I've been thinking about picking this up during the Steam sale this weekend. I want to know what the current state of the game is. I've read some reviews, some of which were pretty negative, but I also know there have been some significant patches that have come out for it. Hows the game now?
I've been thinking about picking this up during the Steam sale this weekend. I want to know what the current state of the game is. I've read some reviews, some of which were pretty negative, but I also know there have been some significant patches that have come out for it. Hows the game now?
I haven't played for a little bit mostly due to SC2 and my backlog catch up plan. But this game was always fun. The campaign isn't to bad at all. The match making on it(once it came out) did pretty well of finding games of equal level. Balance between the sides was pretty decent and the sides were all pretty unique. The tech tree allowed you to specialize your army and had consequences depending on how you went. Games for 1v1 usually last about 20 to 30 minutes, 4v4s can get up to an hour or more. Battles are pretty epic since macro is the name of the game and man do you get some awesome armies.
In general I bought it at release and actually never felt it was a bad purchase, probably put almost 40+ hours into the game.
I've been thinking about picking this up during the Steam sale this weekend. I want to know what the current state of the game is. I've read some reviews, some of which were pretty negative, but I also know there have been some significant patches that have come out for it. Hows the game now?
The game is what it is. The first thing to know is that the Singleplayer is Ok....ish, if I'm feeling a little generous. Really, I'd say to buy this game for the multiplayer. Even comp-stomps are something that's fairly encouraged by the game and fun. The patches haven't been about changing the gameplay or anything, they've mainly been balance patches and tweaking the actually quite-fun-to-fight-coop AI. They did patch in a pretty good matchmaking system for 1v1 pretty fast. Anyway, depending on time of day it can sometimes take a while to get a decent game on the matchmaking since most people prefer to play with more than 1 person. There' usually custom games going so you just join.
The gameplay itself is good as long as you know the RTS basics (i.e. don't just sit back in your base building things for 30 minutes). However, the game does cater just as much to new people with the options it has, which has always been a plus point of the series. You can disable land / sea / air units, you can disable nukes, you can disable research centres so the only way to gain research points is fighting, and you can disable research altogether and have all upgrades and tech available from the start. Unlike other RTS's, completely walling off sea or air units doesn't break the balance gameplay (unless of course, you're on a map that requires it. And Aeon don't actually HAVE a navy anyway). Most custom games tend to disable nukes since if you don't then someone is likely going to try and fast tech to nuke, and everyone else gets worried about that and tries to fast-tech to anti-nukes before that happens. I'd say keeping nukes on is really more of a 1v1 or 2v2 thing.
The best feature for new players though is the rush timer, which basically restricts all players to a small zone around their starting point for anywhere up to 20 minutes. During this time you can build whatever you want, you just can't leave your highlighted area or attack people. It actually makes for an interesting game mode in itself. Even 20 minutes goes surprisingly fast when you're focussed on teching up as fast as possible, and madly rushing in the last few minutes to get your armies / experimentals out.
In general, gameplay is fun, and tends to feel a bit more relaxed than something like Dawn of War 2, which whilst fun, also tends to make me feel a lot more frustrated at times. You will still feel frustrated if your partners are sitting back and doing nothing but building research stations and power plants in an attempt to tech solely to artillery, but that happens with any multiplayer RTS where you're working with other people.
The sides are also much more well differentiated now. Basically research means that units stay useful throughout the entire game, unlike before where T1 units were largely scrap when everyone was building T3's. Some people complained about the lack of "scale" because the experimentals don't take 30 minutes to manufacture anymore. Or of being dumbed down because it uses a research system instead of tech levels (ironic, because I'd say the tech system makes things a lot more nuanced) but in general the game is a lot more focussed than the previous iteration, and more fun.
I am a little worried though of a possible impending exodus of players once the other big SC2 hits. But then I'm worried that'll happen to all the other RTS's too, and maybe some of the FPS's.
A half-baked Megalith saved my ass on a FFA by putting its own body between the enemy army and my commander.
Of course, he only delayed the innevitable. But it was quite the delay (enough to build another, complete Megalith) and it was awesome seeing it come out of the factory ASAP just to save the day.
I've been playing a lot of SupCom 2 lately. And I have to say, the more I play, the more I really appreciate the depth that the multiplayer in this game has, it's a lot more than most people give it credit for. There was all that angst on release about how the series had been dumbed down for the consoles, but that's just not true at all, it's more complex now but also probably more accessible because of the gameplay changes they've made.
Strategy in 1v1 games can often be a bit on the formulaic side if the maps are small, but things really start to get interesting once you hit 4+ players. Removing the Tech levels and replacing it with the research tree was definitely the right idea. Turtling is still just as valid as before as long as you focus your research along the right lines, but you've also got to adjust your play and even your research options on the fly to counter what paths your opponent might be taking. In this case though you have to also be aggressive in your turtling, not passive, you need to know where to defend choke points and how to manage threats, you need to be active in seeing what the enemy is throwing at you so that you can repel it. Meanwhile, if the enemy fails to crack your defence at the frontline, it could mean that your allies have had the time and opportunity to fast-tech up to game enders whilst they trying to push ahead. It buys you time but if you mess up on where you're researching to, you can be shut down once the experimentals start to hit.
Experimentals are far more frequent now (where before the major experimentals you almost never saw because they could literally take up to 30 minutes to build), and they're still massive game changers once they hit the field. Base defences that can slaughter armies at a time crumble in the face of a few mega-robots or experimental gunships. Your enemy decided to invest heavily in the ultimate land force instead? Well maybe that entire landforce is about to get sucked into a giant magnet and rendered useless as it's crunched to pieces. Maybe that magnet will get ripped to shreds by a couple of AC1000 gunships. Maybe those gunships will get knocked out of the sky by experimental AA bots, or a land army that's teched up to anti-air missile defences on all its tanks.
I really wish this game had taken off more. The multiplayer isn't dead but I really do feel it deserved more hype than what it got. Hopefully GPG can release an addon pack with some additional unit varieties and maybe do a free weekend, but at this stage it's probably too late. Starcraft 2 is coming and that's pretty much going to be devastating to the playerbases of all the online RTS's right now.
I've been playing a lot of SupCom 2 lately. And I have to say, the more I play, the more I really appreciate the depth that the multiplayer in this game has, it's a lot more than most people give it credit for. There was all that angst on release about how the series had been dumbed down for the consoles, but that's just not true at all, it's more complex now but also probably more accessible because of the gameplay changes they've made.
Strategy in 1v1 games can often be a bit on the formulaic side if the maps are small, but things really start to get interesting once you hit 4+ players. Removing the Tech levels and replacing it with the research tree was definitely the right idea. Turtling is still just as valid as before as long as you focus your research along the right lines, but you've also got to adjust your play and even your research options on the fly to counter what paths your opponent might be taking. In this case though you have to also be aggressive in your turtling, not passive, you need to know where to defend choke points and how to manage threats, you need to be active in seeing what the enemy is throwing at you so that you can repel it. Meanwhile, if the enemy fails to crack your defence at the frontline, it could mean that your allies have had the time and opportunity to fast-tech up to game enders whilst they trying to push ahead. It buys you time but if you mess up on where you're researching to, you can be shut down once the experimentals start to hit.
Experimentals are far more frequent now (where before the major experimentals you almost never saw because they could literally take up to 30 minutes to build), and they're still massive game changers once they hit the field. Base defences that can slaughter armies at a time crumble in the face of a few mega-robots or experimental gunships. Your enemy decided to invest heavily in the ultimate land force instead? Well maybe that entire landforce is about to get sucked into a giant magnet and rendered useless as it's crunched to pieces. Maybe that magnet will get ripped to shreds by a couple of AC1000 gunships. Maybe those gunships will get knocked out of the sky by experimental AA bots, or a land army that's teched up to anti-air missile defences on all its tanks.
I really wish this game had taken off more. The multiplayer isn't dead but I really do feel it deserved more hype than what it got. Hopefully GPG can release an addon pack with some additional unit varieties and maybe do a free weekend, but at this stage it's probably too late. Starcraft 2 is coming and that's pretty much going to be devastating to the playerbases of all the online RTS's right now.
The only way to 'save' it would be to add back in all the complexity they took out. This game only ever had a chance when it was the 'anti-starcraft' in that it was about grand scale epic conflicts with numerous unit types. With the complexity totally scaled back, all the people who were enthusiastic about the game just stayed with the original. The game was just kind of a pointless excursion into simplicity, when noone wanted simplicity.
Man what? I said the complete opposite of that, the gameplay isn't more simple now, it's more complex. What they "removed" was just changes to make the game more accessible, and it works. I don't necessarily agree with all the changes, but it's still Supreme Commander, and the gameplay is a lot more involved now (and flows a lot better) whilst still keeping that core.
The only way to 'save' it would be to add back in all the complexity they took out. This game only ever had a chance when it was the 'anti-starcraft' in that it was about grand scale epic conflicts with numerous unit types. With the complexity totally scaled back, all the people who were enthusiastic about the game just stayed with the original. The game was just kind of a pointless excursion into simplicity, when noone wanted simplicity.
All of the die-hard SupCom 1 fanboys keep repeating this vague rhetoric over and over again. Could you be specific? What 'complexity' was scaled back in SupCom 2?
I think it's just a matter of you having sour grapes over changes in the design direction that the game took. It's not a simple game, it's just one that take s a different approach to timescale. SupCom 1 battles took hours upon hours to complete, SupCom 2 battles tend to wrap-up in just over 45 minutes or so.
I know, I know. That's heresy, right? I mean, that's just running a dagger right down the spine of the 'true fans' of the series, right? Oh woe, if only Chris Taylor hadn't 'sold out' to the console crowd, who want to be able to play more than one game in an afternoon.
Except, not. I played Total Annihilation back in the day on Boneyards. Guess what? Multiplayer games lasted about 45 minutes, and only LOLNOOBs went for the Krogoth Gantry.
I've been playing the first SupCom, since I never did really get into playing it when I bought it oh so long ago.
I was on the mission where you gotta protect black sun.
I was furious.
First, for a game that is supposed to be epic I hit a unit limit, which I guess counts buildings as well, So my base could only be half defended.
I manage to set up to where Black Sun is over 50% charged, and those Cybran spider laser wang tanks come.
I blow the hell out of 2 of them with my Tech 3 siege bots, doing great. Killing every aircraft and land unit that enters my space, Lost my exterior outposts to a 5 pronged nuclear attack, but that was okay because it freed up the unit limit and would allow me to fortify the base more..When I get game over.
WTF?
Apparently while I was fighting the stupid spider tanks at my gate, another one..I don't know, came out of the water or something, I didn't see, and blew my ACU to hell and back. Giant explosion, game over.
cue the shouting of many expletives. It took like 3 hours to get up to that point, I sure as hell am not going to go through this again.
I've been playing a lot of SupCom 2 lately. And I have to say, the more I play, the more I really appreciate the depth that the multiplayer in this game has, it's a lot more than most people give it credit for. There was all that angst on release about how the series had been dumbed down for the consoles, but that's just not true at all, it's more complex now but also probably more accessible because of the gameplay changes they've made.
Strategy in 1v1 games can often be a bit on the formulaic side if the maps are small, but things really start to get interesting once you hit 4+ players. Removing the Tech levels and replacing it with the research tree was definitely the right idea. Turtling is still just as valid as before as long as you focus your research along the right lines, but you've also got to adjust your play and even your research options on the fly to counter what paths your opponent might be taking. In this case though you have to also be aggressive in your turtling, not passive, you need to know where to defend choke points and how to manage threats, you need to be active in seeing what the enemy is throwing at you so that you can repel it. Meanwhile, if the enemy fails to crack your defence at the frontline, it could mean that your allies have had the time and opportunity to fast-tech up to game enders whilst they trying to push ahead. It buys you time but if you mess up on where you're researching to, you can be shut down once the experimentals start to hit.
Experimentals are far more frequent now (where before the major experimentals you almost never saw because they could literally take up to 30 minutes to build), and they're still massive game changers once they hit the field. Base defences that can slaughter armies at a time crumble in the face of a few mega-robots or experimental gunships. Your enemy decided to invest heavily in the ultimate land force instead? Well maybe that entire landforce is about to get sucked into a giant magnet and rendered useless as it's crunched to pieces. Maybe that magnet will get ripped to shreds by a couple of AC1000 gunships. Maybe those gunships will get knocked out of the sky by experimental AA bots, or a land army that's teched up to anti-air missile defences on all its tanks.
I really wish this game had taken off more. The multiplayer isn't dead but I really do feel it deserved more hype than what it got. Hopefully GPG can release an addon pack with some additional unit varieties and maybe do a free weekend, but at this stage it's probably too late. Starcraft 2 is coming and that's pretty much going to be devastating to the playerbases of all the online RTS's right now.
The only way to 'save' it would be to add back in all the complexity they took out. This game only ever had a chance when it was the 'anti-starcraft' in that it was about grand scale epic conflicts with numerous unit types. With the complexity totally scaled back, all the people who were enthusiastic about the game just stayed with the original. The game was just kind of a pointless excursion into simplicity, when noone wanted simplicity.
Complexity and depth are not necessarily the same thing.
theres no way to resist nukes other than to destroy the strategic launcher before launch or building strategic missile defenses, right?
Like, i coouldnt cluster together a bunch of tech3 shields together and be able to resist/mitigate the brunt of the damage?
in supcom one, incase you didnt read my previous post:p
You could build tactical missile defense things, which are anti-nuke missiles. After you build those silos you gotta construct each individual missile but it's so worth it.
theres no way to resist nukes other than to destroy the strategic launcher before launch or building strategic missile defenses, right?
Like, i coouldnt cluster together a bunch of tech3 shields together and be able to resist/mitigate the brunt of the damage?
in supcom one, incase you didnt read my previous post:p
You could build tactical missile defense things, which are anti-nuke missiles. After you build those silos you gotta construct each individual missile but it's so worth it.
I know, thats why I mentioned the strategic missile defense
My last save was faaaar earlier than I expected. Like, just before having to destroy the southeastern aeon base.
So, I have returned to a state of rage. The unit cap is only fuel on the fire, I am slamming my head against it and unable to figure out how to defend black sun without hitting it.
Buttcleft on
0
ViscountalphaThe pen is mightier than the swordhttp://youtu.be/G_sBOsh-vyIRegistered Userregular
edited July 2010
That final level on sup com 1 can seriously go fuck itself. I had to turn it down to easy to finish it.
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I haven't played for a little bit mostly due to SC2 and my backlog catch up plan. But this game was always fun. The campaign isn't to bad at all. The match making on it(once it came out) did pretty well of finding games of equal level. Balance between the sides was pretty decent and the sides were all pretty unique. The tech tree allowed you to specialize your army and had consequences depending on how you went. Games for 1v1 usually last about 20 to 30 minutes, 4v4s can get up to an hour or more. Battles are pretty epic since macro is the name of the game and man do you get some awesome armies.
In general I bought it at release and actually never felt it was a bad purchase, probably put almost 40+ hours into the game.
The game is what it is. The first thing to know is that the Singleplayer is Ok....ish, if I'm feeling a little generous. Really, I'd say to buy this game for the multiplayer. Even comp-stomps are something that's fairly encouraged by the game and fun. The patches haven't been about changing the gameplay or anything, they've mainly been balance patches and tweaking the actually quite-fun-to-fight-coop AI. They did patch in a pretty good matchmaking system for 1v1 pretty fast. Anyway, depending on time of day it can sometimes take a while to get a decent game on the matchmaking since most people prefer to play with more than 1 person. There' usually custom games going so you just join.
The gameplay itself is good as long as you know the RTS basics (i.e. don't just sit back in your base building things for 30 minutes). However, the game does cater just as much to new people with the options it has, which has always been a plus point of the series. You can disable land / sea / air units, you can disable nukes, you can disable research centres so the only way to gain research points is fighting, and you can disable research altogether and have all upgrades and tech available from the start. Unlike other RTS's, completely walling off sea or air units doesn't break the balance gameplay (unless of course, you're on a map that requires it. And Aeon don't actually HAVE a navy anyway). Most custom games tend to disable nukes since if you don't then someone is likely going to try and fast tech to nuke, and everyone else gets worried about that and tries to fast-tech to anti-nukes before that happens. I'd say keeping nukes on is really more of a 1v1 or 2v2 thing.
The best feature for new players though is the rush timer, which basically restricts all players to a small zone around their starting point for anywhere up to 20 minutes. During this time you can build whatever you want, you just can't leave your highlighted area or attack people. It actually makes for an interesting game mode in itself. Even 20 minutes goes surprisingly fast when you're focussed on teching up as fast as possible, and madly rushing in the last few minutes to get your armies / experimentals out.
In general, gameplay is fun, and tends to feel a bit more relaxed than something like Dawn of War 2, which whilst fun, also tends to make me feel a lot more frustrated at times. You will still feel frustrated if your partners are sitting back and doing nothing but building research stations and power plants in an attempt to tech solely to artillery, but that happens with any multiplayer RTS where you're working with other people.
The sides are also much more well differentiated now. Basically research means that units stay useful throughout the entire game, unlike before where T1 units were largely scrap when everyone was building T3's. Some people complained about the lack of "scale" because the experimentals don't take 30 minutes to manufacture anymore. Or of being dumbed down because it uses a research system instead of tech levels (ironic, because I'd say the tech system makes things a lot more nuanced) but in general the game is a lot more focussed than the previous iteration, and more fun.
I am a little worried though of a possible impending exodus of players once the other big SC2 hits. But then I'm worried that'll happen to all the other RTS's too, and maybe some of the FPS's.
Any recommended reading for (multiplayer) strategy?
http://store.steampowered.com/app/40100/
which, needless to say, is a HELL of a good deal!
Of course, he only delayed the innevitable. But it was quite the delay (enough to build another, complete Megalith) and it was awesome seeing it come out of the factory ASAP just to save the day.
This game has some awesome moments.
I just started playing this last week and out the following resources very useful:
BEGINNERS GUIDE (With some recommended build orders): http://www.gamereplays.org/supremecommander2/portals.php?show=page&name=supcom2-beginner-guide&st=0
ADVANCED GUIDE: http://www.gamereplays.org/supremecommander2/portals.php?show=index&name=sovietpride-guide-to-supreme-commander-2&tab=7297631
REPLAYS: http://www.gamereplays.org/supremecommander2/
FULL UNIT LIST: http://supcomdb.com/sc2/unitlist
Strategy in 1v1 games can often be a bit on the formulaic side if the maps are small, but things really start to get interesting once you hit 4+ players. Removing the Tech levels and replacing it with the research tree was definitely the right idea. Turtling is still just as valid as before as long as you focus your research along the right lines, but you've also got to adjust your play and even your research options on the fly to counter what paths your opponent might be taking. In this case though you have to also be aggressive in your turtling, not passive, you need to know where to defend choke points and how to manage threats, you need to be active in seeing what the enemy is throwing at you so that you can repel it. Meanwhile, if the enemy fails to crack your defence at the frontline, it could mean that your allies have had the time and opportunity to fast-tech up to game enders whilst they trying to push ahead. It buys you time but if you mess up on where you're researching to, you can be shut down once the experimentals start to hit.
Experimentals are far more frequent now (where before the major experimentals you almost never saw because they could literally take up to 30 minutes to build), and they're still massive game changers once they hit the field. Base defences that can slaughter armies at a time crumble in the face of a few mega-robots or experimental gunships. Your enemy decided to invest heavily in the ultimate land force instead? Well maybe that entire landforce is about to get sucked into a giant magnet and rendered useless as it's crunched to pieces. Maybe that magnet will get ripped to shreds by a couple of AC1000 gunships. Maybe those gunships will get knocked out of the sky by experimental AA bots, or a land army that's teched up to anti-air missile defences on all its tanks.
I really wish this game had taken off more. The multiplayer isn't dead but I really do feel it deserved more hype than what it got. Hopefully GPG can release an addon pack with some additional unit varieties and maybe do a free weekend, but at this stage it's probably too late. Starcraft 2 is coming and that's pretty much going to be devastating to the playerbases of all the online RTS's right now.
The only way to 'save' it would be to add back in all the complexity they took out. This game only ever had a chance when it was the 'anti-starcraft' in that it was about grand scale epic conflicts with numerous unit types. With the complexity totally scaled back, all the people who were enthusiastic about the game just stayed with the original. The game was just kind of a pointless excursion into simplicity, when noone wanted simplicity.
All of the die-hard SupCom 1 fanboys keep repeating this vague rhetoric over and over again. Could you be specific? What 'complexity' was scaled back in SupCom 2?
I think it's just a matter of you having sour grapes over changes in the design direction that the game took. It's not a simple game, it's just one that take s a different approach to timescale. SupCom 1 battles took hours upon hours to complete, SupCom 2 battles tend to wrap-up in just over 45 minutes or so.
I know, I know. That's heresy, right? I mean, that's just running a dagger right down the spine of the 'true fans' of the series, right? Oh woe, if only Chris Taylor hadn't 'sold out' to the console crowd, who want to be able to play more than one game in an afternoon.
Except, not. I played Total Annihilation back in the day on Boneyards. Guess what? Multiplayer games lasted about 45 minutes, and only LOLNOOBs went for the Krogoth Gantry.
IIRC the Boneyards meta-game was usually won by Arm.
Yeah. PeeWee > AK was the biggest factor, usually.
If Core managed to dig-in, though, their late game stuff could pull them through.
Its still awesome right?
I was on the mission where you gotta protect black sun.
I was furious.
First, for a game that is supposed to be epic I hit a unit limit, which I guess counts buildings as well, So my base could only be half defended.
I manage to set up to where Black Sun is over 50% charged, and those Cybran spider laser wang tanks come.
I blow the hell out of 2 of them with my Tech 3 siege bots, doing great. Killing every aircraft and land unit that enters my space, Lost my exterior outposts to a 5 pronged nuclear attack, but that was okay because it freed up the unit limit and would allow me to fortify the base more..When I get game over.
WTF?
Apparently while I was fighting the stupid spider tanks at my gate, another one..I don't know, came out of the water or something, I didn't see, and blew my ACU to hell and back. Giant explosion, game over.
cue the shouting of many expletives. It took like 3 hours to get up to that point, I sure as hell am not going to go through this again.
Ok, now I feel like a jackass.
Yeah, I did, I was just inundated with vidyagame rage that I forgot.
Still, it'll be before Black Sun began charging. Which is irritating.
Like, i coouldnt cluster together a bunch of tech3 shields together and be able to resist/mitigate the brunt of the damage?
in supcom one, incase you didnt read my previous post:p
You could build tactical missile defense things, which are anti-nuke missiles. After you build those silos you gotta construct each individual missile but it's so worth it.
I know, thats why I mentioned the strategic missile defense
Good to know
Okay. I thought it exploded in the air/on contact with the shield. Good
Units of any team can also walk through shields. I am pretty sure this is supposed to be along the same lines.
Yeah I know that, it only stops firepower and crashing aircraft
but your units and artillery can fire out
So, I have returned to a state of rage. The unit cap is only fuel on the fire, I am slamming my head against it and unable to figure out how to defend black sun without hitting it.
I am on easy.
The only thing fucking me in the ass is the damn unit limit
I don't remember having much problem with that level at all, except for maybe frame rate issuses.
That and I would make sure your base defenses are up to snuff. Which faction are you?
I'm not doing multi, i'm doing the campaign..last UEF mission I think, defending Black Sun.
only have access to the aircraft carrier submarine, and yes I generally build 3 of them for anti-ship duty
Finally was doing awesome, Almost had black sun ready to fire..and the game crashes.
Oh,a nd not only that, but it decided to corrupt my save too. so I have to start all over from the very begining, again.