46 replies to this topic

[Soul]

E3 Demo video/interview, I think they kept base building.

[Nertea]

Massive necropost! But my comment isn't quite worthy of a new thread.

I remembered that I played it at the Penny Arcade Expo, and it's not quite as bad as it looks. It was evidently a super-alpha version that was on display, but I'll just note my impresssions.

• The actual 'feel' of the units is the same (at least the Aeon) in how they move and act. I don't expect this for the other factions.
• The graphical improvements make the map look really nice, but I didn't really notice all the advanced shader abilities they talked about. Could be alpha-ness. However, everything looked a little less polygonal, so good there, I suppose. Nice glowing weapons fire and particles (explosions still suck, obviously WIP)
• The new style of map is nice (better handling of elevation differences and pathing were notable), but lacks the scale in any way or fashion. Boo.
• For those who weren't fans of the combat pace, bad news. Combat seems to be slower, but this is taking place on a much smaller map, so it evens out.
• Factories are now upgradeable and stuff - you can build towers/shield generators onto them. Pretty cool.
• Economy reduced to kiddie-level. Big boo. Power/mass funnel into a standard resource pool which is used just like gold and food. Sigh.
• I couldn't figure out how to open the research screen, so I don't know anything about that.

Overall I wasn't impressed, but not as unimpressed as I thought I would be. It still felt distinctly like supcom.

[Ash]

Wow. I just read the flamewar. I was about to post to it, but then realised I already did so.

SupCom, as shown, is a marmite game. This will probably be one too, but for different reasons.

I don't mind slower-paced gameplay (although even SupCom stretched that to a limit). Where I think SupCom really fell down was in the many-units-for-the-same-job and giving them all the ability to withstand only one hit from a unit of the same tech tier. Oh, and the imperviousness of T2 defences to damage of any kind. This caused the game to descend into simply spamming as many units as you could muster and just throwing them at the enemy lines in ad-hoc groups in the hope that they would manage to kill that massive turret before they became meat and before the enemy ACU could replace it.

Units were too expendable and too useless. Bottom line.

I can see why Kacen likes it, and I agree with him on a number of aspects (there's a disconcerting thought), but on the other hand, I have to agree with Fen that it isn't nearly the God's-Gift-to-RTS that Kacen thinks. Good, but not a truly great game. I agree with him wholeheartedly on Warzone 2100's brilliance though. Defences weren't impervious to harm, and units could actually take a bit of a beating. And a storyline of incredible excellence.

As for SupCom2, whichever way it goes it'll be reviled. It probably won't appeal so greatly to the current SupCom fanbase, nor will it appeal to current-gen RTS/RTT (whatever you wanna call it) players. I don't care what anyone says, though: Strategy games aren't meant for consoles.

[Nertea]

Pretty much agree with you with the mileage, but I do oh so have to contest one point still:

Oh, and the imperviousness of T2 defences to damage of any kind.

I play this game regularly against a couple people and one of them is a dedicated turtler... cost for cost, only T2 point defence even slightly approaches any kind of effectiveness. AA towers half around 1.5x the effectiveness of a T2 flak trukk at at least 10x the cost. Equivalent cost of a PD in T2 tanks is 4 or 5, which I think will come very close. I've shown him this in every game we've ever played and he refuses to believe it There are other things I'd complain about before going for the static defenses (commander sniping, the acu nuclear missile, the alternating uselessness/supremess of the paragon... etc). The game certainly has its share of flaws.

[Ash]

Your wording is confusing - are you proving my point about point defences being ridiculously overpowered or disputing it? AA towers may cost more than their equivalent similarly-armed tank, but bear in mind that they are stupidly armoured as well. That explains the fact that you can get 4/5 tanks for the same price as the defence. And in the time for those tanks to destroy the defence, they're all already dead. Mammoth Mk.II vs Equivalent-Cost Disc Thrower Squad, this ain't.

I know that the true counter for the defences is artillery, more specifically missile artillery, but they're somewhat unwieldy and love to roll in closer than their max range, which brings them into T2 defence range and defeats the entire purpose. Plus there's no way to check the progress, or outdo the ACU's ability to rebuild his base if you're not up against a Too-Dumb-To-Live AI opponent (or Campaign AI).

[Nertea]

Yeah, rereading it the wording is a mess. Let me try again (and expand a bit)

Any static T2 AA battery is almost completely useless as they only do around 1.5x the damage of a mobile T2 AA unit, but have somewhere between 5 and 10 times the cost. As nothing in the game homes, mobile AA can disperse and move to avoid the worst of the various bombers' payloads. Yes, they do have a lot of health, but no more than half a dozen AA vehicles (which end up being around the same cost). The nature of the air/sea/land balance is generally denial though, so if there's a lot of AA of any type, you shouldn't be attempting frontal bomber assaults. Most people that I've played online practically never build these, instead they'll use interceptors or a few T2 AA vehicles for air defence.

T2 point defence is approximately equal in cost-effectiveness to a basic T2 tank. They do a couple times the damage and have a pile more health, but their main advantage is that they outrange the tanks. If you can close with a few T2 tanks, this becomes evident (they do die quickly, they just kill a chunk of the force before it gets in range). It's probably about 6-7 Pillars to take out a T2 PD, which makes it a decent option for cost. So in that kind of a pure situation I would agree with you - they're very good. They're built a lot in games in groups of 1/2 as area denial to make an enemy invest in an attack. Still though, I never have any trouble taking them out - if there's a large collection of them supported by shields they are a potent foe, but that's a huge power/mass investment. On anything larger than the tiniest map size, it's not that much of a problem to just go around (the maps tend to lack choke points) and hit something important. With the changes in FA, map control has to be maintained to have a good economy going, and if he's sunk 30 tanks of investment into a shield generator, 3 point defences and the generation capacity to power the shield, he's going to be skimping on something else. This is without even talking about investing in artillery yet. Personally I'd just build more tanks or quickly tech to T3.
And sorry though, not being able to check the progress or disrupt the rebuilding operation? T2 PDs build really slowly without a herd of engineers (something like 2-3 minutes!), and every faction has an extremely cheap spyplane or land scout equipped with radar that can be flown over or sacrificed if you want to see how much health one has left.

I do get what you're saying, and it's certainly annoying at times - if you actually want to attack the hardpoint there are some points at the game where it can't be done and you have to pull out some t3 artillery - but it's not the largest flaw in the game by any stretch of imagination.

Edited by Nertea, 28 September 2009 - 04:31 AM.

[Casen]

Is Supreme Commander hypothetically the most ideal game for me?

No...but out of all modern RTS games, nay, all RTS games ever made, it is the RTS game that is closest to my style of gameplay. It's a nice and welcome change from the mainstream RTS games I see and I find kinda...bland, like C&C, Starcraft, Dawn of War, etc.

Is it perfect? No...

But it is unfairly bashed. Some people think that just because a game is "slow" it's automatically "bad" and fail to see any innovation in it.

- Realistic radar, that is, it's differentiated from sight. (No gimmicky "special" radar units; many units such as SAM missiles' effectiveness increased by AA)

- Stealth realistic and actually useful (as a result of above point).

- Radar jammers. (Once again, not gimmicky.)

- Realistic flight dynamics. Aircraft have limited range, making refueling docks and aircraft carriers practical.

- Speed and tactics actually means something. Cybran Mantises can beat more armored and powerful UEF MA12 Strikers by strafing, where otherwise they'd be beaten facing them head on, for example.

- No unrealistic "rock, paper, scissors" gameplay.

- Waypoints actually fucking useful and used a lot. Waypoints can be moved.

- Coordinated attacks.

- Dedicated naval system, compared to say Red Alert.

- Interesting amphibious tactics, mainly with Cybran, but with any submerging unit.

- Realistic projectile/bullet physics. Unique for different units and factions.

- Terrain is much more important in Supcom than in others.

- The ability to queue up units before a factory is even built, thus reducing wasted time.

- The ability to assist factories with engineers, and many other units.

- The ability to reclaim wreckage for resources.

- Ferrying - http://supcom.wikia....wiki/Full_Ferry

- Dual screen support / Multi-core support.

A lot of innovative features...

Honestly, if I was forced to choose between Supcom and Warzone 2100, I'd choose the latter. But still...

Admittedly the game appeals to more a niche. It was overly ambitious, but the expansion and patching really evened it out. Thing is I think a lot of people played the original demo and vanilla and judged it from that, I got the game late, so I had the expansion and all the patches...for all I know, well, from what I've read, there's a huge margin of difference there.

Even I admit when I first played it I was a bit disappointed...then the more I got the hang of it I began to -really- appreciate it.

That's all I have to say. Any inquiries can be PM'd, I'm just through arguing it, because some people are just dense and elitist. Admittedly I was harsh, but out of principle.

But yeah, I'll just go back to posting in the Phoenix Rising subforum, like I always do.

Edited by Kacen, 28 September 2009 - 01:53 PM.