I like the freedom of the spring "ferry" sequence more then the way supcom has it. I own supcom because a friend of mine insists that he prefers it to C&C3, so I bought it to play with him. However, please call me an ass more, I 'll be sure to lol at it when you get banned, again.
Furthermore, hmm yeah gundam definitely is.. oh my god a cartoon from the late 70s and as such it makes little to no sense but you gleefully ignore the many, many times I have said that. So, rather then get all upset because I find supcom a dawdle, perhaps you could merely accept my opinion that it is dull.
I know you are very fond of piles of nanoturrets assisting construction to get any level of prompt unit construction. This is the core of your AA balance, and I can see how you, would like supcom. However, I do not like the dull way that supcom's construction and economy plays out. I do not like the unexciting effects that frankly, Gundam beats while snoring at supcom. I do not like that in large battles the game reminds me of the older WWII table top games because you are forced into that dreadfull icon view. I do not like that the maps are pretty flat when looked at in perspective view(holding space to rotate down). There are many reasons that I have a distaste for supcom and find it above all, lackluster for a professional game.
The aeon animation thing, that is a minor trifle compared to the terribly bland units and uninspired designs for some of the higher level units. Honestly, I found between the two of them, C&C3 to be much more interesting in terms of tactics, strategy and over all unit style. However, as you are sure to attack myself or gundam over this long winded explanation I am just going to add a big SMILE just for you, as I, personally enjoy my gundam work and frankly, if you are going to try and troll me with it consider that i have had 3 years to hear all the tired insults about the franchise. I EAGERLY look forward to a REAL insult about it that I have not heard before, that is of course if your five or six synapse a day limit can handle that.
*edit* on second though can a moderator tell me if this is the REAL caydr or has an 8 year old hijacked his account. I am not sure which part of this schizophrenic creature is the real caydr *end edit*
Supcom Expansion
Moderator: Moderators
Disregarding supcom as a dawdle is a mistake because its the closet thing to spring available and many of the flaws spring players attribute to supcom can be thrown back at the spring engine.
Playing supcom I dont get into the icon war setup usually but I do use it for aircraft and superunits. Icon war is a problem inherent to all RTS engines that implement huge zoom.
However I see just as much of it in spring if not more.
CC3 avoids this problem by confining the camera to absurdly close up views. This way they can also get away with making the maps 10x smaller because the constrained zoom means the maps look bigger ebcause you have to scroll around more, whereas super zoom and icons make it look smaller because that vast scrolling distance is now a flick of the scrollwheel away.
Ferry for example can have all its issues levelled at spring in its cumbersome area laod unload system whcih is intuitive and eays at first glance but awkward and annoying to keep maintained once you start using any real intelligence past a straight direct route.
imo ferry is great but it needs to be combined with area unload to really work. Supcom was all about breaking the boundaries of the genre, not about revolutionary new graphical effects and unit uses. It did give us walking ships, and the floating mothership of the aeon since copied by CC3 and starcraft, but when you look for new stuff smoth you forget that we've already heavily plundered supreme commander and all the new things to be found are common place ehre in soem shape or form and are a part of the many other games.
As I said, supcom is the closest to spring the rest of the world can have, and we're moving closer. Many of the new thing we will have in 0.75 will man that we'll be able to do the same things as supcom in the same way. I wouldnt be surprised if someone ported a supcom UI addition to our widget system within the next year, or made supcom style mapmods such as sayas zone control map.
However I disagree on effects. They have a consistency and theme with enough variation to look nice, there's no huge array of different colours and effects and there are many pople who would prefer that to your rainbow of explosions, better suited to your anime themed mod.
Playing supcom I dont get into the icon war setup usually but I do use it for aircraft and superunits. Icon war is a problem inherent to all RTS engines that implement huge zoom.
However I see just as much of it in spring if not more.
CC3 avoids this problem by confining the camera to absurdly close up views. This way they can also get away with making the maps 10x smaller because the constrained zoom means the maps look bigger ebcause you have to scroll around more, whereas super zoom and icons make it look smaller because that vast scrolling distance is now a flick of the scrollwheel away.
Ferry for example can have all its issues levelled at spring in its cumbersome area laod unload system whcih is intuitive and eays at first glance but awkward and annoying to keep maintained once you start using any real intelligence past a straight direct route.
imo ferry is great but it needs to be combined with area unload to really work. Supcom was all about breaking the boundaries of the genre, not about revolutionary new graphical effects and unit uses. It did give us walking ships, and the floating mothership of the aeon since copied by CC3 and starcraft, but when you look for new stuff smoth you forget that we've already heavily plundered supreme commander and all the new things to be found are common place ehre in soem shape or form and are a part of the many other games.
As I said, supcom is the closest to spring the rest of the world can have, and we're moving closer. Many of the new thing we will have in 0.75 will man that we'll be able to do the same things as supcom in the same way. I wouldnt be surprised if someone ported a supcom UI addition to our widget system within the next year, or made supcom style mapmods such as sayas zone control map.
However I disagree on effects. They have a consistency and theme with enough variation to look nice, there's no huge array of different colours and effects and there are many pople who would prefer that to your rainbow of explosions, better suited to your anime themed mod.
Actually, since games are in development for so long, people CAN have the same idea as each other and not know it till the other games come out. It's not like they swap ideas daily.
So, CnC 3, Starcraft 2 and SupCom can ALL have the idea that hey, giant mother ships are cool (and let's face it, they are), and not know that the others have it till the videos come out.
So, CnC 3, Starcraft 2 and SupCom can ALL have the idea that hey, giant mother ships are cool (and let's face it, they are), and not know that the others have it till the videos come out.
however, as caydr said, the game is suposed to be somewhat realistic. The glowy bloom they call fidelity is not like realist explosions. C&C3 has that part correct. Also, while you chasitise them for a smaller zoom, C&C3 has more detail on those maps then any of the supcom maps that I look at and lets not forget that C&C3 is not meant for large war. I never compaired these aspects.
However, I do not play in TA view in spring, I play in fps view where I can see my whole battlefeild and icons are only on half of the map, the far half. Now arguably I play gundam which as far as spring games go, has large units. However, the super units are just that, super units. I am uninterested in them. I was more interested in the smaller units. Now if you tell me that the air wiffle effect that the "guns" of the level 1/2 units fire is good looking.. I have to disagree. I further have to POINT OUT that real explosions are fully of vibrant reds, blacks and greys. Something the the glowy pulse of supcom sorely lacks.
However, I do not play in TA view in spring, I play in fps view where I can see my whole battlefeild and icons are only on half of the map, the far half. Now arguably I play gundam which as far as spring games go, has large units. However, the super units are just that, super units. I am uninterested in them. I was more interested in the smaller units. Now if you tell me that the air wiffle effect that the "guns" of the level 1/2 units fire is good looking.. I have to disagree. I further have to POINT OUT that real explosions are fully of vibrant reds, blacks and greys. Something the the glowy pulse of supcom sorely lacks.
I would like to show where I got that from and also confirm that it wasn't just some random forum rumors I read, but I can't remember and don't want to spend half a day to try and dig it up. It's just something in the back of my head I -=think=- was from an official source, maybe something like a forum post by a GPGer or something.Caydr wrote:Show me, and I'll believe you.I think I read/heard interview that they took out the aeon folding animations to make the game run faster. Something about the many individual animated pieces slowing the game down.
Better yet, explain to me how a unit that needs to unfold its guns can be ready to fire at an enemy at split-seconds notice. SupCom's aircraft move fairly quick compared to other RTSs, especially the scout planes. This is necessitated by the fact that the maps are so large. In large engagements, the opening shot could probably destroy at least a tenth of your aircraft, and Aeon couldn't go through any kind of fast enough unfolding process without it looking silly.
So you'd need at least 10% more aircraft than your opponent in order to not be at a disadvantage, because the aesthetics appealed to you. Uhh-huhhh... Maybe make them cheaper?
That fixes the gameplay, but makes it logically ridiculous. What kind of a crazyass design decision would it be to have units be designed to lose a tenth of their number before firing a single shot? Just because Gundam gets away with crazy stuff like legged robots fighting with swords in outer space doesn't mean that it makes sense in a realistic setting to have completely idiotic design decisions. Nothing against Gundam as a mod, I'm talking about Gundam since it's a good point of reference for extremely illogical vehicle design, the same thing you're suggesting makes sense in a "semi-realistic" RTS.
Anyway your 2nd qestion, the aircraft could unfold instantly or near instantly wich I'm pretty sure would look perfectly good and cool. As for your realism arguments, these are always retarded and it's easy to make up whatever realism ideas/arguments you want. But anyway I have my own: the really new modern cutting edge aircraft, especially stealth ones, like the JSF to mention one, alredy uses internal weapons that fold out. And there's many aircraft with wings that can be "folded" around for different situations.
We can be reasonably sure that they all took the idea from Independence Day (which probably took it from some anime because let's face it, gigantic beamcannons and explosions are standard anime material) anyway.Zoombie wrote:So, CnC 3, Starcraft 2 and SupCom can ALL have the idea that hey, giant mother ships are cool (and let's face it, they are), and not know that the others have it till the videos come out.
Also the Lunar Corporation has the Ripper in Earth 2160 which came before SupCom.
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PauloMorfeo
- Posts: 2004
- Joined: 15 Dec 2004, 20:53
I heard, from Chris Taylor's mouth, that they intended to greatly enhance stuff about AIs. You know, that stuff about AIs with some personality, which they intended to have in the original.KDR_11k wrote:It means the game sold badly.rattle wrote:You know what this means... pay twice for the very same game.A standalone expansion is on the way.
Also what will they add, finalyl some unit variety or will this remain a polished version of SimBase?
I also bet they will add that greatly anticipated (at least by me) thing of multiplayer campaigns, which i was extremely sorry to find it absent from the original. In fact, that must be badly needed since, with only players fighting players (skirmishes aren't really the same thing...), no-rush discussions began to spam in they're forums and, aparently, they already added a no-rush option to the game (LAME ass shits). Multiplayer campaigns would solve that, mostly.
Except, for some reason, Independence Day has gotten a whole lot less cool from when it came out to now. I watched it again and was like, "Wow...this is totally not nearly cool anymore."KDR_11k wrote:We can be reasonably sure that they all took the idea from Independence Day (which probably took it from some anime because let's face it, gigantic beamcannons and explosions are standard anime material) anyway.Zoombie wrote:So, CnC 3, Starcraft 2 and SupCom can ALL have the idea that hey, giant mother ships are cool (and let's face it, they are), and not know that the others have it till the videos come out.
Also the Lunar Corporation has the Ripper in Earth 2160 which came before SupCom.
Strange, huh?
Multilayer campaign sounds nice, but I'm following a form of: No hype reading.
If I don't read the hype, I can approach a game with a clean slate and no expectations.
There's no need for this "persecuted artist" thing any time anyone mentions Gundam. We're not out to get you.gundam definitely is.. oh my god a cartoon from the late 70s
Again, I'm not criticizing Gundam as a whole or your mod in particular, I'm saying the design makes little sense in the real world, the same way aircraft that must unfold before they fight makes little sense in the real world. There are at least a few people here who understand what I mean, since many here know of Gundam, if only from your screenshots. I used Gundam as a point of reference. Robots do not need legs or a head to fight in outer space, fighter aircraft would not make sense to fold and unfold when they need to be able to fire at a moment's notice. If they were modern-day fighters that never actually fight, fold and unfold all you like. It'd make sense - aerodynamics and all that good stuff. But these aren't that kind of fighter, they're WWII-styled, like all RTS games.
Don't be so petty, you're attacking a game's graphics, when any gamer knows graphics are unimportant. Why would I, the graphics whore, need to point this out?
Besides this, AF answers the rest for me pretty well.
Regarding "glowy bloom" - It's a design decision to keep things consistent with the universe the game is based in. Units don't all explode, they more often melt down like any good nuclear-based thingie. Every game has explosions, SupCom has a different effect. Take it or leave it I guess, but it has no effect on gameplay.
CnC 3, I admit I haven't played it yet. I've seen screenshots and read reviews, all they tell me is that it's pretty and you can't zoom out far enough to see anything that's happening. I'd take icons to not being able to see anything, any day. Also if you hate the icons so much, increase the LoD setting. The distance at which units are turned into icons is based on this.
JSF, F-22 et al are a completely different animal. If RTS games used this kind of modern-day technology there'd be no fight, just a supersonic missile launched and an explosion 5 minutes later. SupCom, TA, and most other RTSs stick themselves in WWII-themed aircraft, since that era was actually interesting. My realism argument is thin, nay, anorexic... I know. I guess if you really want stuff that folds, you should have stuff that folds... the part I don't agree with is that it contributes to the game being dull or that it was a "feature" that we're missing out on.the really new modern cutting edge aircraft, especially stealth ones, like the JSF to mention one, alredy uses internal weapons that fold out.
Caydr wrote: Robots do not need legs or a head to fight in outer space,
OH SHIT!
caydr, the weapons being sealed away protects them and probably makes the units more aerodynamic. However, you are the ONLY one who brought gundam up, af brought it up after you opened that to discussion.
Again, the key point you are avoiding is the key to why supcom is dull. It plays terribly slow. All production(in order to be timely) needs assistance via something not entirely different from your nano-spam economy. The game also feels and plays like some old world war II board game with icons and all.
again, also complaining about the ZOOM on C&C 3 is pointless because C&C3 is a small scale RTS. Which is one of the most striking things to me about it. AGAIN, for a professional RTS, supcom lacks detail, the units are bland and largely uninspired outside of the epic units... oh and as far as unrealistic anime robots.. aeon has a giant ZOMYGOSH gundam. So you cannot say Supcom is supposed to be realistic at all
First you make stuff up that's cool, then optionally if you feel a need for it, make up some "realism" to suit it. Ideas about Realism can be twisted and turned anyway you want, giving up on stuff that's cool becouse of "realism" is stupid.
There is no objective realism, unless maybe if your making truly historical or present day thing, wich will need to give up some realism as well if you want it to work at all. And we could also probably discuss for ages what actually is realistic in that case as well.
For supcom they kind of went, hey WW2 combat is cool, it's the last war that could actually be called a real war after all, and probably will be the last one too. No pressing buttons to blow the world up or assymetric "warfare" dosn't count. But this is just some general idea about how they wanted it. There is no reason to stick with this for details however, to make planes that do some folding action for example. Just make aeon planes faster while their unfolded or whatever if you want to justify the folding, or make them fold really quickly or instantly so it dosn't matter, it's easy.
BTW gundam is cool so realism can go f.. fold itself for all I care.
There is no objective realism, unless maybe if your making truly historical or present day thing, wich will need to give up some realism as well if you want it to work at all. And we could also probably discuss for ages what actually is realistic in that case as well.
For supcom they kind of went, hey WW2 combat is cool, it's the last war that could actually be called a real war after all, and probably will be the last one too. No pressing buttons to blow the world up or assymetric "warfare" dosn't count. But this is just some general idea about how they wanted it. There is no reason to stick with this for details however, to make planes that do some folding action for example. Just make aeon planes faster while their unfolded or whatever if you want to justify the folding, or make them fold really quickly or instantly so it dosn't matter, it's easy.
BTW gundam is cool so realism can go f.. fold itself for all I care.
Thank you for the consideration to post in such a way, I will respond in kind. Let's keep this up.
Kicking is inefficient. If you can get close enough to kick, kill that loser with your hugeass green-laser-thing. It's stylization for the sake of making something look cool, the same as a WWII-era aircraft that folds and unfolds despite needing to fire with no delay. Regardless, you've only responded to something I already said was irrelevant to gameplay.
edit: A valid suggestion was made before this was posted - why not have the aircraft faster/slower when they're folded/unfolded? It creates an unpredictable balance concern. For instance, suppose you make it faster/slower depending on open/shut. It can now much more easily bypass anti-air. The power of anti-air must be a constant in order for balance to be achieved. For anti-air to be useless or even just less effective for aircraft in some configurations, this means that they can slip past your defenses and attack things that cannot be defended. It means that fighters cannot be used to defend either, since they'll be outrun. Etc etc etc etc. I can go on like this and analyze the effects that differences to firepower, armor, etc depending on open/close would have on balance, but if you've ever balanced something (speaking to the newcomer, not you smoth, I'm not slighting your work) you'll know what I'm talking about. If not, I'll come back later and try to explain better.
The concept of nano-assisting doesn't magically make a game boring. Being unable to modify the speed at which things are produced by any means besides building a dozen factories - which is in no way somehow more exciting - is something that's been done a hundred times over. Nano-assist was one of the most appreciated additions in TA, and something that hasn't been duplicated very often, if at all. To remove that tried-and-proven concept from the game is to take a step backwards.
Nano-assisting adds a certain amount to gameplay as well - it allows you to have another target for an attack. If you kill his nanoturrets/conkbots, he's just as crippled as if you attack his factory, only his factory is a lot better defended than a conkbot. Kill his conkbots, you kill his ability to expand and build efficiently.
It's a little like the way that you can build (arbitrary number) 100 flashes or (arbitrary number) 1 krogoth. If you build the flashes, your ability to attack increases quickly and smoothly. If you build a krogoth, you're better off at the end (or should be, if a mod is made right. AA is not, and it's on my list of things to fix for the next release), but in the meantime you've achieved nothing unless it is 100% constructed. The same is true of attacking factories vs conkbots. Attack the factory, you kill his production completely for a time. Attack his conkbots, you steadily reduce his production down to almost zero, as well as his ability to replace his economy. It's a choice. Not an earthshattering one, but it adds a little bit to gameplay. It keeps things fresh, gives you one more thing to think about. Have lots of these, like I try to do with AA, and it is really good for gameplay.
Something I believe very much is that the more ways you can attack and defend, the more interesting a game can potentially be. To have only one objective as you do in traditional RTSs - kill everything you see - is IMO dull. Or maybe you have another objective, like kill the resourcers. That's a step in the right direction. It's still more limited than it needs to be though.
Please provide examples for how units are bland and largely uninspired. I haven't really given it a lot of thought.
Aeon has a giant mech. It walks on the ground, it does not move about in a gravityless vacuum. All its appendages do something useful.
Kicking is inefficient. If you can get close enough to kick, kill that loser with your hugeass green-laser-thing. It's stylization for the sake of making something look cool, the same as a WWII-era aircraft that folds and unfolds despite needing to fire with no delay. Regardless, you've only responded to something I already said was irrelevant to gameplay.
edit: A valid suggestion was made before this was posted - why not have the aircraft faster/slower when they're folded/unfolded? It creates an unpredictable balance concern. For instance, suppose you make it faster/slower depending on open/shut. It can now much more easily bypass anti-air. The power of anti-air must be a constant in order for balance to be achieved. For anti-air to be useless or even just less effective for aircraft in some configurations, this means that they can slip past your defenses and attack things that cannot be defended. It means that fighters cannot be used to defend either, since they'll be outrun. Etc etc etc etc. I can go on like this and analyze the effects that differences to firepower, armor, etc depending on open/close would have on balance, but if you've ever balanced something (speaking to the newcomer, not you smoth, I'm not slighting your work) you'll know what I'm talking about. If not, I'll come back later and try to explain better.
The concept of nano-assisting doesn't magically make a game boring. Being unable to modify the speed at which things are produced by any means besides building a dozen factories - which is in no way somehow more exciting - is something that's been done a hundred times over. Nano-assist was one of the most appreciated additions in TA, and something that hasn't been duplicated very often, if at all. To remove that tried-and-proven concept from the game is to take a step backwards.
Nano-assisting adds a certain amount to gameplay as well - it allows you to have another target for an attack. If you kill his nanoturrets/conkbots, he's just as crippled as if you attack his factory, only his factory is a lot better defended than a conkbot. Kill his conkbots, you kill his ability to expand and build efficiently.
It's a little like the way that you can build (arbitrary number) 100 flashes or (arbitrary number) 1 krogoth. If you build the flashes, your ability to attack increases quickly and smoothly. If you build a krogoth, you're better off at the end (or should be, if a mod is made right. AA is not, and it's on my list of things to fix for the next release), but in the meantime you've achieved nothing unless it is 100% constructed. The same is true of attacking factories vs conkbots. Attack the factory, you kill his production completely for a time. Attack his conkbots, you steadily reduce his production down to almost zero, as well as his ability to replace his economy. It's a choice. Not an earthshattering one, but it adds a little bit to gameplay. It keeps things fresh, gives you one more thing to think about. Have lots of these, like I try to do with AA, and it is really good for gameplay.
Something I believe very much is that the more ways you can attack and defend, the more interesting a game can potentially be. To have only one objective as you do in traditional RTSs - kill everything you see - is IMO dull. Or maybe you have another objective, like kill the resourcers. That's a step in the right direction. It's still more limited than it needs to be though.
Please provide examples for how units are bland and largely uninspired. I haven't really given it a lot of thought.
Aeon has a giant mech. It walks on the ground, it does not move about in a gravityless vacuum. All its appendages do something useful.
Last edited by Caydr on 05 Jul 2007, 02:17, edited 1 time in total.
Legs can very much serve a function on a unit. The offer ways to throw mass out and even redirect without using propellant. The can be used to lift and set down to crush rather then wasting precious ammo. A kick coming up while the arms are engaged in melee is very useful in an environment where you do not have to STAND ON GROUND. They can even have thrusters on it. When of course the unit goes into a gravity environment it can then walk with no conversion. blah blah blah.. many many reasons. In zeta gundam which is a handfull of years after the one year war, they use the legs to house thrusters for mobile suits that can go between a flight mode and a mobile suit for land.
Now, as far as the supcom units, I am not able to find a site with lots of units to compare the most obvious is the uef construction unit which just gets an extra arm with each level of tech progression. While it is nice to see all the units fit to a theme, there are no stand out units. No bombers that have a blue-ish tint or even a black unit. The entire faction is one color. While the designs are nifty they are merely variations of each other. with the main stylistic differences being: round and white/spikey and black/square and blue.. so we have white circles, versus black triangles and blue squares. in and of the units, this includes the epics which I keep wrongly championing to have fresh design, they follow this theme as well.
What I would have like to see was some odd ball designs mixed in. Maybe some sort of liquid weapon for aeo some flames for cybrain or even some sort of crazy cluster bomb weapon for uef. I would like to see some fast units.. not mildy faster.. I mean like wow, look at the motorcycle hover bullet thing go. Not look, more roundish crap or look another spikey bug.
