[diceman111]

Downloading demo now good thing my fileplanet subscription hadent ended yet ;-)

Played the beta was kinda fun now I will have to see how single player is, Got 90% and Game of the month in Swedish PC Gamer

[ChronoReverse]

Damn, this sounds like my kind of game! I hate games that require micro because I always end up getting my ass kicked.

My usual strategy consists of: create a mass of units, preferably a single jack-of-all-trades unit, mass-select them and click inside the enemy's base. And forget all this "rock-paper-scissor" stuff. Juggling anything more than two or three kinds of units is more than I care to handle.

You're not going to like SC then.  Just because there's less micro tactics, doesn't mean there's no strategy.  If you just build units and hurl them it'll be very easy to repel them.

For example, I was playing the skirmish map in the demo.  The two land choke points were obvious so I built three laser towers and a concrete wall in front of those.  Concrete walls are extremely tough against direct fire but go down under explosives fairly well.  A few minutes after completion, the AI sent a column of ground units, mostly direct fire and AA.  Three laser towers slaughtered the entire mass because they had to thin out through the choke point and slowed against the concrete wall which also blocked their direct fire.  The laser towers could shoot over the walls >:-).  The little damage the walls took were quickly repaired by the Engineer I set patrolling the fort.

Later on, the AI built some missile units and utterly annihilated the little fort without taking any damage =/.


Incidentally, the AI gets to have these kind of setups premade in the campaign missions.  I generally have to rely on artillery to lob shots over the wall (there tends to be a cluster of Point Defense and Anti-Air Towers behind the walls so direct fire and bombers get slaughtered).

[SadisticSid]

All the major strategy games have gone to the Warcraft style of micromanagement over the past decade. SC is a breath of fresh air - it elevates the game from who has the strongest army to who controls map regions, and thus the economic resources. There's no restrictive, artificial unit cap to block a player from becoming too strong so his opponent could catch up, and a balance made by a unit's capabilities - e.g. range, weapon velocity, speed - rather than the usual paper-stone-scissors nonsense. It's TA2 in all but name really.

[NGTM-1R]

As a (big) aside, is it (in your opinion) 'cheating' in games like Rome:TW if you only engage enemies when you have massive numerical superiority?  Because it's, like, a valid tactic but also a very cheaty-feeling one....

(this was, incidentally, because I was thinking about the issues of balancing tactical control against 'realistic' real time action; and concluding that the inherent reduction of control through use of fixed keys and ui meant that some form of pause-to-order was perfectly justifiable as still being realistic)

Not really. I don't think of it as cheating. I've been known to do the occasionally "kekeke Zergling rush" type attack myself. (Though normally I do that kind of thing as a spoiling attack; cause damage and general havoc, force them to commit units to defense they were trying to save, just generally mess with them.) I just prefer to be able to finesse something.

[IceFire]

Games are getting out of control. These video cards cost hundreds and hundreds and even the high end ones can't run games very well. that sucks.

Gotta disagree with you there.  Although I'm considering upgrading now I've had this same AMD Athlon XP 2700+ which is now at 1GB (started with 512mb) and now using a GeForce 6600GT (my Radeon 9700Pro died) and is otherwise untouched and it still plays most of the latest games just fine.  Doom III demo wasn't a problem at all...not a bit.  Battlefield 2 I've had to decrease some details but is otherwise fine and looks fine.  IL-2 is an absolute beast and will eat every bit of RAM, CPU< and video you can throw at it ...and it runs fine.

I don't think its out of control...its quite manageable actually that a 4 year old computer can play new games reasonably well.

The Supreme Commander that's being talked about is a beta as far as I know (game is gold but not out yet I don't think) and I'm sure performance is not yet where it should be.  Games are always slower during beta than at release...except for games that get sold still in beta format (it happens).  Optimization to make the game run well, no matter the hardware, always comes last.

You guys should have tried the FS2 multiplayer beta.   That was slow!  But by the time the demo came out on nearly final code.  Things were blazing fast then.

[DeepSpace9er]

The Game as it stands in the demo is the finished product minus all the features of the finished products like the rest of the campaigns. Im able to play the game with 0 fps issues. However in the beta i would play with 3 AI sides and after about 30 minutes either my RAM would be running out or the memory leaks in the code would slow the game way down until it ulimately froze. The demo seems to run significantly better so far.

System Specs:
2.4Ghz C2D
2GB PC6400
GeForce 8800GTX
Windows Vista

[Unknown Target]

All the major strategy games have gone to the Warcraft style of micromanagement over the past decade. SC is a breath of fresh air - it elevates the game from who has the strongest army to who controls map regions, and thus the economic resources. There's no restrictive, artificial unit cap to block a player from becoming too strong so his opponent could catch up, and a balance made by a unit's capabilities - e.g. range, weapon velocity, speed - rather than the usual paper-stone-scissors nonsense. It's TA2 in all but name really.

Now you've got me interested. I usually suck at RTS games because I don't like having to memorize tech trees/unit combos/etc, and prefer to use actual tactics. Of course those don't work, so I end up just massing a giant army and hurling it at the enemy. SC sounds much more interesting now that I can actually use tactics based on the lay of the land. Unfortunately, I must wait until I get a new computer

[ChronoReverse]

Tech 3 units are so satisfying.

The Galaxy Class battleship is just insane.  Takes forever to build, but is supremely tough and has really long and accurate range for its shells.

The Plan B strategic submarine is also sweet.  It builds and fires ballistic missiles.  As in it goes way up, move along and then comes straight down on the target.

Interestingly, the Galaxy Class can survive one nuke blast (the commander is killed twice over).

[Mefustae]

Interestingly, the Galaxy Class can survive one nuke blast (the commander is killed twice over).

Most experimental units can. Other than the units meant to be produced in numbers; ie. Monkeylord and the like, every experimental unit can withstand at least one direct hit with a strategic nuke. Hell, the Galactica Colossus can withstand over 3 direct hits with a nuke, believe me, i've tried.

[Fineus]

You have a point IceFire, the beta suffered quite badly from slowdown but the demo is much improved in that area so I'm assuming the released game will be similar or (even hopefully better) in performance than that.

A couple of other points I realised:

1. Command and Conquer - Tiberian Wars (sp?) is out in March. Should be interesting to see how the two size up against eachother as the daddies of the RTS industry.

2. SC is (in the words of the demo adverts) one of the most moddable RTS games ever apparently. I'll be interested to see what they mean by that, as well as what people can do with it. I would actually quite like to see some total conversions in there and heck - something like a Halo RTS could be fun!

[NGTM-1R]

Halo RTS is already being done, remember? C&Ds for you!

Be interesting to see if the old BattleTech total conversion for TA gets restarted.

[SadisticSid]

Halo RTS is already being done, remember? C&Ds for you!

Be interesting to see if the old BattleTech total conversion for TA gets restarted.

I'm hoping so, although there are inherent limitations in a comparatively simple RTS to the whole damage modelling and customization that make BattleTech such fun. It'll be interesting if they can be worked somewhat around with the scripting engine.

[NGTM-1R]

I have to echo my corp CEO in EVE and say that the game ending when the Commander dies can be rather annoying.

Case in point: you build up the perfect force to crush their base and then their commander runs out and takes a T3 artillery shell in the face and it's all over.

All you really need to end the game are four or five siege assault bots, a Support Commander or two, and a T3 artillery unit. The great battles I was promised really aren't materializing.

[ChronoReverse]

Well, there's other modes in the full version you know.  Like the complete destruction mode.  Besides, the map in the demo is tiny and the AI is really stupid.


In any case, humans wouldn't send their commanders out from the protection of shields.  You can build subcommanders to do stuff and T2 (much less T3 or experimental) bots enmasse can easily destroy a commander.

[Fineus]

Unfortunately though - in the campaign at least - the AI has a tendancy to send its commander into whatever fray it can. On the second mission of the demo, I ended up accidentally beating the map before taking out either of the Aeon or Mach bases simply because the AI chucked both its commanders at my base defences and attack units. End result? The map finished whilst there were still full bases of enemies to be destroyed. 

[NGTM-1R]

and the AI is really stupid.

That does not mitigate the point. Makes it worse, really. If they've shorted the singleplayer experience that badly, like so many other games, then frankly they can suck my balls.

[Falcon]

I think I'll be playing more online than single player in supcom.

[ChronoReverse]

and the AI is really stupid.

That does not mitigate the point. Makes it worse, really. If they've shorted the singleplayer experience that badly, like so many other games, then frankly they can suck my balls.

Yeah, you'll notice I've included that in the context of the demo.


From reports, the demo AI is oddly stupider than the beta's (besides leaving out the harder AI modes).  We'll see when the full game comes out.

http://files.filefront.com/lua2zip/;6710945;;/fileinfo.html

Download that file and replace the lua file in the demo/supremecommander/gameplay folder. It changes medium difficulty to the harder setting and changes hard difficulty to horde mode. In Horde mode you are getting attack almost constantly after the first 10 minutes or so. It is much more fun that the difficulties available in the demo.

See if that helps any.

[Getter Robo G]

Son of a *****!

"please verify you can meet specifications"

This is not a bug, it's their lazy way of saying (something about your system sucks, go figure it out yourself!)

I had to dig through their crappy forums as they had 4 separate threads about this problem (what, they never heard of a Fracking STICKY before for important threads? Or are they just clueless on how to set up a support forum?)

Apparently my system meets all the minimum reqs except for one thing, shaders...

I got TWICE the video memory needed (256 vs 128) but I got a ATI 9250 and you need 9600+. Too bad I already upgraded.

Bugger. They made Dawn of War, and it runs beautifully on my system so I thought I would have no problem.

If your system fails the internal check you can't even get INTO the game to deselect game options and turn off shaders (AFAIK). As the game crashes back to desktop after that message on startup. If you can they they don't mention it "just get a new card" they say.

(Now deleting the 1gig demo to free up the space)...

[Lt.Cannonfodder]

Bugger. They made Dawn of War, and it runs beautifully on my system so I thought I would have no problem.

Gas Powered Games did not make Dawn of War, Relic did. DoW and SC only have the same producer, THQ.

If your system fails the internal check you can't even get INTO the game to deselect game options and turn off shaders (AFAIK). As the game crashes back to desktop after that message on startup. If you can they they don't mention it "just get a new card" they say.

I don't think you can turn off the shader effects, you need a card that supports them to even run the game. I had the same thing happen to me with Battlefield 2 demo back when I had a GeForce 4800.