Supreme Commander is the long-awaited "spiritual successor" to the cult RTS classic, Total Annihilation. "Sup Com" – as it is otherwise known – was developed by Gas Powered Games, a video games developer formed and led by Chris Taylor, the man behind the design of Total Annihilation. It shouldn't be at all surprising then, to learn the Supreme Commander effectively is the sequel to Total Annihilation in terms of gameplay, style, atmosphere, and cutting-edge game design.
The game is set in the distant future featuring three playable factions – the United Earth Federation (UEF), Cybran Nation, and Aeon Illuminate – with the Forged Alliance expansion pack adding a fourth faction, the Seraphim.
Developer: Gas Powered Games
Publisher: THQ
Release Date (Supreme Commander): Feb 16, 2007
Release Data (Forged Alliance): Nov 6, 2007
OverviewIf I had to use one word to describe Supreme Commander, it would be "scale". Battles range from tiny, early game, one unit skirmishes; dominated by who can micro their unit best, right up to epic clashes between armies of colossal proportions, where the victor is the one who can manoeuvre his army best as a whole, while still executing surgical strikes on the enemies' key units.
Supreme Commander allows for this disparity in magnitude by offering the player what's called "strategic zoom". This revolution in RTS control allows players to zoom right out from the battlefield simply by scrolling the mouse wheel, and zoom right back in, in the same way. This allows you to easily switch between bullet-dodging micro mode in early game to epic-warfare macro mode in late game. The game also introduces several other enhancements in RTS UI, such as real time command modifications, automatically repeating build queues, and automatic ferry routes that tell your transports to continually transport units from one point to another.
GameplayIn Supreme Commander, you start the game with an Armoured Command Unit (ACU) that is able to walk around and construct buildings as well as provide early game offense and defence, much like the Commander from Total Annihilation. He is essentially your avatar on the battlefield, and as such, if he dies, you lose. Fortunately – as his name suggests – the ACU is heavily armoured, and can easily hold his own in early game. However, in late game the player must invest a significant amount of resources and effort into defending him otherwise he could (and often is) "sniped" via bombers, gun ships, and tactical missiles, among other things. As you can imagine, players often use these "ACU snipes" as a last resort once all hope of a more conventional victory is lost.
The ACU is not the only thing Sup Com has in common with Total Annihilation; Supreme Commander also shares a very similar economy system, with the two main resources being mass and energy (as opposed to TA's metal and energy). Mass is primarily collected by constructing mass extractors – or "mex" as they are often abbreviated – that are constructed on discrete mass deposits around the map, and provide an infinite source of mass. Energy on the other hand, does not require any map control, and generators can be produced wherever there is room to build. Another main source of mass income is from the wreckages of fallen units, which can be reclaimed by engineering units (which include the ACU) to regain in the region of 80% of the mass originally spent on those units. This makes it even more important to win battles, as the winner has the best access to those wreckages. As the standard of competition has progressed, it has become common for players to try and reclaim those wreckages in the heat of battle, really pushing the limits of a player's ability to micro.
Unlike most RTS games, Supreme Commander features land, air, and naval units, all in equal proportions. For example, the UEF's military units consist of 16 land units, 14 air units, and 13 naval units (including their three amphibious land units). Units are built from either the land factory, air factory or naval factory, and each factory has three tech levels, which are upgraded independent of other factories. For example, it's entirely possible to have just one tier 3 land factory and still have several tier 1 and 2 land factories. This tech tree model is much simpler than the likes of StarCraft, but still allows for a variety of tech-oriented strategies. For example, players can best counter tier 2 navies by using tier 2 aircraft, and tier 2 ground anti-air provides the best defense against tier 2 air.
Speaking of counters, Supreme Commander opts to use a counter system based on intuition rather than hard-coded damage multipliers. For example, mobile artillery will counter static defenses because of range, and static defenses will counter tanks/bots due to pure brute strength, and tanks/bots will counter mobile artillery due to manoeuvrability. You also have obvious counters such as anti-air units against air, and torpedo bombers against naval units. The benefit of using these intuitive counters is that players can jump right into the game and know what units to use in every situation without having to study various armour and damage types.
