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My one and only problem with SupCom is that it slows down to a crawl when you have many AI-controlled players on a large map. This is still true today - I tried
by klibertp 8y ago
My one and only problem with SupCom is that it slows down to a crawl when you have many AI-controlled players on a large map. This is still true today - I tried playing SupCom on a high-end laptop from 2017, and maps larger than 10x10 with multiple AI opponents are still unplayable. There are AI mods which supposedly improve this, but in my testing, the difference was minor to non-existent. Which is a damn shame, because even the hardest, cheating AI is very easy to defeat if you're somewhat experienced, so I mostly resorted to playing against 3+ allied AIs, which is simply impossible on larger maps.
That being said, SupCom is easily the best RTS I ever played - it was basically Total Annihilation, only bigger, better and prettier. And TA was already an exceptional RTS, one that people still played and enjoyed as long as a decade after release.
I think TA and SupCom ruined the whole RTS genre for me. I was trying to play some newer RTSes, but they are all lacking in features which the two taught me to rely on and enjoy. Strategic zoom, queues of commands in factories and building units, waypoints, unit formations, ferry routes, terrain obstructing visibility, radars, and getting in the way of bullets/missiles, an economy where you have to balance income and spending, gradual construction of structures and units, massive amounts of units on the map and massive units themselves (experimentals), very well-balanced factions with each still being quite distinct and so on - there are games with some of these features, but I couldn't find a game which would have all or even most of them. SupCom2 was a disaster and I refuse to consider it SupCom at all, so I'm basically still waiting for the sequel.
Or maybe I just missed a game like that - suggestions on the titles to try would be very welcome!
- jules 8y agoHave you tried FAF?
- hnmonkey 8y agoI assume you're referring to https://www.faforever.com/ https://www.faforever.com/ because just googling for FAF doesn't give you anything useful.
- hnmonkey 8y agoTo add to this... it appears that FAF is referenced elsewhere in this thread by mrguyorama and AceJohnny2 while providing more details on it.
- jbattle 8y agoYou might like Sins of a Solar Empire. The scale is even larger than SupCom, so a full game can run several hours to complete. You can play on smaller maps as well, but the game shines best with several different solar systems. It's got large fleets, a decent amount of automation (very little micro needed as I recall), a huge range of scale in terms of the units themselves, strategic zoom every bit as good as SC. Layer on top of that a research tree, neutral factions (pirates) you can influence, 'hero' units in the form of capital ships that you can level up and customize. I haven't played since the very first release, so maybe it's gotten overcomplicated since then - but I think it's worth a look
- eximius 8y agoIt's still pretty good. :) I sometimes wish there were more micro, but I'm really not that good at micro so it's probably for the best. Haha I always feel like I have things to do, macro-wise. Haven't played much recently due to the game lengths, but it's always fun. (Go Vasari!)
- theandrewbailey 8y agoThere's Planetary Annihilation. Many of the same people who worked on TA and SupCom worked on it. It seems to channel many of the same points. https://store.steampowered.com/app/386070/Planetary_Annihilation_TITANS/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/386070/Planetary_Annihila... I've wanted to dig into this game for years, but haven't had the time. What little I have spent was a few campaign missions fighting on planets the size of tennis balls.
- Synaesthesia 8y agoWe’re basically limited by CPU performance which is necessarily single threaded since it’s synced to all players, plus it will run at the speed of the slowest player in the network. Even with modern CPU’s you see slowdowns in SC2, especially with 4 or more players.