And now SupCom. I love the this game but I miss several features…like the deformable terrain, battle with tousands of bots, the different economical view (I hate the Massfab run)
Somewhere i find that Spring is better than Supcom…but now I cannot return on this old game. Too small, too clumsy, lack of polish.
I hope that FA will restore the balance and offer a more “TA-ish” gameplay

The only flaw I find with this game is the mass fabs and the map control issue. First off there needs to be a reason to hold mexes in late game. One way is to make t2=t3 mass fabs and t3 mexes produce double that and have the mexes automatically upgrade themselves based on your current eco situation. The maps need certain strategic points that when held give you an advantage. eg. Placing T2 Arty on a hill dynamically changes the range of the arty. Placing a building around rocks decreases it’s damage taken. etc.

. . . . . . . I moved from there onto TA, which I played for a considerable amount of time on MSN Zone. I was able to catch the very tip of boneyards, and I do mean the very tip. I created an account 1 day before Boneyards closed for good. I felt so left out. So i was forced to use Zone. I played on zone almost until Zone stopped supporting TA, but i didnt pursue it from there. By that point in time, I was well into playing Starcraft as my main RTS.

. . . . . . . .My days became filled with Battlenet. I never did play on the ranked ladder all that much, even though I wasnt bad really. I played a lot of custom matches, and for a while I was really stuck on playing those Use Map Settings maps like Sunken Defense or Golems.

. . . . . . . From Starcraft, I moved on to playing more first persion shooters like Halo, and into RPGs like Neverwinter Nights. Which is where I experienced my very first really close online community. I was in a server that had only 26 slots, and there were easily 30-40 regulars at some points. I sometimes had to wait in line to get in. We had a dedicated server, but we didnt up the slots because of space or something. I dont know. I never achieved the rank of DM for our server, but I was a big whig. I got great respect and everyone would also great me upon entry. I was one of our servers official clan leaders (of 4 clans), and built a castle for us with the editor which was added by the Admin and everything. Neverwinter Nights was amazing. Just writing about it makes me want to go out and buy Neverwinter Nights 2.

. . . . . . . . From there, I played a variety of games from Black and White, to Panzers and a few other RTS. I saw that supcom was coming out and I just had to have it. And now I do and I’m happy. I havent had to buy a new game since it’s release.

I think I first heard about SupCom on a TA related website. I don’t remember which one. I built my new computer with SupCom in mind.

I also agree that it is missing something. I like certain parts much more than TA (zoom, shields, transports), but it doesn’t capture quite the same feeling. The harsh system requirements at the beginning certainly had an effect on how many of my friends were able to play. I also wish there were more customization, like TA’s ability to turn off units you didn’t want.

My first real-time strategy… sigh, I can’t remember. I definitely played Warcraft, but even back then I was frustrated with the lack of scale. I think my first RTS, or RTS-like game, was an old Mac LAN game, Bolo. You had one tank with a guy parachuting in. You could take and hold towers and lay mines. It was an awesome early LAN game. It even had features I still don’t see - like roads for extra speed, hiding in forests, and deformable terrain (well, you could destroy forests, use mines to make moats and I think even fill in water too).

TA is still my favorite RTS game (then Supcom, Cossacks, AOE and descendants, Total War and descendants, and way, way, way down the list Starcraft and other Blizzard stuff). The first time I saw a windmill explode and the vanes go bouncing off I was hooked :-) (I also loved the nuke in TA - watching the screen shake and things go splintering everywhere was much more interesting than a nuke whiteout) No other RTS game had the longevity of TA. I played that game with my friends for years. The graphics were revolutionary (much more impressive for their time and supcoms), the resource model (spend before you earn and queue everything) was revolutionary, and even the scale was revolutionary (TA somehow captured the ebb and flow of battle very well).

I love Supcom but I too agree it is missing some special spark. I am not sure exactly why, but I do think GPG should have kept TA’s resource balance and *definitely* kept TA’s EW warfare (I don’t like the Omni sensor and everyone should have mobile, cheap jammers). I also think, seemingly in opposition to popular opinion, that it is too easy to break turtlers in this game: SAB are too fast (the old goliath was awesome… and awesomely SLOWWWWWWW :-) ) and unbalanced, experimentals are too cheap (it really felt like you earned it when you built a Krogoth), and subcoms are just ridiculous. I also wish the game was as moddable as TA was. By this time with TA, there were tons of official units and even more unofficial units and maps.

What GPG got right: that beautiful zoom, formations, modifiable waypoints, and transports… I’m sure there is other stuff I cannot think of right now. Of course, the most important thing they did right, they made the game! I have been waiting years for TA 2 (god, kingdoms sucked).