C&C3 Demo

[SirNitram]

People that dislike it play games to watch stuff happen, not command troops. They should play real time battle watching.

What a succinct, witty-sounding, and utterly wrong statement. Go the fuck away, troll. Your pollution of the RTS Innovations thread was quite enough.

[Covenant]

I'm trying to maneuver in a box. Every other RTS feels cramped. You can't take advantage of the terrain, and there's no feeling of a vast battlefield.

I can see why you'd feel that way, and it's valid.

I can't say for myself that I've ever really wanted a vast battlefield between me and my foe though, unless there's things like ammo limits and supply chains and other things that would make area control worthwhile. I like how C&C's Orcas have an ammo limit, as do both side's bombers. Makes forward firebases more important, and area control is a good part of the game.

I'm not talking about metal extractors dotted across the landscape either. SupCom's massive distances are arbitrary anyway, C&C's got one single map out, and I'd be interested in seeing the size of the biggest map as it compares to an infantryman (ie, a T1 tank in SC). There's generally no reason to hold one pass over another one, and defensive structures are usually what you fall back to. Even if people build forward defensive lines, it's not like they need to hold territory in SC. You end up racing back and force between bases.

The extremely limited resources of C&C leads me to feel a lot more need to expand and control areas though. Harvesting sucks in general, I hate it, but it does force me to aggressively seek new mineral wads.

Use of terrain is also somewhat arbitrary. I can garrison structures, blow up bridges, lay down mines at chokepoints, and so on. What's SupCom's big terrain utilization feature? Geographical chokepoints that you can build defenses at, and hills you can put artillery on to make them fire farther? Is that all?

2. So many different ways to kill the enemy. Seriously. CnC 3 does not come even close. Dawn of War and company of Heroes don't come as close either. You have sea, air, land. You have nuke barrages, stealthed firebases, teleporting commanders. You send land forces across the water or drop them by air. Or forego all that and just siege, and I mean properly siege, a base from afar. Very few RTS games give the feeling that you're actually sieging someone.

Who needs sea? You only get sea on sea maps. I don't get the big deal. They're just big tanks. Sea battles are cool, but it's just a real big tank on blue grass.

Nukes are in C&C. I also, as Nod, have a variety of other missiles I can fire at the enemy, deployable reinforcements that drop out of the sky, superweapons, long-range artillery, and so on. Lots of firey death there.

I can stealth a Nod firebase and launch long-range attacks from it. GDI doesn't get stealth, but they have MOBILE FIREBASES. How's that for cool? Who needs it stealthed when it can move?

I can walk my trooprs there via land, hop them around with jumpjets, play a long-range duel game with skads of atrillery and spotters, bomb them with my bomber groups, or airlift my troops in with the inspired summonable air-deployment button.

And yes, I can siege. If your forces keep my spotters from getting into your base, the most I can do is lock down your periphery and creep fire up as close as their vision radius. The only different between your siege and mine is the shield. I think the shield was a really good idea in that sense, and it made sense for SC to have that, since you'd need to have time to redirect an army to return and break the siege. But it wouldn't feel right in C&C

I still don't understand why people are having problems with controlling their units.

We don't have problems controlling them. But the advanced tools we hoped would be there to make controlling a thousand units a snap just aren't there.

Again, CnC 3 has a separate planning mode, while supcom doesn't have a specific planning mode but its robust and versatile base control system allows you to do just that anyway. And armor facing was done way better by company of Heroes so cnc 3's not doing anything new there.

Eh? No, we're not talking about bases. We're talking about the 'complete a complex set of waypoints and commands, but don't put it into action until I say so' mode that C&C has SupCom doesn't. You can give them ways to do similar things (a video was posted showing how) in SC, but the simple function to tell them to do this just didn't exist, and it should have.

[Stark]

I don't see how whether the idea is new or inventive has anything to do with implementation. My response was simply aimed at Covenant's question as to what SupCom offers, not what SupCom has invented. But of course if there is another game that has offered this sort of scale and zoom feature as you appear to implicitly suggest, please let me know what game this is that I've been missing out on.

No no, I just saw some crossover here.

Yes, people have REALLY said stuff like that. Peruse the other thread and you will find people saying the game feels like an 'ants' game in the context of immersive gameplay and even Mike has retorted that the zoom feature was nothing impressive in what he feels is an unoriginal game. If I'm somehow misconstruing these complaints, then feel free to show me where I'm wrong. Of course, these are merely some complaints among other complaints.

Like this - are you talking about the zoom out feature, or the whole SupCom package? I was involved in that other thread, and I don't recall ANYONE saying 'the game is boring because you can zoom out'. People had problems with blandness, but this was NOT due to the zoom-out feature. Frankly, Mike's attitude that zooming out isn't impressive is exactly what I just said: it should have happened years ago, and *by itself* doesn't change anything or make anyone love/hate SupCom. The zoom is nowhere near as impressive or interesting as the other things SupCom does.

What? You think anything I post about SupCom is based on vilifying anyone who doesn't like it? No, Stark. I'm only vilifying you. I've said nothing about the creativity of SupCom or of its ideas. So what is this other game that makes SupCom's zoom feature so last decade?

Oi! As I said, sensible people have wanted to zoom out for years and years - it's not anywhere NEAR as impressive 'innovation wise' as all the other neat stuff SupCom does. SupCom finally did it... but again, the zoom is simply *one feature* in a game full of features. Yes, C&C3 would be better with the ability to zoom out, as would every RTS ever. So what? C&C3 beats it's (low) expectations, and SupCom disappointed after it's (much higher) expectations.

In terms of what? Sales? Ratings?

Sales of COURSE. Ratings are meaningless shit, right up there with Wiki shovelcontent.

EDIT - PS Don't lump me with the 'minimaps are ok' crowd. I've hated minimaps since the late levels of Dune 2, and fullscreen maps like TW, HW or SupCom are much better.

[Pint0 Xtreme]

I think any game with a minimap would be considered an all-out zoom feature. That's what they become in SupCom when you pull it way far out--just little symbols on the minimap. I can give people orders to move to other map locations and such, so really all SupCom did different is a MacroMap. I think that was a really nice thing to add, but it's just removing the arbitrary camera distance. You can change that in a buncha games via modding.

The difference between zooming all the way out on your main screen and having a minimap feature is not trivial. How many times have you used your minimap to order attacks? How many times have you used your minimap to probe weaknesses in your enemy's fortifications? Evaluating the situation quickly is only one of the advantages of zooming out all the way.

And RTS's like Homeworld had a free-roaming camera that was an infinite zoom, along with a MacroMap.

Yes, Homeworld did have a similar zoom and a macro-map. But you still didn't have to worry about the terrain, which is a dimension that is quite lacking in space based RTS's.

It was my issue that they felt like ants, but that's because there was no real sense of scale. This is something I and others in the Beta forums brought up, and preceeded their shift to a more 3/4ths camera angle than top down. The new camera angle helped.

The problem was, look at your units from above. Do you get a sense of scale? of course not. Look at them from the side, or from ground level, looking up. Sense of scale? Definately? But we never see towering monkeylords stomping over our heads, as tanks and such thunder under trees and cannonfire. We just see little pewpew lasers and spiderbots and they explode like they're made of tinfoil. The big berthas don't sound like big berthas, the tanks don't sound like they're firing potent energies, and it just seems small. You need to actually zoom down and rotate it to get a sense of 'bigness' to any of the units.

Yes, I'm quite aware that this was your complaint and that was what I was referencing earlier. It's like playing Homeworld entirely in the Macro-map mode.

And this is done by improperly scaling some units (the small ones especially, they look like toy cars), bad sound design, and in part the zoom feature. When given the option to zoom as far away as possible, there's really no reason not to. At that point you don't see ANY combat or ANY sense of scale and it's just little dueling symbols.

I don't think it's as much scaling the units improperly as it is scaling the units so small relative to the map. The scaling of the units relative to each other is fine. It's that you can scale out so far that they appear like ants is what destroys the immersive experience for some such as yourself.

[Companion Cube]

Judging by the demo, this is one of the most polished RTS games I've played recently. The aerial transport system in particular is good. After playing SupCom for a while, 20-minute games in CnC3 are a nice complement.

Oh, and I got nuked three times in the last skirmish I played. What impressed me was that the AI followed that up with a horde of stealth tanks and cloaked suicide bombers (How do they do this?) before the mushroom cloud had cleared.

[Pint0 Xtreme]

Like this - are you talking about the zoom out feature, or the whole SupCom package? I was involved in that other thread, and I don't recall ANYONE saying 'the game is boring because you can zoom out'. People had problems with blandness, but this was NOT due to the zoom-out feature.

No, no. I was speaking specifically towards the zoom and scale feature. Covenant's complaint stood out in my mind. I'm aware of the other complaints regarding blandness.

Frankly, Mike's attitude that zooming out isn't impressive is exactly what I just said: it should have happened years ago, and *by itself* doesn't change anything or make anyone love/hate SupCom. The zoom is nowhere near as impressive or interesting as the other things SupCom does.

I think it's one of the more interesting things SupCom does. Granted that it's about damn time someone implemented the feature, it's still pretty damn cool. I'm surprised no one else mentioned the fact that, like TA, everything is simulated in SupCom. It makes for much more interesting gameplay than using predetermined "hit" and "miss" averages like in Blizzard's RTS's. Yes, I know it's not anything new but it's still cool nonetheless.

Oi! As I said, sensible people have wanted to zoom out for years and years - it's not anywhere NEAR as impressive 'innovation wise' as all the other neat stuff SupCom does. SupCom finally did it... but again, the zoom is simply *one feature* in a game full of features. Yes, C&C3 would be better with the ability to zoom out, as would every RTS ever. So what? C&C3 beats it's (low) expectations, and SupCom disappointed after it's (much higher) expectations.

Lucky me I suppose. I had no expectations for it whatsoever probably due in part that the only press exposure I got was an announcement that Chris Taylor was making a new RTS and the E3 trailer of the game. My exact thoughts were "Cool! A new TA-like game with a cool zoom out feature!" and that's exactly what I got.

EDIT - PS Don't lump me with the 'minimaps are ok' crowd. I've hated minimaps since the late levels of Dune 2, and fullscreen maps like TW, HW or SupCom are much better.

Fine by me. I'm not that comprehensibly challenged! You made no such statements or implications.

[Covenant]

Huh. Well Pinto, in that sense, yeah. It really is about time. I'm suprised C&C didn't let me zoom out farther. They could have added atmospheric haze effects or something if they wanted to limit my maximum zoomout, but yeah. I'd agree with all those points. I still think SupCom is a good game, I'm just frustrated that it's not more fun.

A minimap is not as good as a macromap, but I quite often use the maps for ordering attacks, actually. I may be utterly, completely bizzare like that, but I use it that way. What I really want is a macromap spacebar function like HW so I can order things right there.

That's something that SupCom totally shoulda' done with their overlays! Ugh! We were so close to tactical perfection! I'm annoyed that they whiffed on it. Maybe it was never their intention. Ah well. What I really want is C&C GUI and units, with all that flavor, stuck into TA:Spring's deformable terrains and SC's map management. Since it's not ideal either way I'd rather take the slightly clunkier fun game than the drab and boring ant-management tech demo.

And just to clarify, the zoomout made things bland because eventually it zoomed out and just became a macromap with icons. Like you said, it was like playing homeworld on map mode only. The zoomout itself didn't necessitate this, but because I needed to spend so much time zoomed out and focusing on the big picture, I rarely got a chance to pivot my camera around and watch the cinematic beauty of towering monkeylords plodding across a living carpet of mantis tanks towards the enemy.

C&C, which does not require me to spend much time zoomed out (due to effective unit management functions and generally smaller scale) gives me a much more visceral experience while also a similar or superior level of game control. I lose out on the epic scale, but until someone makes Kane:Total War I'm stuck choosing between glorious combat and detached battlefield control.

[Stark]

Lucky me I suppose. I had no expectations for it whatsoever probably due in part that the only press exposure I got was an announcement that Chris Taylor was making a new RTS and the E3 trailer of the game. My exact thoughts were "Cool! A new TA-like game with a cool zoom out feature!" and that's exactly what I got.

Lucky you indeed: SupCom has been hyped as the revolutionary next step of RTS awesome for ages. Hence, it disappoints a bit.

[Pint0 Xtreme]

C&C, which does not require me to spend much time zoomed out (due to effective unit management functions and generally smaller scale) gives me a much more visceral experience while also a similar or superior level of game control. I lose out on the epic scale, but until someone makes Kane:Total War I'm stuck choosing between glorious combat and detached battlefield control.

Effective unit management does not make up for the ability to see the whole battlefield though it's preferrable to have both. About detached battlefield control... isn't that what real generals and commanders see anyways?

[SirNitram]

After SupCom and C&C3, I really am looking at two different approaches. SupCom tries so hard, it's kind of sad: It tries to be THE NEXT BIGGEST MOST AWESOME THING EVA!!!!!!... And it's got a zoom out. Nothing else even vaguely interests me about it. The units are bland, the massive size meaningless because nothing forces you to be expansionist, and the macromap just.. Doesn't draw me in.

Would a Macromap in C&C3 be awesome? Yes. So would being able to fully implement the scrapped feature in TibSun where you can dictate what travels into a mission via orbital lander, which caters very much to the 'I'm bored with base building' crowd.

C&C3 caught me because.. It's C&C. It's cheesy, it's silly, it's over the top, and it's got the playstyles I've come to love. The units in SupCom simply don't seem to support wildly different approaches. After the recent RTS' I've played, it's like going back to Homeworld after Cataclysm: Ho-hum, two identical forces with two unique units per!

I suppose part of it is also that C&C3 is aimed at being nothing more than the latest C&C. It's not gonna change the world; indeed, while it departs from formula in places, it's building on what made it great. It isn't trying to be more than it is, and thus each improvement.. Squads instead of individuals, reinforcements in multi, massively improved superweapons.. Is a pleasant surprise. When placed beside the supposedly 'revolutionary' SupCom, you find yourself vastly preferring that which didn't try and re-invent the wheel.

[Prozac the Robert]

I've been playing a little bit. Sadly, my poor laptop can't really play it very well. It's just about ok on the demo skirmish map, and the single player prologue worked fine on lowest settings, but I imagine it would slow right down on a bigger map. So I wont be buying it any time soon. If I had a better computer I'd buy it straight away though.

One thing that's annoying me though is the left/right click system. Left click un-selects troops, but places buildings. Right tells troops to move but cancels buildings. I can't remember which way rally points and repair work. Why is it like this?

The other thing I found odd was that the audio didn't sync properly in the videos. I guess it's another symptom of my below spec computer, but it seemed odd. Has that happened to anyone else?

And finally, did anyone else look at the ion cannon blast in the trailer where it hits the side of the planet and think "wow, that looks like a big blast. I wonder if someone could calculate a yield from that."?

[AniThyng]

I hope the pacing is toned down a little for the single player campaign at least, it strikes me as a little fast, though par for the course for RTS these days.

My laptop (capable of 3Dmark05 score of ~2000) handles it OK at lowish-medium settings @ 800x600 so far, hopefully the release build is better optimized, considering I can run DoW maxed out and CoH medium-low...

[D.Turtle]

Force Move: the old C&Cs let you do a 'force move' the same way you could 'force attack' them to shoot at the ground. This was the way to tell your guys "hey run over these infantry kk lolz" and ruin their day. I'm fairly certain this existed. I remember doing it anyway.

Simply right-clicking tells your units to move. I run over enemy infantry over that way all the time.
There is also a Force-move command ('G' I think) but I don't know what the difference is (The description says something about suppression armor)

One thing that's annoying me though is the left/right click system. Left click un-selects troops, but places buildings. Right tells troops to move but cancels buildings. I can't remember which way rally points and repair work. Why is it like this?

Its the system that almost every RTS out there has used - except for the C&C games. I think it was about time they abandoned their stupid system

The other thing I found odd was that the audio didn't sync properly in the videos. I guess it's another symptom of my below spec computer, but it seemed odd. Has that happened to anyone else?

Worked fine with me.

I hope the pacing is toned down a little for the single player campaign at least, it strikes me as a little fast, though par for the course for RTS these days.

Yeah, the pacing is crazy, but makes for short exciting games. It will be possible in the full game to choose the game speed in skirmish mode (It is disabled in the demo for skirmish mode), but I don't know about single player (didn't see an option for it in the demo)

I just noticed: Harvesters will still kamikaze into the enemy base if there is no more Tiberium in your base, but still some in his...

[Netko]

The other thing I found odd was that the audio didn't sync properly in the videos. I guess it's another symptom of my below spec computer, but it seemed odd. Has that happened to anyone else?

Readme says this is a problem with 9xxx series ATI cards on Vista.

All in all, the demo has made me like it enough for the cheesy story to consider picking it up - a first in a long while since I can't stand stupid RTS conventions (last one was Dawn of War), but FMV Battleconquer goodness simply is overpowering those minor concerns.

Oh, and Mammoths are absolute monsters against the AI if the demo is a correct indication. Get 5+ together and they are basically unstoppable, especially if supported by an APC or two with Zone Troopers for clearing those pesky rocketeering NOD mosquitoes.

[Howedar]

Yes, Mammoths are as they should be. Seemingly unstoppable.

Do the GDI medium tanks (don't remember the name) seem slow to anyone else? There doesn't seem to be much of a speed drop-off between the mediums and the mammoths, or even the Nod tanks.

[Covenant]

The Panthers? They're fast enough to get around, they're certainly faster than infantry. They need to be a noticably slower speed than the Nod tanks so that the cultists can retreat rather than be caught under a steamroller of GDI steel. Mammoth tanks aren't incredibly slow, but they're no spring chickens. Panthers are overall quick, but the Nod ones are faster.

They seem fast enough overall. If you sped them up you'd need the Nod tanks faster, which means the bikes need to be faster and the aircraft need to be faster.

I think the Nodders either need a little power boost or they need a little more speed. I've had success using attack bikes and panthers as a combo, since the attack bike missiles can do pretty significant damage to a tank. My best run so far is rush to flametanks.

I'm really unnerved by all the Nod reliance on mechs though. The beam artillery don't have the range or the power to stop a tank before it gets close up, and the Mechs get overwhelmed. I really hope there's something about nod that's specifically toned down for the Demo, because otherwise it's pretty stacked against Nodders.

[Howedar]

Certainly Harpies could be used with beam tanks to own other tanks, but this is a pretty micro-manage-y tactic. My feeling at the moment is that Nod needs to be somewhat micromanaged on offense, although defensively Obelisks seem to kick unholy ass. That and there's some GDI micro needed to destroy defensive control structures rather than the grow-back turrets.

[Covenant]

The choppers are called Venoms in this game. Also, the reflecty power is extremely short ranged. It can fire up and over things but the maximum range for the bounce seems to be extremely short. Am I just doing it wrong, or what? Isn't that red radius around the Nod chopper it's reflectbeam radius? If that's the case then they really could just do better on their lonesome.

And then it would be an even bigger advantage for the Juggernaut to be able to fire across the map.

[Beowulf]

The choppers are called Venoms in this game. Also, the reflecty power is extremely short ranged. It can fire up and over things but the maximum range for the bounce seems to be extremely short. Am I just doing it wrong, or what? Isn't that red radius around the Nod chopper it's reflectbeam radius? If that's the case then they really could just do better on their lonesome.

And then it would be an even bigger advantage for the Juggernaut to be able to fire across the map.

You can chain the Venom's reflections, if they're sufficiently close together. This allows you to fire the beam cannons farther. Potentially across the map, though it's a bit difficult to maintain the chain. Juggernauts are lot easier to use. Get some sharpshooters in range, then bombard with 44 of them or so.

[Covenant]

Really? I figured that was the case, but whenever I creeped a vencom up, some jerkass in a shopping mall would shoot my choppers down. This sounds like an extremely problematic procedure. Could people really expect to do this mid combat?

They'd have been better off giving the reflect beam a huger range and restricting the reflect beam source to Obleisks of Light.

[wautd]

I hope the full game will have significantly bigger maps than in the demo. It's doesnt have to be like SupCom, but looks to me NOD needs some more space to maneuvre.

All in all I'm still sitting on the fence. I'll probably enjoy SupCom more in multiplayer while the single player in C&C3 is probably good, but Company of Heroes did it better. The main advantage for C&C seems to be the story with the excellent cutscenes. I'll probably buy it just for that.

[Nephtys]

I hope the full game will have significantly bigger maps than in the demo. It's doesnt have to be like SupCom, but looks to me NOD needs some more space to maneuvre.

All in all I'm still sitting on the fence. I'll probably enjoy SupCom more in multiplayer while the single player in C&C3 is probably good, but Company of Heroes did it better. The main advantage for C&C seems to be the story with the excellent cutscenes. I'll probably buy it just for that.

It certainly has to have bigger maps. This is a 'duel' map and likely amongst the smallest in multi.

[Howedar]

The choppers are called Venoms in this game.

Shit.

[GuppyShark]

Supreme Commander and a new C&C game! It's a good time to be an RTS gamer.

[Shinova]

The ion cannon looks very impressive, but its blast radius isn't bigger than the Nod missile. And I don't know who said you can only fire the nod missile once, but I don't think it's true.

That said, come'on release date! I wanna see what the Scrin are like!