Supreme Commander: It's fun!

The game that has been in vogue for me lately is Supreme Commander. I love it. I never played the original Total Annihilation series, or any of its millions of mods, but the game immediately struck a chord with me after I started playing it.

I'm still rather ambivalent about the single player campaign that was provided. I only made it a few missions in before switching my sights to skirmish maps and multiplayer maps. My main quibble being that I want to have all the units and all of the upgrades available to me from the start so that I can have a greater variety of strategies available to me.

The multiplayer, however, is very robust. I'll be the first to say that it's never the same game twice in a row. The size of the map, the players on the other side, your faction choice, and how you choose to play make it all very dynamic. On the other hand, my online experiences seem to show me two big game winning methods: Tier 1 rushing and Tier 3 Siege Bots/Strategic Bombers. But even then, the games have so many nuances and variations even on those two strategies alone that it's worthwhile.

Supreme Commander, to me, is composed of two very large but equally important parts: the logistics of the battlefield and the tactics involved in an engagement. These two components could really be related to almost any RTS, but Supreme Commander's huge scale puts these in perspective that much better.

The logistical component of the battle rests in managing your economy and having sufficient forces in the right places. Economy can be pretty straight forward at times: have enough mass extractors and power generators to keep units pouring out of your factories. Economy also involves defending those resources to a greater or lesser extent. The other portion of the logistical battle is producing units, and generally lots of them, and making sure that they are in a position to react quickly in a defensive situation or optimally in an offensive manner. An army might as well not exist if you can't put it to good use. Having lots of units coming out of factories is good, but having those units ferry into the back of an enemy base or to a flank is even better! Logistics also involves a bit of intelligence too: you can't position your forces well if you don't know where the enemy is. So, having a good radar/sonar setup is fairly critical, and these two buildings should never be neglected in your infrastructure.

So, you have a ton of units and you have a good idea of where the enemy is or is coming from. The next thing to do, of course, is to bury them in the bodies of your diligently constructed army! Or maybe not. Sending gobs of units in formation at enemies is a good tactic, it provides a huge amount of brute force focused on a given direction.

But there can be so much more to it - a handful of units managed well can crush a much larger force. Example: Player 1 has 65 T1 units, comprised of 30 medium tanks, 25 artillery pieces, and 10 anti air guns. Player 2 has 5 T2 Heavy Tanks, 5 T2 Missile Launchers, and 5 T2 Gunships. Being an aware commander, Player 2 has sent scouts overhead and is aware of Player 1's unit composition, and have managed to keep them in the radar bubble. Player 1 gives the ctrl-click command for his units to move in formation to crush his opponent in one sweeping move. Player 2 might just let them come, thinking that his missile launchers, tanks, and air power will take the day. Maybe, but not without losing practically everything along the way - and whatever Player 1 has left will descend on his mass extractors, defenses, engineers, etc... Player 2, however, has a better idea: he's going to tell his missile launchers to kill all of Player 1's AA, allowing his gunships free reign over the battlefield. In this scenario, he might lose all of his ground units, but he is practically guaranteed to entirely obliterate Player 1's entire force, with gunships intact to wreak some havoc.

This scenario is simplistic, but also representative: a well-managed force of smaller units can destroy a larger force of uncoordinated units very handily.

In Supreme Commander, being good at just the logistics of an operation or just the tactics of a battle can bring a win. Most players fall somewhere between these two points on a line, closer to one or the other. However, being aware of both components of Supreme Commander can make for much earlier, impressive, and deft victories. Making the transition to being good at just one part of the game to being good at both parts of the game marks the difference between an average player and a skilled one.

So, Supreme Commander is a fun game, I'm enjoying it, and probably will continue to enjoy it!