Supcom Expansion

[Zpock]

The power of anti-air must be a constant in order for balance to be achieved.

You mean this makes balancing easier, having the same units on both sides sure does. I wouldn't say it's inherently wrong or anything, if this works for you then why not.

I mean good balance is an art, it's subjective, there are no musts, or right/wrong.

[Dragon45]

Please, for the love of god, stop discussing realism and "appendage usefulness" and al lthis other garbage. You're talking about universes with robots, antimatter, LASER SWORDS, everything-can-vtol, and herodudes who make a big difference in the course of a battle. Please stop talking right now.

[smoth]

yeah gundam definitely is.. oh my god a cartoon from the late 70s and as such it makes little to no sense

I did say this dragon 45... some people use realism as a crutch. Personally I can see some use for limbs and having heard a lot of these arguments before most of my statements about the rational of limbs on a craft is recycled from past arguments where people try the same(although to them clever) tired arguments.

[Muzic]

Did anyone relise that during the UEF victory during the president's speech..

THE INFINITE WAR IS OVER!!

People: *golf clap*

.... The war has been going on for ONE THOUSAND years; Id crap my pants and start crying if I hear this.

[Zoombie]

Yeah, I know...actually, I don't know, cuase I only beat the Aeon campaign. And that one's ending is friggen weeeeird.

Stupid Aeon. Anyway, I should beat the UEF campaign, but I'm waiting till I can upgrade my computer. And my upgrade, I mean get a new one.

[DandyGnome]

As to the reservedness of the clapping, the president is speaking to the members of the senate who as politicians can be expected not to show any emotions that might be too extreme for their constituents.

Its too bad that I won't get to play SupCom or the expansion for quite a while as it will probably take several years for wine to progress enough for them to be playable. Some of the gameplay and modding they have looks a little more polished and consistent than that in Spring. And before you ask no I will not install windows on my Mac just to play a game, especially when I can play Spring natively.

[zwzsg]

I don't think even the most negative reviewer would deny that it's groundbreaking, and the first RTS in a long time to really try to break the standard formula,

It is not groundbreaking. It is merely a TA II. It appears to break the standard formula only because all other RTS followed into the StarCraft steps, and none but SupCom the TA steps.

Its system requirements are high, but not as severe as some people would believe.

It is so high that if it was any bit higher no one could plays it. Heck, it can give trouble to even the best PC of now.

But I complain not just about the steep requirements, but mostly about how such raw power is wasted. Despite the marvelous promises Chris Taylor made during developpment, if you look at facts, SupCom doesn't have bigger battles than TA. I have played TA games with 500 units per player, on gigantastic epic map, on my old Duron 800Mhz, and it ran well. SupCom unit number is not higher, maps are not bigger, graphics are more 3D but less pretty (especially the maps). And yet it requires top of the line multi core processor. To do nothing more than a 10 years old game!

I have to wonder how many of SupCom's detractors here have actually played it

I played the demo, it was such a disappointment I didn't even finish it.

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.

I would have much rather had instaopening animation than no animation at all. Plus opening up was supposed to remove their stealthness, which added some tactical element.

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?

Well, if it affect the gameplay (which it should, I dislike when graphics are disconnected from game mechanics), then take it into account when balancing, what's so special about that?

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.

Yeah, sure, battlecruisers with legs are teh realism! The Aeon Colossus and its weaponary is teh realism! Totally unlike that fantasy Gundam stuff! I mean, geez, Gundam has those legged robots fighting on the surface of planets, this is pure idiotic design! SupCom, on the other hand, has legged robots fighting on the surface of planets, NOW that's realism!

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.

Not true. Spring has a very powerful zoom too, yet when I play Gundam or Expand & Exterminate, I see the icons on my main map nearly never. When I play 1944, however, I see icons even more than in SupCom. This is not a problem inherent to the presence of a zoom. First of all, there's the icon distance: in SupCom it is too early: there's surimposed icons already when the unit is still fully recognisable. Then, for exemple for metal patch, there's an icon instead of a shiny ground, even when fully zoomed in. But mostly, imo, what makes the icon prevalent, is the relationship between unit size, speed, range, etc... The SupCom units, or the 1944 units, are tiny compared to their speed and weapon range, which means we have the choice between seeing one unit of a tight squad at a time, or icons. Well, not really a choice actually. Gundam and EE-not epic have bigger units relatively to their range and speed, which makes for a better gameplay, because then size matters, and better experience, because instead of icons you see 3D mapped polygonal models and pretty sfx, which makes it much more immersive.

Supcom was all about breaking the boundaries of the genre

And it failed, by being just a TA II.

not about revolutionary new graphical effects and unit uses.

Duh, re-read the preview. We were promised DX10 graphics, and Chris Taylor kept talking about the possibility opened by his revolutionnary units such as flying aircraft carrier, and nuclear missile fired from submarine, and units so big they crush anything under their feet, and ... well just reread those preview, revolutionnary unit use was supposed to be a huge part of SupCom.

As I said, supcom is the closest to spring the rest of the world can have

Yes. However a bigger proportion of the world can have Spring, considering Spring is free and works on older computer.

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 people who would prefer that to your rainbow of explosions, better suited to your anime themed mod.

SupCom effect is only one single effect: the pouring of whiteness. Every unit, from the level 1 to the experimental, die the same way: blinding whiteness engulfing it from the inside, so as to hide the lack of proper death animation (proper death animation are very complex and time consumming to make for something that player barely see for half a second, so I guess they went the lazy way).

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.

Maybe not daily, but at least weekly. There was a time when each new feature appearing in SupCom teasing previews & interviews was followed by the same feature appearing in Spring. Stuff like icons or strategic map for instance. It's harder to know, but I would be very interested to know what feature were copied the other way around, from Spring to SupCom. Maybe the repeat button?

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.

I fail to understand how that is possible, and ask again a movie of you playing in FPS view. Playing, not replaying. In replays I can use FPS view too because there's nothing but the camera placement to control. But if I had to give orders, keep in check everything, be more effective than the enemy, etc.. it would be impossible in FPS view. However, I could use a tilted, rotatable overhead, if only it zoomed and centered along view axis.

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.

LoL, the gullibility of the human race, you can promise the very same thing over and over, they get all thrilled up and forget you never delivered in the past.

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.

Smoth already told you that US latest/upcoming aircraf fold/unfold its weaponary. Not for aerodynamic, but for stealthness reason. Exactly like aeon craft were supposed to be! So not only it makes sense, but it's actually what real life future aircraft do!!

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.

a) SupCom's robots have legs and head too. SupCom backstory and movies involve lots of space too.
b) Smoth's Gundam does not take place in space. He stated it repeatadly: There isn't and won't be any of Gundam's space robots in his mod.
c) Opening a hatch quicker than a human eye can see is easy for such an advanced alien technology as the Aeon.

Don't be so petty, you're attacking a game's graphics, when any gamer knows graphics are unimportant.

You never read any comments for general gamers, do you? Nor check sales figure?

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.

LoLz, fanboy manual, lesson 27: how to defend an undefendable defect: label it a "design decision". Game's ugly, retarted, and reek of laziness? It's a design decision! It defies any kind common-sense? Pretend it's because it's sci-fi / magic! A single effect for all explosion? But admire how it's consistent with itself! And beside, nothing else in the fluff indicate units have to explode like that.

Oh and Spring explosions, on the other hand, have effect on gameplay:
* Goliath recevied 60dmg from peewee explosion schnarpel
* Goliath recevied 60dmg from peewee explosion schnarpel
* Goliath recevied 60dmg from peewee explosion schnarpel
* Goliath has died.
* Fusion recevied 200dmg from goliath explosion splash.
* Fusion has died.
* Half of razed was razed from fusion explosion.

So, I don't care about adhering to wacky fictionnal tech you just pulled out of your hat solely to explain the bad explosion, I don't care about being similar to the real life weapons of real life 20th century armies, all I want is that it makes sense and feel coherent on an intuitive level, that's it's varied enough to keep me entertained, and pretty enough to live up to the standard of a 2007 AAA game, and that the pretty graphics go in hand with the gameplay mechanic.

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.

Yes, making Aeon plane faster when closed would make the balancing more interesting and less bland.

Even after having chosen which plane to build, they would still be choices and decisions to make about your air forces.

All very good points, that could have rendered SupCom a better game.

... nano-assisting ...

I like nano-assisting too. It makes the growth more explosive. It makes the game more scalable. It makes the gameplay more fluid.


As for the SupCom expansion pack, one of the three promotionnal screenshot they handed showed units so ugly and blocky even the Core Can is a beauty next to then. If that the best they can come up with, well, that doesn't bode any good.

[Ishach]

Supcom is really bad


Im 100% serious in saying the beta was one of the most disappointing things in my whole life

[Andrej]

http://images.google.com/images?um=1&ta ... erd%20rage

[AF]

zwsg obviously hasnt looked at the game in any real depth.

Heavy Arty fire such as tier 3 arty cybran rapid fire arty, or UEF strategic arty has purple explosions with bright white cores but they're obviously shades of purple blue and magenta. Numerous cybran weapons leave red explosions, aeon bombers leave blueish explosions, some bombers have bright orange explosions.

And explosions do affect other units. Fusion reactor goes boom, nearby builders destroyed, several mass fabricators next door blown, up their explosion destroys another building and so on. Aeon tsar falls out of sky and all buildings under it are annihilated.

And of the list of revolutionary new units you cited all but 1 made it in game. I see my aeon colossus blowing up enemy tier 1 turrets not using its weapons but by simply walking on them. The nukes from subs are in the tier 3 shipyard. Indeed during the previews, a PCZone reviewer lost a game when their commander was crushed by the monkeylord it just built.

With regards to high min requirements, OTA was guilty of this too. Supcom has masses fo pixel shaders and custom sfx that spring doesnt have.

With regards to map sizes, yes it 'appears' that OTA has similair ro larger map sizes, but OTA doesnt have zoom like supcom. Zoom has a huge effect on how a user percieves the maps size. The more zoom, the smaller the map looks because its easier for the user to move around, the map becomes a lot smaller in the users mind as a result.

Suffice to say, if supcom maps were 10x larger than spring maps, everyone would deny it and insist they made the units 10x smaller instead because they look 10x smaller. Of course they would! your 10x zoomed out and you dont expect them to look tiny?

@iconwar: I was right and you're just bsing your arguement ehre on a single sldier cotnrol in spring, and then citing common iconwar flaws that are inherent to all iconwar issues. You do realize that the biggest supcom map is impossible under sm2 format? Have you ever played on a 64x64 sm3 map in spring? I have, and I can tell you spring has these problems too.

@white deaths:
This is fail. At least supcom has death animations and tries to deal with it. Most units in spring dont even have an explosion and either instantly turn into a mangled wreck or dissapear completely. They arent even engulfed in their explosions you can still see the switch happening. All we have our the death lurches of aircraft falling. At least supcom ships sink. Our ships just turn into wreckages then the wrecks fall a little bit and rest.

@feature napping:
repeat as an OTA feature that was removed before it was released, in that little command queue bit where you could re-order by dragging them around. I do believe they pinched our line move command with right click drag but for formations, however I dont think they pinched it from us but from another game.

a) SupCom's robots have legs and head too. SupCom backstory and movies involve lots of space too.

Supcoms units dont fight in space though, the UEF are the space farers and the ones with space craft and they use it to great effect. If you had completed the cybran missions you'd know the UEF usually soften up targets using orbital bombardment before sending in an ACU.

LoLz, fanboy manual, lesson 27: how to defend an undefendable defect: label it a "design decision"

Indeed smoth labelled a probably reason for the much whiteness in soem fo the sfx, visibility. However the same is true of the reverse.

Why does OTA use plasma weapons? An unfeasable means of blowing things up? Design decision? Non beam lasers? Design decision? VTOL aircraft plants with runways? Design decision? Battered looking units that're minutes old? Design decision?

As for th seraphim unit, I like the design. There doesnt have to be a stigma saying that every units surface must be curved or spiky and that designs based around geometric shapes are always bad does that? Where were you in arghs nanoblobz thread when he showed off the first autofac with its spheres? Why didnt you harass the blockwars map thread?

I AF accuse you zwzsg of being an antisupcom fanboi!

I'm sick fo havign to defend supcom from attacks that're unfounded. If I can debunk a myth I will and there seem to be plenty going around about supcom. I just with there was a spring mod that felt a little more like supcom without actually being supcom, that perfect balance between the two. I was hoping EE would be that with its added specialized superunits and its already great tier 1/2/3 system but its slooow progress over there.

[TheRegisteredOne]

I'll tell you what supcom has that spring doesn't. GOOD, complete content. I am not saying that spring mods are completely worthless batpiss (Gundam, A&A and SWTA are good, maybe even KP), it is just that it doesn't match up with the quality and completeness of supcom content

[KDR_11k]

Completeness maybe but quality? It may have higher production values but SupCom is a lot of polish and nice additions (interface-wise and so) around a core of an unimaginative, generic RTS. Supcom has great features but the gameplay itself plays like they only put it in because they had to, not because they wanted to. Kinda like they thought "hey, wouldn't this be a good addition to an RTS?" and made loads of additions but then realized they had no game to add it to and slapped something together that would barely pass muster.

[Andrej]

------
"if supcom maps were 10x larger than spring maps, everyone would deny it and insist they made the units 10x smaller instead because they look 10x smaller"
------

ok lets say supcom gets an update
in the update all maps look 10x bigger for yet unknown reason (for example if you could fill 1.000 units in a row to cover the maps length now you can fit 10.000)

im saying we would be able to tell because making maps 10x bigger would
keep the map detail compared to units
10x unit shrink would get less detailed maps compard to units

http://desu.no-ip.info/scx1/likethis_naab.jpg

the maps i played on look shittier than springs when it comes to heightmap ?? or CnC3 detail :O

EDIT LOL:
if i remember correctly in supcom there was a command that would show you all the triangles the map was composed from, i use that

[KDR_11k]

Map and unit size mostly matters in relation to unit range. A map where an average unit can shoot across 10% of its length is pretty small, no matter whether the units take up 5% of the map's length or just 0.00001%. The size of the unit models doesn't matter, it's the size of a battle that does.

[Zoombie]

Lots of long posts. I really just read stuff that had my name in the quotes above it and skipped the rest. That makes me a self centered whore.

What's funny, is while Ishach is spending his time being disappointed, I'm spending my time having fun :D

[TheRegisteredOne]

Completeness maybe but quality? It may have higher production values but SupCom is a lot of polish and nice additions (interface-wise and so) around a core of an unimaginative, generic RTS. Supcom has great features but the gameplay itself plays like they only put it in because they had to, not because they wanted to. Kinda like they thought "hey, wouldn't this be a good addition to an RTS?" and made loads of additions but then realized they had no game to add it to and slapped something together that would barely pass muster.

And judging of the occurance of the letter 'e' in your post, I can tell, with 87.3% certainty, that you do not have any armpit hair what so ever, and you have a 4 meter long pet turtle named "batman" that pushed you into a volcano when you were 3.

goddammit, I hate people who pull minutely detailed, yet baseless extrapolations out of their arses.

[Neddie]

One; The Infinite War cannot end. It wouldn't be Infinite if that were the case, lads.
Two; Any more personal jousting matches and somebody will put you down for the count. Such is the way of the internet, stop trying to wave your virtual genitalia for attention.
Three; If you're going to undermine a statement, then actually do it - don't pull a vague and entirely superfluous post out of thin air in an attempt to appear witty and/or emulate parody.

[TheRegisteredOne]

One; The Infinite War cannot end. It wouldn't be Infinite if that were the case, lads.
Two; Any more personal jousting matches and somebody will put you down for the count. Such is the way of the internet, stop trying to wave your virtual genitalia for attention.
Three; If you're going to undermine a statement, then actually do it - don't pull a vague and entirely superfluous post out of thin air in an attempt to appear witty and/or emulate parody.

does this count as a vague and entirely superfluous post pulled out out of thin air?

[Muzic]

If you really dont like supcom; do you think that making this essay posts is really going to convince anyone who likes playing it to stop? Some of are saying 'Oh you play supcom, your obviously a homosexual becuase supcom... '. Jeez, if some of us like playing supcom then let us play supcom its not hurting anyone. So what if its 'flawed in a thousand ways', if someone enjoys playing it for fucks sake let them play it. It doesn't matter how much some of you will trash supcom, we'll still play it until something else comes around or until we get bored. It doesn't matter, these internet debates do nothing but show who's e-penis is bigger. Infact they shouldn't even be considered debates becuase a debate becuase im sure that none of these posts have convinced anyone whos enjoyed playing supcom to stop!

[Neddie]

One; The Infinite War cannot end. It wouldn't be Infinite if that were the case, lads.
Two; Any more personal jousting matches and somebody will put you down for the count. Such is the way of the internet, stop trying to wave your virtual genitalia for attention.
Three; If you're going to undermine a statement, then actually do it - don't pull a vague and entirely superfluous post out of thin air in an attempt to appear witty and/or emulate parody.

does this count as a vague and entirely superfluous post pulled out out of thin air?

Your post? We would have to ask the for the full opinion of your peers as a group to have an acceptable and reliable answer.

Homosexuality, also, is not hurting anybody. Just bringing that up.

So, are there any third party groups working on equivalent expansions?