Supreme Commander
Preview
Command astonishingly huge armies
by Marko Susimetsä
previewed on PC
Managing your empire
When you start the game, you are just a beginning commander in whichever faction you choose to support. You are sent on missions from planet to planet, through teleporting technology, to secure them for your faction. Each mission starts with you arriving on a new planet, destroying the near surroundings with the energy set free by the teleport sphere, and setting up your command unit to start building your base and producing your armies. The two key resources that you will want to secure as soon as possible are Mass and Energy. You produce these by building Mass Extractors and energy generators on suitable locations on the map. If you happen to lack in suitable positions for mass extractors, you can produce mass by building mass fabricators that transfer energy into mass.
After having set up your mass and energy production, you may start building your factories that will provide you with the much needed land, sea and air units. Factories that are located close to energy generators will produce units faster than those that are located far away from a steady source of energy. This may tempt you to build your base buildings as close to each other as you can, but then you should also consider the weapons of mass destruction that may be aimed at you. Do you really want to risk losing the entire campaign because one enemy nuclear missile got through your defences and laid all your factories and energy generators to waste?
When you reach the next tech level, some of your earlier units and buildings may become obsolete, while others you can upgrade. The most powerful buildings, such as a missile silo, take the longest to construct, unless you assign multiple engineers to work on the construction site. And, naturally, as you progress through the levels, you will get new and shinier units to throw at your enemies. All in all, the game includes 250 different units and structures that you can build, so you will not learn to use them all to the full effect during the first game session!
Waging the war
As was said above, Supreme Commander lets you control armies that are much bigger than in any other RTS thus far. Now, the reason why traditional RTSs have been limited in scope is pretty much the fact that it is hard for the player to keep track of the ever-expanding base while simultaneously producing units and sending them to the front lines. Without a real innovative advancement in the way the battles are depicted, you cannot get around this problem and promising vaster armies to play with will come back and bite you in the vulnerable place when you least expect it.
Luckily, Supreme Commander seems to be able to present the overall situation of the battle with a special strategic map that you get when you zoom out enough from the battlefield. The units will turn into icons representing larger armies. You can still control them by clicking on the icons and give them orders by moving them around on the battlefield. You could perhaps lead your armies to victory just by using this field, but then you'd miss out on the great spectacles such as dozens of small aircraft attacking a vast destroyer and falling in flames around it like moths flying into a candle.
With bigger maps, also logistics becomes a big factor in the war. Moving units across long distances takes time and, in case of slower ground units or lots of impassable terrain on your way, you need to take care to have transports that you can use to deliver your units where they are needed on the battlefield. Sometimes, you may even be able to surprise your enemy with a few cleverly positioned units. One very welcome idea is the idea of ferry systems. Basically, you can set up an air transport to lift up units from a specific location (where you have ordered all newly created units to gather) and deliver them to another location on the map.
