Supreme Commander 2

wobbles-grogan

Cannot wait for this title, its to be released sometime in 2010, hopefully its early 2010, or late 2010 cos ill be doing exams in the middle :mad:

The first sup com was great with a great expansion. They're (seemingly) trying to make this run FAR more smoothly and for more hardware than sup com 1, which would only run on quite a recent rig.

Square are publishing it also, which im not so sure about it, also, the economy system is a good bit different i believe. Most notable, you must have the cost of the unit before you can "buy" it. Just like every other RTS.

Hopefully, itll overcome these and prove to be just as great as the first!

Whats everyone thinkin about it?

Coriolanus

I only skimmed the article but the economy section piqued my interest.

I think it's a shame that they're genericizing it. One of the more subtle skills, in online play at least, was timing your new builds just right with a rampaging rescource gathering strike force.
Sure, you were left with a clogged up production line and a decimated force if it all went pear shaped, but the momentum you could build was pretty savage.

youcancallmeal

So anyone know if there is going to be an open beta for this?

Sephiroth_dude

Looks epic cant wait for it.

wobbles-grogan

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/supremecommander2/news.html?sid=6248843&mode=previews&om_act=convert&om_clk=previews&tag=previews;title;7

This is a good preview about it. Theres another interview with chris taylor on that site too somewhere. Theyre quite intersting and tell us a good bit about the game!

Cant wait for March 2nd!!! Woop!

Also, i dont know about the open beta. I doubt it as release is only a month away! I think thats a pity too cos an open beta would iron out most bugs. Therell prob be a patch out soon after its released

youcancallmeal

Hopefully there might be a demo in late Februrary. I tried playing the first one but my PC at the time couldnt handle it. This time round I should have the better of it! Does anyone know will they still have the dual screen feature? I would imagine they will, its so handy. Nowhere near enough games take advantage of dual screen capability these days.

Sephiroth_dude

wobbles-grogan wrote: »

Cannot wait for this title, its to be released sometime in 2010, hopefully its early 2010, or late 2010 cos ill be doing exams in the middle :mad:

Pc version is out march 5th and xbox version is out 16th march.

Maximilian

Call me a cynic but when I see "xbox version", I expect a dumbed down emasculated SupCom.

PC games can be great despite being multi-platform but never, ever because of it.

RolandIRL

the first sup comm was so slow on the xbox. honestly, it was as stuttery and the controls were f***ed up. just goes to show that strategy games are not meant for consoles. they can only be played with a keyboard and mouse.

youcancallmeal

There are rumours abound that there will be a PC demo released at some stage today!

Maximilian

Demo is up on Steam.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/40140/

Sephiroth_dude

Maximilian wrote: »

Demo is up on Steam.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/40140/

Downloading it now,have you tryed it?

Maximilian

Taking ages to download. Looks like it will have to be tomorrow night.

youcancallmeal

From reading around there seems to be huge disapointment with this. Most of the comments are basically just saying "Its just not as good as FA!". At first I was really annoyed that my PC isnt working at the moment but I'm not so bothered now.

_CreeD_

Currently downloading but I wouldn't trust the comments. The same folks were yelling SupCom wasn't as good as TA. Some people always need to say the last edition was better regardless.

_CreeD_

Played the 2 demo missions and yup they seemed pretty quick and tactical rather than strategic, but then so were the first few campaign missions on SupCom. Graphics are about FA level with a few improvements in detail and particle effects but nothing major. Unit building was much faster than SupCom, with that and the points system they really want you piling out units and hurling them at the enemy. The points/research tree I think will work very well, over the years they've searched for ways to help stop games turning into stalemates and I think this will definitely help, successful attacks = more points = more upgrades so you can gain a distinct advantage over the enemy. The only thing I didn't really like was the change to a more genre-typical build system, you need to have the resources in place to build. The old system of Q'ing and simply relying on your resource rates to manage output was much better imho to avoid micro managing production.
The soundtrack was pretty good as usual but the little storyline dialogues and matching animations were weak imho. Whoever wrote the script should be shot for extreme abuse of cliches. They're going to hinder immersion in the campaign rather than improve it.
Still it looks promising, a few changes to make gameplay more aggressive will make it a good companion game to Supcom/FA but likely not a complete replacement as I don't see it having the same strategic appeal - but then I am a fan of 8hour drag out huge map kill-fests.

Maximilian

_CreeD_ wrote: »

Played the 2 demo missions and yup they seemed pretty quick and tactical rather than strategic, but then so were the first few campaign missions on SupCom. Graphics are about FA level with a few improvements in detail and particle effects but nothing major. Unit building was much faster than SupCom, with that and the points system they really want you piling out units and hurling them at the enemy. The points/research tree I think will work very well, over the years they've searched for ways to help stop games turning into stalemates and I think this will definitely help, successful attacks = more points = more upgrades so you can gain a distinct advantage over the enemy. The only thing I didn't really like was the change to a more genre-typical build system, you need to have the resources in place to build. The old system of Q'ing and simply relying on your resource rates to manage output was much better imho to avoid micro managing production.
The soundtrack was pretty good as usual but the little storyline dialogues and matching animations were weak imho. Whoever wrote the script should be shot for extreme abuse of cliches. They're going to hinder immersion in the campaign rather than improve it.
Still it looks promising, a few changes to make gameplay more aggressive will make it a good companion game to Supcom/FA but likely not a complete replacement as I don't see it having the same strategic appeal - but then I am a fan of 8hour drag out huge map kill-fests.

I'd agree with all that. Also, what's with the camp Cybran commander. He's probably called Bruno.

Could be decent but I do get the impression it's been dumbed down. No prizes for guessing why.

Mantel

Maximilian wrote: »

I'd agree with all that. Also, what's with the camp Cybran commander. He's probably called Bruno.

Could be decent but I do get the impression it's been dumbed down. No prizes for guessing why.

"Toodles!"

I mean, wft....

Not liking the demo or at least the storyline in the demo.

Yarr! I'm tough!
I'm a bit meak, good natured and try to the right thing, I'll do what you say.
I'm gay! Lets go do gay things! Toodles!
Yarr! I'm tough but also evily insane!
I can't follow orders of the evily insane! I must run to my plot device, I mean wife and child so they can die thus setting up some reason for me to do something later in the game. For that is how all stories must unfold.


I hope QAI "industries" turns up and slaps them silly, reveals the plot twist and the real story appears.

Sephiroth_dude

Did'nt like it at all,cancelled my preorder and preordered chaos rising instead.

youcancallmeal

So did anyone actually get this? I was going to get it but I'm too busy playing BC2 so it will probably be a couple of months down the line before I get around to it.

Shapey Fiend

Been a TA addict for 10 years, enjoyed SupCom to an extent but the multiplayer was horribly slow and monotonous for the first 9 months, and only a little bit better after they patched it.

SupCom 2, from my brief few days of play testing, seems like a massive improvement. The map scales been downsized so the units don't take all day to walk across the map (or sprint along like a Benny Hill skit when they sped them up post-patches) and you can actually get a battle going quickly.

The maps being smaller isn't a bad thing because now people actually USE all the map. Expansion is actually viable (instead of turtling and resource farming) with the factory upgrades (you can put shields, and tactical missiles on them). Add in the fact the Commanders are massively powerful and can massacre your starting base pretty easily and you really have to keep on your toes. The factories essentially act like fire bases so you're encouraged to get right up against the other guy and press him throughout the match instead of sitting at opposite sides playing sim city, which reduces play to whoever has the most efficient build orders.

The joy of Total Annihilation was you could get an attack unit to the enemy base in 1minute and 20 seconds. Yet the match could go on for 4 or 5 hours if people were evenly matched. You got the tactical and the strategic in the one package. But the really long matches only kicked in if both players were evenly matched. That's the way it should be. In SupCom the matches were long because everything just took forever, not because you were locked in some sort of nail biting minute to minute grudge match.

I'm only speaking from the point of view of the multiplayer playability. TA, SupCom 1 and 2 are all horrible singleplayer games so obviously don't buy them if that's what you want. I only care about multiplayer.

All in all this is a 9/10 in the playability stakes (the only ones that matter) and it may well be a 10/10 like TA is/was but it'll take a couple of years before we'll know that. RTS multi games take on a life of their own and that'll depend on the players. I'm seeing TA experts I haven't seen in like 8 years playing it obsessively so I think that's as good a recommendation as any.

_Kaiser_

My "preorder copy" just arrived yesterday :rolleyes: so just a quick post with my initial impressions:

- It's SC/FA for Dummies! (or XBox.. you decide!)
- Wayyy too much micromanagement - I don't like the changes to the build/resouce system
- Where's my upgradable factories?
- Yea ok it looks nice, but at the expense of gameplay? No thanks!

I'll give it a few days and see if it grows on me, but so far I think FA is the superior game. The "but SC2 will run well on more hardware" argument is cancelled out for me by the fact that anyone still playing SC/FA will at this stage HAVE the hardware to run it properly.

Shame.. I was looking forward to this...

Shapey Fiend

What are you talking about? They've cut out 90% of the micro, unless you're talking about managing your battles. No more reclaiming and no more support Commander upgrading. There was a bit of an issue with Commander rushing but people have worked out how to counter it pretty effectively now without losing their starting base. The only major issue at the moment is the mass extractors are too expensive. Thats the main bottle kneck causing a little too much micro. Once they fix that, and perhaps make the experimentals a little cheaper (like they did in FA) it'll be spot on.

_Kaiser_

Shapey Fiend wrote: »

What are you talking about? They've cut out 90% of the micro, unless you're talking about managing your battles. No more reclaiming and no more support Commander upgrading. There was a bit of an issue with Commander rushing but people have worked out how to counter it pretty effectively now without losing their starting base. The only major issue at the moment is the mass extractors are too expensive. Thats the main bottle kneck causing a little too much micro. Once they fix that, and perhaps make the experimentals a little cheaper (like they did in FA) it'll be spot on.

I mean that normally (in FA) I just queue up a list of tasks for my factories/engineers to work on, but now unless you have the resources already in the bank, they won't just work away and build as resouces become available.

Unless I'm missing something? I did only get about an hour in so far and I'm not one for reading manuals

Shapey Fiend

That is annoying alright. But if you tried to play FA in multiplayer there were A LOT of really annoying micro chores that you had to do to have a hope of winning. There seem to be far less of them in SupCom2.

As I say if the max extractors didn't cost a fortune, and take 3 minutes to pay for themselves I think you'd probably be able to queue up more stuff and not have to baby sit the engineers. At the moment it is indeed a bit of a pain. I think if they tweaked that you wouldn't be as conscious of it. The game is trying to make resourcing farming hard to execute so people concentrate more on warfare, but it might take a bit more patching before they work out a really satisfying way of accomplishing this. I think it's a step in the right direction anyway.

_Kaiser_

OK I've played some more so can expand a bit on my earlier comments:

Units:
It looks like they stripped out about 90% of the different air, land and sea options you had in SC/FA.
Now you get 4 of each and experimentals can be churned out almost as fast as regular troops, and don't have the same impact on a battle as they did in those earlier games as a result.

Upgrades:
Gone are the Tiered upgrades, instead replaced with a very simplistic point and click tech tree. Gone too is the strategic element of when to upgrade to gain an advantage over your opponent. Also gone are upgrades to the resource collectors, and the bonuses you got from placing buildings/factories next to them.

Buildings:
Again, most of the variety has been removed and as I said above, the bonuses with them. Rather than have to build defences around them, you can now (virtually instantly) add on AA and shields to them - not a good thing as it cheapens the whole idea in my opinion.

AI:
I played a few skirmish games and so far the pattern seems to be that the AI will throw planes at you first, then nukes and experimentals - consistently! How this is "better" than the AI of the first 2 games is beyond me.

Maps:
Yes they look pretty but they're a lot smaller than the ones in the earlier games too which I don't like. I quite liked the massive maps

So overall, I think it seems like a watered-down, console port that has dispensed with the strategic planning and tactical side of when and where to build and attack (and using what) to a more "just jump in and start firing out units" approach. :rolleyes:

It also took over 2 hours to "update" via Steam before it would even let me start it up, which suggests to me that this is far from finished. I also have to be logged on to Steam throughout it seems to even play a single-player skirmish. Why??

I'll be sticking to FA I think.. very disappointed.

hello932

Hi i got supreme commander 2 the other day and im having a problem with playing the game. Basically i got the cd, installed the game and then it updated a patch via steam. I can log on into the game but then for some reason i cant see the mouse pointer-that is the mouse is moving around the start up screen but i cant actually see the mouse pointer (the white arrow thingy). Anyone know how to fix this?

Shapey Fiend

I'd say your best bet is asking on the official forum: http://forums.gaspowered.com/

There's also a Steam chatroom with a fair few users on it that might be able to offer you some pointers (no pun intended).