First Post!
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- Last Chaos Game Client - new MMORPG client.
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- Battle of Britain II: Wings of Victory 2.05 patch - bug fixes, balancing changes and more for this combat flight sim.
- Age of Pirates: Caribbean Tales 1.43 patch - now with more pirates.
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Supcom > your game
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nice, very nice! I might make one over break when I have a bit of time to waste, though, to be honest, I've kind of grown to like http://www.foxhawk.com/Files/Images/foxhawk_terminal.png :(
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TEHO; I certainly enjoy company of heroes more than a little bit (a lot), but Sup Com gets the nod because the freedom you have in decision making... there are tons of viable strategies and tactics, even if high-level ranked matches. (To be fair, though, one could argue it's still to early for Supcom to have games boil down) CoH, from what I've seen from my playing time and 8 or so ToH matches, boils to down a small number of strategic and tactical options, though it opens up with more players or less seriousness (rec match). Both super-solid games.
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I finally got a chance to (briefly) see the game in action after installing the beta and downloading a replay off gamereplays.org.
Unfortunately, I was far from impressed. Sure it's a beta but it's certainly fair to say that the current game is how it will look and play at final, but optimized and tweaked for balance, etc. And from what I could see, it didn't play so hot.
The problem? The game is just lifeless and characterless. What I saw was a whole bunch of little ... non-descript things running around shooting beams and stuff at other non-descript things. I didn't know what the things were and worse, didn't care. It didn't look fun at all. And that zoomed out mode? What are you supposed to do with that? The game is even less fun in that mode, if that's possible.
I'm really hoping I'm missing something here, though. And I say this as someone who played the original TA pretty much exclusively back in the day.-
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I think that's pretty close to the accepted definition, that's certainly how I think of it. Strategy is your battle-plan.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_strategy
Strategy - planning the conduct of warfare
Tactics - methods for engaging and defeating an enemy in battle
Logistics - maintenance of an army
These SC threads always result in people bandying around how deep the strategy is, but nobody seems to be able to define why that is. I don't see how bigger battles or more units make for inherently deeper strategy.
Chess has loads of strategy. There are only 6 unit types and an 8 x 8 "map."-
Here's a post I made giving an example:
http://www.shacknews.com/ja.zz?id=13154788 -
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Exactly. MOO3 suffered from the exact same problem with the 'battles'. It was technically accurate (scale etc), but all you were really looking at is dots shooting beams.
Also, supcom is a clickfest, way worse than starcraft. I thought they told us that it would be more 'who has the best strategy', not 'who can click the fastest and build tons of mass extractors all over a 20x20km map'.-
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If they really want to set the focus on strategy, please automate resource building at least a little. Right now its, send bots to build extractors all over the map, remember to upgrade those extractors, build tons of powerplants. Protect extractors stranded all over the map with turrets, anti air turrets, etc.
Its basically all you do the whole game, then you have enough resources to build a huge monster unit / nuke and kill your opponent after 2 hours of clickfest building resources.
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But that's the thing--I didn't feel the original TA (OTA) was lifeless at all and I certainly remember that being a major criticism from Starcraft players at the time. OTA had a certain joie de vivre with the unit graphics that just isn't there from the in-game stuff I saw. It's hard to describe, but that's what I see and it's unfortunate for SupCom in my opinion. But who knows? I may get a better view down the road 'cos Lord knows I'd love a "new TA."
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Chris Taylor explicitly said in past and current interviews that he doesn't like violent wargames where the victims are humans or humanoid creatures. He said he didn't want to glorify the violence and death of war, but instead wanted to focus on the tactics and strategy and remove all human elements.
So, I can see why some might feel it's lifeless. In a way, it is. But it's deliberate, so at least that's some comfort I guess.
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Something like that. Take Total Annihilation. Now add things like formations, and an even more robust command queuing system, and better battlefield information, and similar upgrades.
Now make it big.
No, bigger than that.
No, still bigger.
No, I mean maps the size of the state of Delaware big, with semi-realistic unit sizes and speed, and fire ranges that can be measured in kilometers.
Now, to make the massive scale manageable, imagine zooming seamlessly from ground-level, inspecting individual units close-up all the way out to a satellite view where the units are just icons on a massive overhead map.
That's Supreme Commander, and that doesn't even do it justice. You don't really grasp how much the scale matters until you play on a 20km by 20km map, zoom in, and it suddenly clicks that the "narrow strip of land" connecting the two main land masses is about a kilometer across, and most of your land units are 10m wide or less and don't move all that quickly. Then it hits you that 20km by 20km is only 1/16th the size of the largest maps in the full game.-
You might want to check out the videos on Fileshack to get an idea:
http://www.fileshack.com/browse.x?cat=3526
Also, I believe you can still get keys for the open multiplayer beta (as well as the client) through Fileplanet, without being a subscriber. Not positive, though.
http://www.fileplanet.com/betas/supcom_screening.aspx -
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To address those who think supcom is lifeless, what would classify as full bodied life? Is a game where you have possibly hundreds, or thousands of units engaging in battle not full of life? Is a game where you have fleets engaging other fleets and swarms of aircraft while you make a push for the enemy's base from three seperate bases constantly producing a steady stream of pain not full of life? A game that gives you such an extraordinary amount of options of simply what to do doesn't have character?
I can understand why people say they like warcraft/starcraft/CoH more. They are really focused in, they are much more personal. They have supply limits and units have awesome special abilities. This is personal on step higher than those, this far more grand in terms of scale and you just have to give it a chance and learn how to play. Yea, first going in you're going to get completely fucking dominated. Watch a few replays and look what the seriously awesome players are doing. You'll be amazed at the kinda shit they pull off and you'll see just how many options there are for annihilating your opponent. I can't recommend this game enough, never have I been so enthralled in a game since starcraft.
The only thing I regret is if the game ramps up enough that we're talking about hundreds of units engaging each other, my computer just fucking crawls. But you can do that. You can have a constant battle that gets up to the T4 level where you're talking about hundreds and hundreds of units in formation marching against other formations and just going completely ape shit while things like spider bots and fatboy mobile battleship/factories tear shit up. Its not theory either, I've seen this shit and its incredible. Just have to give it a chance. -
Would it be wrong of me to say I find the art style horrible?
There's something about it and the way the units and the ground / background look - they just don't blend in right - or rather they blend in too well.
I find it all looks the same to me :/
I really like Blizzards style far more.
There's a good interview with Chris Taylor on the latest PC Gamer netcast btw people - check it out.
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