EPTYesterday I was out of action, at home looking after a sick baby and exhausted wife - but I'm back today with a game which I am still very fond of. I didn't get to play a lot of multiplayer, so my experiences are based mostly on the campaign.
Supreme Commander
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Game: Supreme Commander
Developer: Gas Powered Games
Platform: PC
Release Year: 2007
Supreme Commander is an epic real time strategy game which blew my mind when I first saw it.
Basic Plot
The campaign involves a battle between three factions:
- The United Earth Federation (UEF) is the remnants of the Earth Empire and are the starting faction for the campaign. They most closely resemble current human society.
- The Cybran Nation are a group of Symbionts who are human beings with robotic implants to enhance their abilities. They are essentially fighting for their own freedom from the UEF.
- The Aeon Illuminate are a religious group who worship an alien race called the Seraphim. The old Earth Empire exterminated the Seraphim but the Aeon Illuminate live by their philsophies post mortem.
Gameplay
Supreme Commander is a real time strategy set at a slower pace and at a more epic scale than other games in the genre (for example StarCraft or Age of Empires).
Similar to how Crysis has the nanosuit as the "thing" that makes it stand apart, Supreme Commander has the concept of a mech called the Armoured Command Unit or ACU. The ACU is your starting unit and is multi purpose for both building, gathering resources, and engaging enemies. Depending how you upgrade your ACU it can fulfil these roles to a greater or lesser degree. When an ACU or sub ACU is killed it sets of a nuclear explosion.
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From left to right an Aeon, UEF, and Cybran ACU.
Units are broken down into three tiers of technology. Each tier is significantly more powerful than the previous and is slowly unlocked during the campaign. There is also a fourth tier for experimental units only available toward the end of the game. These units are extremely powerful and slow to build but can devastate an opposing force of standard units.
Resources are mass and energy. Mass is extracted initially from mass locations on each map and are unlimited. The rate at which you extract mass is what is important, so controlling mass locations is important. Power is generated by building power stations. There is also a mechanic whereby building energy stations right next to other buildings "links" them and helps them run more efficiently. Later on you can create mass fabricators which turn energy into mass, which frees the player up from having to use mass locations on the map.
The view is top down like other RTS games, however the player is able to zoom quite close in, but also zoom right out of the map and look down on the entire landscape as a top level map with unit icons. This is an extremely satisfying mechanic which makes managing the huge maps easy. I found it very difficult to adjust to Starcraft 2 when it came out without this feature.
One mechanic I really like is shields. You can cover your entire base with shields which absorb ranged weaponry fire. This becomes critical later in the game, especially against artillery fire.
Units can be land, air, or ocean based or a mix of the three.
The game features multiplayer, and I would have really liked to have experienced some more competitive online play.
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Some experimental units mixed in with the traditional ones in a UEF and Cybran battle.
Positives
It was refreshing to have an RTS at a slower pace. It's less stressful than other RTS games and a great way to get into them.
The epic scale of the game is really satisfying too. You can build enormous armies and create truly epic battle scenes.
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Traditional game view. You can zoom in and out significantly.
Negatives
Unit groups automatically assemble themselves in ranks which is frustrating when you want them not to scatter out over vast distances. It's hard to get them just to bunch up.
I think one thing lacking from the game which would have boosted its success a lot was the absence of a good multiplayer system, equivalent to Battle.net or Steam. A ranked ladder system, the ability to add friends and automatically find opponents, these are features which would have greatly boosted the replayability of the game. From memory I don't remember anything like this being included.
Memorable Moments
There are some Cybran battleships which you can actually "walk" on land (they have legs which open up). They move very slowly but it's pretty fun roaming a fleet of death up into an enemy base.
Tier three artillery units can shoot over an entire map. I used to enjoy building them and just winning a game without ever leaving my own base.
I'd be very interested to hear about the multiplayer experience of this game. Was it well balanced? Fun to play? Was there a high skill element to macro and micro management?
