Massively growing the community

[PumpkinKing]

I haven't played TA spring a while, I'm into Supreme Commander now to be honest, but theirs a problem....

Literally Hundreds of thousands, maybe even in the dam millions! Of people are finding out that their computer do not run Supreme Commander worth a crap.

These same people however more so then not are likely craving the type of gameplay of TA over the other latest RTS games.

Personally I think everyone just needs to spend a ton of money for a super rig for supcom but I'm realistic. I know most of the people who find out they can't run Supcom

Are going to go buy mediocre garbage like CnC 3 and to be honest I'd much rather see those people come here then go stuff money into the black hole that is EA Games.


So basically you guys need to get the fucking ball moving, every single person on the internet who posts Supcom runs like crap or they are just overall just disappointed with the game NEEDS to be getting a PM from one of you guys.

Their is NO better time then right fucking now to grow this community to heights in which you never thought it would reach, don't let this opportunity slip by!

[AF]

At the moment the engine isnt ready.

Our main major criticisms are:

lobby is awkward to use
mods and maps are awkward to install at first
the spring sites not very user friendly
The GUI graphics arent upto scratch


This would require

- lobby UI overhaul
- a concerted attempt at creating a GUI using lua rathe than random widgets, that puts HCI ideology in the n# 1 priority spot rather than flashy graphics.
- a mod installer / map installer / general components updater

[1v0ry_k1ng]

supcoms gameplay is a pack of crap. It just looks nicer than spring. woopity doo.

[Optimus Prime]

i think the most disappointing thing about spring for newcomers will be the user interface. It needs some nice futuristic textures.
Come on - its the thing you see 100% of the time in game and you still dont have a real user interface since more than a year...

But i cant see why ppl flame about supcom.. i played the beta and i liked it. Spring has sure some advantages (mod friendly, free, has a very good performance, friendly fire), but so has supcom (grafics, ig music, upgradable units, animations, i guess clipping is better, ladder system).

[AF]

People here are too used to all the fancy shorthands Spring has like the markers and doodles and dragging boxes of buildings and so on.

[Deathblane]

The biggest issue with spring is the de-synchs. If those were fixed (or re-synch enabled) then it might be worth expanding a bit.

[caldera]

...lobby is awkward to use
...

Have you seen the supcom lobby?? Now i love tasclient...

supreme commander is just one more game of many on my shelf which arent worth the money i paid for them.

[Tobi]

I don't agree with awkward to use lobby, it has (quite) some inconsistencies yeah, and it could use a first use wizard of some sorts, but I do not think a total overhaul is needed.

Maps and mods downloads probably won't happen again (iamacup doesn't want it; remember fileuniverse and the automatic map downloader...), but if I get around to doing some things I have in mind installing mods/maps will be a little easier next version. An automatic component updater is already in place, though it could be improved upon (a lot).

[drolito]

for map ... we only need One unique link for all maps (like that was 2 monthes ago) ... can someone make that ?

[PumpkinKing]

I don't get why theirs some many idiots in Spring that bash supcom.

Yes it has steep hardware requirements, but that doesn't make the game bad in fact you are really just a flat out idiot if you claim TA springs Gameplay is great and supcoms isn't as all Supcom is , is TA with a larger scale and a bunch of great new interface tools!

Sure their are a few area's in which Spring beats Supreme Commander like:

The system requirements are a billion times better

The maps terrain is much more dramatic, live and effects gameplay overall more.

The unit count is much higher though I don't know if I would go as far as to say the units give the game more strategy, I think supcom's more unique units do this better by unique I don't mean across factions, but within the actual factions...TA Spring makes this up though with the much bigger role terrain plays in the game though I think that advantage will slip away as the map making takes off in Supreme Commander. The difference between Kbots and vecs difference in roles on the games terrain though I will admit is greatly missed in Supreme Commander, but I have heard this will be addressed in the expansion along with the addition of better, more diverse heights in the maps....



How about the ton of things Supreme Commander does better though?

First the obvious stuff...

The Zoom

The Scale-which I think makes the game more different the most people give it credit for. The game has much more thinking involved then TA ever did and the scales allow for much bigger longer, more epic battles and it all in all makes the game much more Macro oriented then TA. Hell in some maps in Supcom you need an aircraft carrier just so you planes can make it to you enemies base with enough fuel!

Formations- nope these weren't in TA, in TA when you had a big battle you basically had a big ugly unorganized mess. Often your attack would end up being a giant string of units or just a big cluster of them, this was a huge pain in the ass! Because of the organization possible in Supcom the battles involve much more strategy. Not only do you have formations now, you have multiple different types of formations.

The Adjacency bonus- this is huge and really doesn't get enough mention. This adds enormous depth to the resources and base building decisions you have to make as you can get bigger and bigger bonusous from building bases in a more clustered manner, but you risk things like chain reaction explosions. This even goes into greater depth then even many of the games great players right now are aware of, their are very complex patterns of structures you can create to get even more power.

Variation- in TA units were not nearly as varied in types and because of this the game didn't have as nearly as much depth. Theirs just many more types of combat in supcom thats also spread out more throughout the tech levels allowing for a game that can remain fresh even in battles that go for hours, something no other RTS can even remotely do.

Upgrading- The way the upgrade system works in Supcom is a billion times better then how it was in TA, in Supcom you can simply upgrade to Tech 2 with a click of a button, in TA you would have to get an engineer and build a whole new building, the extractor upgrades were even worst, you had to send an engineer to the dam extractor, reclaim it then tell him to build the new one there! Now the upgrade is a simple click.

Engineers-In TA you needed Tech 1 naval engineers for tech 1 water tech 2 naval engineers for tech 2 naval, this was a major pain and it also limited the depth of the game by making it inconvieable to build anything other then a land base first. The engineers in Supcom is a all in one and eliminates this problem TA had.

Hover units- Are a joke in spring, honestly, idk maybe they are better now, but the last time I played AA seldom would you see someone use any of these, they are a vital important part of supcom.

All around now air and sea in general play a much bigger role in Supcom then they ever did in Total Annihilation, in TA you couldn't even consider going sea or air first thing, you can do that here. Especailly sea man, the Navy felt like an after thought in TA in comparision to the major role it plays now.

Transportation-In TA the transport system was simply a joke, the transports held one unit a piece and were just all around a huge pain to manage, not practial at all. Now you have a easy to use ferry system and transports that can hold up to 12 units at once, you also have some units that can fire from the transports that give them even more depth.

Shields-Shields don't really play any role in TA Spring from what I have seen, and theirs only one type of shield, not even any mobile ones.

Experimental units-The experimental units in supcom are all very unique, and very useful, in the same note also balanced. The Super units in TA Spring really feel like a joke in comparison in variation, usefulness and ya just all around.

nterface tools- the way point system in Supreme commander is much
better and the UI can be moved all over the screen with the click of a
button, on top of this you have a number of new tools like the factory
assist or the structure pause button that allows you to halt upgrades
and units being produced if your economy takes a hit.

AI-The best AI in any RTS game ever...(note: AI in the demo was dumbed down, not sure why)

The Commander- In TA the commander just had the laser and the Dgun,
here in Supcom you have tons of upgrades for him to help keep him safe
in the later game when things get crazy or to even use him as a front
line solider with some super weapon you gave him..

Single Player- I haven't played it yet, but the reviews make it pretty clear
it isn't the after thought it was in TA which had no story, no dialogue
and no CGI videos aside from the intro and the 5 second end...

Music- A great new soundtrack from gamings best composer Jeremy Sole.

[iamacup]

the spring sites not very user friendly

the wiki especialy sucks so bad its unreal

wikis are crap anyway but the spring one is so annoyingly hard to navigate.

[drolito]

All around now air and sea in general play a much bigger role in Supcom then they ever did in Total Annihilation, in TA you couldn't even consider going sea or air first thing, you can do that here. Especailly sea man, the Navy felt like an after thought in TA in comparision to the major role it plays now.

That's possible in BA ...

[1v0ry_k1ng]

but so has supcom (grafics, ig music, upgradable units, animations, i guess clipping is better, ladder system).

How about the ton of things Supreme Commander does better though?
The Zoom-
The Scale-
Formations-
The Adjacency bonus-
Variation-
Upgrading-
Engineers-
Transportation-
Shields-
Experimental units-
AI-
Music-

Ok, firstly, AI, LOL the supcom AI is laughable. I beat supreme AI on my first game of supcom. its a joke.
The formations dont work well. formations in praticular are awful, inflexible and take an age to get moving because of the un-reresponsive units.
Scale and zoom are completly drawers. to play the game well you have to be zoomed out to a point where all the units are icons. this game could be played in ASCII. its basicly ICON WARS played at a higher level.
The adjacency bonus is a terrible idea, it encourages people to porc in their bases and puts people who EXPAND and PLAY AGRESSIVELY at a disadvantage! this means of course everyone just sits behind mass defences.
Unit variation? lol.
engineers are not as cool as construction units.
The transportation system is better.
shields are shields. dont really elevate the game.
experimental units are just big units. spring can easily support them. its just no mod has chose to. this is because to make one is to sit in your base porcing and teching all game, which mods focused on gameplay try to discourage as a rule. the krog is experimental, and is the noob option.
music is okay, but it dosnt change the bad points:

The game was balanced by a moron.

games last forever.

winning is about teching and porcing not attacking and terriroty control.

supcom looks pretty, and thats all people ever tend to argue on its side. it looks nice. fine. that dosnt change the fact its poor. and im not just senselessly bashing it. I own the game and I had the beta. Ive made an evaluated decision and played it 8 player at a lan. the game atm is awful. maybe when a few patches come out and someone makes a gameplay mod.
until then supcom is one for the noobs.

[KDR_11k]

Shields-Shields don't really play any role in TA Spring from what I have seen, and theirs only one type of shield, not even any mobile ones.

I can tell you haven't played E&E.

[10053r]

@Tobi

I'm not sure why we can't have people download maps and mods from people who have them, rather than from unknown-files. It would be a little slower, perhaps, but would scale with any number of players, rather than putting increasing pressure on the central servers. And it would be very convenient. To be fair, implementing what is basically a very basic bittorrent is not trivial, but I think that it should be on the developers' radar rather than written off as straight up undesirable. People could still download from unknownfiles if they weren't getting enough dl speed, but it would take a big load off of unknownfiles, and eliminate a big bottleneck in the growth of spring as a community

[KDR_11k]

A problem is that you wouldn't want to run a torrent alongside an online game and if you kept it active only for the duration of the download that would be too short to share enough unless the downloads took so long that by the time you're finished the game you wanted to join is long played and closed.

[10053r]

@AF

Your Lobby stands to be the new easy to use lobby, and with a built in very basic bittorrent (see previous post), installing maps and mods would be brain-dead simple for most people.

Lua widgets will inevitably replace the normal gui. Just let the lua hackers do their thing.

The desynchs are an issue. Something needs to be done about that. Most epic games I've played that reached more than a couple thousand energy production by most players desynched rather than ended in a win or lose. But it used to be that most games ended in desynch, period, so things are much better. I've no doubt they will continue to.

More people in the community will mean the wiki gets better.

In my mind, the next important milestone in growing the community is inclusion in the major linux distros. That will open the game to a community that is fairly tolerant of beta quality software, and will help us fix it and improve it further. Also, as the only modern RTS on linux, we have a huge advantage of being the only game in town. The linux desktop install base is not small. It isn't large enough to be worth EA's time, but we can probably easily increase the number of people in the lobby at any one time from 175-250 to 750-1000. That will mean more coders, more testers, more players, and more people playing every mod. This is a good thing.

[PumpkinKing]

Idk what problems you are having, but formations in supcom are flawless if you know how to use them Ivory

Units get into air formations almost instantly, you can have it all nice and organized, have you ever sent a big group of Rapiers into a base in AA? Talk about a pain in the ass dude to lack of formations!

Land formations also set up very VERY fast

Sea formations in huge numbers can be a disaster, but if you keep them in smaller numbers, break them up even they are relatively simple, so your formation remarks are really just way off the ball, idk when you played the game, but the final versions formations work much better then they did in the beta...

If you don't like the zoom thats your problem, but it is a more advanced type of gameplay it ushers in and many people love it.

The engineers in TA are awsome

How about the upgrade you didn't even try to counter? Ya thats right the upgrading setup all around in XTA/AA is just trash in comparison the way you have to upgrade the extractors, and through the techs is just a massive pain in the ars

Did you play the AI in the demo? it was very dumbed down...No the AI isn't human level, but what is? It has the best AI in RTS history thats my point...

Actually shields along with any other element of gameplay add to the game as much as artillery, sea or air do..

I guess all you have done is played with a bunch of noobs because if you goto Gamereplays.org and watch some games with players like Unconquerable you will see that high level games aren't porce fests at all

Supreme Commander is no more a porc fest the TA is and funny you say games last forever because the average game for me in the beta was about 15 minutes long.

You obviously don't have much experience with the game if you think it's a porc fest, but it's not surprising you say that as on boards all over the place you can see noobs who briefly played the games bashing the game, talking as if they actually know how to play the dam game.

And ya you pretty much are senselessly bashing it, you really don't seem to have a clue what your talking about, I mean seriously calling the game a porce fest?

On top of that you didn't even address a number of my other issues and the adjacency bonus hardly promotes porcing, if anything it promotes EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE, as using the adjacency gives you more resources and allows you to be more aggressive in the same note though it makes you much more vulnerable to attacks so no your wrong...

[drolito]

I don't have played supcom ... but when i see the videos and listen all what is writen on it ... i'm sure it will be THE strategic game ... it's not already the case but it will be in few monthes with the evolutions !!!

[KDR_11k]

It ain't strategic until you have to keep up supply lanes to the frontline!