Supreme Commander

If you’ve read our preview for Supreme Commander, you’d see that we were really excited about the game, and for good reason. Supreme Commander (SupCom) was supposed to tread on completely uncharted territory with its epic scaled battles and unique design. Under Chris Taylor’s expert supervision, we’ve hoped for another title as brilliant as his last brainchild—Total Annihilation, which by the way is regarded as one of the best RTSes of all time by many. So did this game really deliver? To make up our mind, let’s take a look at what we expected from the game, and what we experienced.

Just as expected, the game boasts of some really massive battlegrounds, which stretch over miles. The enormity the game claimed (and has) was the key, and make or break factor of the game, since it could either ruin, or enhance the gameplay depending on how it translated into the single and multiplayer modes. In this case, it’s a bit of both. When they said that the maps would be huge, they really meant it! The maps are large enough to make you feel like you’re part of a full scaled war, rather than tiny skirmishes. But traversing these huge maps can be rather cumbersome at times. Although the units are pretty large themselves, they’re really tiny compared to the size of the game’s maps, and it can take them what seems like eons to get from one corner to another. I’m not exaggerating—the powerful (and slower) units LITERALLY CRAWL like an infant with only one leg and no hands.

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To help move your forces around, you can make use of aerial transport. The ferry option given to all transport units is a God-send here, since it automatically transports units to and fro across inaccessible terrain after you give it the command. This means that there’s no need to ferry them manually; just select the transport units along with the units you wish to ferry, and the AI will do the job for you! At times however, this feature craps itself and transports only units that cannot walk over the terrain at hand. Units that can walk over the terrain (albeit slowly) do not get ferried even if you give the command, instead they walk to their destination. This gets really annoying, especially when you can’t focus on every little detail on the map, since they’re so friggin’ huge! Let’s hope that this little bug gets fixed soon, as it can really ruin a game—just imagine going into battle without your most important units; doesn’t sound too good, does it?

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Speaking of units, there are 3 tech levels of machines you’re given access to—tech 1, tech 2 (it’s not named after us unfortunately), and tech 3, which are also known as T1, T2 and T3 units respectively. You gain access to these units by upgrading your main production facilities, so if you want tech 3 ground and air units, you’ll have to upgrade your Land and Air factories separately. Apart from these 3 levels, there are experimental units, which take ages to build, and are better than standard units. Unfortunately, they can be taken out quite easily if you send them into battle alone or in a small group. They do pack a great punch though. The key to using units effectively in SupCom, is to have a good balance and variety of troops, that provide diversity to your army where range, attack type, damage absorbing capacity, and sheer size is concerned. This part of the game is what I liked the most. You cannot horde one kind of unit and expect to achieve victory by storming your foes. If you do so, you will get slaughtered.

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This happens because the turrets in the game, whether they’re point defense, anti-air, or long ranged, are powerful as hell. Even the most powerful/damage absorbing mechanical mammoths you can bring to battle, will not survive a direct assault from a number of T2 turrets. This ensures that you always scout your enemy well, which promotes warfare tactics akin to those that are practiced (or have been practiced in the past) in real life warfare. You have to look for weak spots in the enemy’s defense, and push through those areas. At this point, the strategic value of the terrain’s gigantic size really stands out, since you can’t create an army of powerful units and have them move around the map fast. So your battle tactics will have to be planned before hand, which in turn lays more emphasis on battle planning than unit hording than any other RTS out there.

Like most good things, the way the base defenses are overpowered in SupCom, does backfire. In matches against other human opponents, there’ll be times when they ‘turtle’. Turtling is when a player digs his base inside a shit load of turrets and shield generators, making his base impenetrable, and waning away the strategic value of the game, while reducing its pace to a staggering halt. Games like these can get extremely frustrating, since the turrets are too powerful for even the T3 or experimental units. The number of players that resort to such tactics is staggering, and this will have you quit a lot of multiplayer battles before they end.

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Now before I forget, let me tell you more about two of game’s most complex features—resource management and base design. Starting with resource management let me begin by saying—I hate it. The resource you need to gather are split up in two—mass and energy. Energy (power) generators can be built anywhere, but mass extractors can only be constructed over mass deposits. It’s all simple so far, but here’s the complicated part—apart from gathering both resources you need to store them, much like Tiberium is stored in Tiberium Silos in the Command & Conquer games. Only here, you’re gonna need a lot more Power/Mass storage facilities, since the bigger units in the game need a lot more of these resources. Having two separate storage structures is extremely frustrating, since the amount of management required in getting larger units up and running is enough to enfeeble even the most hardcore, economy driven RTS game structures out there. In a standard game of SupCom, around 30% of your time will be wasted in building storage and generation/extraction structures, which in my opinion is a waste of time. In other words, even though the economic structure can be mastered, half of the RTS fans out there that try to attempt mastering it will end up dead after they smash their heads on their keyboard out of frustration.

If it’s any consolation, the game has some really easy to use (and master) build queue mechanics in place, to help you build the large amount of structures you’ll need to. To build multiple structures, simply hold the shift key and give build commands in the order you wish to get them constructed, and your engineer(s) will do the job—it’s as simple as that. It’s simple features like these that really make the game really stand out, since their simplicity is remarkable and demands appreciation.

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Since we’re talking about construction and build queues, I might as well tell you about base structuring. Chris Taylor and Gas Powered Games have come up with a pretty nifty new feature to improve the efficiency of buildings. If you wish to reduce the build costs and time of a few structures, just place power generators adjacent to it. Doing so will connect the generator to your structure, providing extra power to it. Additionally, you can attach storage structures to extractors/generators by simply placing them in the adjacent blocks. This helps make them more efficient and provides greater gains. Once practiced on your own base, structures in your base will look similar to the one below.

If you want to master the game, or even be able to simply finish the campaign, you’ll have to learn all of the features above. Else you’re gonna get slaughtered, since even the single player campaign is really unforgiving at times. If you’re considering buying this game, answer these questions first – are you patient enough to endure a painfully slow and steep learning curve? Is the PC you own powerful enough to run this game (you need a REALLY powerful PC to play this)? Does the idea of pulling out your hair in frustration attract you? If the answers to the questions above are ‘Yes’, buy the game. Else be wise, and skip this game altogether… invest your money in Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars instead.