Is supreme commander worth purchasing ?

[Haven]

This thread is entirely for my own benefit, I was going to purchase the game but have reconsidered after reading many of the comments in the Supreme Commander thread.

If you have played the game then post up your opinion, was it worth the purchase price or should I spend my money on something else ?

 

[[THN]Buffalo_Hunter]

The answer is....is.....maybe

My impressions so far are that it looks nice close up, but you can't really achieve much at that scale so I ten to find myself zoomed out a bit so I can see what's happening.

As for the gameplay - it's pretty good. I had a game yesterday where I set the AI to random and pretty soon I was having to defend myself against gunships and hoards of bots which simultaneously attacked my shield generator and anything that was outside the shield. Eventually I lost

Overall, I wouldn't say it's anything out of the ordinary - it's like Rise of Nations several thousand years in the future. Gather resources, build stuff, kick the s**t out of your opponents

Knowing what I know now I'd still go out and buy it.

 

[Dragon]

hmm i'm rather undecided ... i think its got a very good concept and i like the idea of a coop mode ... BUT the main problem yet is that proportionaly with the growing size of your army the ability to control your army decreases ...

don't know wether I'll buy it or I wait for a friend of mine to buy it and then test the real version at his place

 

[Piacular]

You need a new option Haven, "Sure, if you can run it!".

If you don't have above the recommended requirements, I'd say no. But if you do, then maybe. My enjoyment of the game has been zeroed by the graphics and drain on my P4 2.8, 2G RAM, x800 pro . At 1024x768 the GUI takes up a third of the screen, I feel like I'm viewing the battlefield through a tiny window. I also can't seem to turn the GUI off! So meh, seems like a step down from CoH. Had a 1v1 against Tetsuo, which was okay, but not oodles of fun :/.

 

[Tetsuo_Shima]

Well, if Haven had asked just after our game I would've said 'No, it isn't worth it.' but now that I've played it a couple of times and given it a bit of a chance I'm starting to enjoy it! Mission one on the Cybran single player was cack, two was only slightly better, but I'm having a rare time on three with the expanded tech tree at my disposal. Also, since i've explored into the factions deeper in skirmishes, and have had some really really good battles (once, I had a monkeylord aka massive spider laser and a big bunch of artillery and assault bots moving in for the kill on an enemy's base, only to have him march out the fog of war with 2 monkeylords and an experimental gunship That was some showdown, let me tell you) the epic scope is really starting to open up to me.

The system performance is probably the biggest grumble you could have at this game, with my dual core, 2gb ram and swish gfx card only just holding it together during large scale battles. I don't understand how it's possible for either Psi or UArch to even manage the loading screen when I've seen the taxation it puts on my own machine, unless the game is bottlenecked or just extremely inefficient with bigger powerhouses. One other minor problem I've had in a couple of games is that sometimes there are irritating popping and crackling noises, like someone tapping a microphone, when there are big battles and loads of explosions. I'm pretty sure my soundcard is fully updated, so I'm at a loss to explain that one away.

Oh, and another thing, although its quite unwieldy for me where I have to turn 120 degrees to see my HDTV, the dual screen support is pretty neat! The best use I've found for it so far is me watching my screen and just zooming out when I need to, whilst my bro watches the strategic map on the HDTV and tells me when all the green dots start moving toward my red ones You can also zoom right in on the second screen in the same way you would on a single screen, but there isn't any point to that apart from letting my bro see the big battle I'm fighting in detail

If I were forced to give it a mark, I'd probably hazard a good 7.5/10 at the moment. I find it a bit unbelievable that pretty much every review site has been awarding it 9/10, unless I'm seriously missing something or the game gets REALLY good after loads of play time (but thats weird, because it only came out last week. Odd.).

 

[PsiSoldier]

I don't understand how it's possible for either Psi or UArch to even manage the loading screen when I've seen the taxation it puts on my own machine

That's one thing I don't really get, why I can run the game fine on med yet others say their system struggles. I suppose it's possible you haven't optimised drivers and graphics settings, possibly even BIOS, that could be why you're 'struggling'.

 

[waterproofbob]

gah my head hurts, just been playing some campaignage, and oh my lord.
Tis very pretty playing full res full everything at 1680x1050 but once the battle really started to heat up i could see it a bit started to lose control and will be turning somethings down to medium me thinks.
Errrrrr tis awesome. have enjoyed it although haven't finished 1st missoin yet(tis quite mansized) and am hoping this is not entirely due to my ineptitude. although my general RTS tactic of lots and lots and lots appears to work in this as well which is reasuring (mwahahahaha if i build x many bombers then it must die).

Am a little apprehensive about ever playing any of you as i have played no RTS's at all for about 2 yrs, am thinking i will be destroyed.
also need to play with dual screen support as i was having trouble as i could go up down and left but going right was a little tricky.

 

[Cookalarcha]

I recon its not worth getting. I played the demo and it was ok but my comp can barly run it. But anyways Haven u'll be better off with C&C3 http://www.play.com/Games/PC/4-/3305510/Command_Conquer_3_Tiberium_Wars_Kane_Edition/Product.html i believe they are the best RTS serie ever made even the original i can spend hours playin. : )

 

[UArch]

well if your going to go down the road off "dont buy it because of the system requirements" then you should probably ditch c&c3 too, i dont know what the requirements are but i doubt that they are much lower than supcom, so stick to age of empires or something

buying a game based on what kind of gameplay it offers is an entirely different matter however, and i will probably buy c&c3 too since i liked most of the others in the series

haven, if your going to decide to buy it or not, judge it on the kind of rts gameplay you are into

if you like a fast paced simple rts then supcom isnt for you, the game also lacks in many other areas but those are mainly nitpicks, anything can be ironed out with a bit of modding im sure

 

[Tetsuo_Shima]

That's one thing I don't really get, why I can run the game fine on med yet others say their system struggles. I suppose it's possible you haven't optimised drivers and graphics settings, possibly even BIOS, that could be why you're 'struggling'.

I noticed there were new ATI drivers (7.1 vs. the 6.5 I have just now) last night, and I've downloaded them, but Ive yet to install and give it a whizz. After the effect that installing new drivers had on BF2142, I'm willing to reserve ultimate judgement until I've tried it. I'd say that if I dropped the resolution and gfx down to the same level as you then I'd probably get some good good performance, but the improvement over your machine should be far more noticeable than it's showing.

All the same, can't wait to get home and play it again tonight, I'm right into it now

 

[PsiSoldier]

I have only tried the beta and demo as of yet, which are apparantly less optimised than the full game, so I am very very confused about why I can actually run this :O.

 

[[THN]Buffalo_Hunter]

I got my ass handed to me yesterday when I took on 3 opponents with each set to Random AI - everything was going swimmingly until the artillery started...then my point defense turrents started disappearing...then my power generators...then the gunships appeared and I was dooooooomed!!!!

I think I need to rethink my strategy......

 

[UArch]

get to a tech3 factory asap and build one tech3 generator, then start shielding all your important stuff, build zappers/anti missile systems if possible, and definately a few aaa defenses

then roll out the experimentals ;P


also play against the "tech ai" its great...im currently in a game against the aeon with tech ai, and im cybran

giant flying saucers keep coming over, long range artillery knocking out my shield

and then the sacred bot walks along and destroys all my shielded defenses, but i managed to kill it eventually..it eats spiderbots for breakfast but has on anti-aircraft defense, so my soul ripper took care of it D:

 

[Tetsuo_Shima]

I played a 2v2v2v2 on the largest map yesterday Everyone just turtled, until eventually nukes started flying everywhere. I was trying to nuke this one opponent, but he had too much anti-strategic missile defence. So I built a Mavor and punished his missile defence rightly and then launched three nukes at the same time The strategic missile subs are great fun.

By the way, the mavor is a complete joke of the cheatery variety. Although it takes ages to build, it just takes out anything anywhere on the map with pinpoint accuracy and blast-radius shells. It also fires pretty damn fast for an artillery installation.

One more thing, I never noticed that the strategic missiles varied for each of the factions. Cybran get some kind of gravity bomb, Aeon get a mass destruction bomb or something, and the UEF get the plain ol' nuke I think I've come to the conclusion that the nukes do more damage and have a bigger blast radius than the other two, its pretty cool when you see the blast wave ripple through and demolish all the base structures.

As far as experimental units go, the Soul Ripper is rubbish! It only took 4 SAM sites before it was in serious trouble. The UEF submersible aircraft carrier is a bit crap as well, no offensive capability at all unless youve got aircraft inside of it (it doesnt come with free planes, boo ) and even when it does, the planes in SupCom are easy to kill. I reckon my fave is the mavor at the moment, followed by the monkeylords (ok, not as good as the galactic collosusses, but quite nice all the same. Can handily take down the Rippers as well) and Ive still to try out the rolling factory and the rapid fire artillery.

 

[PsiSoldier]

You will LOVE the FatBoy (Or did they change the name?), it's a fecking land battleship . Takes out nearly anything and has that sweet ass shield around it. My favorite by far.

 

[UArch]

man i had a great battle too the other day, it was only a 1v1 but it was great, the enemy aeon kept pumping out colossus bots like there was no tomorrow...(and there wasnt!) and those things are god damn hard to kill...anyway, eventually they shelled my base and shields to death with long range heavy artillery and the giant bots just rolled in and i was almost done for, so i quickly packed my acu and 5 engineers and flew to a second base which had natural defenses (surrounded by cliffs with one entrance) and thats when the *real* battle begun, my old base was holding out for quite a while, so i built a second base and let my old one fall

i had a row of 5 heavy artillery for defence, lined the cliff walls with sam launchers shields and tech2 artillery and then build a massive army of spiders + mobile missile launchers

eventually the enemy grew tired of this and started launching nukes, often 2 or three in a row...but they kept targeting really stupid places (i guess they didnt really know where my important structures were)

at one point three colossus bots breached my defenses and came straight in and caused alot of havoc, i barely survived it, i build two cybran rapid fire artilleries for defense, they work great, then i build 5 nuke silos, with ten engineers and an sacu on each one to speed up my nuke production..then i nukes them to death using brute force tactics, they had big clumps of 4-5 anti-nuke silos, but they couldnt rebuild the missiles quick enough and eventually one nuke got through, paving the way to victory

its hard to express in words just how amazing some of these battles can be, and this was just a 1v1 on a 4 player map but it was still big enough for a complete war!

im somewhat disappointed about the cybran spiderbots, yes..i love them dearly...but they were just so useless against the aeon..really , ive never had a fight against uef so they might be better at that

5 spiderbot vs colossus = spiderbots lose

i find that the soul rippers are actually really good against them, so i use them in groups of three or four

i love this game, this is the kind of stuff you just dont get in the demo \o/

As far as experimental units go, the Soul Ripper is rubbish! It only took 4 SAM sites before it was in serious trouble

dont forget that sam sites are incredibly powerful, any of the experimental air units will go down easily from a sam site (might be something to do with all air experimentals having little health, the aeons giant ufos also go down easily with 4 sams)

 

[Haven]

It has been hailed as the next Total Anihlilation, I used to play that game a reasonable ammount and it has always been my favourite RTS. If it matches up to that then I might be interested, but I am not going to bother if my system cannot handle it as I dont think it will be worth upgrading.

(system spec: AMD_64 4000+, NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GTX, 2GB RAM)

 

[UArch]

i think this is one of those times where *cough* "getting a copy of the game" through other means is reasonable , if you know any friends who have the game (or if you can get it through some other unthinkable means), grab a copy of it and give it a whirl on your system and see how it runs, get a feel for the real game since the demo doesnt really give you a taste of what is really offered

and then if you like it, support the developers and buy it ;P

ive done this with alot of my games and its the only way to be sure!

 

[Tetsuo_Shima]

(system spec: AMD_64 4000+, NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GTX, 2GB RAM)

That should be fine for at least medium graphical settings, and I'd even say that graphics don't matter too much in this game anyway, but they are really very nice when you're capable of nudging the sliders up a couple of notches.

Also meant to say to Pia - remember you thought the Aeon gunships were crap? You should try the UEF ones It's Brawlers all over again, except this time they can carry things around. The heavy gunships that fire the photon missiles are pretty good as well, hard as nails. It's a shame the spy planes are so useless, a bit of cloaking would have been nice. Out of interest, the UEF spy plane, the SR90, is a rip off of Lockheed-Martin's SR71 Blackbird. Just thought I'd mention it because theyre so cool

 

[Sephiroth]

i'd have to say no but that would because i never got it running no matter how many times psi told me how to get it running i could never get the skirmishes to work and since it was beta that was basically the only thing i could do which sucks... but i like RTS i'd more then likely love it for a few days compelte it then forget about it compeltely (like i did with C&C and warcraft)