Supreme Commander 2 demo is out

[Nephtys]

Econ really wasn't that hard in SC anyway. You just built a handful of Tech1 or Tech2 Engineers, and shift-clicked them onto all the metal patches you could find near your base, so they run off to build up for you. Then you shift-drag a string of power generators, or build one or two Tech 2 or Tech 3 buildings and you're set. Just watch the net income number at the top, and slow production if it goes too far into the red. Are you at +9 or more metal, or have enough stored to build a L2 mine without current income? Upgrade a mine. Etc.

Such an econ mechanic also makes raiding very strong. If you can slip in and take out a few mines, that put more pressure on your enemy. The grand jackpot is to get a bombing run through on their power-grid and take that out for a few minutes.

I really had high hopes for SupCom2. We'll have to see if it's a step forward or back though. I do like the idea of fortifying factories, and I think I understand the research concept. The idea seems to be instead of upgrading each factory individually to produce Tech2 or Tech3, you do research to globally upgrade. In theory, that sounds fine.

Experimentals in SupCom1's were mainly for the very long ranged firepower. Most (again, aside from Monkeylord or Collosus) were actually kinda feeble up close. A Fatboy can be taken down by an embarrasingly small number of Tech3 Assault Bots that got close enough under a radar jammer. The Tech3's were where the real meat of your force are at.

[Covenant]

As someone who played a lot of SupCom vs. Neph and personally had a lot of problems managing econ (I'm much more of a tactical gamer, like CoH or Homeworld, than I am at managing strategic economy) I can say that while I did not believe Supreme Commander's economy was in ANY way an 'elegent' system, the real issue was busywork involved and not the concepts at heart.

Early game you have few resources to spend, no engineers of any quality, and a lot of stuff to do. Your generators are small, do little, and will quickly be phased out. It's a really abysmal system. Add onto that the millions of other early things you need to do (build defenses, harvest some trees/rocks, build some units) and the relative inability of your command unit to provide adequate resources for these tasks... the early game was less about maximizing output than trying to juggle resources so that you didn't run out.

There's a lot they could have done to alleviate this. Gutting the system is the least creative, and also doesn't solve the problem (now the busywork is just in a different area). Everything else in the game was much better off. Experimentals were never as valuable as they shoulda' been, and economies were too powerful at the endgame--given that an endgame economy could mass-produce experimentals, and even though they weren't as potent as they should be, they were still potent enough. SupCom needed more of a focus on area control, less of a focus on massive fortresses full of shields and cannonades, and to continue playing up the ideas of scale.

It's possible SupCom2 will be tons of fun anyway, but it's certainly not the game it shoulda' been.

[White Haven]

less of a focus on massive fortresses full of shields and cannonades

...

Don't be hating on us siege engineers.

[Covenant]

...

Don't be hating on us siege engineers.

It's always been one of my peeves, and it sets me at odds with a large portion of the playerbase I know, but I've never enjoyed that aspect. I'm curious as to if it remains at all in SupCom2.

[defanatic]

I finished the two missions in the demo, and have a few comments also:
I'm glad they got rid of economy micromanagement. That was annoying. I'm sure some people enjoy it. I don't.
Story corn levels seem to be cranked up to eleven. Dislike.

[Andrew_Fireborn]

...

Don't be hating on us siege engineers.

It's always been one of my peeves, and it sets me at odds with a large portion of the playerbase I know, but I've never enjoyed that aspect. I'm curious as to if it remains at all in SupCom2.

I like the fact that the static defenses in TA & SC were actually worth a damn. Though yeah... Some levels of turtle could get quite silly...

[Stark]

Effective defences is one thing; people who think playing ghe game is building a huge nigh useless castle for no reason instead of attacking and winning is another. So boring.

[Ryan Thunder]

Effective defences is one thing; people who think playing ghe game is building a huge nigh useless castle for no reason instead of attacking and winning is another. So boring.

Hey, point-defense creep is a viable tactic, you know.

[Covenant]

I've got no issues with defenses being worth a damn, but a large number of the weapons were more than able of reaching out to your opponent's base. This was generally assumed to happen even on the really huge maps, where the base artillery units were going to be able to start plinking forward shields before too long. Now, add to that the base-built tactical missiles and the strategic missiles, and the rare piece of T4 artillery...

On one hand those are end-game stalemate breakers. On the other hand, without such ponderous defenses you most likely wouldn't have a stalemate without army counts. As a fan of area control mechanics that favor movement and such, the base defenses were a thorn in my side. I do believe that these things could actually enrich the experience rather than overwhelm it, but they'd need to be tweaked to play with a strategic movement/area control gameplay mechanic, rather than against it. And I know it's very debatable if they actually do play against it, but maybe it's my fault for playing such flat maps.

[Serafina]

Well, the game is out (yay for Steam) and it's really much better than the beta shows.

So far, i have discovered at least three different strategies for each skirmish map - both including heavy upgrading of one techtree and mixing multiple ones. Of course, i can not say how valid they are yet, but they appear solid enough.

Research points are really quite valuable - if you build them early on, the extra enemy units will hurt, a lot. And loosing mass deposits hurts as much as ever.
You will get a lot more research points later on - which alows you to compenstate for the deficiencies in your early research. Much like the first game, where you could easily spare the resources to build up things you neglected earlier on.

Gameplay is still strategic enough to be called SupremeCommander. Call me superficial, but just commanding dozens or hundreds of units from strategic zoom makes a lot of difference for me.

Is it a good game? As far as i can tell, yes.
Is it better than the original? Well, here the points where i think it is worse:
-The economy is much less of a challenge. It's not specatuclary bad (most RTS-games don't have much of an economy anyway), but it does not compare to the original.
-Graphics style. Its' not actually bad, but i grew very acustomed to the old stlye, and it's just a huge difference.
-Units names...aeon unit names. God, what were they thinking?
-Intel - there is no dedicated air scout and radar only comes in one variety. Scouting feels much more like in standard-RTS games.
-No stealth. Damn, why do the Cybrans don'T have any stealth options?
Now the good things:
-Faction diversity. Not only do the factions have quite different units, but the research trees make them really different.
-Factory upgrades. A factory can now be a forward base all on its own, which is really nice.
-Units don't get outdated. A "T1" unit (no research) will still get raped by a "T3" unit (lots of research), but i really like that there are no longer any "same, but stronger" units in the game.
-ACU upgrades. A fully upgraded ACU can waltz into a base and kick ass - and if things go critical, just use your escape pod and build a new one. Add some ground&air escorts, and sending the ACU to the front is still viable in the endgame.

[Spectre_nz]

I... I don't think I've ever been so disappointed with a sequel.
Hell, I enjoyed Terror from the Deep despite the fact it was a pallet swap that mistook 'make it more difficult' for 'make everything more annoying'

I just played a couple of skirmish games and I want to ask steam for my money back. I loved the first one and it's expansion. I loved the variety of units. I loved the fact that your economy slowed down if you were resource poor rather than just a blanket 'nope, can't queue another building'. I loved that it took 10 minutes to build super units and you could have massive territorial control wars while you tried to defend your construction area and retain your economy while your opponent fought to slow down construction of your big stompy unit.

I was looking forward to Sup-com with an art upgrade, maybe some new units and a new experimental or two. But no.

Unless I've missed some obvious upgrade buttons, there are only half a dozen ground units for cybrans, two air units (excluding the two transports and the experimental giant gunship) and three naval units. Oh and one experimental giant sub with tentacles called 'Kraken'. And most of the units you have to unlock. I thought there was at least going to be some sort of flexible unit upgrade system, but no.

And there's a dinobot experimental that looks like a huge lizard with armour stacked on top of it. Oh, and it breaths fire.
It all just feels so dumbed down, so one dimensional. Build a tank. Build a plane. Build some turrets. Harvest resources. Attack. Everything builds in 60 seconds or less.
It's like they've added strategic zoom to a new game in the red alert franchise or something.

I'm really not enjoying it over the original and its expansion.

[Shinova]

Got a chance to try the full game and my conclusion is that if Chris Taylor wanted to make a more accessible RTS game, he has succeeded admirably. The economy is easy to understand, the research tree is simple. It is very easy to build up a force and start fighting right away.

In doing so he has destroyed everything supreme commander has accomplished for the RTS genre. Supcom 2 is not Supreme Commander 2. It's a generic RTS game, and not even a good one at that. The huge sense of scale is gone; weapon ranges are often even smaller relative to their units than even Dawn of War 2 (!!!!). There is no sophistication, no unit variety, and the experimentals are merely upper-tier units and no longer have special battlefield presence and ability. In my mind and heart the Cybran monkeylord shall always remain the epitome of the powerful and awe-inspiring experimental. Cybra-zilla is a joke. Hell, ALL of the experimentals in this game are pathetic. Only certain things like the noah unit cannon stand out, everything else is just dumb.

Supcom 2 doesn't even NEED the strategic zoom. The ranges for everything are so short the zoom feels like an addon rather than an integral part of the game.

The unit design sucks balls. The only thing that looks cooler in the sequel are the ACUs, everything else is a giant step backwards, in both the retarded lego-look and the designs themselves. Every single unit's predecessor shats silly bricks all over their descendants.


And lastly the Aeon. What the hell were they smoking when they came up with the unit names? And here's the straw that breaks all horse backs: the Aeon side has no navy. Nothing. No water units at all. Maybe there's a fluff excuse on why the illuminate has no naval forces while the UEF and Cybrans do, but it almost feels like GPG was running out of time and they decided to just forego building a navy for the aeon side. The Aeons went from sleek, formidable and well-kitted to utterly gutted-out jokes in the sequel.


Supreme Commander is dead. Long live Supreme Commander.


So don't bother buying the new game and just stick to the first. I'm totally sure that many, many people will. If you want a small-scale RTS, pretty much everything except for Starcraft 2 offers so much more for your buck.


Biggest gaming disappointment in years.

[Admiral Valdemar]

Looks like I made a good call getting the SupCom Gold pack last week. Not that my laptop could play this game. Not that I would now want it to.

[Serafina]

Got a chance to try the full game and my conclusion is that if Chris Taylor wanted to make a more accessible RTS game, he has succeeded admirably. The economy is easy to understand, the research tree is simple. It is very easy to build up a force and start fighting right away.

That's the part i can agree with - the game is really much easier to learn, and "easy to learn, hard to master" is still the way to go.

In doing so he has destroyed everything supreme commander has accomplished for the RTS genre. Supcom 2 is not Supreme Commander 2. It's a generic RTS game, and not even a good one at that. The huge sense of scale is gone; weapon ranges are often even smaller relative to their units than even Dawn of War 2 (!!!!). There is no sophistication, no unit variety,

What do you mean by "sophistication"?

As for unit variety - you have about as much units as before, but you no longer have copy&paste versions over different tech-levels. Look at the UEF: You still have a basic Tank, mobile artillery, a mobile missile launcher, a mobile shield, mobile anti-air, mobile missile defense and an assault bot.
That is the same as in SupCom&FA (except that the MMD is new).
Yes, instead of having four tanks, two artilleries and two AAs over different techlevels, you now have one unit - but since the higher-tier versions practically replaced the lower-tier versions, that gives you the same amount of unit variety at each stage of the game.

The Aeon have about the same unit-mix and the Cybrans do not have a tank and blend shield generator, AA and MMD into one unit - but you have about the same variety of units.
The complaint is more legit for air-units (where two factions only have a figher-bomber instead of both, plus a gunship&transport)) and especially for navy (only four shiptypes for UEF&Cybrans, lacking AA-ships and small frigates).
But the difference is still not as big as it seems.

and the experimentals are merely upper-tier units and no longer have special battlefield presence and ability. In my mind and heart the Cybran monkeylord shall always remain the epitome of the powerful and awe-inspiring experimental. Cybra-zilla is a joke. Hell, ALL of the experimentals in this game are pathetic. Only certain things like the noah unit cannon stand out, everything else is just dumb.

Yes, a lot of experimentals need balancing. what, surprised that end-game units are not well balanced in a newly released game?
However, they all fill distinctive roles, and some of the apparent joke-experimentals are actually quite usefull right now (such as the magnetron).

Supcom 2 doesn't even NEED the strategic zoom. The ranges for everything are so short the zoom feels like an addon rather than an integral part of the game.

What the hell did you use strategic zoom for in the prequel?
It's a tool for having a great overview of the whole map. It still does that perfectly.
In fact, strategic grouping adds a good new layer of information (units with the same order are automatically put into one group, which is displayed and selectable in strategic zoom).

The unit design sucks balls. The only thing that looks cooler in the sequel are the ACUs, everything else is a giant step backwards, in both the retarded lego-look and the designs themselves. Every single unit's predecessor shats silly bricks all over their descendants.

Well, yes, i was dissapointed by the looks at first, too.
But then again, i do not care about the graphics that much, and it's not like it's ugly.

And lastly the Aeon. What the hell were they smoking when they came up with the unit names? And here's the straw that breaks all horse backs: the Aeon side has no navy. Nothing. No water units at all. Maybe there's a fluff excuse on why the illuminate has no naval forces while the UEF and Cybrans do, but it almost feels like GPG was running out of time and they decided to just forego building a navy for the aeon side. The Aeons went from sleek, formidable and well-kitted to utterly gutted-out jokes in the sequel.

Um...that's by design. Nearly all their land units&experimentals are amphibious - they do not NEED a navy.
But yes, a lot of the names are stupid

So don't bother buying the new game and just stick to the first. I'm totally sure that many, many people will. If you want a small-scale RTS, pretty much everything except for Starcraft 2 offers so much more for your buck.

I honestly do not get where you get "small-scale RTS" from.
The game may LOOK smaller, at first, but if you actually play it, you should notice that the scale is about the same.
Shorter unit ranges and smaller maps are compensated by slower speeds - and long-range weapons can still fire over the whole map (or half on bigger ones).
The number of units is the same (and apparently even higher due to upgrades), the practical ranges are close, you are still mostly playing strategically - so, yeah, totally a small-scale RTS.

What REALLY changed is that you are now focussing much less on economy and building a base and more on unit strategies.
I am thinking much more about when and where to engage with my units and what research strategy (and therefore units) i should use then about when i should go to the next techlevel or how i should build my economy.
That's one of the reasons why i like the streamlined economy and the exchange of hard tech-levels to variable research.

Looks like I made a good call getting the SupCom Gold pack last week. Not that my laptop could play this game. Not that I would now want it to.

Heh, SupCom 2 actually needs less resources than SupCom 1.

[White Haven]

They really screwed the pooch on the economy. They tried to make it simpler, but in the process ended up making it micromanagement hell. In the first game, I could say 'You there, engineer, build an entire defensive emplacement. I'll check up on you later. Yes, I know it'll be slower, just get on it, I have better things to do.' Now in the sequel, you can't queue construction that you can't pay for the instant you queue it, so you have to micro all your construction. Bloody obnoxious.

[Darksider]

From what i've heard, as bad as they nerfed the gameplay, they really fucked up on the story. According to the review thread at HLP it's typical JRPG crap. There wasn't much story to the first Supcom, but at least it wasn't anime-style "we must all band together to stop this horrible war" bullshit.

So from the guys here who got suckered into buying this, How bad is it, really? Post some quotes from the SP game as evidence.

[White Haven]

It's...incoherent. There's no exposition of any kind, so you're just dropped in the middle of disjointed missions with piss-poor explanation for the individual ones, never even mind for how they connect.

[Serafina]

It's...incoherent. There's no exposition of any kind, so you're just dropped in the middle of disjointed missions with piss-poor explanation for the individual ones, never even mind for how they connect.

This.
The characters are not bad, tough - the Cybran villain is simply hillarious.

The missions, however, are GOOD - some of them are actually challenging, and not just by throwing insane numbers of units at you.
I really, really liked the second cybran mission: Spoiler

Basically, the enemy is building nothing but engineers and point defenses/AA-turrets.
That may sound stupid - but these engineers are really fast at capturing. If you throw land units at them, they will get captured in seconds. Air units get raped by the anti-air. And your commander is not strong enough to take all these point defenses, even fully upgraded.
So you really have to think how to counter these engineers, and it is a nice way to show the player how capture works (tough the enemy engineers have about 10x the normal capture speed).

Oh, and for those who want to know the solution: Spoiler

Build sufficient point defense to sstop the engineers with your acu. Take out the PDs with ships and then slowly advance towards the enemy. Once you get to the actual base, and overcharge-upgraded ACU can take out all the PDs and destroy the base.

Generally, the campaign seems quite good at providing constant pressure. Unlike SupCom 1, you actually have to move fast and focus on your target - no "oh, i will delay the first objective until i have ten times the army i need, because the enemy will send a huge wave at me as soon as i fulfill it"-crap.
So the actual mission design of the campaign is good - i actually think it is one of the more interesting RTS-campagins around.
It's not brilliant enough to make the game worth buying just for the campaign - the story is a bit too cheesy at times and it is linear - most missions have three or less interesting/possible strategies. Figuring those out is interesting, but nothing you can repeat ad infinitum.

[Stark]

Because I'm clueless I didn't know this is coming out on 360 as well. How much of the changes made to the game flow are accountable by a desire to move into the console space?

[Admiral Valdemar]

Wait, there was a story to SupCom 1 beyond "It's TA, but without the Core or the Arm. Gotcha"? I can't say I cared for generic super-massive space war with hilariously 1D stereotype sci-fi cliques fighting for overall supremacy, so long as the gameplay isn't pants. Only RTS with a storyline I ever wanted to follow was C&C's, because one day, Kane MAY actually die.

May. And stay at it.