Ack, how did we manage to miss this? Oh yeah – it must be because we don’t care about PC games one jot. So did you see that Ratchet & Clank XII, eh?
Pfft. SupCom 2 is a fascinating endeavour – partly because it’s a sequel to a game that scared away half of the people it wanted to appeal to, and partly because developer Gas-Powered Games teaming up with Square “…” Enix is about the most improbable match-up since Howard the Duck and Lea Thompson. Uber-hardcore RTS meets incoherently self-indulgent auto-mythologising: whatever will happen?
Well, something like this:
No, not that. That’s just bullshit CGI posturing with zero relation to the game itself. More like this:
And this:
Interesting that this stuff concentrates on the fundaments of RTS combat, and reassuringly so to PC old-hands, whereas reports I’d heard previously had concentrated on the improvements to storytelling and accessibility: always SupCom’s greatest stumbles. SupCom2 seems to be trying to do two very different things at once. Really hope it can pull it off, and that the mewling of the shocked fanbase doesn’t mean whatever GPG are trying to achieve with this gets lost in the noise.
Oh -those ramp-based levels seem a bit DemiGod, no? Quite the departure from SupCom 1’s endless, strangely flat battlefields…
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I liked SupCom, but it felt kind of bland to me, with a ho-hum campaign. That was somewhat disappointing, because TA was probably my favorite RTS.
I like most of what I’m seeing/hearing about SupCom2 – more interesting maps, more varied/differentiated units, even the Squeenix involvement, which might give the game (especially the campaign) more personality.
But I *liked* the base adjacency bonuses, and the stuff I’ve read about “streamlining” the base building and resource collection concerns me. “Streamlined” has come to be synonymous with “dumbed down for the console crowd” for me.
I’m sorry but what the crap is all this complaint over the lack of art style? Watchign the video I could quite CLEARLY tell what faction each unit was on, none of them had changed drastically and we only saw a small number of units :/
The game looks awesome and it has a gorramn robot dinosaur. How is that NOT awesome or quite clearly cybran. I loved TA, supcom and FA to bits and intend to play FA plenty more over this summer and amd looking forward muchly to this game. I can hardly see how anythign in this trailer is bad, people just seem much more happy to hate nowadays.
A dinosaur that breathes fire?
SOLD!!!
In Supreme Commander everything I did felt pointless. The only reactive thing I ever did was rebuild one or two metal extractors and repair a few turrets. Apart from that the whole game was building up to deliver a crushing blow. It could be nukes, super units, air strikes, whatever. Felt like a 90 minute build up to the Mortal Kombat ‘Finish Him!’ bit. It got old very quickly.
I’m going to be coming from the camp that really loved Supreme Commander. The complaints about the slow gameplay are somewhat justified in singleplayer, but that’s a regular complaint of most RTS’s. In multiplayer, if you weren’t out there harassing your opponent fast, you were going to lose (well, against decent players anyway). Turtling was more of an option but losing the initiative ultimately means losing the game.
Anyway, onto this game, and I really like what I’ve been hearing. I think it’s a good idea to get rid of the tech levels and tier 1/2/3 units, instead opting for a model that allows for starting units to be useful right into the end game. Fewer redundant unit types, more focus on configuring them for your strategy. It was annoying whenever you hit the unit cap for whatever reason and had to scrap all your useless tier 1 units because they wouldn’t last 5 seconds in a base assault.
I also really like the idea that you gain the ability to upgrade through research, but also through combat. Should make sure there’s always something going on.
@Lintman: I don’t think removing adjacency bonusses is dumbing down the game, they’re just trying to streamline the economy model. It’s something a lot of people, especially newcomers, grappled with, and there’s no point in adding extra complications that don’t really add that much to the game. In another interview, Taylor also mentioned that they’re removing the simultaneous attack feature, because nobody was using it. And it’s true, whilst it sounds like an awesome idea, nobody ever did you that feature. If you wanted to strike defensive positions from air, you’d likely want to do it before your ground units hit the defence line, not simultaneously.
you’d likely want to do it before your ground units hit the defence line, not simultaneously.
At that’s why I’m waiting for a useful RTS battle planner utility. Group units into battalions (or have the game auto-group based on user inputs [X AA units, Y tanks, Z gunships]), pause the game, go to a battle map, draw attack vectors for each battalion, determine order of attack, and watch the battle unfold. You could then zoom around the map, taking control of individual unit groups depending on the circumstances. But the overall attack can proceed without micromanagement.
^ I’ve often thought something similar. Although I’ve also sometimes thought that I’d like to see a part-turn based style to it, where you issue orders in chunks like that, and then watch the results of your plan unfold without being able to issue any further orders until the next phase /turn / whatever.
In SupCom you can set things like attack vectors and fairly complex routes and orders, but you can’t co-ordinate units temporally in any complex way. You can get an ETA on unit arrivals, but it’s impossible to set a time trigger to launch a ground offensive automatically after units X Y and Z are destroyed.
If I’m realistic though, I think such a system would probably be too complex to implement from an interface point of view, and likely difficult on the engine as well with all the extra calculations and baggage to carry around that the human controller would ordinarily be carrying out.
Or, rather, a strategy game with a more Take Command: 2nd Manassass feel, with competent AI on all levels and the ability to become any given commander, from squad commander to general. That way you don’t have to jump around your focus like a mad thing and feel like if you don’t micro your army will fold.
The BIG deal with Supreme Commander, the one that worked in beta, was combined attacks- if you set up a group of lumbering land units, a few more powerful ones flown in by air, and a naval invasion, they could be set up to all arrive and start shooting at the same time. Too bad this and a ton of visual enhancements had to be removed from the final revision for the sake of performance improvements. As for a stronger and more cohesive story… I don’t need one in any sort of war game. Those guys over there with different colored shirts? They don’t even have to look at me funny, they are going down.
I think all games need a coherent storyline:
FIFA 2009 – Call of Footy
“For years, Newcastle United have been stockpiling footballs despite signing the Soccer Non-Proliferation Treaty of 2008. Now, the Toon Army stand ready to invade our peaceful town of Leeds. But there is still hope. A crack squad of 11 highly-trained elite Leeds special forces have inserted themselves into the Newcastle stronghold behind enemy lines. Can they hope to hold back the tide of black and white or will they fall beneath the stud-booted heel of the Toons?
Coming this fall. Eleven men. One goal. Football.”
I am unsure about the chessiness (chinesses?) of a “dragon” in a sci-fi game. I ask for a cutscene that explains this all, and best It use the words DNA and cyberspace in a elegant and convincing way.
I think it’s safe to say that it looks like a giant cyber-dragon because dragons are freaking sweet.
I mean the last Cybran experimental was a giant spider with a giant head mounted laser, so it’s not like they’ve been wholly inconsistent here. If you’re going to crush the armies of your foes beneath your iron heel, you may as well do it in style. :)
“PS please don’t let this be a repeat of Kingdoms failtasticness.”
Now why did you have to ruin a perfectly good Internet argument by bringing up that abhorrent disaster of a sequel?
I dont like how they are taking away the tech levels. I also really hope they will have big maps. Hopefully the “unlocking units” and such will still give you quite a bit of units, not just 5 or 6. Supcom was all about big massive battles and lots of units and variety of them. Yes once you got to tech 3, you’d mainly use the tech 3 guys on ground, and you’d use tech 2 and tech 3 for naval, and air MAYBE you’d see tech 2, but mostly tech 3. Still, you had variety and needed to use it, not just give a tank an upgrade so you can take down annoying gunships. Thats part of what made Supcom, if you didnt want gunships attack your tanks, you’d either use air superiority fighters or have AA units, not have your tank be a 1 unit army that can take EVERYTHING on. Maybe it wont last against most of the things that are being thrown at him, but still, they are taking out the variety. That upsets me a lot. I was really hoping this would be like Supcom 1, but with more and new units, all the problems like the pathfinding and lag fixed, and more big maps, not demigod small scale 100 units max small map crap, because thats what its starting to seem like.