SupCom2 Demo

[Das Bruce]

So how is it strategically, then...

It does not understand the word.

[LordMuffe]

bought it, played it.... fun in mp... and the graphics are really cool on the highest settings. seems that the textures look much better in the full versions compared to the demo...

and some of the experimental-units are super fun :)

[1v0ry_k1ng]

You can queue, however you can't select more than one builder at a time and order them to build. This is terrible, aircraft also sit airborne and motionless while not doing anything, this is so shit it hurts.

nggh I hate the industry

[luckywaldo7]

So if units are paid for upfront when they are ordered, how exactly does the repeat work? Does it upfront pay for as many unit loops as can be paid for, or does it switch to paying only at the moment of construction?

[AF]

Unsure, I assume it pays for each item in the queue as and when it can, waiting if there isn't the resources. I haven't played around and watched too closely

I got the game earlier today, but I had to head off to lectures, I just got a quick read of the manual instead.

[JohannesH]

So how is it strategically, then...

It does not understand the word.

Ok. Winner is determined by a coinflip then, or what?

[Gota]

Hmm on gamespot players gave it a 6.8
a very low score...
Most SC1 fans say its just a dumbed down version of the first.

[Tribulex]

seems u can only build with 1 con at a time too. if you set a con to assist another, it will just get started on the next thing in the que. sucks.

Guess than means no ta-style airconswarms :)

[AF]

pfft steam

[AF]

Okay they made a lot of tweaks and bugfixes since the demo, the delay in orders appears to have gone and things seem overall a lot more responsive.

I'm troubled by the habit of fighters to arrange themselves in neat formations. I don't want my patrol of 80 fighters to be stuck in the one bit of the route *facepalm*

The pay before you use setup doesn't really affect you later on but its frustrating early game not being able to click on the icon and pre-order

[Google_Frog]

the only thing that has changed is it take the entire cost of the order when it's clicked

Doesnt this break looping buildorders as only the cheapest stuff gets build and there might never be enough ressources stored for the more expensive units to start construction?

Of course this will break looping. Cheap units will take the resource before the expensive ones can be started. This means there is a lot of econ micro to do something as simple as creating a few units at a desired ratio.

Optimum play is generally when you spend all your resources as fast as possible but the build interface fights against this. If you want to build a few unit types and run a tight economy prepare to constantly micro your factories.

[AF]

That is not true, I suspect strongly that order is preserved

[Tribulex]

Order is preserved. However, instead of stalling, you look like an idiot as your factory sits there doing nothing. It sucks. I feel like you will have to wait around for enough resources for experimentals and such.

[Google_Frog]

That is not true, I suspect strongly that order is preserved

Of course order within a single factory. The repeat issue arises when you want to use multiple factories to make different units.

[Tribulex]

ya, like setting an airlab on repeat fighters and setting your experimental on repeat fatboy. If you dont have enough eco, you will have alot of fighters and no fatboy

[AF]

Tip 1: Turn off the stupid strategic overlay

I played a full skirmish game, and it seems to play surprisingly well if not different.

There are no tech levels. There is 1 mass extractor, 1 power plant, 1 assault bot, 1 artillery bot, etc The tech tree is surprisingly flat and simple. Its setup in such a way too that I dont end up spamming energy structures like solars either.

Stuff builds a lot faster too, and works a lot easier, far less hassle to use mostly. Some of the upgrades are nifty as well. For example all cybran land units can be upgraded with jumpjets, and then upgraded again for range, giving them a rather sizeable distance they can leap over.

Transports work VERY well. I love that units just have to walk under a transport, no slow and clunky maneauvering them into place and extending grappling hooks, no slowing down and turning, they just walk to the transport and get sucked up. All the fiddlyness has been removed.

Self destruct is still in there but if needs to be researched. There are numerous other things in there too.

Overall the complexity has been streamlined and a few assumptions have gone straight out the window. For example it looks like they expect large armies of mini experimentals to be built and decided to skip putting in uber expensive stuff into those units. Rush to superunits isnt going to work quite as well here.

They've also merged a few roles together. For example the cybran aircraft plants builds a single unit type which is a combined bomber fighter, then you research better specialized versions such as dedicated fighters and dedicated gunships.

Later on in the game after 15 minutes the economy just flows really nicely. I don't like the steps leading up to that where you have to decide what to build and regularly run out however. I much prefer this hybrid system to the AoE type resources it's compromising with.

Also loving the unit magnet building. You can repulse all enemy units on the map away from it, or attract, and they get pulled into a small trench surrounding it with big grinding things that kill them. It costs energy to purchase a time period of attraction or repulsion, and lasts for about 30 seconds.

[Master-Athmos]

Even though I created this topic I wasn't able to play it until recently. When hearing about its "innovations" I didn't plan to buy it but what I got my hands on in the demo was just devastating to me...

Seriously - what have they done to SupCom? It's not just something dumbed down it's plain awful. It starts with the gameplay and ends with the presentation. I actually don't know where to start. The best part of their innovations probably is the resource system. I cannot say that I like it but at least it's easier to handle with just one structure, things build pretty fast and it's easy to guess what something costs and when you can afford it. So with the goal of making that part less complex is pretty successful I guess...

Just as for resources they tried to simplify many other things too but in my opinion greatly failed on this task. The term "dumbing" down fits very well in terms of units because this part really was bad to me. You now just have a unit for a certain purpose and that's it - there's no variety whatsoever. At the same time it seems that they tried to keep the "cool" stuff from SupCom 1 just as its epic scale. It feels like a joke though and it's like you'd take SupCom 1 and rip out the entire T2 and T3 and make T3 units like the Loyalist or Harmbringer into so called "Experimentals" with an nice look. In exchange for teching you do a so called "research tree" which gives your units slight improvements to make them better. Instead making this a serious strategic element it's done via a stupid point system making a research lab spam the way to go with an insanely fast progression leading to being able to get experimentals (and as I heard also nukes) at an incredibly fast rate. It really makes SupCom 2 a quite silly game leading to just a fraction of the initial depth by having just like 4 ground, air and sea units plus some experimentals. During the missions I also was surprised that the ACU cannot walk through deep water so I guess amphibic warfare is another thing that got deprecated...

While talking about the missions: What did happen here? Are the same Square Enix guys who created badass characters like Sephiroth responsible for this? It starts with the characters looking stupid and actually also cheap in comparison to the level of artistic quality from SupCom 1. I didn't really get the storyline but maybe the intro either isn't included or only gets played in the tutorial. It nevertheless is as stupid as it could be. The most annoying part probably are the dialogues which are just awful. Especially that General and the Cybran get very cheap lines. Maybe that's due to a very comic style presentation in contrast to the pretty serious SupCom 1. I guess that also explains the map design - while I sort of liked that futuristic plattform from the E3 presentations what I got to see in the 2nd level of the demo is just ridiculous. Some sort of plateau rising up for whatever reason and consisting of island like things connected by iirc wooden looking bridges featuring some stone made pit things which spam Fatboy experimentals who just go down a premade route. Are they serious? They turned the entire SupCom universe into a joke ruining a to my mind excellent setting which was far better than e.g. TA in giving a believable "excuse" for such ultimate warfare and the concept of the Commanders...

I also was a bit surprised by the general graphics quality. Despite the comic look this is many steps backwards from the SupCom 1 quality (and that at an extremly smaller amount of units). Especially that UEF naval carrier experimental was extremely ugly. Not so much because of the geometry which was good I guess but the texture was just wrong - it's just a big ugly floating piece of teamcolor...

Well to sum things up I'm astonished how they could mess up the game in such a magnitude. Well ok I'm not asking for an improved SupCom 1 here as they clearly said they wanted to make part 2 more easy and accessible. Ok this doesn't make SupCom 2 a bad game by principle but the way they tried to achieve this is just plain wrong in my opinion and created a stupid and highly boring game concept. I actually had the feeling that they tried to melt Demigod and SupCom together. Seriously - those Fatboys following certain roads on some plateau bridge connected fantasy setting with a Commander that e.g. has special abilities like that invulnerability mode where you cannot shoot or move - if that's no inspiration taken from Demigod I don't know what else it is. Maybe it were the same devs who worked on both...

[Tribulex]

omfg should i read that? Thats longer than the average Argh post!

[Das Bruce]

Sumarised for you.

SupCom2 sucks

[Scratch]

i take it the game sucks

i hear resources play almost no part