REVIEW: Supreme Commander - Strategy that will strain your rig

Mike Bantick
Wednesday, 25 April 2007 13:04

Opinion and Analysis

Soon though, veterans and newbies alike will be mustering huge numbers of fighters, bombers, tanks, artillery, sea-borne destroyers, cruisers and subs.  At the same time they will be building formidable base defences which along with the ACU itself can be upgraded to various tech levels and bewildering array of equipment.

A tool in being able to manage all this choice, activity and real estate is another change to the TA mould.  The build and order queuing.  In SC multiple orders may be given to units with a simple hold of the Shift key, this enables simple set and forget build and scavenging chains for engineers along with coordination of a multi group attack.

The queuing of these orders enables you to concentrate on other areas of the battlefront comfortable in the knowledge that other parts of your army are taking care of business.  This is especially important in building a efficient and well defended base.

Ultimately the aim of each map is to take out the opposing ACU, generally this means a long term campaign of dissecting enemy defences for that final push by an overwhelming force.  This is quite achievable as quite early on in each mission resources become irrelevant, and you will be pumping out unit after unit with out an economy to concern you.

SC will tax your computer; it is already becoming the game of choice to stress out new graphics card or CPU technology.  Once you are controlling hundreds of units each with queued orders things can start to “chug” on even a high end rig – be warned.  One does wonder why Gas Powered Games did decide to calculate the trajectory and impact of each shot fired in the game.  Traditionally the amount of damage done by an attacker has simply been done using a lookup table and/or a virtual roll of the dice.  Both methods achieve the required goal, one – the SC one- takes a heck of a lot more computing power to get done.

The RTS experience with SC, even when the frame rate drops, is still empowering.  Taking out a CPU or human controlled ACU at the end of a arduous mission is a rewarding feeling, perhaps not in the same league as Medieval Total War II or some of the better moments in Dawn of War, but satisfying none the less.