Very well written, The personal twist at the end akin to the tele-snipes you vividly described. I feel that the 'never say die' aspect of this game that you've conveyed so well is what gives me some life at the moment. Creativity under pressure. When life circumstances become hard, this game and the casts are neurological relief, a way to imagine new outcomes from ever-emergent complexity. Thank you.
IRL half the games are Thermopylae (no air) or Dual Gap or Astro Craters... What you see on Gyle is atypical.
And yet there's still more of this game than you covered! There are the Phantom games which I loved but had a global player base of about 15-20 people. 2 players get an eco bonus and have to kill the other four (before killing eachother) so there's a game of deception and diplomacy as we move our fleets around, jostling to be the last one standing. Or if you're innocent you just have to survive.
There are also the PVE/team PVP games where you have to face endless AI hordes who march into your point defense, (usually with extensively modded extensions of point defence). At the same time, you're fighting the enemy team on the other side to outlast eachother, sending off nukes or strategic artillery.
There was one brief gamemode called zombie, where it was 8 players vs 1 player who (whenever he killed a unit) got a clone of that unit.
Phantom was always deeply cool (if nigh unwatchable for the first 40 minutes, ussually) because all the phantom players develop insane skillsets no one else has.
All the Experimental and T3 units with factory suites you never use, all of a sudden they become deeply relevant when the game's going to 2 hours and your entire land base is getting destroyed... or suddenly all the different kinds of submarine warfare become incredibly relevant because Mass points and fabricator farms are no longer possible, and instead you have to hunt down all the RAS preset Support commanders on the ocean floor.
You start to learn there really aren't useless tools and abilities in the game... just ones optimized for wildly different minute marks
You should've seen the lag problems we have on big Phantom games. Casts are always at 0-0, we could be at -4 for prolonged periods of time.
Once you play 100 games of Roanoke you get a very good build order, that's a lot of what's going on. I had a tactic of building combat SACUs which are relatively easily disguised since everyone else is building RAS SACUs and airlifting them just to the side of the enemy island, outside their SAM ring. They shred everything since there's no PD that can beat six 40,000 HP death machines with rapidfire AOE attacks. Of course that meant I had a weaker navy...
Or using the Seraphim battleship nukes! Normally they're not used but on phantom it's good to have something that's plausibly deniable in the way a missile submarine isn't.
Magnificent dissection beyond what I could've realized back in the 2010s when only playing but not quite so carefully studying it. There is a rightful resurgence of this legendary game, and genre perhaps? Love to see it. Perhaps one day a proper sequel will come—in my dreams sometimes there does.
Very interesting article! Made me wish to revisit this game. There is a very similar (free) game called Zero-K, it's a more of rethinking of Total Annihilation, with a very well developed customizable UI and good unit AI. It also has an interesting take on balance, there are no factions, you all start with the same building options, but they are even more diverse and crazy than in Supcom, you can build anything from the start, there are no tech tiers, only your economy is the limiting factor. There is a very rich constantly shifting meta-game.
Thank you for this article. I am a big fan of SC but never played with the mod or online. I loved how you could use a 2nd monitor to display the entire map. I've never seen this in any other game. I liked the storyline too. SC2 was a little disappointing. Neat contrast to chess which I also used to play when I was younger!
Wow this is the best explanation of why despite some trying and time having had all the years scene 2007 to make something better than this game, well no one has! This is a must read for anyone trying to make a game to surpass supcom!
I still have feverish nightmares in which the phrase "Strategic launch detected" is repeated over and over again
Very well written, The personal twist at the end akin to the tele-snipes you vividly described. I feel that the 'never say die' aspect of this game that you've conveyed so well is what gives me some life at the moment. Creativity under pressure. When life circumstances become hard, this game and the casts are neurological relief, a way to imagine new outcomes from ever-emergent complexity. Thank you.
Was a big fan of Total Anal, never got into Supreme Commander but bought it for dirt after reading this.
IRL half the games are Thermopylae (no air) or Dual Gap or Astro Craters... What you see on Gyle is atypical.
And yet there's still more of this game than you covered! There are the Phantom games which I loved but had a global player base of about 15-20 people. 2 players get an eco bonus and have to kill the other four (before killing eachother) so there's a game of deception and diplomacy as we move our fleets around, jostling to be the last one standing. Or if you're innocent you just have to survive.
There are also the PVE/team PVP games where you have to face endless AI hordes who march into your point defense, (usually with extensively modded extensions of point defence). At the same time, you're fighting the enemy team on the other side to outlast eachother, sending off nukes or strategic artillery.
There was one brief gamemode called zombie, where it was 8 players vs 1 player who (whenever he killed a unit) got a clone of that unit.
Phantom was always deeply cool (if nigh unwatchable for the first 40 minutes, ussually) because all the phantom players develop insane skillsets no one else has.
All the Experimental and T3 units with factory suites you never use, all of a sudden they become deeply relevant when the game's going to 2 hours and your entire land base is getting destroyed... or suddenly all the different kinds of submarine warfare become incredibly relevant because Mass points and fabricator farms are no longer possible, and instead you have to hunt down all the RAS preset Support commanders on the ocean floor.
You start to learn there really aren't useless tools and abilities in the game... just ones optimized for wildly different minute marks
You should've seen the lag problems we have on big Phantom games. Casts are always at 0-0, we could be at -4 for prolonged periods of time.
Once you play 100 games of Roanoke you get a very good build order, that's a lot of what's going on. I had a tactic of building combat SACUs which are relatively easily disguised since everyone else is building RAS SACUs and airlifting them just to the side of the enemy island, outside their SAM ring. They shred everything since there's no PD that can beat six 40,000 HP death machines with rapidfire AOE attacks. Of course that meant I had a weaker navy...
Or using the Seraphim battleship nukes! Normally they're not used but on phantom it's good to have something that's plausibly deniable in the way a missile submarine isn't.
I know there have been performance improvements, wonder if phantom is more viable now...
Magnificent dissection beyond what I could've realized back in the 2010s when only playing but not quite so carefully studying it. There is a rightful resurgence of this legendary game, and genre perhaps? Love to see it. Perhaps one day a proper sequel will come—in my dreams sometimes there does.
Very interesting article! Made me wish to revisit this game. There is a very similar (free) game called Zero-K, it's a more of rethinking of Total Annihilation, with a very well developed customizable UI and good unit AI. It also has an interesting take on balance, there are no factions, you all start with the same building options, but they are even more diverse and crazy than in Supcom, you can build anything from the start, there are no tech tiers, only your economy is the limiting factor. There is a very rich constantly shifting meta-game.
Thank you for this article. I am a big fan of SC but never played with the mod or online. I loved how you could use a 2nd monitor to display the entire map. I've never seen this in any other game. I liked the storyline too. SC2 was a little disappointing. Neat contrast to chess which I also used to play when I was younger!
Wow this is the best explanation of why despite some trying and time having had all the years scene 2007 to make something better than this game, well no one has! This is a must read for anyone trying to make a game to surpass supcom!