Supreme Commander Talk

[Ed. note by Cyde Weys: In this post we depart from our usual fare of showing matches between experts and show more of what an average ranked match is like. There is a lot that can be learned just from watching this replay.]
Download the replay of this match (v3223).
Oh man what a match! [...]

You may have noticed that at any given moment there are usually only 1 or 2 custom games available to join involving the truly huge 40×40 and 81×81 kilometer maps. Of course, none of these maps are available at all in ranked play, with good reason. In custom games, however, one cause for [...]

Coordinated attack is a feature in Supreme Commander that was highly-touted prior to release. Since then, it seems it’s been almost entirely forgotten about. Basically, to coordinate an attack, you set one attack order with one group of units, select another group of units, and then double click on the same attack point [...]

The engineer drop is an excellent, yet unfortunately seldom-used, maneuver that frequently blows games wide open. The maneuver itself is simple: load up some engineers into transport(s) and drop them behind enemy lines. Most of the time they will get through, especially if you fly the transport(s) off the edge of the map. [...]

One unfortunate tendency that I notice amongst novice players is a fever for fancy units. By “fancy” I am referring to, roughly, every unit that costs over 10,000 mass. This includes all of the experimental units as well as tech 3 artillery and nuclear launchers. Yes, it’s true that the big, expensive, [...]

Lately, a new consensus seems to be emerging that the Cybrans are the best faction to play on close-quarters expansive maps, even better than Aeon. This realization was only made widespread recently after the removal of all water maps from ranked rotation, which finally allowed non-Aeon factions to get a fair shake in ranked [...]

Reclaiming is great, whether you’re reclaiming objects strewn around the landscape or husks of dead units. Reclaiming is also one of those techniques that you use the majority of great players using, but a lot fewer of the mediocre players. There’s a reason for that: reclaiming is hugely advantageous.
Reclaiming can provide effectively free [...]

One interesting facet of how the game changes at higher tech levels is that the health-to-damage-output ratio gets a lot higher. This is something you’ve definitely noticed subconsciously, but maybe didn’t consider explicitly. Tech 1 units kill each other in a few hits. Put together a battle of many tech 1 units [...]

Hopefully most of you are aware of this feature, but if you’re not, learning about it is really going to help you. Once a building is destroyed, it leaves behind a husk. One thing you can do is reclaim the husk for the resources. But what is often a better idea is [...]

Expert players will tell you that the assassination victory mode is the only way to play Supreme Commander. The sole exception is if you are for some reason playing against the AI, in which case you probably want to play supremacy, because the AI is notoriously bad about even trying to keep its commander [...]