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Supreme Commander Review
Jon Wilcox
16/02/2007
Chris Taylor's spiritual successor to Total Annihilation finally arrives with a bang...
Ten years ago, Chris Taylor (then of CaveDog Entertainment) produced a Real-Time Strategy title called Total Annihilation, a game that pushed the boundaries of the genre thanks to the introduction of 3D units - a first. Since then, the genre has largely wallowed in a quagmire of generic releases, all too often inspired by the events of World War II. Occasionally a spark of originality occurs, like Company of Heroes or Warcraft III, but for a long time the genre needed a solid kick to push it forward. Which is where Chris Taylor once more steps in with Total Annihilation's so-called "spiritual successor" Supreme Commander.
Look at the size of that thing...
Four years in development, it's clear to see exactly what the team at Gas Powered Games aims to offer gamers: Scale and Scope. Set over 1800 years in the future, where three distinct factions of humanity perpetuate a war that has lasted for a millennium (the "Infinite War"), Supreme Commander introduces the prospect of large-scale battles with players capable of overseeing vast swathes of a planet's surface. Each of the three factions, UEF (United Earth Federation), Cybran Nation, and the Aeon Illuminate, see themselves as mankind's saviour at the destruction of the other two divisions. All three have the ability to raise massive armadas made up of hundreds of units, creating battles on a scale that quite simply has never been seen since the days of Total Annihilation, and then some. Finally, players have a complete view of the entire battlefield, creating an incredible sense of scale as the war ebbs and flows along a very dynamic front line, offering a level of strategy once more that is rarely seen in an RTS. At its core, Supreme Commander is an 'old-fashioned' RTS game, relying on an army's strength in numbers to succeed, but when these armies consist of not just dozens, but hundreds of units each, it re-defines tank-rushing in a whole new destructive and totally satisfying way.
Despite a perceived 'short' campaign of 6 missions per faction, each of the missions can continue for extended periods of time, with a continuous flow of objectives added as time goes on. Each of the game worlds are significantly largely than most RTS titles, something that becomes all too clear the second the player pulls away from the planet's surface, and each individual unit is replaced by an icon representing everything from its position, movement, and status. It's this viewpoint that Taylor has stated in the past as key to delivering a 'strategy' game and not a 'tactical' game, something that he feels many RTS titles have failed to achieve in the past. There's a distinct and familiar cascade to how each mission progresses, beginning each time with the arrival of the player's Armoured Command Unit on the planet. This futuristic method of space travel, called 'Gating' enables ACUs to drop land onto a surface in relative safety, allowing the next key step in building up the hive of units needed to complete the mission successfully.
Two resources are at the heart of unit manufacturing in the game, Power and Mass, and it's from these that the ACU and Engineering units create everything from Power Generators to the massively powerful (and resource draining) Experimental Units. Whilst Power can be infinitely gathered, Mass 'harvesting' can only be achieved on spots were 'mass outcrops' occur, making them precious locations in the game world - especially in some of the smaller Skirmish maps. Building both Mass and Power generators are key to the strategy of any player, especially as armies grow exponentially and the thirst for more resources increases.
Each of the three factions can produce Naval, Aerial, and Land-based units, spread over three tiers of increased magnitude, and a single tier of experimental craft so powerful, that generating them costs significant amounts of time and resources. Many of the Tier 1 units are on the sort of size and scale that you'd expect from an RTS title, growing to much larger units as they progress to the more devastating experimental units. With a level cap of 500 units per army in the Campaign, expect huge armadas to battle it out for global supremacy in combat on a scale never before seen in an RTS. At that scale, offensive rushes against the enemy can prove to be devastating on both sides, with losses in the dozens with every wave. Unit movements feel natural and unscripted compared to the canned animations traditionally used in RTS titles, the most noticeable example coming from the squadrons of aerial fighters, which flock together in smooth and natural movements.
Reigning Supreme
There's no doubt that for many months, hardcore RTS fans have been looking forward to getting to grips with Taylor's latest masterpiece, and for good reason. The general structure of the gameplay, including the interface, is one that'll be very familiar to anybody who has played an RTS title, and as such Supreme Commander is a very easy game to immerse yourself into. Selecting, moving, and issuing orders are all done in the same manner as every RTS since the beginning of the genre, but where Supreme Commander does push boundaries rests with the sheer amount of numbers, the scale of the gameworld, and an advanced interface and command system that is frankly, genre defining.
The number of units and the scale of the battlefields are things that have probably been emphasised enough, at least for now. There are a number of other additions to the gameplay that make Supreme Commander a benchmark in the progress of the RTS genre, not least the way it micro-manages units and handles resource management. A key feature is the ability to queue the building of structures, freeing players from spending too much time over the mundane matters of base-building, and instead focus on the flow of the battles or the build up to the encounters. Surely, a cornerstone of any RTS title in the future, the ability is further enhanced with a countdown to each unit's completion. In addition, players can set up links between production lines and transportation units, enabling an endless supply of automated support right when players need it.
The actual scale of Supreme Commander is easily apparent, but what continues to push the level of detail built into the game even greater is something that isn't quite obvious at first glance. Whereas a great deal of RTS titles use percentages to calculate the amount of damage dished out by a unit, Gas Powered Games has gone one further, calculating the logical damage of each and every projectile fired by a unit in the game. A breathtaking accomplishment by the developer, the function takes away rigid statistics of how two units would react to each other, instead allowing a more dynamic tussle to develop. The result may be the same, but at least you know that it was written in stone from the beginning of the encounter.
The Infinite War
Hardcore RTS fans will no doubt spend many sleepless nights battling through each of the faction campaigns, but when the Campaign is complete, what's next? Following in the footsteps of Total Annihilation, which is still being played by a select group of gamers to this day, Supreme Commander's supreme longevity comes from its Skirmish and Multiplayer modes. Four game types are available, each sounding as epic as it can possibly get, from Assassination (destroy the enemy APC units) to the truly hardcore Sandbox (the game never ends) - a clone of Chris Taylor could be created a thousand years from now and AI symbiant life forms would still be playing the game.
Dozens of maps have been bundled together with the game, ranging from the comparatively dwarf-like Blasted Rock (which covers 5 square kilometres of land), to the gigantic Betrayal Ocean (which, at 81 square kilometres, is a tad smaller than the country of Lichtenstein). Up to eight players can take part in the larger maps, with team play thrown in, with LAN support and online play from Gas Powered's GNGNet client. Additionally, every army can support up to 1000 units per side, double the amount in the Campaign, though expect severe slowdown if you're playing on anything but he upper echelon of gaming rigs.
For now, Taylor and the team are working out a plan on how to release the tools required for feverish modding by the Supreme Commander community; something that has certainly helped Total Annihilation over the last decade. A Mod Manager tool is included in the main menu of the game, so at least something will be coming eventually, though for now players will have to be content with just fighting in battles the likes of which the RTS genre (and videogaming as a whole) has never seen before.
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