What is so great about this RTS?

[aks2161989]

I don't want to start a fight, but i keep seeing players of this game call it the best RTS ever. Can someone tell me how it is better than other RTS games like Company of Heroes. Age of Empires of Man of War apart from the "spaceship" part?

Sorry if this is a stupid question, I'm not a very experienced gamer

[germanicianus]

That (old) review may be helpful for you:
https://www.gamespot.com/reviews/supreme-commander-review/1900-6166152/

[Bolt]

It's greatly exaggerated. To me this entire game feels like a beta. It's not just the pathfinding that constantly fails, but also delayed unit responses (only noticable with large formations in games with tons of units, where an entire selection receives an order but then they only move one by one instead of all that were selected and they do that with a delay), the UI which doesn't allow to make my units do what I actually want them to do or fine-tune any default behavior, the lack of economy- and unit-overview features, the fact that a game that's mostly about economy and construction has no UI features that support both well or the AI that just doesn't exist but the fact that they had this addon and it's actually worse in every aspect, aside from +1 more faction and some new units, than the main game. Without FAF it's even more stale with the experimental spam it allows.

It's a game I won't ever play competitive because not only does it have unfixable flaws (pathfinding, moving outside the map, water surface issues, sound issues, limited processor usage, 32bit memory limitation) but it also doesn't have the overall game design to actually work well, like I can't even make sure that my ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ engineers do what I actually want them to do without micro-managing everything they do constantly. What's most infuriating to me is that it calls itself "Supreme Commander" but lacks a functional AI that can actually rebuild from scratch or take care or its ACU any bit and it also fails to provide an UI rich enough in functionality to actually play the strategy instead of micro-manage all the unit f*ckups nonstop - like where's the "Supreme Commander" ? Things like bombers not turning after dropping their load but flying right over the enemy base with all its air defenses or AA fighters chasing enemy scouts right back into their base to be shot down or that I can't change their attack priorities without mods to not let the T3 bombers pass to engage in air combat with other AA fighters but shoot them down before they drop all their bombs.

It's really people that don't care about gameplay mechanics or haven't played a great amount of games that praise this as "best". It's okay to good, depending on what you like about it, but it needs a great deal of forgiveness because the flaws are everywhere and literally the only thing that keeps this game floating and from drowning is the community and all the work it puts into this but without the slightest bit of a doubt I can say that a proper remake would be far better than trying to fix the unfixable.

Edit: It doesn't even have the space ship part. It's all ground combat and at least it got naval combat in it, which I like, unlike some other RTS games that just remove that.

Edit#2: Fúck the rétard who gave the jester award. I provided valid points and could provide entire more pages of them. I held back.

[loudman2]

Despite the complaints above - every issue mentioned above has been extirpated by the mods that have come along since - especially those incurred by performance issues (UI delay). It's still the finest, most granular, and large scale RTS out there - and more importantly, it's solid basic design premise has allowed it to mature right along with modern times. Forged Alliance continues to thrive, thru it's two most important communities - FAF and The LOUD Project - even here on Steam, where there are several hundred players at any given time.

[Antineutron]

I never played those rts but from what I see about them none of them feature strategic zoom and that alone makes supreme commander 200x better to me (I literally can't play rtss that don't have it, it should have become a standard feature in all rts since its first appearance, once you try it, you can't go back)

other things in this game:

• everything in the game being part of a real time simulation including weapons and projectiles and units and buildings, all the collisions between these happening and dealing damage as you see them with no illusion or separation between what you see and what really happened, unlike other "homing bullet" rtss
  
• the unique economy system combined with the way you build units and buildings without needing to pay full cost before starting like in other rtss, but instead "funelling" resources into construction in real time using engineers's "build power" that act as a limiting factor of how many resources per second you can funnel into something depending on how many of engineers are involved in it, and the absolutely unrestricted building of anything you want anywhere you want in any number you want, the build power and available resources being the only limit instead of "you can only have x of this unit", this includes engineers themselves that you can build as many as you want (well there *is* a limit to max total number of units you can have at a time that is usually 1000 or so)
  
• reclaim, the destroyed buildings and units leaving behind wrecks that you can harvest for resources, which is technically the fastest way of getting resources, instead of only being able to get them from economic buildings, this adds a lot of consideration in anything you do in the game since dead units become an important thing for economy, these wrecks can also be damaged by weapons, reducing the amount of resources you (or anyone) can get back from them

and all of this balanced into 1 game, at least those are some of the things that matter to me

hollow explained a lot of flaws in the game (and not even all of them, but I think a lot of control issues are solved in FAF and its ui mods, I never tried loud so I can't speak for it), some can just never be solved because their source is in the inaccessible engine itself, at least not without compromising what makes this game what it is, but even so, this game is far better than any other rts I've seen so far, what is really needed is sufficiently budgeted supreme commander 3 that fixes all the problems with this one and further improves the things that can be, without changing things that don't need to be changed (like basically every sequel insist on doing for no reason and over the top), but like that will ever happen

you should really just try it and you will see why, or here is a video that describes what is so good about this game from someone who explains it way better than I can

[Sagi]

We need a supcom 3 wich is this but without it's problems and absolutly nothing like supcom 2.

What i like most in this game is the use of the commanders and the scale wich it represent so very good.

[WarDaddy]

Get forged alliance forever, It fixes this game.

[aks2161989]

Thank you so much guys

[aks2161989]

Originally posted by Hollow:

It's greatly exaggerated. To me this entire game feels like a beta. It's not just the pathfinding that constantly fails, but also delayed unit responses (only noticable with large formations in games with tons of units, where an entire selection receives an order but then they only move one by one instead of all that were selected and they do that with a delay), the UI which doesn't allow to make my units do what I actually want them to do or fine-tune any default behavior, the lack of economy- and unit-overview features, the fact that a game that's mostly about economy and construction has no UI features that support both well or the AI that just doesn't exist but the fact that they had this addon and it's actually worse in every aspect, aside from +1 more faction and some new units, than the main game. Without FAF it's even more stale with the experimental spam it allows.

It's a game I won't ever play competitive because not only does it have unfixable flaws (pathfinding, moving outside the map, water surface issues, sound issues, limited processor usage, 32bit memory limitation) but it also doesn't have the overall game design to actually work well, like I can't even make sure that my ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ engineers do what I actually want them to do without micro-managing everything they do constantly. What's most infuriating to me is that it calls itself "Supreme Commander" but lacks a functional AI that can actually rebuild from scratch or take care or its ACU any bit and it also fails to provide an UI rich enough in functionality to actually play the strategy instead of micro-manage all the unit f*ckups nonstop - like where's the "Supreme Commander" ? Things like bombers not turning after dropping their load but flying right over the enemy base with all its air defenses or AA fighters chasing enemy scouts right back into their base to be shot down or that I can't change their attack priorities without mods to not let the T3 bombers pass to engage in air combat with other AA fighters but shoot them down before they drop all their bombs.

It's really people that don't care about gameplay mechanics or haven't played a great amount of games that praise this as "best". It's okay to good, depending on what you like about it, but it needs a great deal of forgiveness because the flaws are everywhere and literally the only thing that keeps this game floating and from drowning is the community and all the work it puts into this but without the slightest bit of a doubt I can say that a proper remake would be far better than trying to fix the unfixable.

Edit: It doesn't even have the space ship part. It's all ground combat and at least it got naval combat in it, which I like, unlike some other RTS games that just remove that.

That's very interesting. Thank you for replying

[aks2161989]

Originally posted by Antineutron:

I never played those rts but from what I see about them none of them feature strategic zoom and that alone makes supreme commander 200x better to me (I literally can't play rtss that don't have it, it should have become a standard feature in all rts since its first appearance, once you try it, you can't go back)

other things in this game:

• everything in the game being part of a real time simulation including weapons and projectiles and units and buildings, all the collisions between these happening and dealing damage as you see them with no illusion or separation between what you see and what really happened, unlike other "homing bullet" rtss
  
• the unique economy system combined with the way you build units and buildings without needing to pay full cost before starting like in other rtss, but instead "funelling" resources into construction in real time using engineers's "build power" that act as a limiting factor of how many resources per second you can funnel into something depending on how many of engineers are involved in it, and the absolutely unrestricted building of anything you want anywhere you want in any number you want, the build power and available resources being the only limit instead of "you can only have x of this unit", this includes engineers themselves that you can build as many as you want (well there *is* a limit to max total number of units you can have at a time that is usually 1000 or so)
  
• reclaim, the destroyed buildings and units leaving behind wrecks that you can harvest for resources, which is technically the fastest way of getting resources, instead of only being able to get them from economic buildings, this adds a lot of consideration in anything you do in the game since dead units become an important thing for economy, these wrecks can also be damaged by weapons, reducing the amount of resources you (or anyone) can get back from them

and all of this balanced into 1 game, at least those are some of the things that matter to me

hollow explained a lot of flaws in the game (and not even all of them, but I think a lot of control issues are solved in FAF and its ui mods, I never tried loud so I can't speak for it), some can just never be solved because their source is in the inaccessible engine itself, at least not without compromising what makes this game what it is, but even so, this game is far better than any other rts I've seen so far, what is really needed is sufficiently budgeted supreme commander 3 that fixes all the problems with this one and further improves the things that can be, without changing things that don't need to be changed (like basically every sequel insist on doing for no reason and over the top), but like that will ever happen

you should really just try it and you will see why, or here is a video that describes what is so good about this game from someone who explains it way better than I can

Thank you for your detailed response! I all fired up to get this game

[UHC]

One of the best features that make this an amazing RTS game is that all projectiles are actually an object. In other words, if you want to stop an artillery shell, an air unit can get hit instead of whats on the ground. This even applies to things like nukes, air units can stop them from detonating on your base.

Another one is resource management. Everything generates at a constant rate and increases depending on what you build. So you are never halted from making something regardless of how high or low your values are. The only thing that happens if you let your values go too low, your building speed will slow to a crawl, but the moment you get them back up, your speed will immediately go back to to normal. And on top of that, you can stack builders for faster construction speed, which also requires more resources.

These things are in the first Supreme Commander, but this one has more units, a new faction, it also has better HUD and UI. I do recommend playing the first Supreme Commander, at least the campaign.

[Shaman King]

This game as a game is fifth best strategy rts ever made. Aoe 2 stronghold wc3 sc2 then supcom. But tbh its the most realistic one. Nothing come close. Others are more fun games but if you want learn warfare this is the game. Also if you want to know how to fight on 2 crater maps connected with a road lol. Maps are epic weponz incredible soo join the UEF or gtfo

[Antineutron]

Originally posted by UHC:

you can stack builders for faster construction speed, which also requires more resources.

just to clarify, using more engineers doesn't make things they are building cost more resources, the cost of what they are building remains the same, they just use the resources faster to build the thing faster but the total finite amount of resources used for construction never changed

[Bolt]

Originally posted by Antineutron:

Originally posted by UHC:

you can stack builders for faster construction speed, which also requires more resources.

just to clarify, using more engineers doesn't make things they are building cost more resources, the cost of what they are building remains the same, they just use the resources faster to build the thing faster but the total finite amount of resources used for construction never changed

...except if you use them on factories that benefit from the adjacency bonus: All units assisting a factory completely ignore and bypass the adjacency-granted price reduction and apply full cost. So if you have a factory with 120 build speed and assign 4 engineers with a combined build speed of also 120 half of the unit is built by the factory, using the discount price that it costs due to adjacency, the other half is built by the 4 engineers that completely ignore and bypass the adjacency bonus because reasons. On top of that you can't rotate structures 90° for alternate production layouts despite the game being heavily about construction, which is why FAF had to program it in that turrets would face the direction of the closest enemy by default when constructed instead of some default direction which might force them to turn full 180° or something. Also adjacency is only profitable with T3 structures as the lower tech structures only grant a very minor bonus that doesn't scale with time already spent being connected and can't be upgraded because aside from ACUs & factories unit upgrades / research doesn't exist, so they'll always stay less efficient and can't even improve a bit. This limits potential layouts further and turns adjacency into a huge consumption of space with layouts that want shields to not be blown up, as both power generators and mass fabricators are explosive, which kinda ruins the entire concept of it further, So it turned into sub-ACU spam via quantuum gates, as that just generates both resources without all those complications instead and gives a utility unit with lots of health and self-repair. Because the amount of sub-ACUs you can have isn't tied to your population limit, like only one for every 200 units or something, you can just spam sub-"commander" units that are merely better engineers or utility combat units (upgrades required) but don't really have any units to "command" over.

[Antineutron]

yeah I know this game has problems but I think it's a bit in depth for a new player that never even tried it

anyways sure, engineers don't benefit from adjacency like factories do, but they don't *increase* the cost of the unit past its base cost, they just don't get discount on resources they put in with their build power, which seems very marginal problem to me if a problem at all, consider engineers assisting factories an "overclock", pushing the build power of factories past what it is normally, trading efficiency for speed (if factory even had any adjacency bonus in first place, otherwise it is just a bonus with no downside)

don't want to derail the thread with the rest but suffice it to say, adjacency has its uses (other than energy storage building) and sacus aren't that big of a problem due to their build cost inefficiency and how late game they are, rotating buildings is just something gpg didn't consider for some reason and FAF has that workaround upon turret placement but not for factories (it does have some normalization and optimization of factory rollout speeds between factions afaik)

[Red Spot]

Any one of you actually read the topics you post in or are you just interested in yourselves?