Supreme Commander 2 - Demo... sucks?

[akaluk]

Maldau... Talshere... There IS no endgame. Only tech 1 is left. Cant upgrade extractors or build fabs.

I hate micromanagement, but theyve removed macromanagement as well.

The techtree is horribly imbalanced; you get stuff like +200% health and shields and crap for everything, which means you cant adapt your strategy: what you research is your strongest most cost-effective unit, and since theres no area anti-air left, unless some experimental has it, air will dominate because
- Air units are built faster, giving factories veterancy faster, making air units cheaper
- Air units still cost less mass, and since you cant improve your mass output anymore...
- Air units are faster meaning they can engage one force in one place, then intercept another force in another place, so you only need 1 airforce to respond anywhere on the battlefield
- naval units still have no useful antiair and regular bombers get torpedoes with tech
- Maybe just demo, but no experimental i've seen so far has good AA

Faster, cheaper, quicker to upgrade, no way to counter

 

[Banhaze]

What did you do to my game?!?
Holy shit. Total Annihilation is rolling in his gigantic mausoleum right about now...

 

[Kollega]

So they didn't only ruin the resource system. They have also ruined construction and assistance. Great.

[HEADING=1]BULL-FOOKEN-SHIT![/HEADING]

 

[ethaninja]

It doesn't sound bad except for the upgrade and resources bits. Me, I hate rushing players anyway, I like to build up to a good long game.

 

[Wicky_42]

Hey peeps, can we keep the abbreviation for Supreme Commander to SupCom plz - SC has been taken by Starcraft

I have to say that I didn't like the demo for the original (I didn't get the resource system - no tutorial = frustration lol), but I'll have a look at this demo and see if they have made it more accessible to newbs without 'genericising' it.

 

[Talshere]

It doesn't sound bad except for the upgrade and resources bits. Me, I hate rushing players anyway, I like to build up to a good long game.

But when both players are good that first rush is repelled and it turns into an all out slogging match for resources, since the aggressive player will be pushing to take resource nodes in the other players area of influence.

Rushes only "suck" when the other player is wholly incapable of dealing with attack, at which point I believe the term your looking for is "out-played"

 

[impirion]

I have to say, I am a bit disappointed at the changes in Sup Com. I was really disappointed the way the tech levels ave been done away with. In addition, the changing of the resources, taking away the limits on resources stored cheapens the game a little in my view.

On the other hand, you have to say that there are some definite improvements, in particular how much less resource intensive the game seems to be, thus the game runs smoother and potentially even bigger battles will be possible. Although admittedly it does seem to have come at a cost to prettiness of the models.

To me there's actually gonna be less micro management in the new game than in Sup Com 1, simply because there's less options of stuff to do.

Oh, and I would say that Starcraft isn't going to necessarily destroy Sup Com in terms of casual gamers, because firstly they won't appeal to quite the same audience anyway, as one of the major advantages of sup com is the huge battles which just can't really be replicated in Starcraft, and furthermore, while Starcraft have addressed the LAN issue somewhat, it's still turned quite a few people who off the game.

 

[Chaos Marine]

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/9.177343-Supreme-Commander-2-demo-out-on-Steam#5104020

Hmmm.

 

[MadeinHell]

Now that so many people mentioned Starcraft I realised that GPG has actually tried to turn Supreme Commander into Starcraft. Most of the changes make it "just" a traditional RTS only with on higher scale.
While the idea sounds good the overall product lacks innovation and simply turns into a mediocre grey mass.

 

[saejox]

only thing i hate in SupCom2 is building units. In the first one i would order 200 tanks without any resource stock, now only 10-20. I cant go back and order same things again and again, thats stupid.

 

[Snotnarok]

All I see is the Supreme Commander l33ts blabbering how this game sucks and yada yada yaa but fuck it, I liked it. Liked it very much actually. Maybe because the HC RTS Supreme Commander w/e fans dislike it, maybe, but I still thought the graphical details looked amazing, it ran smoother and it felt much more user friendly. The UI wasn't such a clusterfuck and I actually had a clue what was going around. The music during the game was making things even more intense and I felt like I actually gave a damn what was going on in the "story".

Sure the one engineer per construction was little strange but other than that I have pretty much no complains.

Maybe it's better to have all the SupCom vets stay at the first one and let the casual RTS fans get into this one.

/Activate flame shield 2.0

Dood who cares what anyone else likes? It's what YOU like and what YOU enjoy and if someone calls you an idiot for liking it, screw them, let them go play whatever game THEY like. :|!

 

[Lordtommy]

I'm a veteran player of Supreme commander, and I enjoyed the demo for SC2. I enjoyed having more character development in the first mission than in the entire Supreme commander 1 game. On top of that, the new resource system makes more sense to me at least. Sure you can't hit the build tank button a hundred times to spam tanks, but the units in the game are more powerful. You don't have to worry about making 100 tanks to take out a base, but only about a quarter of that number.
the old system of your economy stalling didn't make much sense to me.

 

[Wicky_42]

This is from someone who's not played more than the original's demo skirmish level.
Just tried the demo out, and there's a couple of complaints that don't seem valid:
1)Someone said they strategic view to work - well, it does, and shows the whole map, which I think is zoomed out far enough.

2)Some projectiles seem *slightly* guided - flack rounds from AA tanks for one - though misses are still possible. Whether you can micro away from rounds is another matter completely. I didn't see any guided 'lasers', but the small course corrections shells were making is entirely within the realms of smart shell tech (fins/whatever tied to onboard targeting system - think ballistic missile without propulsion)

One thing that put me of SupCom 1 was the rank system - I mean, if you're fielding Mk2s and 3s, what's the point of being able to produce 1s? I just felt like I was wasting resources if I did. Then again, I only played the demo.

The upgrades in SupCom 2 mean that all your units remain useful, with more funky units being unlocked periodically. The tree structure allows you to focus development on the 5 branches as you wish, which is cool. I like the idea, but research points are simply a resource you produce for yourself - I guess so you can devote as many resources to it as you wish. However, that means it's hard for you to sabotage enemy's research without raiding their base.

To decide whether this affects the rusher strategy you have to bear in mind that only one builder can work on each job, and there's no (apparent) way to boost building production through adjoining energy or mass thingies. Basically, a rush is just the same as in any other game, though quickly teching en-route is going to give you an awesome punch!

Was there a pop cap in the original? I managed to hit it with just air units in the demo - maybe around 150-200? Considering how small units are and how squishy, that doesn't seem all that many for the sequel to a game that was all about the 'huge battles'. Perhaps I'm wrong.

Experimental units shown in the demo were a bit crap - a sub that can't shoot other subs, a armadillo thing that dies hard to naval artillery (though it rapes air) and a 'prototype experimental' (lol) that's all artillery and no AA.

All that said, the few levels the demo gives you were good fun to play but not all that distinctive from the multitude of other RTS games with resource gatherin... oh yeah - ok, so I don't think it plays better than Starcraft 2 looks, but I might pick it up when the price drops in a year or so. It's actual projectiles are a nice change from the SC/WC/CoH/DoW/etc method of 'attacks and dice rolls', and that alone validates it for a look.

 

[Zac_Dai]

It doesn't sound bad except for the upgrade and resources bits. Me, I hate rushing players anyway, I like to build up to a good long game.

Supcom is probably the most "anti-rush" game there is thanks to the power of the ACU in the early game.

But anyway I agree with all the hate, why try to compete with starcraft, C&C etc?

The original game sold well and has a solid fanbase that would guarantee good sales. So why try to go mainstream and fail against the likes of Starcraft 2, while at the same time alienating your niche market??

Its just seems so stupid.

EDIT:

This is from someone who's not played more than the original's demo skirmish level....
...All that said, the few levels the demo gives you were good fun to play but not all that distinctive from the multitude of other RTS games with resource gatherin... oh yeah - ok, so I don't think it plays better than Starcraft 2 looks, but I might pick it up when the price drops in a year or so. It's actual projectiles are a nice change from the SC/WC/CoH/DoW/etc method of 'attacks and dice rolls', and that alone validates it for a look.

See you've never played the original but even you can't see why you'd buy the sequel over starcraft 2.

Although if the projectile system interests you its worth picking up the gold edition of supcom, which includes the expansion. Its less than a tenner off play.com, definitely worth the money.

 

[Signa]

I played the demo for 5 minutes before turning it off. At that point in the supcom 1 demo, I couldn't wait to get my hands on a boxed copy. I am so offended this bears the SupCom name. I'll play 'crappy-old' Total Annihilation before I play this seriously.

Disclaimer: TA is NOT crappy, but it is horribly dated and SupCom1 was a good replacement for it. My point is that TA is 10x the game SupCom2 is, and TA is inferior to SupCom1.

 

[SniperWolf427]

it changes the forumula that much? ugh damn, guess Ill have to try the demo, oh well at least dow2 is getting its expansion soon

Haha, speaking of another RTS franchise that completely changed in its sequel...

OT: I actually only recently got into the original Supreme Commander, and I like it alot, so I'll be busy with it for awhile. However, it does seem rather disappointing that they've changed it so much.

Hell, my favorite aspect of it that most other RTSes didn't have was the infinite resource thing. It made resource gathering much more interesting to me.

 

[Worgen]

it changes the forumula that much? ugh damn, guess Ill have to try the demo, oh well at least dow2 is getting its expansion soon

Haha, speaking of another RTS franchise that completely changed in its sequel...

OT: I actually only recently got into the original Supreme Commander, and I like it alot, so I'll be busy with it for awhile. However, it does seem rather disappointing that they've changed it so much.

Hell, my favorite aspect of it that most other RTSes didn't have was the infinite resource thing. It made resource gathering much more interesting to me.

yeah, I liked how infinite resources let you really play around with things, seems like the new one has it also altho you cant queue up bulding past the current amount that you have which is kinda weird

 

[Katana314]

Sounds like an extraordinarily complex RTS being somewhat streamlined for less hardcore audiences. Key word being "extraordinarily complex". My bet, they're going to dumb it down either too much, or not nearly enough.

 

[AlanShore]

My bet, they're going to dumb it down either too much, or not nearly enough.

Why does it need dumbing down at all? If the game is too hard for you, go and play something else. It's not there's a shortage of simpler RTS games to try.

 

[Katana314]

Exactly my point. The guys there should have realized that they can't cater to the crowd they're not as good with, and kept it a professional game.