mixed squads, but there is far less room to manoeuvre in Starcraft and and it all felt a little restrictive.
I always wanted my marines to be pressed up to a wall or dug in not clumped together in some weird blob.
If you clump units like they do in Starcraft in SupCom then they all get blown to pieces by a tac missile or a bomber and alternatively the units just dont find cover like they do in CoH. Sure this is something to do with the age of the engine, but I just find myself thinking that the game engine could be capable of a lot more
When we get a tactical RTS like CoH mixing with the scalability of SupCom (and I dont just mean the tac zoom there) then we will be at the next evolution of RTS gaming.
I agree.
I tried playing Starcraft, Total Annihilation, C&C and although I can play them fine, I really miss the strategic zoom.
As for SupCom has no strategy; I'd argue it has the most strategy as the maps are the largest in RTS, there are many different ways to play and win and it allows you to be sneaky as hell like in real warfare.
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I tried playing Starcraft, Total Annihilation, C&C and although I can play them fine, I really miss the strategic zoom.
As for SupCom has no strategy; I'd argue it has the most strategy as the maps are the largest in RTS, there are many different ways to play and win and it allows you to be sneaky as hell like in real warfare.
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You can rotate the camera, you can even have full 3D perspective like in a total war game.
Graphics are reasonable, particularly with the unit scale. Chris Taylor said to his programmers that he wanted to add another faction, but the team came back to say that the minimum spec of ram goes beyond the 32bit limit and is unreasonable.
keyboard presets make unit selection easier, and also idle engineers etc at the right of the screen.
I agree that unit path finding is troublesome, even Will Wright says pathfinding is a major AI obstacle for the industry as a whole.
SupCom AI for me has been the most impressive rts AI, there are AI mods you can try which are more human like and the Cheating AI of that is near impossible.
If your so disappointed of SupCom go online and get your ass kicked because you deserve it for ripping on a legendary Chris Taylor rts.
I certainly struggled to play DoW & CnC after playing sup-com, I still cant really handle them it feels like my nose is on the deck 
.
Even RA3 beta, which was interesting being all new & stuff couldn't hold my interest for long, because it felt too restrictive, I get a sense almost of claustrophobia when playing these close in RTS Games.
That said; I dont think supreme commander is the most interesting RTS out there. I think the lack of unit variety and uniformity of the races was one of the downers for me; even the new race in the expansion were pretty similar.
.Even RA3 beta, which was interesting being all new & stuff couldn't hold my interest for long, because it felt too restrictive, I get a sense almost of claustrophobia when playing these close in RTS Games.
That said; I dont think supreme commander is the most interesting RTS out there. I think the lack of unit variety and uniformity of the races was one of the downers for me; even the new race in the expansion were pretty similar.
Man of Honour
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As I said, I can't speak for how SupCom plays, but you'd certainly do better to not clump units in StarCraft. The whole idea of decent play is to micro-manage smaller units, moving them around in ways that limit the effectiveness of things like artillery/splash damage, and making use of special abilities of smaller units to let them stand up to bigger tanks/etc. Try watching some of the top-end replays on youtube to see what I mean
As I said, I can't speak for how SupCom plays, but you'd certainly do better to not clump units in StarCraft. The whole idea of decent play is to micro-manage smaller units, moving them around in ways that limit the effectiveness of things like artillery/splash damage, and making use of special abilities of smaller units to let them stand up to bigger tanks/etc. Try watching some of the top-end replays on youtube to see what I mean
StarCraft is not about strategy or sometimes even tactics. You need to be basically a mouse cowboy and know and control each key and button of your keyboard/mouse like your name. If you get to this point then it becomes interesting.
Some people say StarCraft was great but it was so limited (no physics, limited amount of units) that it was more like an arcade/tactics game than a proper RTS.
CoH is miles better I reckon.
Man of Honour
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As you say yourself, it requires good reactions and unit control as a pre-requisite for the rest of the game.
Have to admit I've also not played CoH but from what I've seen it looks quite interesting. I simply don't agree with your other views on StarCraft however. The tactics and strategy is actually very deep - the fact that you're required to react and implement these in less time than in other RTS games doesn't nullify that.
It isnt a great game.
Dont get me wrong, its not terrible, as in the worst i've ever seen, it just isnt very good.
you my friend are an idiot
Sorry but i love my rts games and for me once you are bored with nuking and experimental units what is there left ?
Certainly not the slow unit spam that is online play ?
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Soldato
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I wish I could enjoy Supreme Commander, but it just doesn't appeal to me. It has awesome features, huge battles, physics - but it lacks character. None of the factions are particularly 'interesting', none have any characters that you can care about. It looks like a sci-fi simulation more than a game. As a poster said above, it is like a future concept or a technology showcase, rather than a fun game.
This is how I felt too...I WANTED to like it, but I just couldn't get into it..it felt so hollow
Thanks,
Scott C
Strategic zoom, seemless waypoint systems, assist commands for factories and utility units, mobiles factories and the best intelligence systems. It has spoiled me but not ruined other rts games.
I ahve always felt W3 and starcraft were cramped games, but since supcom i can still play all the cnc games and dawn of war perfectly fine. But the worst is spore zooming thing, because in supcom it will zoom in on your cursor but in spore it always zooms to the centre of the screen/ship... it kills me each time.
But for people saying it's a bland game i dont beleive you, even the single player campaign has character and some good (not amazing) set battles to contend in. But playing a 2v2 or 4ffa with people of the same skill level as you will always be and intense too and fro over all the mass points of the map. People dont complain about dow being boring and that is a rock paper scissor game with (originally) a limited selection of units over the same kind of control points.
Ai sucks pants though but with sorian ai they are very good and a challenge for unprepared players.
I ahve always felt W3 and starcraft were cramped games, but since supcom i can still play all the cnc games and dawn of war perfectly fine. But the worst is spore zooming thing, because in supcom it will zoom in on your cursor but in spore it always zooms to the centre of the screen/ship... it kills me each time.
But for people saying it's a bland game i dont beleive you, even the single player campaign has character and some good (not amazing) set battles to contend in. But playing a 2v2 or 4ffa with people of the same skill level as you will always be and intense too and fro over all the mass points of the map. People dont complain about dow being boring and that is a rock paper scissor game with (originally) a limited selection of units over the same kind of control points.
Ai sucks pants though but with sorian ai they are very good and a challenge for unprepared players.
sorry and i know im gonna get flamed to hell for this, but everyone saying supreme commander is bad is a 100% fool, its the epiphany of RTS games, hell its the only proper RTS game out there, and those talking how it has no 'tactics and strategy' are talking utter balls, the fact the factions are so similar and the units so similar makes them all perfectly matched meaning one has to use strategy to get around that rather than massed units vs. massed units, sure you can do it that way but you can in any other RTS, however in supreme commander you have robots, tanks, submarines, ships, aircraft, experimental units, nukes, anti-nukes, proper artillery, base shields (use them or again your stupid) tactical missiles, tactical missile defences, it has more choice than any other RTS around. it simply CANNOT be compared to C&C3, its in an entirely different league, also the stragetic zoom is needed or else you'd sit for ages scrolling endlessly its dead simple, zoom out, zoom to cursor stuff that even a baby could master. sure its graphics aren't the best but unit animations are solid, explosions are good and the physics are superbe (something no other RTS seems to use) also worth noting i know the projectiles are rubbish detail but they all behave in a correct fashion unlike any other RTS game. also its NOT in the remotest respect a long winded game, you can choose to play long games, medium games or short games. small maps with loads of hard AI (forged alliance AI is much more brutal) and its a battle royale way more mentally demanding than C&C3, etc. or you can play larger maps with water and have enormous naval battles with nukes and T3 artillery bombarding enemy islands, im clueless to how anyone can say this is a bad RTS 
supreme commander is THE definitive real time STRATEGY game, if it doesn't appeal then its not an RTS your after, its a quick skirmish (C&C3, RA2, SC, etc) either that or your COMPLETELY missing the point *prepares to be flamed*
supreme commander is THE definitive real time STRATEGY game, if it doesn't appeal then its not an RTS your after, its a quick skirmish (C&C3, RA2, SC, etc) either that or your COMPLETELY missing the point *prepares to be flamed*