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Supreme Commander (video game)

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Supreme Commander
Supreme Commander box art
Developer(s)Gas Powered Games
Publisher(s)THQ
Designer(s)Chris Taylor
Platform(s)Windows
ReleaseEurope February 16, 2007 (EU)
United States February 20, 2007 (NA)
Australia February 22, 2007 (AU)
South Korea February 22, 2007 (ROK)
Genre(s)Real-Time Strategy (RTS)
Mode(s)Single player, Multiplayer
This article is about the video game. For the commander of a nation's military forces, see Commander-in-Chief.

Supreme Commander (abbr. Supcom) is a real-time strategy (RTS) computer game, developed by Chris Taylor's Gas Powered Games. It was first announced in the August 2005 edition of PC Gamer magazine and is referred to as the spiritual successor to Taylor's 1997 RTS game Total Annihilation, which was listed by Gamespy as the number one real-time strategy game of all time.[1] The game was released on February 16, 2007 in Europe and was shipped four days later, February 20 in the U.S.

Factions

There are three factions in Supreme Commander. They are all essentially human, but differ violently in their opinions on the path humanity should take.

In the wake of the events that led to the creation of the Cybran Nation and the Aeon Illuminate, the Earth Empire dissolved into anarchy. Since then three factions have been engaged in an "Infinite War" that has lasted a thousand years.

United Earth Federation

Background

The United Earth Federation (or 'UEF') is the faction representing the interests of a united earth-based government. The UEF developed from the ashes of the Earth Empire, and now seeks to re-unite humanity and restore Earth's control over the galaxy. Their society and military tactics resemble modern society more than the Cybrans or Aeon do. Their acceptance of a variant of slavery and ideology of forced unity lends a darker side to the faction.

Tactical Overview

The UEF favors traditional modes of warfare, utilizing tanks, bullets and large caliber weapons reminiscent of modern designs. They tend to be the toughest of all three factions, but often at the penalty of firepower and special abilities. Their design style is somewhat derived from 20th and 21st century mechanized warfare and technology, having inherited neither the alien tradition and methods of the Aeon, nor the ultra-integrated cybernetic mentality of the Cybran.

UEF's unit's turrets are mostly slow turning making them particularly weak to flanking attacks.

Aeon Illuminate

Background

The Aeon draw their roots from the Golden Age of expansion of the old Earth Empire. The descendants of the first humans to encounter alien intelligent life, a peaceful, yet highly advanced society called Seraphim which taught the colonists what they referred to as "The Way." Xenophobic humans however were always present, and the Earth Empire soon brought this peaceful race into extinction. The colonists of the alien planet, disciples of the Seraphim, and the teachings of "The Way," soon founded a civilization based on these teachings. With the technology and teachings of the aliens these humans began to spread their influence to either convert or kill non-believers in "The Way."

Tactical Overview

In sharp contrast to the other two factions, Aeon units have melded surfaces and typically display mirror-polished metal surfaces. Aeon tactics rely on efficient, specialized attack vehicles with very powerful, yet narrow capabilities.

Cybran Nation

Background

The Cybran Nation is composed of Symbionts, humans whose brains have been computerized and enhanced with implantable technology, including most importantly a downloaded mutual AI (in addition to various other augmentations). This allows them several advantages, such as being able to think more quickly and precisely, to be more perceptive, and have more accurate memory recall, but at the cost of being more easily controlled. They fight for the liberation of their fellow Cybran from the oppressive United Earth Federation, which fears their unrestricted potential and treats them as human computers and general technical laborers, due to the seamless ease with which they interface with technology. The UEF seeks to maintain the position of inferiority and service of the Cybran to natural humans, whereas the Cybran Nation demands emancipation and a society of their own in which they would not be forced into a frustrating reliance on humans.

The Cybran Nation is led by the disturbingly unfocused Dr. Brackman, the genius who invented Symbiont technology.

Tactical Overview

The Cybran units are cybernetic, reminiscent of mecha anime. Their focus is on adaptability and stealth. Their units display unusually wide ranges of adaptability, notably deploying ships with land-walking capabilities and an experimental mechanical crawler capable of walking on the ocean floor. The Cybran's versatility comes at the cost of having less direct strength. Most Cybran weapons are based on laser or pulse technology rather than projectiles, lending them more accuracy and increasing effectiveness against moving targets, but decreasing effectiveness versus fortifications or on varied terrain (due to their weapons' straight-firing nature)

Campaign

The single player campaign consists of 18 missions, 6 for each faction. The player is an inexperienced Commander who plays a key role in their faction's campaign to bring the 'Infinite War' to an end.

Each Campaign takes the player through the most of the same planets and similar missions, but from the perspective of the faction that is being played. Each mission is a critical engagement between the rival nations that could alter the balance of the conflict through failure or success with the final mission for each faction resulting in a free for all on Earth, attempting to seize control of Black Sun.

Though there are fewer campaign missions than most games, each mission can last some time. When players accomplish objectives, the map is expanded, sometimes doubling or tripling in size, and new challenges are revealed.

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General Storyline

The UEF is losing the 'Infinite War' due to having to fight on multiple fronts at the same time in comparison with Aeons and Cybrans who are more focused on fighting them than with each other. It is only a matter of time before the UEF is overrun. Due to this, the UEF has resorted to constructing a black-ops weapon known as 'Black Sun' which utilizes the Quantum Network to deliver a shockwave powerful enough to destroy a planet. The weapon however can be reconfigured for any faction's purpose and it is a race against time to gain control of the weapon before the other factions do.

UEF

As General Clarke has put it, "All hell has broken loose" and the UEF forces are spread thin. It is only a matter of time before they are overrun by the Aeon or Cybran sleeper cells. It is up to the 'new commander' to help ensure that 'Black Sun' will be completed on time to ensure their victory.

Cybran

QAI estimates that the UEF will fall within 42 days and that it is imperative the Cybrans deal with it before the Aeons do who would otherwise turn on them afterwards. It is up to the 'new commander' who will act as the 'tip of the spear' to ensure the Cybran's survival.

Aeon

There is a schism within the ranks and the princess, who has become disillusioned with the war path her people are currently taking, must find a way to defeat the UEF and stop the bloodshed before civil war breaks out and causes more destruction. It is up to her champion, a 'new commander' who will carry out her will and to bring peace and stability to the galaxy.

Gameplay

File:Pcgamer cover small.jpg
Supreme Commander on the cover of PC Gamer magazine.

Chris Taylor believed that most modern strategy games were actually tactics games, simply because they operated on too small a scale. His stated intention with Supreme Commander was to create a game that was strategy-focused by virtue of scale.

Supreme Commander centers around the 'Armored Command Unit', or Commander. These suits are designed to be transported through quantum gateways across the galaxy and contain all the materials to create a 30th-century war machine from scratch. All units except Commanders and Subcommanders are robotic.

Resources

There are two types of resources: Energy and Mass. Energy can be obtained by reclaiming organic debris or by constructing power generators. Mass can be obtained by constructing mass extractors on mass deposits and by building 'Mass Fabricators' which consume a great deal of energy. Mass can also be obtained by "reclaiming" wrecked units, rocks, and trees. Both resources can also be generated by certain unit upgrades. Each player has a certain amount of resource storage which can be expanded by the construction of storage structures. This gives players reserves in times of shortage or allows them to stockpile resources. Resources can be generated at a faster pace when the generating buildings and storage buildings are constructed next to each other, granting that player an 'adjacency bonus'.

The choice of resources reflects a futuristic society that has mastered transmutation.

Unit scale and Zoom

Supreme Commander uses a "strategic zoom" system that allows players zoom out far enough to view the entire map on the screen. It can do this smoothly and quickly. As it becomes difficult to distinguish individual units, they are replaced by icons denoting their type and role. Players can also zoom in close enough that the larger units such as battleships fill most of the screen. This system allows Supreme Commander to have vast units and maps.

In most RTS games, units must be sized to fit reasonably on the screen. This imposes minimums and maximums to unit and building sizes for the game to remain playable. For example, Act of War had to use two entirely separate zoom scales in order to implement realistically scaled naval units.

To accomplish this, Supreme Commander uses fully 3D terrain that is dynamically tessellated as the camera is moved around. Both units and maps also use normal maps in order to allow for a large amount of detail.

Advanced Interface

Players often had a difficult time controlling everything going on in Total Annihilation, Supreme Commander's "spiritual predecessor". In order to help players with this and to make the game more appealing to casual gamers, the game uses a number of labor and time-saving features. Factories still under construction can have items added to their queue; by holding Shift, players can view all the move and construction orders they have issued, and once placed construction orders are seen as faint green outlines, without the need to hold down the SHIFT key. Idle construction units can be selected by type. The game also uses a number of optional Overlays that help the player take in information at a glance. The Intelligence overlay shows the range and type of every radar, stealth generator, jammer, and sonar; the Economy overlay shows the mass and energy consumption or production of every unit on the screen.

Another notable feature is the ferry system. Typically, the use of armored personnel carriers and other transports in games is awkward at best; it requires a lot of effort from the player compared to the reward you get from doing so. It was often more efficient to build some buildings on enemy islands and create from there. In Supreme Commander, air transports can be ordered to use ferry routes. Other units can be way pointed onto the ferry beacons, automatically shuttling them to the other end of the route. Combined with the ability to issue detailed orders from factories, a player can produce units far behind the lines and have them automatically ferried to the front.

Supreme Commander natively supports multi-monitor displays and split screen on one monitor. Players can view the entire map or track a specific unit on it. However, no audio from secondary displays is played.

Simulation

Supreme Commander does not use probability tables to calculate hits or misses. Instead, each projectile is individually tracked in the world to see if it impacts a target. Accuracy depends on maneuvering, speed, and angle.

Tiers

All units and structures belong to one of four technology tiers or 'Tech' levels. Upgrading structures and producing advanced engineers allows the player to produce higher Tech units. The first Tech is available at the start of the game and consists of small, relatively weak units and structures. The second Tech expands a player's abilities greatly, especially in terms of base defenses and shielding. The third Tech level has very powerful units designed to break the defenses of the most entrenched player. The fourth, "experimental" Tech level includes massive constructions that take many resources and much time to construct but can turn the tide of battle.

AI

Supreme Commander features unusually varied skirmish AI. There are the typical Easy and Normal modes, but there are 3 variations on Hard. Horde AI will swarm the player with lower level units, Tech AI will tech up as fast as possible and assault the player with advanced units, and the Balanced AI attempts to find a happy medium.

However, it does suffer from the typical problems that plague RTS AIs. No AI understands placement as well as a player does and cannot adapt to enemy strategies as well. This can be exacerbated because of the importance of proper structure placement for purposes of base defense. Furthermore, its tactics can sometimes best be described as bizarre; the AI does things like send empty transport units to the player's base, and uses non-upgraded commanders as combat units while attempting to defend.

Despite this, the AI in Supreme Commander can be quite challenging to defeat, to those without plentiful experience in the genre. The AI will scout to determine its course of action. It will build effective clusters of defenses and artillery rather than placing them randomly across the map. It will even airlift ground units into your territory where your anti-air defense is weaker. It also sends its units in complex ground sweeping patterns rather than the usual RTS-AI style of building a mass of units and sending them directly at the nearest enemy unit.

Experimental Units

The fourth tier consists only of the "Experimental" units, all of which are large, expensive, and powerful. Each faction has 3 of these units. These units have unique capabilities, and are typically difficult to kill. Designed to end the game, some experimental units take as long as 90 minutes for a single engineer to construct. (More engineers will speed up construction.)

The experimental units, sorted by race, are:

United Earth Federation
  • "Fatboy" Mobile Factory : A tracked mobile base that can crawl across land and the ocean floor. It has a variety of weapons, including 4 battleship turrets, torpedo tubes and anti-aircraft capability. These are joined by a strong shield that operates only when no construction is underway. The Fatboy can construct land units at high speed and can repair and re-arm aircraft, but can only do any of this when on land, underwater it's a sitting duck.
  • "Atlantis" Submersible Aircraft Carrier: Can hold, refuel, and repair up to 150 aircraft, depending on size. It has several anti-aircraft missile launchers, mainly Surface-to-air missiles and AA guns, but primarily relies on powerful torpedoes (from six torpedo tubes) to inflict damage.
  • "Mavor" Strategic Artillery: An extremely expensive artillery structure, the Mavor can fire extraordinarily accurate artillery shells across the largest of maps, thanks to it being stationary. Requires a very long time to build, and has very high energy costs. The shells are of the same basic design as the UEF's nuclear weapons, and they arm in mid-air to prevent accidental detonation.
Cybran Nation
  • "Soul Ripper" Experimental Gunship: A very tough beetle-like gunship. Has a number of air-to-ground and air-to-air weapons. Low firepower, but very mobile. Usually meant for frontline help with air support and anti-air weapons, the Soul Ripper, if used correctly, can do a great deal of damage to the enemy.
  • "Scathis" Experimental Mobile Rapid Fire Artillery: The Scathis consumes a considerable amount of energy, but can quickly blast apart the toughest imaginable defenses. It is notable for its extreme vulnerability, for which it is the subject of much debate in the emerging Supreme Commander community.
  • "Monkeylord" Spiderbot: One of the most flexible units in the game, the Monkeylord can go anywhere and fight almost anything. Mounts torpedoes, heavy cannons and a powerful microwave laser, it is also undetectable by radar installations. The concentrated microwave laser continues firing as long units are in range, even if on the opposite side of the Monkeylord, resulting in a "garden hose" firing arc as the turret turns to meet the target.
Aeon Illuminate
  • "Czar" Flying Fortress: The Czar is usually described as an Independence Day-style flying saucer, complete with a massive beam weapon that annihilates anything in its path, but the Czar must be directly above to fire correctly. In addition to its main weapon, anti air weapons line the perimeter of the Czar, and it can carry a large amount of aircraft. Very useful for taking out enemy ground-based experimental units. Also the Czar will destroy anything it crashes on.
  • "Galactic Colossus" Sacred Assault Bot: This is the most resilient unit in the game and is the only one that can survive ground zero of a strategic nuclear explosion (in fact, four are required to destroy the Galactic Colossus). It has a head-mounted Photon Beam Cannon (which can take out an enemy commander in less than a second) and two 'gravity claw' arms. It is, however, extremely slow and lacks any anti-aircraft capabilities. In addition, the wreckage of the Sacred Assault Bot can provide possibly the largest amount of mass from a single object in the game to add to a commander's war effort if it is reclaimed.
  • "Tempest" Submersible Battleship: Carries a long range energy cannon and torpedo launchers. The Tempest can quickly construct naval units, however, like the "Fatboy" mobile factory, it can only attack or construct while surfaced.

Features

Chris Taylor has publicly stated that his goal for Supreme Commander was for it to be the most customizable RTS ever made, and would like to ship the team's development tools with the game itself. Upon the release of the game this goal was not achieved and the editing tools were not sold with the game.

An adjacency system will allow certain structures to benefit from being built directly adjacent to other structures; energy-consuming structures will use less energy when built adjacent to power generators, power generators will produce more energy when built adjacent to power storage structures and factories will consume less energy and mass when built adjacent to power generators and mass fabricators/extractors, respectively. Players must balance taking advantage of the adjacency system and spreading their structures apart, so as to not make them an easy target - threats from projectile splash damage, inaccurate weaponry and friendly-fire damage from exploding buildings are reduced in relation to the empty area present.

Musical score

The score for Supreme Commander is composed by Jeremy Soule, who is most famous for his compositions for Guild Wars series, The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, and The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Jeremy Soule also composed the music for the game's spiritual predecessor, Total Annihilation.

Reception

The hype around Supreme Commander's new sense of scale was largely justified at release, with Supreme Commander receiving reviews from online reviewers IGN and Gamespot of 9.0 and 8.7, respectively, and garnering an overall industry average (as of last Edit) of 85 from www.metacritic.com and an 87% from www.gamerankings.com. PC Gamer gave the game a 91% rating. PC Zone gave the game 88%. Computerandvideogames.com gave the game 9 out of 10.

Awards

At E3 2006, the game won the following Game Critics Awards: Best Strategy Game. [2]
IGN ranks Supreme Commander as the best upcoming PC game (ranked 19th against all consoles). [3]
IGN gave Supreme Commander its "Editor's Choice Award" [4]

Demo

On February 6th, 2007, a demo for Supreme Commander was released. It included a tutorial, a portion of the single-player campaign, and a two-player skirmish map called "Finn's Revenge" in which the player could fight against a easy, medium, or hard Cybran AI. Note that of the three factions, only the Cybran Nation was playable in the demo.

Trivia

  • Although Quantum Gates exist in space in the SupCom fiction, sending ships through them is exceptionally dangerous. That is why the three factions employ land-based Quantum Gates.
  • The SR90 (UEF Spyplane) pays a homage to the actual SR-71(Appearance and name), a supersonic spyplane.
  • The Cybran's experimental unit, the Monkeylord, has often been mistakenly attributed to being named by developers in honor of PC Gamer magazine. It was actually named by playtesters.
  • The Mavor is named after Lead Programmer Jon Mavor.
  • The Wagner is named after Producer Gary Wagner.
  • ‘Scathis’ is an online handle used by Lead Content Engineer John Comes.
  • The map “Ian's Cross” was named after Terrain Artist Ian Walker.
  • The map “Finn’s Revenge” is named after Chris Taylor’s youngest son.
  • Supreme Commander was originally a working title, and it was sure to be replaced at some point. There were dozens of suggestions for new names, but the original name stuck.
  • The map “Sung Island” is named after Units Modeler Sung Campbell.
  • Several of the minor characters are named after friends of the design team (e.g., Sweeney, Elliott, Stensen).
  • The character President Riley is named after Chris Taylor’s son.
  • The character Mach was originally named Janus, which was changed to Mercury, and finally to Mach.
  • The character Toth was originally named Ochiba, which was changed to Camille, and finally to Toth. (The name Toth is an homage to comic book artist Alex Toth, who passed away in 2006.)
  • Marxon’s first name is Jaran.
  • The Cybran were originally called the Recyclers.

References

  1. ^ GameSpy (2004-02-31). "Top Ten Real-Time Strategy Games of All Time". {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  2. ^ "2006 Winners". gamecriticsawards.com. Retrieved 2006-06-25.
  3. ^ "Top 100 Games". ign.com. Retrieved 2007-02-16.
  4. ^ "IGN Review". ign.com. Retrieved 2007-02-16.

Community sites

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