Supreme Commander is a perfect example of awesome ideas and terrible marketing.
Both true. It was also buggy as hell, and it had system requirements in its day that would make all the modern Crysis jokes look like they're serious. That didn't stop it being very enjoyable, and Forged Alliance was a decent expansion too, but the endless crashes just as large-scale games were moving into full swing got old.
Also, the strategic zoom was a mixed blessing. It was a great idea, but what's the point of having fine unit control and gorgeous graphics in the game if you have to spend 95% of your time playing general rather than sergeant, zoomed out to global icon view? At higher tech levels and on larger maps, that was almost essential, so you could see a wave of tech 3 attack units or an experimental coming in time to do something about it because the defensive units at higher tech levels didn't keep up with the offensive ones.
IMHO Supreme Commander was a game that genuinely deserved descriptions like "epic", but it was far from perfect and there would be plenty of scope for a modern game to learn from what it did well but perhaps take a fresh look at things like strategic vs. tactical control and providing a flexible economy that created options but without requiring micromanagement of resource generation and unit building.
And if you didn't have two monitors? Little icons zooming around.
IMO, the best thing about TA and TA:Spring is the explosions - when you're under attack, you really know it. Supreme Commander lost all of that feel once you got more than a handful of units.
Both true. It was also buggy as hell, and it had system requirements in its day that would make all the modern Crysis jokes look like they're serious. That didn't stop it being very enjoyable, and Forged Alliance was a decent expansion too, but the endless crashes just as large-scale games were moving into full swing got old.
Also, the strategic zoom was a mixed blessing. It was a great idea, but what's the point of having fine unit control and gorgeous graphics in the game if you have to spend 95% of your time playing general rather than sergeant, zoomed out to global icon view? At higher tech levels and on larger maps, that was almost essential, so you could see a wave of tech 3 attack units or an experimental coming in time to do something about it because the defensive units at higher tech levels didn't keep up with the offensive ones.
IMHO Supreme Commander was a game that genuinely deserved descriptions like "epic", but it was far from perfect and there would be plenty of scope for a modern game to learn from what it did well but perhaps take a fresh look at things like strategic vs. tactical control and providing a flexible economy that created options but without requiring micromanagement of resource generation and unit building.