The first game is one of my favorite RTS games of all time. The base building was fantastic and I'm sure that won't change. My only complaint was that for me the only worthwhile strategy was to turtle up until you had enough economy to afford some high level doomsday army/unit that could guarantee victory. I wish there were more reasons to build low level units and have actual battles that meant something instead of sitting in your fortress until you could slaughter your opponents with a wave of 300 gunships.
The first game is one of my favorite RTS games of all time. The base building was fantastic and I'm sure that won't change. My only complaint was that for me the only worthwhile strategy was to turtle up until you had enough economy to afford some high level doomsday army/unit that could guarantee victory. I wish there were more reasons to build low level units and have actual battles that meant something instead of sitting in your fortress until you could slaughter your opponents with a wave of 300 gunships.
I only saw this happen on large maps tbh, did you play any smaller ones?
So to address the comments of "dumbing down", here's how the economy model is changing:
- No more resource limits. You don't need to build storage to house extra resources, you just harvest them. IIRC they're also taking out the building adjacency synergies since those were awkward as heck.
- Unit purchases are a lump sum like in other RTS's, as opposed to the previous model where you set a unit to build and it would drain x metal and power every second until constructed. Now you set the units to build and the resources get removed from your pool straight away. This makes the resource model a lot more scrutable.
- Instead of going up tech levels (or maybe in addition to?), you instead research upgrades in different fields (land, sea, air, ACU, and maybe one or two others), some of which get applied retroactively to your units if they apply. So in the video the rockhead tanks could be upgraded with more firepower and AA. This is also how you research new units / experimentals to make them available to build, and other more general upgrades. This also means that you can, say, specialise in air combat and leave your ground forces underdeveloped.
- You can earn upgrade points by two ways, either investing in research (which I think involves building research labs or similar), or going out and fighting, which builds up your resources points as well. So upgrading would appear to happen either from sitting back and investing in research, or building up armies and sending them out to fight.
Other bits and pieces:
- Game is making use of Steam's multiplayer architecture, not GPGNet. Which likely means that even store bought version will tie into your Steam account, similar to Dawn of War 2, and so will also be patched and updated via Steam as well. I expect we'll (hopefully) be seeing things like integration with friends lists as well (DoW2 didn't integrate with Steam's friends list since it was making use of GFWL for its multiplayer architecture. Steam was mainly for the updating). What surprised me is that they weren't going with Stardock's Impulse system instead.
- They're making efforts to distinguish the sides even more from each other. To that end, the Aeon don't have a navy like the other sides. However, a lot of their land units are hovercraft, which allows them to move over water (and other units can simply walk along the seabed, like the Galactic Collosus).
- GPG hired on a modder from the community who worked on an AI mod to improve Supreme Commander's Skirmish mode. He seems to have been fairly enthusiastic about the changes made to the game so far, although naturally doesn't go into too much detail.
subedii on
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Zen VulgarityWhat a lovely day for teaSecret British ThreadRegistered Userregular
edited January 2010
Are they also designing this for multitouch screens ala ruse?
Zen Vulgarity on
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Zen VulgarityWhat a lovely day for teaSecret British ThreadRegistered Userregular
edited January 2010
Subedii I knew I always liked you
Now that I know there was someone as fanatical about SupCom as me
I really enjoyed it as a game to mess around with. It's got great scalea nd you can get some pretty huge battles going, but it's also a bit unintuitive.
I don't get this. How is it unintuitive to hold SHIFT and click everywhere to automate a series of tasks and then jump back to the overall conflict? To me the fact that you could easily macromanage makes it more intuitive than a game like StarCraft... which I'm terrible at online because I can't expand while maintaining that level of micromanaging. My brain just doesn't work that wait. It's probably TA's fault since it was the first RTS I really played when I was young (before that I'd only played really Civilization).
They probably went with steam due to the higher market penetration of the service, I won't lie, I don't even have impulse installed yet I own so many games on steam.
Those other changes sound really good, I did like many things about Sup com, but the focus on less units that do/can do more and diversification of factions is usually a good thing in my books.
Subedii, nice write up, sounds like they're making some good changes. I'm especially glad about the resource changes, which always felt a little to micro in a macro game.
And oh man, multitouch control for this would be incredible.
All of the AI was split in multiple threads across cores. So a Quad Core PC will get infinitely better performance... well, maybe not infinitely... but, because of all of the operations going on the game is incredibly CPU bound.
wow i'm surprised there are this many supcom fans on PA. I always thought everyone absolutely hated the game. the new economy and research should be awesome, i can't wait to get to play this
Yes, and that is also carrying over into the sequel. Sup com was also one of the few games that actually could utilize a Quad Core PC's technology.
Was there any notable way it did this other than the dual-monitor thing?
Actually the dual-monitor thing hardly used any resources at all, especially if you put the map into topographical mode (no textures at all, just colors to show elevation). And I don't think that used much of the cpu anyways, that would be more of a graphical thing I would think.
Is the game's scale smaller than the first? Cus it looks more like starcraft than a huge epic war game.
I was kinda hoping they would keep upping the scale until it covered an entire planet with some space battles going on too.
But you know, whatever sales.
The scale isn't much smaller if smaller at all, the economy and units are just more focused.
TheGerbil on
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-Loki-Don't pee in my mouth and tell me it's raining.Registered Userregular
edited January 2010
Downloaded the update, and had to go looking on sites for how to change the interface, but it was MUCH better. I played through nearly the whole first Cybran mission. Just how long are missions in this game? I think it took me about an hour and a half to get to the bit in the first Cybran mission where you're fighting the Aeon Illuminate.
Missions often expand so there aren't tons of missions, but each mission has a lot of parts as the map gets bigger, uses your existing base and asks you to do more stuff.
TheGerbil on
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-Loki-Don't pee in my mouth and tell me it's raining.Registered Userregular
edited January 2010
I realized that, I was just wondering, on average, how long a mission takes. I'm used to the normal hour or so per mission in other RTS's. The scale of this game is also throwing me. I send 40 units to the base and they get their ass handed to them. Guess I need to send a hundred or so.
Yes, and that is also carrying over into the sequel. Sup com was also one of the few games that actually could utilize a Quad Core PC's technology.
Was there any notable way it did this other than the dual-monitor thing?
Actually the dual-monitor thing hardly used any resources at all, especially if you put the map into topographical mode (no textures at all, just colors to show elevation). And I don't think that used much of the cpu anyways, that would be more of a graphical thing I would think.
SupCom has 17 threads so multiple cores can share the processing load very effectively. Someone also set up a utility to better facilitate the spreading of threads because the main processor often takes on the most and can become backed up.
The most annoying thing to me about the original+expansion was GPGnet. Specifically, arcane rituals were required in order to get the game patched up to the most recent release. Seeing that they're planning on using Steam makes this a day one purchase.
wow i'm surprised there are this many supcom fans on PA. I always thought everyone absolutely hated the game. the new economy and research should be awesome, i can't wait to get to play this
Well it was hardly perfect, but I found it greatly entertaining.
I mean, in what other game could I spend several hours against the AI constructing an impregnable island base with the sole, obsessive purpose of building twenty nuclear missile silos and launching them all in time to the 1812 overture?
In retrospect, I really should have recorded that. It was magnificent.
Xyyz on
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-Loki-Don't pee in my mouth and tell me it's raining.Registered Userregular
edited January 2010
Watching the Xbox 360 control walk through by Chris Taylor, he mentions a new innovation - paint selecting enemies. And it works exactly the same as Relic did it in Homeworld. Like, I really hope it makes it to the PC version too, because it's an awesome feature in a large scale strategy game, but calling it a new innovation is stretching it.
I realized that, I was just wondering, on average, how long a mission takes. I'm used to the normal hour or so per mission in other RTS's. The scale of this game is also throwing me. I send 40 units to the base and they get their ass handed to them. Guess I need to send a hundred or so.
Heh. Was playing this over Christmas. Bought it out of the nearby Cash Converters yonks ago (A week later they had the game and expansion for the same price:x), but the older PC didn't do it justice. Installed it to my new laptop to give it a go.
Dunno how, but I managed to get 50 short of the build limit after making huge defenses in the second/third? UEF mission (defending and repairing the research base). Didn't help that
the Aeon commander had artillery defenses and shields over EVERY FUCKING INCH of his base.
Managed to do it with a few waves of 50, alternating bombers and Tier 2 Tanks. The Aeon kept sending wave after wave with no success, and lost 3000 or so. I lost exactly 666. o_OD::evil:
Downloaded the update, and had to go looking on sites for how to change the interface, but it was MUCH better. I played through nearly the whole first Cybran mission. Just how long are missions in this game? I think it took me about an hour and a half to get to the bit in the first Cybran mission where you're fighting the Aeon Illuminate.
Is the expansion something separate that you have to buy? I was following this game like crazy before it came out but wound up only buying it recently. Anyone have any technical tips?
Jaunty on
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-Loki-Don't pee in my mouth and tell me it's raining.Registered Userregular
Downloaded the update, and had to go looking on sites for how to change the interface, but it was MUCH better. I played through nearly the whole first Cybran mission. Just how long are missions in this game? I think it took me about an hour and a half to get to the bit in the first Cybran mission where you're fighting the Aeon Illuminate.
Is the expansion something separate that you have to buy? I was following this game like crazy before it came out but wound up only buying it recently. Anyone have any technical tips?
Sometimes you get deals that have both but yes Forged alliance is a separate stand-alone expansion normally sold separately. You can only play the other factions multiplayer (that is all but the new one) if you own the original supreme commander.
TheGerbil on
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-Loki-Don't pee in my mouth and tell me it's raining.Registered Userregular
edited January 2010
Is Forged Alliance any good? I might grab it if it adds some neat stuff (like more experimentals).
Watching the Xbox 360 control walk through by Chris Taylor, he mentions a new innovation - paint selecting enemies. And it works exactly the same as Relic did it in Homeworld. Like, I really hope it makes it to the PC version too, because it's an awesome feature in a large scale strategy game, but calling it a new innovation is stretching it.
Wasn't the original SupCom's 360 version an abomination unto god? Or am I thinking about the (cancelled) WiC port, they both came out at about the same time so I get the ports confused.
Spoit on
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-Loki-Don't pee in my mouth and tell me it's raining.Registered Userregular
Watching the Xbox 360 control walk through by Chris Taylor, he mentions a new innovation - paint selecting enemies. And it works exactly the same as Relic did it in Homeworld. Like, I really hope it makes it to the PC version too, because it's an awesome feature in a large scale strategy game, but calling it a new innovation is stretching it.
Wasn't the original SupCom's 360 version an abomination unto god? Or am I thinking about the (cancelled) WiC port, they both came out at about the same time so I get the ports confused.
The SupCom port was awful, but it wasn't done by GPG (it was ported by Hellbent studios). This time GPG are doing both. So I guess it comes down to whether GPG know how to make a decent console game.
Brutal Legend put me in an RTS mood. I prefer the ultra-rare Action/RTS hybrids, but it's about time I learned a traditional strategy game.
"Traditional" RTS's these days are far more micromanagement oriented, and usually deal with squad and unit level tactics. SupCom goes more along the lines of large armies of units being controlled at a more strategic level. Few units ever have things like togglable abilities or "spells".
Not to try and dissuade you, I just thought you'd like to know more about what you'd be getting into. Generally SupCom is a slower paced game but large in scale, so I'm not sure how well that goes for you if you're only really into action or faster paced style RTS's. Just as important as your tactical decisions are your base building, defences, and upgrade decisions.
subedii on
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-Loki-Don't pee in my mouth and tell me it's raining.Registered Userregular
Not to try and dissuade you, I just thought you'd like to know more about what you'd be getting into. Generally SupCom is a slower paced game but large in scale, so I'm not sure how well that goes for you if you're only really into action or faster paced style RTS's. Just as important as your tactical decisions are your base building, defences, and upgrade decisions.
Yeah, but this game is meant to be a lot faster, at least to get to the 'meat' of a game. Instead of 20-30 minutes of setting up, it's now more like 5 minutes.
I am buying this game the day it comes out. Loved TA, loved SC, loved FA, and fully anticipate loving this.
I'm a little off-put by the change to the economy stuff, but we'll see how it is. I liked how the old one was set up but I have faith that they'll keep it fun in SC2, even with the changes.
Not to try and dissuade you, I just thought you'd like to know more about what you'd be getting into. Generally SupCom is a slower paced game but large in scale, so I'm not sure how well that goes for you if you're only really into action or faster paced style RTS's. Just as important as your tactical decisions are your base building, defences, and upgrade decisions.
Yeah, but this game is meant to be a lot faster, at least to get to the 'meat' of a game. Instead of 20-30 minutes of setting up, it's now more like 5 minutes.
This pleases me.
Naw, I tried playing CnC on 360, I appreciated the premise but gave up a little after the tutorial. Halo Wars worked out a little better.
Cantido on
3DS Friendcode 5413-1311-3767
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-Loki-Don't pee in my mouth and tell me it's raining.Registered Userregular
edited January 2010
It does look like they've put effort into the 360 version, but boy did it look ass ugly in that walk through. Jaggies everywhere, low resolution ground textures and shadows... Glad another audience will get to experience the game, but man. What a downgrade.
Posts
I mean seriously, the sight of an entire navy walking into an enemy base was a highlight of my gaming life.
Also I think one of the trailer shows the cybran walking ships. I think.
- No more resource limits. You don't need to build storage to house extra resources, you just harvest them. IIRC they're also taking out the building adjacency synergies since those were awkward as heck.
- Unit purchases are a lump sum like in other RTS's, as opposed to the previous model where you set a unit to build and it would drain x metal and power every second until constructed. Now you set the units to build and the resources get removed from your pool straight away. This makes the resource model a lot more scrutable.
- Instead of going up tech levels (or maybe in addition to?), you instead research upgrades in different fields (land, sea, air, ACU, and maybe one or two others), some of which get applied retroactively to your units if they apply. So in the video the rockhead tanks could be upgraded with more firepower and AA. This is also how you research new units / experimentals to make them available to build, and other more general upgrades. This also means that you can, say, specialise in air combat and leave your ground forces underdeveloped.
- You can earn upgrade points by two ways, either investing in research (which I think involves building research labs or similar), or going out and fighting, which builds up your resources points as well. So upgrading would appear to happen either from sitting back and investing in research, or building up armies and sending them out to fight.
Other bits and pieces:
- Game is making use of Steam's multiplayer architecture, not GPGNet. Which likely means that even store bought version will tie into your Steam account, similar to Dawn of War 2, and so will also be patched and updated via Steam as well. I expect we'll (hopefully) be seeing things like integration with friends lists as well (DoW2 didn't integrate with Steam's friends list since it was making use of GFWL for its multiplayer architecture. Steam was mainly for the updating). What surprised me is that they weren't going with Stardock's Impulse system instead.
- They're making efforts to distinguish the sides even more from each other. To that end, the Aeon don't have a navy like the other sides. However, a lot of their land units are hovercraft, which allows them to move over water (and other units can simply walk along the seabed, like the Galactic Collosus).
- GPG hired on a modder from the community who worked on an AI mod to improve Supreme Commander's Skirmish mode. He seems to have been fairly enthusiastic about the changes made to the game so far, although naturally doesn't go into too much detail.
Now that I know there was someone as fanatical about SupCom as me
I like you even more
I don't get this. How is it unintuitive to hold SHIFT and click everywhere to automate a series of tasks and then jump back to the overall conflict? To me the fact that you could easily macromanage makes it more intuitive than a game like StarCraft... which I'm terrible at online because I can't expand while maintaining that level of micromanaging. My brain just doesn't work that wait. It's probably TA's fault since it was the first RTS I really played when I was young (before that I'd only played really Civilization).
They probably went with steam due to the higher market penetration of the service, I won't lie, I don't even have impulse installed yet I own so many games on steam.
Those other changes sound really good, I did like many things about Sup com, but the focus on less units that do/can do more and diversification of factions is usually a good thing in my books.
And oh man, multitouch control for this would be incredible.
Was there any notable way it did this other than the dual-monitor thing?
I was kinda hoping they would keep upping the scale until it covered an entire planet with some space battles going on too.
But you know, whatever sales.
Actually the dual-monitor thing hardly used any resources at all, especially if you put the map into topographical mode (no textures at all, just colors to show elevation). And I don't think that used much of the cpu anyways, that would be more of a graphical thing I would think.
The scale isn't much smaller if smaller at all, the economy and units are just more focused.
SupCom has 17 threads so multiple cores can share the processing load very effectively. Someone also set up a utility to better facilitate the spreading of threads because the main processor often takes on the most and can become backed up.
Also, I expect LewieP is going to pop in at some point and post his video. :P
Well it was hardly perfect, but I found it greatly entertaining.
I mean, in what other game could I spend several hours against the AI constructing an impregnable island base with the sole, obsessive purpose of building twenty nuclear missile silos and launching them all in time to the 1812 overture?
In retrospect, I really should have recorded that. It was magnificent.
Heh. Was playing this over Christmas. Bought it out of the nearby Cash Converters yonks ago (A week later they had the game and expansion for the same price:x), but the older PC didn't do it justice. Installed it to my new laptop to give it a go.
Dunno how, but I managed to get 50 short of the build limit after making huge defenses in the second/third? UEF mission (defending and repairing the research base). Didn't help that
Managed to do it with a few waves of 50, alternating bombers and Tier 2 Tanks. The Aeon kept sending wave after wave with no success, and lost 3000 or so. I lost exactly 666. o_OD::evil:
Is the expansion something separate that you have to buy? I was following this game like crazy before it came out but wound up only buying it recently. Anyone have any technical tips?
The expansion is a separate purchase.
Wasn't the original SupCom's 360 version an abomination unto god? Or am I thinking about the (cancelled) WiC port, they both came out at about the same time so I get the ports confused.
The SupCom port was awful, but it wasn't done by GPG (it was ported by Hellbent studios). This time GPG are doing both. So I guess it comes down to whether GPG know how to make a decent console game.
"Traditional" RTS's these days are far more micromanagement oriented, and usually deal with squad and unit level tactics. SupCom goes more along the lines of large armies of units being controlled at a more strategic level. Few units ever have things like togglable abilities or "spells".
Not to try and dissuade you, I just thought you'd like to know more about what you'd be getting into. Generally SupCom is a slower paced game but large in scale, so I'm not sure how well that goes for you if you're only really into action or faster paced style RTS's. Just as important as your tactical decisions are your base building, defences, and upgrade decisions.
Yeah, but this game is meant to be a lot faster, at least to get to the 'meat' of a game. Instead of 20-30 minutes of setting up, it's now more like 5 minutes.
I'm a little off-put by the change to the economy stuff, but we'll see how it is. I liked how the old one was set up but I have faith that they'll keep it fun in SC2, even with the changes.
Screens and videos are looking good.
Very pleased.
This pleases me.
Naw, I tried playing CnC on 360, I appreciated the premise but gave up a little after the tutorial. Halo Wars worked out a little better.