Supreme Commander

[Bijo]

This upcoming game has gotten my attention recently. When checking out their site I've gotten quite eager. Made by Gas Powered Games, I think it'll be a great game, at least from the first impressions I got. The game intro (HD) which can be found on Gametrailers.com is quite interesting (and good-looking). This is one I'll have to keep an eye out for..... ACHH!!! *again punches away carrion birds!*

Discuss! :P

edit:
Deleted line... forgot TW is not to be discussed in The Arena.


edit2(Links at Sjakihata's request):
http://www.supremecommander.com/ (homepage)
http://www.gametrailers.com/gamepage.php?fs=1&id=2765 (GameTrailers.com)
http://pc.ign.com/objects/755/755287.html (IGN)
http://www.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/...me%20commander (GameSpot)

[Sjakihata]

Some references would be nice. Reviews, previews, links to video, homepage etc.

Gamers are a lazy people!

[Navaros]

I've read quite a bit of feedback from people in the Beta who say that contrary to the hype, it's pretty much exactly like Total Annihilation with little innovation or changes to that. And very lacking on the multiplayer side of the game.

I suspect it will be an average game that gets hyped up as the best thing since sliced bread until the professional reviews come out.

[TevashSzat]

What is innovative about Supreme Commander is that everything is done on a huge scale. The smaller maps are modled i believe to about 30 square kilometers and there could be easily thousands of units fighting simultaneously. You can also zoom from right where a small skirmish is too the whole map where you make large strategc moves.

[Husar]

Well, one innovation is that you can zoom out until you see the entire map.
Apart from that, I'm not sure, the three factions seem mostly equal, the super units all have the same super weapon which is some beam of destruction that simply kills anything it touches.
That is from what I have seen in the beta so far, didn't play it that often, the games can take a few hours and it's quite hard to get one starting properly.

[pevergreen]

Your in the beta?

[Fragony]

It's the spiritual successor of Total Annihilation, that alone makes this one of my most anticipated games

[Meneldil]

It's the spiritual successor of Total Annihilation, that alone makes this one of my most anticipated games

So true. Total Annihilation is still way better than most RTS released lately.

Since TA, I've been waiting for another game that would involve hundreds of different units, realistic plane and warship battles, and all I got was C&C : Red Alert II

[Husar]

Your in the beta?

It's an open beta, at least it was when I signed up for it.

Apparently, it is now closed.

[Bijo]

It's an open beta, at least it was when I signed up for it.

Apparently, it is now closed.

O bugger. Is there still a way to get my hands on the beta? Perhaps a more-- discrete way, if you know what I mean?

[ElectricEel]

The game looks interesting. I haven't played Total Annihilation, but I've read a lot of praise about it. I'll wait what the reviews say, and if it is positive, I'll probably buy it eventually.

For the person who asked for information:

Supreme Commander on YouTube
Videos on Gamespot

Gamespy preview
Heaps of information on Gamespot

[Husar]

O bugger. Is there still a way to get my hands on the beta? Perhaps a more-- discrete way, if you know what I mean?

Not really.
I think if you had been faster, they'd have very discretely given you an account.

[TevashSzat]

I am pretty sure that a beta multiplayer only version of Supreme Commander was released to the public or something like that, but people have managed to mod it to unlock the ai allowing you to play on skirmish

[Afkazar]

Im waiting for supreme commander to come out.I have that on reserve.
I mean the scale...Its just so huge.I think the release date is late feburary.Itll probably make me stop playing Med 2 as much as i do at the moment.


Id say the biggest influence on me to get the game was moon 2150
I got it like 6 years ago for 3 dollars in a bargain bin.Best 3 dollars i ever spent. Nukes and customizable units.I love nukes

Not really.
I think if you had been faster, they'd have very discretely given you an account.

Ya I actually think some hackers cracked the code but i think the awesome people fixed it.

[Husar]

I am pretty sure that a beta multiplayer only version of Supreme Commander was released to the public or something like that, but people have managed to mod it to unlock the ai allowing you to play on skirmish

I know that the AI takes over if a player leaves, was quite surprised when it made a big airborne invasion into the back of my base where I had no stationary defenses.

Id say the biggest influence on me to get the game was moon 2150
I got it like 6 years ago for 3 dollars in a bargain bin.Best 3 dollars i ever spent. Nukes and customizable units.I love nukes

Are you sure you don't mean Earth 2150? That was quite a good game with awesome graphics for it's time, even quite decent for today I think.

[pevergreen]

All Hail TA!

If anyone plays as Arm, shame on you! Core FTW!

[Abokasee]

This topic was gonna come sooner or later! Supreme commander looks amazing!

ALL HAIL TA, Arm and core are no different from one ecother, other than Core having the krogoth, but then again you can download units, bantha makes a good counter, you need 3 of them though, but they can over whelmed by numbers in return and so on...

[ElectricEel]

The demo is out. Some download links:

3D Gamers
Strategy Informer
Gamers' Hell
Fragland
Gamespot
4Players
Extreme-Players

The demo is 1.1 gigabytes zipped. The 4Players link is working well for me - slightly over 100 kb/s, which is the download speed of my connection.

[Husar]

Downloaded it yesterday and had two skirmish games vs the AI.
It beat me on normal by building three heavy artillery guns and aiming them at my commander, I should have been more offensive. But skirmish features only a small map and one faction in the demo.
Seems a bit more polished than the beta though.

[ElectricEel]

On the lowest settings, the game is pretty much unplayable on my computer. I could lower the resolution, but then the gigantic interface panel would take up half the screen (what's up with those? Europa Universalis III has the same problem, but fortunately is much less demanding on the system, so I can run it in a higher resolution). My system exceeds the minimium specs by a fair margin. I guess I'll have to pass on this game.

[Husar]

That's weird, I use highest settings (2x FSAA) and it runs somewhere between 20 and 30 FPs which is very playable, though judging by the graphics, I had expected even more fps, they're nice but not really jaw dropping.

[Xiahou]

It's the spiritual successor of Total Annihilation, that alone makes this one of my most anticipated games

Indeed. TA was an amazing game... I'll keep an eye on this one.

[Meneldil]

Well, being a long time TA fan, I've been quite disapointed by SC demo. I still haven't tried the skirmish mod, but the little I saw while doing the first campaign map was not that great gameplay wise.

First, there are way to much things on the interface. While TA used to only have a few buttons here and there, SC is fullfilled with "toggle this-toggle that" buttons. The thing is, from what I remember, there's no "On / Off" indication, meaning that you basically don't know what is actually toggle-ed and what is not, and that you'll likely end up with a crapload of stuff on the screen (units' range, radar range, etc.)
Some unit have 2 kind of attacks (ie. against vehicle or against planes). You can toggle from one attack to another by clicking a button, but once again, either I'm blind, either there's no indication as to what kind of attack is selected.

Overall, what I found the most disturbing is the scale :
first, the units and buildings are supposed to be huge. Basically, it means that the map looks quite empty and blank. The first campaign map is really boring. Trees and civil buildings are not even half the size of the crappiest-smallest unit available. If you don't zoom in, forests will look like some green vomite on the screen. Only one or two mountains there and there, a few vomite-like forests, a few destroyed buildings, and that's about it. But then, the first mission apparently takes place in a desert. Let's hope other maps are not as blank.
Secondly, the fact you always have to side loads and loads of (often huge) units, added to the fact there's no minimap means that you constantly have to zoom out to as far as possible to only have a glimpse of what is happening currently.

I'm sure I'll get used to this new gameplay, but I'd have hoped for something as simple as good ol' TA.

[ElectricEel]

Secondly, the fact you always have to side loads and loads of (often huge) units, added to the fact there's no minimap means that you constantly have to zoom out to as far as possible to only have a glimpse of what is happening currently.

There is a minimap. There's a button to enable it on the left side of the interface panel.

On the lowest settings, the maps certainly look very bland and ugly. On higher settings, the map looks better, but I can't comment in detail, since then I get something like 3-7 FPS just looking at my supreme commander, a couple of burning wrecks, and an otherwise mostly empty landscape (on the lowest settings, the game only starts skipping horribly when there's fighting going on).

[Husar]

I noticed that, while they advocate Dual-Monitor support the demo uses only one of my two cores of the CPU which is a bit sad because it may affect performance with many units on big maps etc. Though so far, on a small map vs one AI, there is no lag on highest detail, with VSync it's usually between 20 and 30 fps.

[Abokasee]

Well, one innovation is that you can zoom out until you see the entire map.
Apart from that, I'm not sure, the three factions seem mostly equal, the super units all have the same super weapon which is some beam of destruction that simply kills anything it touches.
That is from what I have seen in the beta so far, didn't play it that often, the games can take a few hours and it's quite hard to get one starting properly.

Give me your code, you leave with your life.

Then again its coming out pretty soon so...

THE DEMO: http://files.filefront.com/Supreme+C.../fileinfo.html

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

Got the demo. Pretty sweet, though I don't think it's revolutionary or anything. Just a nice-looking Age of Empires with futuristic units, a simple and streamlined resource system, and great ballistics.

[Bijo]

Got the demo as well, and it ran like **** Movie presentation was nice, though. When I saw that intro clip I was immediately immersed into it.

[lars573]

I tried the demo. I wasn't excited about SC before and I'm still not. Beyond a huge map and tiny units it does nothing original. I might get it to try the other factions. I also don't see it doing that well being as hardcore an RTS as it is.

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

I like the build system, queuing up dozens of build orders at once and everything. And it's supposedly really moddable, which is something I'd be interested in.

I'll probably wait for it to drop in price a bit or something.