Vaclav Elias

I gave a go and played Supreme Commander 2 a real time strategic game recently. I was very interested how strategic games have changed as I haven’t played for a long long time. I remember still Dune II (1992); I loved that game and editing it to get more units and money.

So what is it like now playing Supreme Commander 2?

I spent playing only 8 hours, no more time was available. The story is kind of strange; I think maybe better writers could be hired. The guy, with his Armored Command Unit (ACU) tries to do some work. He works very hard for UEF and after he kills many enemies he realizes maybe he shouldn’t work for UEF because they want to kill also his family. The humanity is doing much better in this game than in the real life; consider this conversation I changed a bit:

The guy: “..but they are innocent civilians..”
UEF: “..they are terrorists..”
The guy: “..there are children..”
UEF: “..they are also terrorists, give them a nuke, ..the nuke was launched..”

That is enough about the story I was told that I saved some civilians. I guess I killed also many innocent enemies, well before they were friends. What a life?

I don’t play games, haven’t played Supreme Commander the first so this is just my observation.

The land, air and naval units are remotely controlled. I guess they are robots and no people inside.

The Best

• It supports naturally two screens, it was really nice to play on my two 24” screens (1920×1200), well the secondary screen was used only as a big map but it was interactive (zoom, move, select, ..) and so very helpful and I did feel like in a command centre
• Reclaim! I love recycling, you can recycle any unit and structure
• Destroyed units and structures stay in the game, not sure if all but this is cool as they can be reclaimed

Good

• Nice graphics, nice effects
• The unit can be in more groups (Ctrl + Number)
• You can set “Guard” mode for any unit so it can guard some unit/structure

Annoying

• I played just a few missions and got 5/5 stars for everything except the time 0/5. WTF? Isn’t it a strategic game? Or I did too much strategy?
• The destroyed units should become a natural obstruction, if there is a battlefield with many destroyed units this should all stay there and become an obstruction unless it is removed by some units or cleared by bulldozers?

Very Annoying

• I couldn’t easily ungroup the unit from the group
• When a unit is just about to die (red colour bar on the unit indicator) I wanted to click on it and sent back to the base so it is repaired. Nice, good idea. But when I moved a group to a different position it automatically moved back the dying unit (wrong unit driver?). WTF? WHY JUST A VERY DAMAGED UNIT CANNOT GO AUTOMATICALLY TO THE REPAIR POINT? Or some aircraft could come and take it to the repair point. Wasn’t this in DUNE II 18 years ago?
• The same problem above with aircrafts
• When I wanted to attack some target deep inside the enemy area I sent a group of aircrafts. WATCH OUT! This can be a suicide mission if they attacked one by one (wrong unit driver?) so you have to move them first to some location and wait till they are all together, then you can attack. WATCH OUT! If they turn around to do a second attack in case the target hasn’t been destroyed they are turning around the area where all anti-aircraft turrets are (wrong unit driver?). WTF? Are you blind? Just fly away as a group, turn in the safe area and come back
• How comes that after 18 years from Dune II the units still have got unlimited ammunition and oil. Even they had a special energy sources they need to recharge them. Or in rockets case they need to reload. NOPE! Your unit can sit wherever it is and can shoot forever
• When the unit is “dying” it is fully functional until it is dead. Well, real life, I can damage you so you cannot move but maybe you can still shoot or you cannot shoot but you can still move. YES! In this case turn and come back to the base so you are repaired
• Research, each mission you have to do again and again the same research, also it wasn’t very clear what the specific research is for, it missed a better comment or a button help where I could easily find out what is a particular research about
• You can set Path for any unit, but it would be better to set an area which you want to guard. E.g. just draw a circle around the place you want to secure
• Factories. When I clicked a factory to build a unit it wasn’t clear where it is going to be deployed. There is a tiny mark hardly visible if there are many units or structures. Even if you re-do the deployment point you can easily forget where it is
• Difficult to recognise easily my own anti-air and land turrets. Which one is which one? Wait till they start shooting.
• It wasn’t that clear that some aircrafts cannot attack land units
• When the nearby units are under attack, your mate next to that unit(s) is just watching, drinking his coffee and checking emails in his mobile. Well, he is not going to help you because the enemy unit is not in his range. He is not aware he is the next one who is going to die. STRANGE. Shouldn’t there be an option if your units in your range are under attack maybe I should help them?

All land, naval and air units in the Supreme Commander 2 need better software or drivers. Not sure what operation system they are running on? Windows? Linux?

It looks that this real time strategic game Supreme Commander 2 teaches you sending your units for a suicide missions because you can still build more and more new units. I did enjoy playing but this game didn’t drag me in.

If I have missed any functionality I mentioned in the game this could be just that the game wasn’t that intuitive for me and probably it should be in the tutorial which I did twice.

Happy Gaming 2011!