Supreme Commander @ E3

I downloaded the fileshack trailer no problem (thanks for the tip mate!), but due to some codec issue or whatever it only crashes WMP10 when I try to view it. It's a freakin' MOV file, I guess my version of the QT codec just is too old. MEH, why do they HAVE to use that quicktime shit? Especially since the game is for PCs, not goddamn macs.

 

Have you tried using Quicktime Alternative? Might just solve the crashing issue.

 

Yah, I've been having issues still.

Movie is H.264 encoded.

I have XP x64 & iTunes/QT alternative both seem to want to install a 32bit controlpanel something which causes windows to throw a hissy & now I can't view any .mov files at all

Runs ok on my other PC (with 32bit windows) except I have to access that one by remote desktop so performance/sound sux

 

Amazing!

 

Did anyone else spot the trees uprighting themselves after they'd been knocked down?

 

Man, TA must have been my favourite game ever. I never understood the popularity of StarCraft compared to TA myself but I suppose it made for a better competetive game.

Anyway, from what I've seen Supreme Commander is going to be the best thing to happen to the RTS genre in a while. Most games seem to have really scaled things down to only a few units at a time that require lots of micro-management to be effective but SC looks to bring back the huge battles of TA with hundreds of units constantly exploding. Awesome!

 

-fixed
(Give or take the Total War series which some consider RTS but is actually TBS/RTT)

Yay, finally got that damn vid to work (well no sound but I just wanted to see & frame step anyway)

They are the same all the way through, its just that the camera is zoomed much further in at the start than later.
Interesting though, the reflection of the ships was per-pixel, could you not potentially hack per-pixel reflection algorythm somehow to give nice shadows?

 

TA is undoubtedly the greatest RTS ever made and I have very high hopes for Supreme Commander. It'll be nearly 10 years since the first game by the time it's released...the wait is unbearable!

TA runs fine with thousands of units, the problem is that pathfinding breaks down for the kbots after only a hundred units or so. So at that point, you have to use air power, which is all you want to use anyway (few hundred adv. construction aircraft patrolling the base, hundreds more stealth planes and maybe the brawlers are the way to go).

 

Which is where SC will have a big advantage hopefully.
They have definitely spent a bunch of extra CPU power on pathfinding in that they will have the ability to have multiple groups hit target at a synchronised time.
If this means the game can handle large (TA large!) groups of land vehicles without running into pathfinding issues then we're in for a treat

The only thing that bugs me really so far is that the map thats been shown is not compatible with numbers like 5000 unit max that we're used to in TA.
Its been said that that map was only 1 16th of a max size map so we can potentially have a much bigger map & that size does sound like the kind of huge needed for 5000 or so.

Has anyone seen any mention of what the unit max will be for SC?
I would bu unhappy with anything below 1000 & hope for 5000+.

 

I'm kind of sceptical that a game with 5000+ units would be humanly manageable (so I suppose I'd better try it out in TA so I know what I'm talking about rather than pulling stuff out of my rear!).

How is it possible to keep track of what all those units are doing?

 

You are tracking them group wise rather than single-unit wise.

 

Its not easy to track them but as mentioned, you tend to think in terms of swarms or groups.
You see, the thing that makes TA superior to all other RTSes is infinite (or at least practically, there must be some actual limit but its sufficiently large that I've never heard of it being reached) queuing and selection + with Core Contingency there are useful selection commands that let you select eg all units with weapons/all planes with weapons/all of same type.

Also bear in mind that a factory/power plant/gun turret/wall section also counts as a unit so depending on how you play, a significant part of the total units is fixed & not normally directly controlled (you can actually select turrets & control their firing though, buildings can be turned on & off, also redundant ones can be told to self destruct if you're banging against unit max)

 

Did any of you guys notice units can actually gain experience in TA?

Build an intimidator on a map with fog of war turned off and watch it start shooting wildly inaccurate shots at anything approaching it. After a couple kills tho, it starts getting better at aiming. After a couple dozen, it's well on its way to becoming seriously deadly. After a couple hundred, it rarely misses by much at all.

Of course, the big bertha has muchos better accuracy to begin with, but let your intimidators build up enough experience and the extra range over the berthas means they will start out-damaging their smaller siblings in the long run.

Yes, I loved starting out as one side and then kidnapping a manufacturing unit with a transport and flying it back home to be captured by my commander so that I could build units of both sides... That always irked me in Homeworld 2 that it was impossible to capture the shipyards of the opposite side! Why the hell can't I do that?!?!

In any case, Homeworld always SUCKED compared to the greatness that is TA... Heh!

 

Units become veteran after 5 kills but I thought that was the only skill increase?

 

PRECISELY when cannons gain extra experience and how many times they do that is a mystery to me, but it's certainly more than just once, after 5 kills...


Krogoths are super fun by the way! I just love to see them laser a scoutplane with one shot, in-stride, as it zips by the kroggy... Assuming one ever lives long enough in a real game to get one of these bad boys up and running, they're almost certainly strong enough to make it into the enemy's base, and if they don't make it out... Well, they explode with the force of a nuke, so it'll obliterate a good chunk of the infrastructure around it when it dies.

Anyone know any neat cool unitpacks with non-bugged units that all work together without conflicts? I had lots of 'em back in the day, but also lots of unexplained crashes that simply killed the game all of a sudden for no apparent reason.

 

Well, multiple skill increases would partly explain why intimidator batteries tend to wind up with a few with hundreds of kills & a few with none...
I always presumed that it was soley due to firs built have longest time to get kills & are built in best place.

 

Man, I can't wait for SC. Makes me want to go reinstall TA...

 

I was at ComicCon on Sunday and Chris was down there and I caught a demo he did...

I'm sorry but I was floored... For one thing, this game has HUGE maps... I mean HUGE!!!! The one he used for the demo was the one in the E3 trailer that has been posted here (which was also being played all over there on the TV's), in the sea on the western (left) side in the top he had a few naval battles set up, there was a fast one and then there was another that it said (when you move units it shows their path and says in minutes and seconds how long it will take to get here, as Chris said "Strategy requires a feeling of time and volume" or something along those lines ) it said it would be a little over 7 minutes before it got about a quarter of the way across, and he also said in the beginning that the map was about 1/16 of the largest maps.

It also has a option where when you assign multiple groups to attack something you can coordinate when they arrive,. I think that’s amazing, nothing like sending scouts to attack the Zerg in Star Craft and have shuttles come in behind to drop ground units, only to have the scouts be so much faster they get there, die, and then the shuttles arrive to their undistracted, fully alerted force...

About half way though he turned in the second monitor and that was cool . Ran great also including showing a pretty good number of units on both screens.

Then the demo ended in a demonstration of the 3ed (? I forget, might have been 4th) tech level, experimental, and there was that spider bot, and in the demo it fought a mobile tank factory; however, I forget if that was in the trailer. There was the spider that kills about 2 and a half of those little flying snake transport things worth of infantry (which can unload by the way ), and there is a mobile tank factory that is there, it had 4 of the big deck guns from the destroyer (which as Chris pointed out are each larger then the tanks ) has 2 pads for planes to rearm and refuel, and can produce tanks as well as run over trees and crawl along the bottom of the ocean. Also the reds had a destroyer that could sprout legs and come ashore and TORE the tanks up... VERY cool. Also the end, end was a demo of nukes, which one screen showed the nukes hitting up close and the other screen was on tactical and was showing the little radioactive symbols (nice touch ) heading for all the main army centers.

It already seemed fairly polished, pushing shift showed the paths of patrols and how long it would take for them to reach check points, and by just moving the check points you could change their path. The guns all moved correctly and the bullets left the ends as they should at the proper angle, it was pointed out but I noticed it,. I don’t like it when some random tank shell just pops out of the side of the tank since it didn’t rotate like it was supposed to.

Thats all I can think of now, but I'm pumped, I want this game even more now... .