New Player Question: Why should I play Supreme Comander?

Ogami_ito · Post by **Ogami_ito** » 17 Apr 2007, 07:57

XTA is a cool game. Just started it after seeing it mentioned on a SupCom board. And it runs on my computer, which Supreme Coimmander does not (my computer is about two years old). It seems to have most of the same features...very large battles with kbots, vehicles, and flying things. And the commander. SupCom can have bigger battles with more units I guess. Maybe. Actually, not sure if that is true or not...never tried to make that many units in one battle, but in SupCon the units can be made faster.

So... why should someone play supcon instead of spring? (besides the obvious things like SupCon is a full commercial product with a cleaner interface)

Also, not on the same topic...

I WILL check out Star Wars mod soon├â┬ó├óÔÇÜ┬¼├é┬ª after I have gotten tired of XTA which will probably not be for a while.

What├â┬ó├óÔÇÜ┬¼├óÔÇ×┬ós the deal with Balanced Annihilation and Absolute Annihilation? Are they small changes from XTA or play like completely different games? It seems when I checked the lobby that those two mods, with XTA, are the most commonly played. Followed by a few Gundam games and 1 Star Wars game.

OK. And one last, unrelated question... can 3D city maps be made for XTA? Are there any out there?

smoth · Post by **smoth** » 17 Apr 2007, 08:16

Please, many of us prefer this game to supcom. You are likely to get raging fanbois if you ask any other supcom related questions.

As far as BA and AA read zwzsg's post in your other thread he sums it up well enough.

also, the features are rather inefficient at the moment so no city maps have been released.

Zpock · Post by **Zpock** » 17 Apr 2007, 09:48

Someone just saw the light...

Ogami_ito · Post by **Ogami_ito** » 17 Apr 2007, 10:00

Zpock wrote:Someone just saw the light...

Not sure I saw the light yet. But I will not bring up SupCon in order to avoid the raging fanbois. That sounds scarry.

About the maps though... If the engine can incorporate and rendor unit buildings like factories, can it not also handle non-fucntioning buildings? All you need to make a city is a bunch of polygonal blocks with a simple texture on it. I mean, you can put trees down on a map, right? How would buildings be any different?

Neddie · Post by **Neddie** » 17 Apr 2007, 10:20

Well, those are individual features, which you would have to first craft, and then place in the design of the map. It can be done, but most mappers want to do it very well, which is prohibitive in the amount of time required.

zwzsg · Post by **zwzsg** » 17 Apr 2007, 10:40

Well, it's simple, you should not play Supreme Commander.

Yes, you can have non functionning buildings on maps. Check for instance:
http://spring.unknown-files.net/file/21 ... euploaded/
http://spring.unknown-files.net/file/16 ... sion_0.96/
http://spring.unknown-files.net/file/16 ... ciousness/

KDR_11k · Post by **KDR_11k** » 17 Apr 2007, 10:52

I think you should ask that question on the SupCom forums, most people here aren't playing SupCom.

Ishach · Post by **Ishach** » 17 Apr 2007, 11:00

i played the beta like crazy and i hated it

Ogami_ito · Post by **Ogami_ito** » 17 Apr 2007, 11:17

KDR_11k wrote:I think you should ask that question on the SupCom forums, most people here aren't playing SupCom.

Well... the thing is most in those forums probably would not know what TA Spring is. Or maybe I'm assuming to much

drolito · Post by **drolito** » 17 Apr 2007, 13:57

I have buy SupCom but only play 1/3 of the single game ... (finish it with one clan ...)
SupCom will become better as Spring i think but now its not !
Spring is the best because u have a lot of differents strategies (planes, nukes, emp, spiders, missiles, rockets, spam units, berthas, crogoths ...) and u can invent new every day !!!

For the diference beetween AA and BA its only the "energy cost" i think ... in AA u always need energy, in BA u can always play with energy down ...

its really different from XTA : make defense is best in BA and AA and u have more units ...

Zpock · Post by **Zpock** » 17 Apr 2007, 14:04

drolito wrote:SupCom will become better as Spring i think but now its not !

I don't think so... GPG will hardly release any miracle patches for supcom, they got their money and are moving on. Spring on the other hand, is opensource and as such lots of people adding in cool stuff all the time, like trepan.

Ogami_ito · Post by **Ogami_ito** » 17 Apr 2007, 14:34

For the diference beetween AA and BA its only the "energy cost" i think ... in AA u always need energy, in BA u can always play with energy down ...

its really different from XTA : make defense is best in BA and AA and u have more units ...[/quote]

Just to clarify... do you mean in BA and AA defensive strategies work better? And there are more types of units you can use? (which seems crazy as there are so many different units in XTA).

You know, it would be cool if each mod had its own Wiki attached to the Spring Wiki. And each wiki had, in a wiki standard format, a basic description, including; (if its based on TA units) why is it different from other mods, what roles do units have, what are the characteristics of the economy, is there a story behind it, etc. Just a sugestion.

overkill · Post by **overkill** » 17 Apr 2007, 14:47

well go to the spring wiki, click mods and most mods have a page and some will link u to a guide for it. also you should try many mods after you get the hang of the controls

Comp1337 · Post by **Comp1337** » 17 Apr 2007, 18:07

Ogami_ito wrote:
For the diference beetween AA and BA its only the "energy cost" i think ... in AA u always need energy, in BA u can always play with energy down ...

its really different from XTA : make defense is best in BA and AA and u have more units ...
Just to clarify... do you mean in BA and AA defensive strategies work better? And there are more types of units you can use? (which seems crazy as there are so many different units in XTA).

You know, it would be cool if each mod had its own Wiki attached to the Spring Wiki. And each wiki had, in a wiki standard format, a basic description, including; (if its based on TA units) why is it different from other mods, what roles do units have, what are the characteristics of the economy, is there a story behind it, etc. Just a sugestion.

IMO AA/BA has a less porcy gameplay that is generally faster. XTA HLTs anyone?

Also, yep. AA has loads more units and buildings :)

DemO · Post by **DemO** » 17 Apr 2007, 20:14

Drolito doesnt know what he's talking about, dont listen to him..

Best advice I can offer is download the mods if you want to know how they play and find out for yourself.

This forum is full of people who want to big up their preferred mod and say others suck or tell lies, so just go find out on your own imo :D

GL HF

Licho · Post by **Licho** » 18 Apr 2007, 02:40

Spring can handle more units and more players than supcom. But maps usually aren't so large relatively to unit size.
Players seem to prefer medium and small sized maps over huge maps.

Lolsquad_Steven · Post by **Lolsquad_Steven** » 18 Apr 2007, 03:30

drolito wrote:I have buy SupCom but only play 1/3 of the single game ... (finish it with one clan ...)
SupCom will become better as Spring i think but now its not !
Spring is the best because u have a lot of differents strategies (planes, nukes, emp, spiders, missiles, rockets, spam units, berthas, crogoths ...) and u can invent new every day !!!

For the diference beetween AA and BA its only the "energy cost" i think ... in AA u always need energy, in BA u can always play with energy down ...

its really different from XTA : make defense is best in BA and AA and u have more units ...

Imo, spring is better because it's funnerer.

Shadowsage · Post by **Shadowsage** » 18 Apr 2007, 06:24

...is that even a word?

But seriously, i would rather play spring, as it is more diverse at the moment.

Besides, i dont want to buy a whole new system.

Guessmyname · Post by **Guessmyname** » 18 Apr 2007, 09:32

SupCom is slooooooooow...

10053r · Post by **10053r** » 18 Apr 2007, 20:12

Spring can support large maps relative to the unit size. However, everyone needs a relatively new computer to handle it. And since the game runs at the speed of the slowest player's computer, games tend to slow down on large maps a lot if the host isn't very careful about who they allow in their games. Therefore, large maps are not played often. (In my opinion, they are not played often enough).

That said, the engine is not as fast as OTA, and the game tends to slow down once there are over 300-750 units in the game, depending on what they are doing, what kind of units they are, and the speed of the slowest computer in the game.

Spring is still buggy. 1/5 of my games end in something other than a win or loss (i.e. some sort of crash or desync). Not sure if that is true of Supcom, but it sure is frustrating.

On the other hand, spring is open source, so there is a linux version, and a mac version in the works. The game play is FAR more balanced (in my opinion), since it has had so much longer to mature and be playtested. This is especially true of BA 4.7 and AA 5.0.

Lastly, it is the only modern platform where modding doesn't require reverse engineering before you can get started.

Spring RTS Engine

New Player Question: Why should I play Supreme Comander?

New Player Question: Why should I play Supreme Comander?