Supreme Commander Demo released!

[Covenant]

My 'Army 1, Army 2' idea was mostly a play off of adding Homeworld-esque formations into a RTS. In SupCom, when I grab a horde of units I can group them up themselves into a group and send them off, click on one of those wierdass tabs on the right side, or try to make a set of groups that all support each other. Like making group one guard group two while group two is also being guarded by the repair/firesupport group three of mantises.

I'd rather just make a single army, assign them a formation/behavior. Grabbing a bunch of different units and creating an army would give them some structure in terms of where they sit, give them some automatic responses (in a No Man's Land army, the artillery sit back and pound the ground while everything else holds back and only rushes short distances whereas in Blitzkreig everything would move at the T2 heavy tank unit's top speed and do a lot of circular driving ).

Even a basic formation toggle like in a Total War game would be nice. But we're playing a game that has HUUUUUGE scale and yet micromanaging every individual little retard unit, most of which are entirely irrelevant? Eh. Seems sloppy.

[Pint0 Xtreme]

Hmm... Well I'm not sure if you've discovered this yet but if you select a group of units and click-hold the right mouse button, you can move that group into that position in formation and adjust the direction they're facing. While you're holding down the right mouse button, left clicking will alternate between different formations. If you zoom up, you can see the future positions of the units in each separate formation style. Generally speaking, the artillery will be placed in the back while tanks and troops be placed in front. Of course, letting go the right mouse button executes the command. That's as far as it goes when it comes to group formations. I've never really needed to micromanage every individual unit myself.

[Covenant]

Hmm... Well I'm not sure if you've discovered this yet but if you select a group of units and click-hold the right mouse button, you can move that group into that position in formation and adjust the direction they're facing. While you're holding down the right mouse button, left clicking will alternate between different formations. If you zoom up, you can see the future positions of the units in each separate formation style. Generally speaking, the artillery will be placed in the back while tanks and troops be placed in front. Of course, letting go the right mouse button executes the command. That's as far as it goes when it comes to group formations. I've never really needed to micromanage every individual unit myself.

Yeah, but I want it to be automatic. Formations always fall apart when you tell them to start mixing it up. They didn't in homeworld--and plus those had ATTACK formatins. So I could tell my units to form a sphere around the enemy, so he couldn't escape. A built-in 'surround' command would be nice.

[Admiral Valdemar]

This is probably why on TA:S I set up the resources to be ten-million of each, so I never have to worry about lame resource gathering (although I admit it can, when done right, add a new element to the game other than smash the enemy ASAP with a rush). The units without any personality, while annoying, is less of a thing for me because I want a revolutionary experience in terms of something new, not just adding voices to otherwise nameless bots and thinking it makes it anything new.

I haven't played SupCom's beta or demo, but just going by reviews, here and elsewhere, and the looks of it in action, it seems too much same old, same old with more glitz. That's my biggest contention there. TA was great, in '97. I want something other than the same, but bigger and shinier. Whether than includes the oft annoying slogans spurted out every time I click a unit or not is irrelevant. I want my superior AI, improved GUI, foundation built on good tactics and strategy and less emphasis on smashing and grabbing resource deposits and more on how to beat an enemy, even if it means using T1 units and some brain power.

Too many RTSs today are simply an exercise in how fast you can build the largest, most bad ass unit and smack your foe upside the head with it. That needs to change before any superficial aesthetics.

[Darth Wong]

Despite the fact that Pint0 is rabidly defending this game as if someone just insulted his mother, I haven't seen him or anyone else really describe anything about the game which makes it even vaguely new. As I said before, it has precisely one unusual feature: you can zoom really far out. Oooooh.

This is probably why on TA:S I set up the resources to be ten-million of each, so I never have to worry about lame resource gathering (although I admit it can, when done right, add a new element to the game other than smash the enemy ASAP with a rush). The units without any personality, while annoying, is less of a thing for me because I want a revolutionary experience in terms of something new, not just adding voices to otherwise nameless bots and thinking it makes it anything new.

The idea about bots asking for permission is not just about audio candy; it means that they want to, which would imply much greater AI and initiative. Same thing for sitting there stupidly while someone is pounding you with artillery. Either move out of range or attack the artillery, or at the very least, complain to the supreme commander about doing neither.

[Darth Wong]

And why the fuck is everyone saying that a lack of personality is somehow necessary because the game uses robots? Didn't Star Wars show us that robots don't have to be boring, back in 1977?

[SirNitram]

And why the fuck is everyone saying that a lack of personality is somehow necessary because the game uses robots? Didn't Star Wars show us that robots don't have to be boring, back in 1977?

Robots don't even need to speak with more than beeps to be sassy, smart-aleck sidekicks.

[Ghost Rider]

And why the fuck is everyone saying that a lack of personality is somehow necessary because the game uses robots? Didn't Star Wars show us that robots don't have to be boring, back in 1977?

It's obvious that Supreme Commander's robots lack Geniune People Personality.

As for the game, seeing it's constant update from inception to demo...the finished game is going to have to spectacular for me to get it and the demo, made me go "TA part three?".

[Admiral Valdemar]

Despite the fact that Pint0 is rabidly defending this game as if someone just insulted his mother, I haven't seen him or anyone else really describe anything about the game which makes it even vaguely new. As I said before, it has precisely one unusual feature: you can zoom really far out. Oooooh.

Which, in itself, is something you can use in TA: Spring anyway and view the whole map.

The idea about bots asking for permission is not just about audio candy; it means that they want to, which would imply much greater AI and initiative. Same thing for sitting there stupidly while someone is pounding you with artillery. Either move out of range or attack the artillery, or at the very least, complain to the supreme commander about doing neither.

That would be preferable to simply seeing on screen text warning that Kbot #1276 is under fire while a klaxon goes off. I can't tell you how much that bugged me. It would be far more interesting to have the units - with their greater AI that's pie-in-the-sky right now - state what is wrong, then say they're returning fire or even bring up a dialogue asking for orders, all of which are pre-made scripts you can use e.g. outflank the incoming enemies using your faster units and set up a kill zone with arty fire and so on.

If they have to speak, it has to be something that's not as annoying as beeps and whirs recycled over again. It has to mean something, else most people ignore it. A stunning lack of initiative is evident with many programmers it seems.

[HSRTG]

I want something comparable to attack walk in Starcraft. I want to be able to tell my guys to burn everything between here and there to the ground, not just go somewhere and take potshots at things along the way.

[Siege]

Err? My guys seem to shoot at anything hostile they encounter along the way whenever they are sent somewhere.

I would've liked a bit more intelligence from my robot minions to be frank. And whilst pounding the enemy base to dust with a hundred bombers is a lot of fun, I'm afraid it'll get a bit tedious after a bit. Considering I was never that big a fan of TA in the first place I don't think I'll be buying Supreme Commander.

[Darth Wong]

Err? My guys seem to shoot at anything hostile they encounter along the way whenever they are sent somewhere.

But if it isn't actually destroyed, they will keep walking and stop firing once they're out of range.

I would've liked a bit more intelligence from my robot minions to be frank. And whilst pounding the enemy base to dust with a hundred bombers is a lot of fun, I'm afraid it'll get a bit tedious after a bit. Considering I was never that big a fan of TA in the first place I don't think I'll be buying Supreme Commander.

And one more thing: what, precisely, is the gameplay benefit to making the Commander unit explode like a nuke and take out most of his base when you kill him?

[Covenant]

Zerg in Starcraft didn't say anything. They made squishy noises that are just as unintelligable as a robot's whirrs and clicks, but at least I knew what I clicked on and if I just gave it an order. Personality comes more from everything ELSE than the voices. If my units sounded like a sputtering gearshifter and rattled around on big, clanky legs while spewing smoke that's tons more personality than 'random square thing 159' that goes 'brrzt' when I click on it.

And one more thing: what, precisely, is the gameplay benefit to making the Commander unit explode like a nuke and take out most of his base when you kill him?

This was hotly debated on the boards several times during Beta, and I was always on the attack. There's no gameplay benefit to it, and our anger about this issue led to him being upgraded.

Proponents of the CommanderNuke say it's part of TA's past, but that's just nostalga. It was annoying back then too.

They also say it's to make the commander's death painful, but this is not true. If the commander were useful, he wouldn't need a massive base-erasing explosion to have his loss be painful. In a 'Commander Assassin' gametype, losing the commander loses the game for you anyway, so the explosion only comes into play in games where the commander has no intrinsic value.

Furthermore, the Commander used to build slower, have less useful upgrades that cost more, and be able to be killed off by just about any handful of T3 units. Like in TA, you only need 5 tanks and some micro to kill the commander. I've killed commanders in TA:spring with weasel rushes.

So you have/had this situation where the commander is this huge, incredibly expensive level 1 builder that builds as fast as a level 3 engineer and can't even build all the Tier 1 units, is relatively weak in combat as well as slow and easy to spot, and if you successfully kill your enemy's commander in his base you'll take out everything around it.

The only way to use the commander effectively at that point was to tech up to level 3 ASAP and then use him as a suicide bomb. Or send him off somewhere outside of your base, seeing as he was more a liability than an asset.

Now that the commander is more useful I have more of a reason to keep him alive and not just use him as a suicide bomb... but if that's the case, why do I need to 'feel the pain' of having him go off like a nuke? Aren't I feeling the loss of my commander by losing all those wonderful things he can do? Inevitably, it still favors disposing of the commander as soon as you can. If not sending him into the enemy base to take as much out as he can, or destroy their frontal defenses, then hiding him under water or something where he can't be anally raped by gunships.

[Uraniun235]

And one more thing: what, precisely, is the gameplay benefit to making the Commander unit explode like a nuke and take out most of his base when you kill him?

I think the big idea back in TA was to discourage using your Commander to kill the opponent's Commander with the one-shot-kills-anything D-gun. But then, in TA the default game-mode was "you lose the game when your Commander dies".

[HSRTG]

And one more thing: what, precisely, is the gameplay benefit to making the Commander unit explode like a nuke and take out most of his base when you kill him?

I think the big idea back in TA was to discourage using your Commander to kill the opponent's Commander with the one-shot-kills-anything D-gun. But then, in TA the default game-mode was "you lose the game when your Commander dies".

Even then, it was still possible to do it. You simply have to get your commander behind a hill to be immune from the blast of the enemy commander. It takes some good timing, skill, and a bit of luck, but it could be done.

[Pint0 Xtreme]

Yeah, but I want it to be automatic. Formations always fall apart when you tell them to start mixing it up. They didn't in homeworld--and plus those had ATTACK formatins. So I could tell my units to form a sphere around the enemy, so he couldn't escape. A built-in 'surround' command would be nice.

My biggest beef is the movement of ground troops. In order for them to march in formation, you literally have to position them in formation where they are and point them in the direction they will be moving to. Then you have to give them a new location with the same formation facing the same direction. That's probably one of the things that bugs me the most. That and if you give a group a simple move order, they spread out so far they become so vulnerable to attack. Why they did that is beyond me.

[Covenant]

Yeah, but I want it to be automatic. Formations always fall apart when you tell them to start mixing it up. They didn't in homeworld--and plus those had ATTACK formatins. So I could tell my units to form a sphere around the enemy, so he couldn't escape. A built-in 'surround' command would be nice.

My biggest beef is the movement of ground troops. In order for them to march in formation, you literally have to position them in formation where they are and point them in the direction they will be moving to. Then you have to give them a new location with the same formation facing the same direction. That's probably one of the things that bugs me the most. That and if you give a group a simple move order, they spread out so far they become so vulnerable to attack. Why they did that is beyond me.

I think they honestly have good intentions, but the scope of this game seems way huge compared to what they must have expected. A lot of the features they wanted to add, like how the Aoen aircraft would go from being these little A-Wing shaped needed to rotating out their wings to become aircraft never really materialized. They push the 3D immersive cinematic quality of it but the explosions are themselves 2D--something that DoW improved upon dramatically. And they really, really want to give you a lot of very efficent controls but are seriously under-utilizing their GUI right now.

None of their ideas are very technically bad, but there's just no polish yet. It feels like they spent a million years developing the most bigass Ant War game ever. I can have like one trillion ants and a few beetles killing each other all at once. But in the rush to do that, and get a sense of scale with the Monkeylords and Mavors and Czar's... they ended up skimping on so much of the small stuff they wanted to do. Playing it zoomed in and tilted low to get that feeling of size is impossible.

I hope they continue to add things in throughout the beta. People who loved TA should really ask them to do better. This is a fun game and it's scale is great, but a Total War game has a way better sense of scale than this. Does it matter if you have giant city-sized Spider Robots running around if they don't feel like they're huge?

Really, if you replaced all the micro tanks with infantry or Zerglings or something, and made the Monkeylord into a tank, I doubt many people would notice the difference. It looks like a bunch of remote controlled cars fighting it out on a model railroad landscape.

[Stark]

Sorry guys, but I had to.

Thanks for restating your example you posted awhile ago... oh wait...

Yeah, you ask for a specific example of a vague comment and I provide some. DAMMIT!

What. The. Fuck? Where the hell have I stated that robotic personality is impossible? I merely stated that unit personality was not important to this specific game, not that it was impossible. My point was that this game was aimed towards large battles, not little cutsie personality traits for each unit. I don't give a flying fuck if this doesn't cater to your taste.

Oh sorry, I thought your frankly rabid attack on my vague 'you could do interesting things with robots' comment suggested it really made you angry. No? Maybe you're just overreacting. Mike isn't participating in this conversation, but I notice he knows exactly what I'm talking about.

I'm not resisting suggestions that might make SupCom a better game. I am criticizing your claim that automation is lacking.

I've noticed this throughout this response, and I think it's where your anger comes from. Autonomy /= automation. SupCom has heaps of very useful *automation* tools, like the ferry thing you discuss. This is good. The units have RTS-standard poor *autonomy*, in that they don't do much by themselves. I'm not saying the game has poor automation, as you'll see below.

I noticed that you ignored the fact that I specifically noted that refueling planes was not an example of advanced automated capability but rather an example that rebuts your claim that the units have lack any kind of automation. Thanks for the strawman. Try again.

Dammit, there's that double standard again. Don't tell me, psychic powers, right? Or imagination?

Do you actually believe that ferrying requires no user interaction whatsoever? The point of the ferry system is to reduce the amount of management required, you idiot. It's not to completely eliminate user interaction, which is nearly impossible for such a specific task.

This is another example of the bad communication at the heart of your seething rage. You say here that you think I believe the ferry command 'requires no user interaction', whereas I just said it *wasn't an example of autonomy* BECAUSE *it requires user interaction*. Either it's a misunderstanding or you're stupid, but we are not disagreeing in this case. Ferrying = automation, not autonomy.

It was an example of automation, which according to you, is lacking. Let's look at the following exchange of posts which this is referring to, alright?

Er, what? Robots can be autonomous and coordinated. SupCom robots aren't. How is this 'precisely jack shit'? Sure, it's equally valid on any other RTS, but I was simply commenting that 'lol robots' might get you out of boring units, but it just means they're STUPID robots. Even Warzone had 'return for repair at x' or 'engage at x' or whatever, and none of the great tools SupCom has. Again, the whole thrust of what you've decided to get so angry about is simply that while robots are boring and don't talk they have other characteristics that are still interesting - thus, saying 'robot units therefore boring' is not an excuse.

Have you even played the game? Aircraft will automatically land to refuel at any available station if they run out of fuel. Engineers who are 'assisting' buildings will automatically switch from speeding up the building process to repairing the building if and when it gets damaged during the course of the game. A queue of waypoints can be intuitively converted into a patrol command. Players can utilize the ferry command on transports to ease the management of logistics dramatically. Admittedly, these aren't huge leaps in unit automation but to say that SupCom has absolutely nothing unique in terms of basic RTS standard unit automation is a bold faced lie.

Must I reiterate myself again? By placing rallying points of factories to the beacons of ferries you enable the automation of transferring troops without manually filling in the transports and moving them one by one. Fueling depots allows the automation of refueling planes so players do not have to worry about refueling aircraft. The coordinated attack feature allows players to let the game automate the synchronous attack without requiring player management. This game is filled with automated behaviors. Do you get it yet, moron?

I'm really enjoying this, you know. Since you think you're being super-smart and pwnzoring me somehow, it makes it very amusing. You say 'admittedly these aren't huge leaps' RIGHT AFTER using them as examples of automation (ie, what you think I'm talking about). THAT'S not fooling anyone.

In any case, the quotes you have here show me talking about robots being 'autonomous and coordinated', NOT automation. The Warzone example simply showed that Warzone had *automation* settings SupCom doesn't to my knowledge. If you think 'return to base at x' is autonomy when it's an order issued by the commander, you don't know what autonomy even means.

Wait, does that mean your whole post is firing in the wrong direction? DAMMIT!

Explain to me why I should care about your general cynicism again?

While this is irrelevant, I think it's funny that you looked at that sentence and took out the 'Stark the hater' part and ignored everything else. Get this - I was pointing out that I'm not hating this game, and you're not being calm and rational. You ignored that to make a meaningless jab at my posting history. DAMMIT!

[Shinova]

I want something comparable to attack walk in Starcraft. I want to be able to tell my guys to burn everything between here and there to the ground, not just go somewhere and take potshots at things along the way.

Are you talking about attack-move? Try ctrl+alt+right click (and you can shift-waypoint these up if you want). Then they'll properly move, stop, kill everything, and then move on and repeat.

[HSRTG]

Are you talking about attack-move? Try ctrl+alt+right click (and you can shift-waypoint these up if you want). Then they'll properly move, stop, kill everything, and then move on and repeat.

That'll work just as well, thanks.

[Pint0 Xtreme]

This is another example of the bad communication at the heart of your seething rage. You say here that you think I believe the ferry command 'requires no user interaction', whereas I just said it *wasn't an example of autonomy* BECAUSE *it requires user interaction*. Either it's a misunderstanding or you're stupid, but we are not disagreeing in this case. Ferrying = automation, not autonomy.

Ah, god fuck. My mistake.

I think they honestly have good intentions, but the scope of this game seems way huge compared to what they must have expected. A lot of the features they wanted to add, like how the Aoen aircraft would go from being these little A-Wing shaped needed to rotating out their wings to become aircraft never really materialized. They push the 3D immersive cinematic quality of it but the explosions are themselves 2D--something that DoW improved upon dramatically. And they really, really want to give you a lot of very efficent controls but are seriously under-utilizing their GUI right now.

None of their ideas are very technically bad, but there's just no polish yet. It feels like they spent a million years developing the most bigass Ant War game ever. I can have like one trillion ants and a few beetles killing each other all at once. But in the rush to do that, and get a sense of scale with the Monkeylords and Mavors and Czar's... they ended up skimping on so much of the small stuff they wanted to do. Playing it zoomed in and tilted low to get that feeling of size is impossible.

I hope they continue to add things in throughout the beta. People who loved TA should really ask them to do better. This is a fun game and it's scale is great, but a Total War game has a way better sense of scale than this. Does it matter if you have giant city-sized Spider Robots running around if they don't feel like they're huge?

Really, if you replaced all the micro tanks with infantry or Zerglings or something, and made the Monkeylord into a tank, I doubt many people would notice the difference. It looks like a bunch of remote controlled cars fighting it out on a model railroad landscape.

It appears to me as if the ability zoom all the way out has 'spoiled' the player in the way of managing the war. In TW, the scale was depicted better partially because it was impossible to see the whole picture. You were tied to a low level view and was forced to move around the battlefield to coordinate your troop movements. You were almost forced into a perspective that provided that immersive experience of a large scale battle. With the ability to zoom all the way to see the whole map, most players have no need to zoom in that close since seeing the whole map is clearly advantageous. As a consequence, it now feels like you're a god playing with ants and it reduces any sort of large scale immersive experiences. Then again, playing it from that level reduces the frustration of moving your screen all over the battlefield to coordinate your troops. Unlike TW, I don't have to pause the game so I can get into the proper view for me to execute the right commands for the right groups. For the most part, I'm too busy managing the war to from the high level to notice the lack of immersion but once in awhile, I'll zoom in close and tilt the screen for it.

[Darth Wong]

Of course, the reason you can't pause the game and examine the situation or issue commands in SupCom is that, just like it is in every other RTS game, your ability to frenetically work the interface is considered an important component of "strategy".

BTW, you don't have to manually scroll around the map in the Total War games. You can just click on the small map in the corner of the screen and it will take you there.

[Stark]

SupCom has less micro than many other games, but AFAIK few SupCom units have triggerable 'special powers'. That's a major element in micro - when to use your grenades/EMP pulse/medic/etc, and furiously changing units to trigger their special powers etc is what makes games like Starcraft an insane clickfest. The majority of SupCom units have no such powers, so this large area of micro is instantly done away with without any brilliant game design.

Of course, other sorts of micro remain (like constantly moving units to avoid slow projectiles, something that should really be automatic or impossible).

[Darth Wong]

Making people click on individual units each time you want them to use a special ability is just sadistic, unless it only applies to a small number of "hero" characters.

PS. I tried playing the SupCom demo again. I don't know who said that resource management was de-emphasized in this game, but it seems to me that I'm always running out of mass. And in order to boost my mass extraction rate, I have to take some of my extractors off-line while they're being upgraded! Couldn't the fuckers have at least made the extractors continue functioning while they're being upgraded, the way the shield projectors do?

[Uraniun235]

Of course, the reason you can't pause the game and examine the situation or issue commands in SupCom is that, just like it is in every other RTS game, your ability to frenetically work the interface is considered an important component of "strategy".

You can change the game speed (plus and minus keys), and setting it to -10 is pretty glacial.