Supreme Commander: The second coming

By
Craig Lager
Published: May 5, 2009Posted in: General nonsense, Initial thoughts

A few details have started to emerge from the tantalising Supreme Commander 2. This is a big thing. Me and all of the prominent members of the community here rank the original Sup Com stupidly highly. I love it, and to me at least, no other RTS quite compares. Hopefully the second coming will be even better, and as an excited child might say in the mid-summer, here’s what I want for christmas:



Supreme commander: monkeylord



  • More variation between the factions that emphasises their key points
    • Cybrans need more units that allow for sneaky attacks and can possibly bypass defences rather than having to fight through them at the expense of weak fire power
    • UEF to have more stronger but slower units. They would be hard as nails but have slow movement and firing rate
    • Aeon should own the skies and have good attack units but completely fail in defence
  • Less resource management
    • Don’t let engineers assist factories. The faffing around managing engineers isn’t fun. Just place more emphasis on factories assisting each other
    • Have mass extractors get more efficient over time. Having to remember to upgrade them is a pain in the arse and this way it’s still important to keep them defended.
    • Don’t make me build massive resource farms. Some are good as it gives people something to target, but planning and building massive ones is time consuming and dull
  • Drop the Seraphim. Ok, not everyone is going to agree with this, but I just don’t see the point in them.
  • Less dull skirmish maps. They are good to play but the visual style is often very boring
  • Urban maps
  • Keep nukes basically the way they are now
  • More very unique units like Cybrans walking boats
  • Far better pathfinding and unit formations is a necessity
  • Finally, addition of an experimental called “The Heavy” which is equipped with a huge mini-gun. Has a special ability called “Sandvich” which stops it firing for 10 seconds but replenishes 50% health



Now, what we know about number two already is that resource management is going to take a bit of a back seat – so hopefully that will mean for changes at least similar to what I’m asking for here, though other than that only time will tell. A quite significant change that has been made known is that a tank that you build in the first couple of minutes could still be around and actually be useful at the end game, which is a far cry from the basically fodder units you can produce at the start of a current match. All together it sounds like some fundamental changes are coming into the core mechanics of Supreme Commander as we know it, and I don’t think this is a bad thing.



Supreme commander: soul ripper takes on a galactic colossus



Less emphasis on managing those pesky resources and more emphasis on tactics, strategies and logistics would make for a much more fun experience me thinks. My only concern at this point is Square’s involvement as they mostly focus on RPG’s, which means character, and robots don’t need character. Sup Com was clinical – you had no attachment to your robot killing machines, and this was a good thing – it didn’t make me feel bad when I sent hundreds of them to their death.


Don’t get excited yet anyway, it looks like this is going to be a long way off – especially as Demigod has only just been released. It’s going to be a long wait, but if Sup Com 2 is nearly as good as the first one, it’s going to be worth it. If there is anything you would really like to see in the sequel, be sure to let us know below. Not that it will have any effect, but it will be interesting none the less.

Craig Lager