Supreme Commander 2 and it's Changes

[Durahl]

So... SupCom2 is out and thinking about the past weeks I notice I haven't really played it past the Campain so I'm thinking why:

1a Supreme Commander Basics ( The difference between Supreme Commander and other RTS ) :
Size of Maps - Awesome! Let me play a Skirmish on Setons Clutch in SupCom building masses of Buildings and Units untill I can build Experimentals in Assembly-Line and I'm in Heaven!

Size of Units - Megalith, Fatboy, Universal Colossus & Yolona Oss! Taking one down marching towards your Base is like getting you nervous but what about 30 of em? That's some Adrenalin pumpin!

Size of Army - Bases and Armies are HUGE! Most of the time I'm at the Unitcap drooling about how large the Enemy or I am have grown. The last time I played a skirmish I was Building up my Base until I was satisfied, watched some shows and when I returned the AI had reclaimed everything else of the Map bombarding me from all sides with bases build everywhere.

Size of Economy - Tech3 Mass and Energy! It takes some time to get there and I'm having a lot of fun building my Tech3 Resource Economy in funny shapes annoying everyone I've played with so far going like: "STOP MAKING MANDALAS! WE'RE NOT IN ART CLASS!"

1b Supreme Commander Basics ( Comparison of SupCom & SupCom2 ) :
Size of Maps - Setons Cluth 2.0 is about a 10th the Size of Seton's Clutch 1.0, the Team's are literally sitting on each other.
In SupCom if a Teammate needed some help it would take some time to get there so you actually had to prepare for that moment but in SupCom2 It's like: "HALP!" *Spoof!* "Whut!? Now THAT was fast!"

Size of Units - Megalith II ( or any other Experimental of your Choice ) are ridiculous underpowered.
I've played a Match against a KI and sent 30 of em towards the Enemy with 20 of em getting wasted by a handfull of nonexperimental Gunships on the way towards the base and the other 10 by Point Defence Turrets, Buildings and a few land units once they arrived.
Hell... Even a single upgraded UEF Metal Extractor would almost have killed my Cybransaurus REX cause I didn't noticed he was standing out of range with his Breath to kill it.

Size of Army - Flowfield Technology is ridiculous lame. The obvious Hirarchy System it has prevents smaller Units to get past larger ones if they're standing in between 2 Buildings and they don't even try another route even if It's just a few clicks next to them.
"So where's that patrolling Engineer... Ah there! Stuck between an Experimental and a Building trying to get closer to a debris" *sigh*
or
" I could swear I had an Engineer somewhere around before I've sent my Army to the enemy" *looking around* "Awesome! He got pushed out of my base almost all the way up to the enemy when the big Units left the Base!"

Size of Economy - In SupCom "I'm killing all yer preshious Tech3 Extractors!" "Oh noes! :'(" )
In SupCom2 "I'm killing all yer Extractors!" "Lulz... Like I care." *Sends in a few Engineers to build new ones*

2 General Failure is reading my HDD?!:
Airnomo, Pulinsmash, Wilfindja, Weedooboth, Bodaboom - C'mon... Were those Names part of a bad Joke gone wrong like: "Lets see if they pass the QC Department" when QC was just fired a day ago? Was "The Way™" related to any kind of drugs since Princess Burke went missing?

Illuminate - "Ladies, because of the recent recession we decided to abandon our entire Navy!" "But that's almost a third of our mobile forces! How am I supposed to feed my Husband and Kids when I'm fired?"
What the hell? Next Expansion Cybran will have no Aerial Fleet and the one after that UEF will be missing the Ground Forces? Awesome.

Artificial Intelligence - I've now been playing about a dozend Skirmish Games and every time the AI's going like this: "Hehe... Let's build 1 Ground Factory and 10 Air Factorys and keep spamming him till he's flooding in debris!"
It's never trying to do something else with what it could do like bunkering itself in and start shelling the whack out of my base or just build masses of USEFULL Experimentals and see if that works ( like in the last mission ).

3 Cosmetic Surgery gone wrong:
Megalith II - While the Main Weapons have been swapped the whole look and how they work together with the overall design of the Unit itself resembles the Monkeylord from SupCom.
Hell... Inspecting the Weapons from close up how they're designed I even assume they were supposed to work exactly like those of the Monkeylord but later changed to make some difference.
It's like: "Got the new Experimental?" "Yeah, here it is! The Monkeylord II" "Kinda lame... Change it into Megalith II" "But..." "Do it! And while you're at it also change it's weapons!"

I could go on but meh... I'm really disappointed to be forced in playing SupCom again to have EPIC Battles with EPIC Units on EPIC Maps while beeing EPIC in Economy Householding.

With all these Changes Supreme Commander 2 is ( at least in my opinion ) nothing more than a Command&Conquer or StarCraft Clone.

Would have liked SupCom2 IF I wouldn't have known SupCom1 but... Well... Another awesome MechWarrior Simulation turning into a crappy MechAssault Shooter :(

[Apheirox]

It's a bit late for the 'opinions' threads.

[Palmerific]

Thing is, most of these issues you're bringing up have already been beaten into the dirt on this forum. I could add counter points to everything you've said..but I don't really feel like it.

But I will say it shouldn't really surprise you that sending 30 megalith II's at the enemy only results in 30 dead megalith II's. That would be a bad strategy in any game, op gunships or not.

Next time, send 10 megaliths supported by 3 bomb bouncers, ADV adapters, support dps and some fighter-bombers. Better yet, load all that into the experimental air transport and pay a visit to his base.

For the record though, I also miss the old economy too. I don't like how completely expendable mass extractors are mid to late game. I miss adjacency bonuses and the massive maps. But changes were made for a reason. If you don't like them, well as most people will probably tell you, you've still got Supcom 1.

[Stringbean]

It's never too late for opinions.

So many people disregarded the "early" opinions with the arguments: "You haven't even had a chance to really play it yet, how can you know", or "You just need to get used to it. It's not bad, it's just different".

Now that people have had a chance to play it for a few weeks, I think it's good to get some more opinion threads going.

I myself am one of the people who jumped ship and canceled my pre-order after seeing the demo. I might still buy it down the road (when it's under $25), but that choice will be made mostly on what info I can get from people's long-term opinions of the game.

[analyst88]

I love how hardcore players, who are generally people with way too much time on their hands, would deny the casual bunch (which I belong to) any opportunity to enjoy something a little more complex.

[DrSuperGood]

Mass fabrication and power plants are miles better than those in SC1 and especially forged allience.

The only way to get a serious economy was to eithor build the impossible to build infinite resource generator as the aeon (building it will cost you the game as they will have 10+ experimentals while your just half way) or to spam a rather boring pattern of mass fabricators and generators. Infact, the only way in supreme commander 1 that you could build your economy was with each T3 mass fabricator being surrounded by powerplants so that you had any positive energy growth at all. On top of that, a few units killing 1 T3 powerplant would level your economy meaning you lost. Here, you jsut spam powerplants and a couple converters (cybran just do powerplants) and then keep building units.

Lost a few powerplants? Well in supreme commander 2 thats no big deal, as you can have them replaced in a minute or so atmost and on top of that your ACU standing near them is still alive as they do not go subnuclear on death and kill your base.

Megalith II are very bad experimental, then again it only costs as much as 5 or so units and when put in comparision, sure as hell beats those 5 units. On the other hand, send in 30 soul rippers and I seriously doubt you will have any enemies left as I have seen 11 take down 3 enemies spamming 100s of fighters with no loses (all max tech fighters).

[Viscule]

Mass fabrication and power plants are miles better than those in SC1 and especially forged allience.

The only way to get a serious economy was to eithor build the impossible to build infinite resource generator as the aeon (building it will cost you the game as they will have 10+ experimentals while your just half way) or to spam a rather boring pattern of mass fabricators and generators. Infact, the only way in supreme commander 1 that you could build your economy was with each T3 mass fabricator being surrounded by powerplants so that you had any positive energy growth at all. On top of that, a few units killing 1 T3 powerplant would level your economy meaning you lost. Here, you jsut spam powerplants and a couple converters (cybran just do powerplants) and then keep building units.

Lost a few powerplants? Well in supreme commander 2 thats no big deal, as you can have them replaced in a minute or so atmost and on top of that your ACU standing near them is still alive as they do not go subnuclear on death and kill your base.

Megalith II are very bad experimental, then again it only costs as much as 5 or so units and when put in comparision, sure as hell beats those 5 units. On the other hand, send in 30 soul rippers and I seriously doubt you will have any enemies left as I have seen 11 take down 3 enemies spamming 100s of fighters with no loses (all max tech fighters).

Seeing as the soul rippers has a short AoE splash damage i am not suprised by that. =P

[Stringbean]

I love how hardcore players, who are generally people with way too much time on their hands, would deny the casual bunch (which I belong to) any opportunity to enjoy something a little more complex.

I find fault with this argument.

I seem to remember that Total Annihilation had A LOT of game customization options. There was a toggle for every unit/building which would allow/disallow that unit in a given match. Maps came in large AND small varieties, and you could double the mass/energy output of extractors/reactors (I'm pretty sure TA had that option, SupCom had a mod for it at the very least).

In short, the game by default was large scale, but you could choose to create a match which only used a subset of the game's available offerings if you wanted a smaller/faster game.

Ideally, SupCom2 could have aimed to please both crowds, by keeping the large scale stuff, and then making a few easy-to-use mods which would limit units/buildings, increase production speed, and use smaller maps.

Instead, they chose to keep the subset, and ONLY the subset, then make some modifications to it (research, etc).


I'm pretty much a casual gamer like you these days (being near the end of my masters doesn't allow me much play time anymore...), but sometimes when I have a free afternoon I like to enjoy a little "epic warfare". :)

[Picakhu]

As a TA/Supcom fan I liked Supcom2. I know I know, it feels a few steps closer to SC and RA.. Almost feels treasonous. But it makes a lot of good comprimises. Plays well on mid-range graphics, can't say that about supcom. Visually pleasing, beautiful maps too.

My only complaint is that it's been dipped down into the bowels of childishness.. Robot dinosaurs? Really?? But in the end I enjoyed the humor of it all. Common, how often do you get to see ICBM-pod-armies and mind control rays? I laugh every time.

EDIT: Yes I do miss the customization too but... I feel that it was not utilized by most users :(

[DrSuperGood]

I wonder how much of the concepts for units came from te partnership with square enix. Gient dinosaurs in the campaign with enough hitpoints that on normal it single handidly can kill 15-20 megalith IIs unless you throw them into reverse seems like the sort of thing square does.

The cybran units are much more experimental compaired to the first game where they were rip offs of the other factions. In 2, they usually perfrom 2 ore more functions at a time. The anti air guns are shield generators and anti missle towers. The ships are both sea and land units via legs. The fighters can hit both land and air. Their powerplants are mass converters all in one. Their strategic facilities are tactical facilities and defense facilities all in one. Their jump ability lets all their units have transporter like abiltiies. Thhus a dinosaur fits perfectly in with all those crazy ideas.

[aleksanderstorm]

I have one thing to comment on this- the Megalith vs Monkeylord: The Monkeylord was such a lame name to begin with - I never liked it. Megalith is a much better name, even if its a 'mini-experimental' vs the original which was a heavy mobile unit-factory type. Exactly the same changes as with the Fatboy, in fact. I think this is on purpose, really. The idea is that the factions decided to re-gear these frames for more pure warfare- streamline them much like the game has been, not to mention making them relatively cheap, effective 'tank'-like units, fulfilling a role somewhere between the old T3 frontline units and ground experimentals, while the full-size ground experimentals (King Kriptor (it so wants to be a Krogoth!), Cybranosaurus, and Universal Colossus) fulfill the true 'experimental' role more properly with their durability and firepower. Though I'd still rather use Soul Rippers. That was generally my end-game choice in the original, anyway, and they're still very dangerous, especially in decent-sized groups.

[Nanobot o0O0o]

I like how this thread started as a kneejerk reaction post that started 2 weeks too late, and has evolved into a fairly mature critique session (with all of our own personal grumbles, of course)...


New patch makes me happy. I think if this were a different Dev company, we'd be seeing patches much more slowly. Feels like a shipped game, as of today. :cool: