The death of micromanagement
When Total Annihilation (TA) was released, way back in 1997, it was a decade ahead of its time in terms of minimizing micromanagement. Other real time strategy games lacked any sort of sophisticated queuing system, and often only allowed you to control small numbers of units at any one time.
This is still largely the situation in many real time strategy games today, which often seem to go out of their way to favor those players who have lightning quick reflexes and the ability to click the mouse hundreds of times per minute. Supreme Commander, of course, is pretty much the complete opposite. With strategic zoom, ferrying, and automatic formations, SupCom is even more advanced in this regard than TA. It allows players to interact with the game at a comparatively leisurely pace, yet still remain competitive.
However, the good folks at Gas Powered Games (the designers of SupCom) have not gotten it perfect, and there are still a few small things that could use some tweaking.
Upgrades: While the upgrade system for most structures, such as mass extractors and factories, is very nice and allows you to easily upgrade many buildings at once, this is not the case for all upgradeable units and structures. In particular, the upgrade system that is used on the ACU, SCUs, and Cybran shield generators does not allow you to do this. The only case I have encountered where this is a serious problem is with the Cybran shields. Selecting 10 shields individually and clicking upgrade on each one can get old very fast. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that you have to upgrade each one four times before they reach full power. I suspect the reason for the shields being this way is a rather technical programming reason: all of the structures that can be upgraded en masse have a separate structure under the building tree for each upgrade level, and the Cybran shields don’t. Still, this shouldn’t be that hard to fix.
Ferry routes: For the most part, ferry routes are really effective and basically eliminate what would otherwise be a very significant bit of micromanagement. (If you don’t know how to use them, click here.) However, there is one small problem. When the “leader” (i.e. the one you started the ferry route with) is destroyed, the whole route ends, and all the other transports stop what they are doing. This can be really annoying. A better system would be for ferry routes to exist independent of any transport. The player could then easily assign transports to the route using assist. This applies to patrol routes as well.
Tactical missiles: While there is an auto-build option, there is no auto-fire option. I suspect this may be because of balance reasons, but the missiles could be toned down. As it stands, if you want to use these potentially very powerful weapons, you need to really sit over them and micromanage, which stands in contrast to the overall spirit of Supreme Commander.
Attacking bases with bombers: I still haven’t figured out an effective way to attack with large groups of bombers. If you order them to all attack the same target, many of your bombs will be wasted, and if you order them to patrol over the enemy base, they generally won’t attack on the first (and, in most situations, only) pass. A better option would be some sort of “attack area” command, where the bombers would automatically separate into small groups, with each group attacking a different target.
That is my list of (admittedly minor) grievances. If you have anything to add, post a comment!
March 6th, 2007 at 8:44 pm
Grokmoo,
Back in TA and when playing the AI, I was a champion of assigning several bombers to squads, pausing the game, selecting targets, then watching a sweet assault on multiple targets. I assume you’re able to assign squads, then rapidly select them and assign targets. This, however, requires clicking skill.
A suggestion was made here (http://forums.gaspowered.com/viewtopic.php?t=3107; gwydion5) to have target types (i.e., economic vs. point defense). This area attack command could be easily combined with target classes and provide a wealth of possible attack strategies.
March 6th, 2007 at 8:55 pm
Yeah, I could do that. But, as I’m sure you realize, that is more micromanagement than I think should be in SupCom. I do think some sort of selective targeting would be a really good addition to the game. You could specify various stances for groups of units, which would dictate the priority those units placeon attacking given types of structures and units. Units clearly already do this (for example, they will always attack the enemy commander when in range), but having control over it would be really useful.
March 7th, 2007 at 1:49 pm
Hey, try formation bombing sometimes. Make 30+ bombers and make them move in formation over enemy units or structures. Don’t attack anything, just make them fly over in formation. You’ll be surprised.
March 7th, 2007 at 2:27 pm
I’ve tried that as well, and it doesn’t work nearly as well as one would expect. The main problem is that all of the bombers blow their loads on the first target they see. So 30+ bombs could all be wasted on a couple Tech I point defense towers at the very front of the base, with all of the Tech II flak cannons and Tech III SAM missile launchers remaining unscathed (and very deadly). The problem is that it takes awhile for the bombs to fall to the ground, so in the time it takes your formation to fly over a single point on the enemy base, none of the bombs will hit the ground yet, thus resulting in everyone bombing the same targets.
March 7th, 2007 at 9:38 pm
I haven’t tried this in-game yet, but maybe with a wide formation? I remember aircraft only having two formations, one of which was narrow.
Something I did in TA with Brawlers that seems applicable here would be to group your guys quite a ways out and have them all rush for the center of the base.
But I totally agree with you: with all the other neat things they’ve done to make the SupCom UI more reasonable and less painful, this seems like it is kind of important. Thinking back, I remember something Chris Taylor was saying about triple clicking to have your guys only fire enough rounds to kill a target.
March 8th, 2007 at 3:51 pm
Yeah, I vaguely remember there were going to be different attack priorities. Like, 1 click for go there and attack the general area, 2 for attack this specific target, and 3 for do whatever it takes to kill the target. I guess that feature was removed during development because they thought it might be too complicated? Maybe it can be modded back in.
March 8th, 2007 at 3:57 pm
Ah, and herein lies the problem over early over-hyping. You start talking about all of these really cool features, and then when some of them (inevitably) fail to materialize, you look foolish, and players look back on what you promised and say, “Hey, XXXXX sounded really cool, what happened with it?”
April 6th, 2007 at 4:48 am
I’m not one of thos “TA Spring is better than Supcom” zealots, BUT, I think they could have learned a lot from TASpring. They have area attack for bombers and an amazing hotkey customizer. Eg. select all units with a range larger than x that is y pixels from my mouse.
And what happened to TA’s amazing feature where you could assing a group number to a factory and all units produced there will automatically get that number?
One thing I do know, is that this game is awesome and that the modders will eventually make it much better. We just need to be patient . . .
April 11th, 2007 at 5:49 am
Area attack would actually be quite a nice feature, especially for longer ranged units (get your artillery to be hitting their economic buildings rather than their PDs). Would reduce the need to shift click on every factory they have :)
May 19th, 2007 at 4:30 pm
maybe something could be added in that could move a formation over say a target and at that target all the bombers in the formation drop a bomb directly underneath them. This would basically be a carpet bomb order, I guess
December 21st, 2009 at 8:41 am
“Tactical missiles: While there is an auto-build option, there is no auto-fire option. I suspect this may be because of balance reasons, but the missiles could be toned down. As it stands, if you want to use these potentially very powerful weapons, you need to really sit over them and micromanage, which stands in contrast to the overall spirit of Supreme Commander.”
As i figured out u can use (after u hit launch button) Shitft+leftclick so u can add multiple targets. with 20 pre-ordered targt u can avoid a lot of micromanaging about missles (same for nukes).
August 16th, 2010 at 11:26 am
Try grouping bombers into smaller formations of 3-5 bombers each, wide formation, with a few scouts thrown in.
The scouts will provide a better view for the bombers so they can release on the first pass, as well as soak up some flak.
The smaller groups allow your bombers to attack in waves from multiple directions, limiting overkill.