Supreme Origins
With the new Forged Alliance standalone expansion looming near, and the wave of new players it will hopefully bring with it, I can’t help but be reminded of the humble beginnings from which we all inevitably rise. Seeing new T4 experimentals lumber and cruise across the screen in the trailer evokes memories of the sense of awe that the Monkeylord and Fatboy first evoked in me, all those months ago. My own personal journey to my current state as a Supreme Commander fan is surprisingly happenstance.
It’s a combination of factors, really; any one of which, gone missing, would have ultimately led to my avoidance or outright ignorance of Supcom. The first would have to be my introduction to RTSs: a demo of Age of Empires I happened across many years ago. It hooked me, and I’ve loved the genre ever since. Secondly, my roommate during freshman year of college. He was and still is a huge fan of Total Annihilation, a game I had heard great things about but never had a chance to actually try. I watched him play a few games of it and marveled at the groundbreaking game. 3D unit models way back when all other games were still using 2D sprites, the huge variety of units, and of course the hour-long symphony of destruction that highlighted the final battle for the map. When I learned, purely by chance, that there was a spiritual successor to TA in the works, and a demo would be released in a few months, I couldn’t believe my eyes. I would finally have a chance to be part of that action.
The Supreme Commander demo was, for lack of a better word, revolutionary to me. The economic model alone sold me; ‘no more infinite stockpiles’ was simply outstanding in my mind. Although there were some bugs in the demo, particularly relating to rally points, I saw past them to the greater glory that was the sheer scale of Supcom’s gameplay. I pre-ordered and haven’t looked back since.
There were other, less significant factors in the process, but here I’ve listed the main ones. So, this long tale brings me to one final point: we all started out in Supcom differently. No story is quite the same; one person might have been a complete stranger to TA & Supcom, whereas someone else may have heard about it from a friend and only just started playing. My question to you, the reader, is this: How did you start out? Where along the line did you realize you’d own this game, and did you think you’d be any good at it? (I’m especially interested to hear responses from some of the higher-ranked players out there!)
July 25th, 2007 at 7:23 pm
I first heard about this game last summer, maybe earlier. News of CNC3 had come out, and I was really excited for that game, and followed it’s development and read forums and stuff like that for a long time. I first heard about Supreme Commander when I saw that it had won “Best RTS” at E3 last year, and all I could think was “how the hell did CNC3 not get it? This game is going to be wtfpwn. I mean, the Tiberium universe is back!” At the time, I didn’t actually know anything about SupCom except that it won this award. I figured it was just another WW2 game or some generic crap like that. Then one day quite some time later, I decided to look into it. I saw one screenshot, and I was totally amazed. Just the scale of the game was something that I thought would get me hooked.
I had never played TA before this, and only heard one or two things about it (like, your commander is everything and the resource system is kind of based on map control). When I heard that SupCom was basically TA2, I decided to play some TA. It was interesting, but I wouldn’t say I was hooked on it. Probably because I only played the campaign and a few skirmishes. CNC:ZH offered more to me at the time with it’s multiplayer, but for the rest of the summer and fall, I looked forward to getting SupCom.
When the closed beta was released, I downloaded it with an AI hack so that I could play some skirmishes. I actually got my ass severly handed to me the first time I played by a MonkeyLord on Finn’s Revenge (I am aware how crazy that is, but it was my first game). I played about 10 or so more games against the AI before I could beat it with my eyes closed, and around this time, the beta became open so I signed up.
I started playing ranked games immediately, and with the exception of randomly getting matched against Unconquerable in my 6th game, I won all of them for a long time simply by setting up ferry transports to the edge of my opponent’s base (transports were hella cheap back then). I started to get pretty good at the game, and when it was pretty clear that I could be a very competitive player when the game went retail, I kept it up. I never played another RTS very competitively, the main reason probably being that I never had a computer good enough to play any of them at the time that they went retail. So when I did get the game months, or even a year or two later, I was always way behind. Starting from the beginning when everyone is on the same footing definitely helped in getting me to the top ranks.
July 25th, 2007 at 7:27 pm
I played Total Annihilation for 9 years solid. I still take an avid interest in TA multiplay and review demos on TADRS (http://tadrs.tauniverse.com). I even went so far as to send Chris Taylor an e-mail back in 2001 or so explaining what I saw as being shortcomings in TA and what could be sorted in his next RTS. He was even kind enough to e-mail me back thanking me for input!
Anyway, I was highly sceptical that Supreme Commander could cut mustard. The videos were quite impressive but I was interested in substance. I was somewhat burned by Half Life 2 (the last game I upgraded my PC for) which despite the ridiculously glowing reviews wasn’t a patch on the original. For this reason I didn’t really take an serious interest in SupCom until it was out a couple of months and I’d had plenty of time with the demo. As luck would have it I managed to procure a top spec PC for bargain bin prices so everything came together quite nicely.
So far Supreme Commander has impressed me. It’s still lacking a certain something though. I fear it’s a little bit slow and economy focussed. In TA you’re constantly fighting over map territory to get economic control and harvest fields of wrecks. In Sup Com at the moment everybody sits in their base after 10 minutes and the movement goes out of the game. It’s also somewhat lacking in map variety. All the demos are on the same 5 maps the whole time.
July 25th, 2007 at 7:43 pm
I believe my first RTS was Warcraft 2, which I played on a friend’s computer. I’ve always loved RTS’s, but until 2 years ago never played them competitively. As a kid I would always just turtle against the AI until they inevitably ran out of resources, then mass an attack. In late middle school and high school (I’m class of ‘05), the LAN party was birthed among my friends, but we only played FPS, so after Red Alert 2 I dropped off the FPS planet’s face (awkward phrasing there). When I moved out of my folks’ house two years ago, my roommate got me back into Age of Empires 2, which in middle school had been one of my favorites, but now, I played it competitively over a LAN. I started reading into RTS’s, and remembering seeing an article online about upcoming RTS’s–SupCom was one of them, and I thought it sounded amazing before I even saw any screenshots or videos. And so it was. SupCom is the first RTS I’ve ever played online (truly the only way to play it), and the one I’ve gotten the deepest into.
July 25th, 2007 at 9:22 pm
Hrmm, as to how I started out, my first RTS was Dune II (yeah I’m old school). I even played Dune, but you wouldn’t call that a proper RTS. Dune II was awesome, and a few years ago I broke out the floppies and replayed through the campaigns again. Sweetness. Then after that I played WarCraft, then WarCraft II, etc., on through all of the modern RTSs. Total Annihilation was my favorite though. What an awesome game, and what fun we had playing that at LAN parties. I even played it as recently as college.
So of course once I heard that a “sequel” to Total Annihilation was coming out, I knew I’d be playing it.
Molloy: I do agree with you that Total Annihilation was better balanced for combat than Supreme Commander is. I can’t quite put my finger on what’s wrong with Supreme Commander (maybe the efficiency and ubiquity of mass fabricators?), but I did find Total Annihilation to be more fun.
July 25th, 2007 at 10:26 pm
god im feeling old agin….
my first RTS was also Dune 2 (’Dune II - A Building of a Dynstay’ for those who remember)
i was young @ the time… only 8 or so i guess my father had been into RTS’s at the time because the only FPS @ the time was Wolf 3D and most games before this where turn based stat (TBS) (god thats another term i havent heard in years)
i played thru all the clasics and a lot of the nitch games (those games that set new limits for games and have set some of the small things we see today)
let me seeee………
C&C (bought the day it came out (the same day it sold out) only had the NOD disc in the pack so played that all weekend before i even found out what GDI was)
Warcraft, Starcraft of course… Warcaft 2, Red alert, RA2 C&C generals and the expansion all the clasics forgot the AOE series (the last one sucked) and the other RTS’s put out by MS Age of mythology (crap)
as well as the nitch markets
‘Z’ - made the bigest diffrence in games that i can see had a ROUND weapons range rather then a set of square range or even hexagonal range (the square range was still used in RA2 and hex was used genrals) finaly to use a circle in supcom :D - Also the first game i would say that had DECENT GFX in it
‘Zed2′ - first game (that i saw) that had FULL 3D camera that u could rotate around the battle to see things from another angle!!!
Dark regin - GREAT AI some of the most advance orders ive ever seen and one of the most complex games ive ever seen… with orders on how far to chase enermy from a position how far to retreat to get repaired what health to turn back to get repaired everything was customizable and had lots of options (also had radar with RANGES)
Cossacks - First game to give massive amounts of units… 65,000 was the limit PER SIDE!!! this gave rise to masive battles and on more then one occasion we have had battles with 20,000+ units on each side 3 players or more going head to head…. VERY fun to watch
u might say i was a little bit of a RTS fan… but i have to say as far as games go… RTS is great it requires thinking and thus is a chalange doesnt matter if ur playing a crap player or Unqon
FPS i was never realy that good at and after playing Decent (3D FPS where ur flying a small spaceship thru mine sharfs) FPS games never realy became a chalange mentaly… even now i dont play FPS BUT because i naturaly have a high reaction time and i THINK about what im doing @ local lans when i DO play FPS i still come in the top 3 teams… doesnt matter what team im on…
now my fav RTS’ let me ssee i REALY got into Warcraft 3… actauly went out to buy it last xmas… just to play online… as i hadnt ever realy played any games online before that… and i only got it to play custom maps… going from cossacks with a limit of 65,000 units to War3 with a limit of 200 units on a CUSTOM map REALY pissed me off…. so i never got into ‘normal games’ where as the Tower Defense and Hero Defense games i realy became a master of…
and GOOD _OLLLLDDD_ TA… well im a BIG fan of the game… never plaied online… but i did play it a lot @ LANs… and a lot more single player and against AI and downloaded my fair share of units to play with… now not knowing what the OLD TA scene was like ive got nothing to compair it with.. but i also thing supcom has something lacking… there isnt any fighting over land anymore…. and its toeasy to turtle (which i shouldnt say becasue im a great turtler) i even kept a same skilled player (we are both just out of the top 1000 players) at bay for more then an hour on winters dual even after he had basicly the whole map and i was stuck in my base.,.. amd he got to T2 when i looked @ starting to upgrade not to mention he made it to T3 before i even got into T2 properly i just dug in and kept him @ arms length… even shot down a ripper or 2 or 3…
ANY WAY the thing thats missing in supcom that makes land WORTH fighting for… is the mexs.. they need a SERIOUS buff…. this isnt a game of who has the most land has the win as they can stave their opent of resouces… but haveing land control SHOULD give a advantage…
everything has been suggested form uping the amount they bring in to a bonus for holding them…
my thoughts are simple… they need to be increased… from what they are now to 3,14,60 oh even slightly higher….
and on top of that for every min u hold a mex it needs a bonus… if its a 10% incease or a 1% increase it needs a bonus… best suggesting ive heard is a bonus based on the amount of mexs u hold IE …..
Total mexes on map / mexs u have * 5% REPEAT every min compounded (also there needs to be a bonus/loss for looseing a mex but i havent worked that one out)
SO if ur getting 100mass per tick… and u have 6 spots… out of 10 on the map (i know VERY small map) thats
10 / 6 * 0.05 * 100 = 103Mass for min 1
min 2 = 106.09 mass
min 3 = 109.2727 mass
min 4 = 112.54
min 5 = 115.92
etc etc etc… giving u a bonus and a reason to hold u mass deposits…
(also remember most maps have about 12 mass spots u can hold with out a trouble giveing u double those resuts… normaly giving u about a extra 10mass per min (also getting one or 2 more mass spots will give u a extra 10 mass per sec in bonus + what they produce!!
giveing a BIG advantage and a reason to hold those mass spots…
sorry for the long post
July 26th, 2007 at 5:48 am
Being quite Ancient, I remember playing dune2 wishing it was multiplayer. Later I played CnC multi using a null modem cable (basically a long printer cable with a converter at one end) against my brother. Total Annihilation was the first RTS that held my attention long enough to make me look for opponents outside my RL circle of friends. I joined Wireplay, only to find out very few people played TA.
Wireplay had a strong Quake2 community however. I became a decent player, did the clan thing, travelled to LANs, and was known to many in RL as “Semper”. Quake2 led to Quake3, then gaming generally faded away leaving behind a box of old cds, 3m mousemats, and a once mighty pc reduced to office duties.
Can’t quite remember when I heard of Supcom. But I browsed the BETA forum, read about the OP mantis and then the Broadsword. The demo was downloaded, the game bought, then a new pc built in order to play the thing.
My online experience was marred by ping nazis, and custom games were dreary. I watched replays, lots of replays, then stepped up to playing ranked- the thrills of old duels, renewed.
July 26th, 2007 at 6:29 am
Bah, Dune II oldschool my eye! I had a copy of Herzog Zwei for my Mega Drive. But I suppose you young whippersnappers wouldn’t have a clue what that is.
July 26th, 2007 at 7:27 am
Meddish : Mass extractors and mass fabricators are going to be rebalanced in the Addons
July 26th, 2007 at 10:05 am
I first played TA in my uncle’s house, around ‘99. I loved the game and eventually was given the copy by my uncle. I played TA like crazy for the next few years, and it wasn’t until then that I started playing online games through Phoenix Worx. I joined the TAUniverse.com forums in 2001 I believe, and have heard about all the things in between, Cavedog dying, Infrogames becoming Atari and owning the rights, TA2 developed by Phantagram, and the first versions of Spring and the replay tool. Eventually I found out about Supreme Commander being developed by CT, and I knew I was gonna buy it as soon as it came out, and I did, and have been enjoying it since. :)
July 26th, 2007 at 3:17 pm
“The economic model alone sold me; ‘no more infinite stockpiles’ was simply outstanding in my mind.” … I don’t get it. Are you talking about the right game? SupCom is all about infinite stockpiles; it’s the other games that have finite limits on resources. SupCom’s economy is infinite and grows exponentially. D:
As for the question, I played the SupCom demo because my roommate did. I hadn’t heard of TA or SupCom before, but when I played the demo I enjoyed it, so I picked up the game the day it came out. That’s about it. I’ve even stopped playing it so I guess it’s all come full circle. ^___^
July 26th, 2007 at 5:42 pm
I’m still relatively new to the RTS genre, the first strategy game I ever played and enjoyed was COH, and I only got that a few months before supcom. I only happened to hear that a great strategy game’Supcom’ was coming out in 2 days by a friend. So I though hey, if it’s as good as he says it is I’ll get it, and I did :)
July 26th, 2007 at 6:28 pm
I started with Warcraft 1, then graduated to Warcraft 2, Starcraft and Total Annihilation (all on Apple Macs). When I heard of the spiritual sequel to TA, there was never any doubt that I was going to buy it, even though it meant moving on from my old mac.
July 26th, 2007 at 7:46 pm
“The economic model alone sold me; ‘no more infinite stockpiles’ was simply outstanding in my mind.” … I don’t get it. Are you talking about the right game? SupCom is all about infinite stockpiles; it’s the other games that have finite limits on resources. SupCom’s economy is infinite and grows exponentially. D:
Ah, sorry if I wasn’t clear. What I mean is this: in previous RTSs such a Starcraft, if you are harvesting a resource, it gets added to your stockpile, and there is no limit to how much you can store. In Supcom, you need to build additional storage—or else the mass/energy is ‘wasted’—and the total amount you wasted during a game is even displayed after the game’s end.
July 26th, 2007 at 7:55 pm
Interesting thread…
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).
July 26th, 2007 at 8:11 pm
I was in a store, futureshop I think it was. I saw a game called Supreme Commander and bought it, here I am.
July 27th, 2007 at 5:33 am
I bought Age of Empires. I thought nothing could beat it. Then, my sister had a free Total Annihilation with his new laptop. I tried it. I loved it. Years after, I’m in SupCom. (I also played FPSes)
July 27th, 2007 at 2:19 pm
I got hooked on TA in college, and must say it still holds the rank of my favorite game of all time. I remember how much I looked forward to Kingdoms, and how disappointed I was when I actually played it. I don’t think I’ve ever managed to play it past 3 or 4 of the missions. I played Starcraft for less than 20 minutes before I went back to TA.
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.
July 27th, 2007 at 4:37 pm
I remember going to Walmart in 1997 to grab something we needed for work…saw a magazine with a 2 page ad for TA and wanted the game from that moment. The day it released I purchased it, installed it, and then played for many years. I’m surprised I’m still married after all the games we played. Friday and Saturday nights we played on MPlayer, Heat, etc from 10pm until 4 - 5 - 6am…..then to bed for 5 hours or so. We played almost every night. There were a lot of good clans. Molloy, who I don’t really know other than his name, played with Blitz, which was a pretty good clan. Many people in the TA community waited for TA2….and it never came. I kept playing TA and visited the fan sites, followed thE rumors and still no TA2. So all these years later I saw the Supreme Commander game ads and trailers and knew I would purchase it. I like Sup Comm…but something is definitely “not there” at least for me. It doesn’t or hasn’t grabbed me like TA did. I enjoy SupCom but not like TA. The additions in SupCom I like are the shields, transports, and Tech 4 units. The maps are big and that makes for fun games, though they aren’t as random as TA. One thing I can personally point out that I think takes something away from the game and yet makes the games playable on a large scale is the zoom. The problem I see is that zoomed out, you are at such a point of view you lose the concept of what units you have in a particular battle. The units don’t mean as much to you. When you played ARM and you had Bulldog tanks and Samsom rocket launchers, and Rockos for instance, you knew what you had what you had to do in that particualr battle.
SupCom is ambitious and gives you opportunities for multiple battles. But managing that needs to be done while being zoomed out (most of the time) And then you are just moving icons around the field. And people have mentioned other things like map domination isn’t as much of an issue, and the system requirements unfortunately turned a lot of potential players away. I know a couple myself who couldn’t play.
All in all…I really like SupCom and hope for some more improvements in SupCom FA.
July 27th, 2007 at 5:19 pm
SigH-Max: Your sister had a trial on his laptop? How did that work?
July 28th, 2007 at 5:07 pm
gender confusion:)
July 28th, 2007 at 11:38 pm
. . . . . . . .Well well… what has been my path to Supreme Commander… My quests and adventures in video gaming began I suppose with my good friend, Mr. NES. I was just a small boy when I used to come home and play Mario 3 for hours. I never was any good at duck hunt, even though i’m quite good indeed now. Eventually, once computer gaming came around and these silly things called RTS happened, I think my first real RTS was probably AOE 1. I wasnt any good, probably because I was way too young to be able to even comprehend what I was doing.
. . . . . . . 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.
July 30th, 2007 at 3:39 pm
My SupCom Journey. My parents bought me a Nintendo when I was eight and the first game I ever played was Super Mario Bros. It was a three game pack with Duck Hunt and a Track & Field game that came with a pad you run on and it mimics you in the game. I also had the Power Glove. Mike Tyson’s Punch Out. LOL! Then when I was 11 I got my first computer and the first PC game I played was Doom. Man many nights spent playing Deathmatch with my buddies. The first RTS game I played was Dune 2 for Sega Genesis. I was hooked from the first day my buddy showed me it. Then I played all the Warcraft games and the C&C games. I tried out Starcraft when it came out but didn’t like it that much. I never got around to TA though. Then I heard about SupCom around April. And I watched the tournament that Gamespot held that Unconquerable won. I enjoyed what I saw and went out and purchased it. Ever since then I’ve been hooked and this is pretty much the only game I play.
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.
October 30th, 2007 at 5:05 am
I started everything with Warcraft then C&C (I played hours on this title). When TA was on the shelves I instantly grabbed one box.
Afther that I only played TA or affiliates. It was so awesome at this time, I couldn’t play Warcraft 2- Starcraft anymore…too small :)
Time passed, and then I found Spring….oh boy, I loved Spring! TA on steroids! I played, destroyed entire maps on 4Vs4 fights, nukes everywhere, holes instead of mountains…pure fun!
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