I truly cannot understand why so many of you guys get wet pants over this...

I couldn't agree less with some of his statements. The Rock/Paper/Scissors principle is a cornerstone of true strategy gaming. Look at all the possiblities in StarCraft... there's a reason pros get filthy rich and famous in Korea with this game. It's like chess.

"We do have infinite resources, because infinite resources are way more accurate to reality. "

...give me a break - this couldn't be further from the truth. Everybody with basic highschool history knowledge knows the Germans lost WW2 mainly because they couldn't keep up with the Allies building enough tanks and airplanes, although their equipment (King Tiger, Me262) was far superior.

It looks like this game caters mostly to the 14 year old kids playing those stupid unlimited ressources maps building craploads of units as fast as possible and then just autoroute them into the enemy base.... Where is the strategy in that? "Cool, we can have 4000 units - or even 10'000". So what? Looks to me like all the graphics pimping going on in FPS gaming nowadays. Technical features don't make the gameplay.

Oh, and my little sister could design more imaginative robot tanks - can you say generic and uninspired art direction?

Although Starcraft, Warcraft 3, and Dawn of War are great games each, they are far from perfect. There is too much micromanagement in these games considering how small the scale is.

These games should be more about thinking, tactics, and strategy, not about who is most skilled with mouse and keyboard. I have no intention or time to study fastest build orders, or all of the hot keys.

I don't want to micromanage my troops during the battle too much, I just want build them, point them to some direction to attack, and so that they can do their "thing" as any trained military unit would do.

Also when you are playing in smaller scale, and in smaller maps with not so many units, you can always expect what units your opponent is ultimately going to use, if you are playing against Eldar in DoW multiplayer, you can be sure that at some point you'll be facing Fire Prism tanks. And because the scale is so small, its hard to hide any of your units, and maps limit your ability to outflank your enemies.

In Total Annihilation you could always surprise opponent with many different ways, and I can see that there willl be even more ways to surprise your enemy in Supreme Commander.

Zooming far out is also great feature, often in DoW I just simply miss lot of important happenings in the game because there is so much happening in the screen sametime. Warning messages about your base being attacked when you are middle of huge battle are easy to miss.

Awesome interview. Dual core and dual monitor support is cool.

It's kinda odd that I read a lot about TA being great (not only from here), Christ Taylor being a good game designer etc. but I found TA "only" to be a good game, not a superb one.

I think it reflected in sales too, it couldn´t compete with C&C or Starcraft.

Or maybe I'm just not too easily defaced by the hype anymore...we are all growing older (and smarter), right?

Why can't we play this now :(

I'm so psyched for this game it's unbelievable. I just pray he Chris can pull off everything he's promising and make it workable.

I want to indulge all my Napoleonic fantasies and be in charge of a fucking war. I want massive tank and K-Bot wars between hundreds of units raging in the centre of a map, whilst ships and subs engage offshore and aircraft fly in reinforcements. I want timed pincer attacks on enemy bases from land, sea and air at the same time, and I want territorial control to really matter. Shifting battlefronts in the war for resource control, and strategic use of terrain to hide artillery. I want it to be epic.

If you'll excuse me, I'm going to go jerk-off to the gameplay videos again.

One thing I found really interesting was the focus on 'war' more than 'battles'.

Since they're going this route, I hope they allow co-op, where 2 or more players can control one "side" with one player being the 'supreme commander' and the others following his/her orders... or customize it however.

Reason being, if you're running a war, you want intel-gathering, building, resource management, and the guy actually leading the troops into battle divied up. Otherwise that can become a huge amount of work in the larger, humongous-er games. :) I don't think they should design it around multiple people, but allow the games to get massive enough to allow that kind of thing. I think it'd be a cool kind of co-op.

Total Anal Lotion was great, cant wait for SC.

Great interview, Remo! Now the wait for this game is even more painful. :(

re : Rock paper scissors - it's obvious to me Chris does NOT like Warcraft 3.
That's fine with me, I love it and I may enjoy his game but yeah he doesn't seem to like that gameplay from this interview.

I find it really balanced and clever but I also totally appreciate that he wants to do something very different.


Admitedly War 3 is tiny in scale, very fast gameplay - his game does sound far far more large and strategic.

It sounds really awesome though, I love LOVE LOVE that new daunting "oh my" feeling when you first fire up a new RTS game (remember that first C&C) and you have no idea what unit is what and the battlefields seemed so massive at the time - yet after a few weeks or months it seems so cramped, especially War 3, the maps really are single player storyline sized.

I think he's going to capture that sweet daunting "oh my" feeling when you just don't know WTF and the thought of finding the enemy base seems impossible on such a large playing field.

It's over a year away huh? that blows :( no more info for 8 months please, hyping now is like umm a hot chick telling you she's on her period but otherwise it would be a go.....

are the units individual or in squads?

this game is going to be so awesome my brain is going to explode

Great interview with Chris, Chris. :)

I had to stop reading partaway through page 4 because I realized I'd hugely anticipate this game and it won't be out for another year. :(

Very interesting stuff about his game design concepts, though.

The thing with anti nukes and nukes is pretty cool and simple to understand, but leads to complex strategy possibilities.

As long as you remember to build anti nukes, you will be pretty safe. However, say you build 3 anti nuke silos, and they cover the exact same area. Now I launch 5 nukes simultaneously. 2 of them may get through depending on how quickly the anti nuke silos detect the incoming warheads on radar, and how quickly the facilities launch missiles :D

In TA this had a bad tendency to stagnate a bit, because if you simulataneously launched enough nukes at once, you might be able to overwhelm the anti-nuke missile launching capabilities of your enemy. So you might end up constantly building both nukes and anti-nukes as fast as your resources would allow. Luckily, you could just queue these buildings up with your construction units and move on to more important tasks. This is part of the simulation CT is talking about, and it's just really cool in practice.

But this also means that nukes will generally probably not be a viable mode of attack on your enemy's main base. You're going to end up doing one of these things with nukes:
1) Nuking a massive incoming assault force of the enemy's
2) Sending enough simultaneous nukes to overwhelm the enemy's anti-nuke launching capability
3) Luring the enemy outside of his anti-nuke net
4) Leading a targetted assault specifically on the enemy's anti-nuke facilities to allow for the coming of your nukes
5) Since anti-nuke facilities cover a RANGE, one area may be more heavily guarded than another, and likewise, you may be able to simul-nuke one area more easily than another, thus weakening his net and allowing for more nukes.
6) Attacking a hidden outpost that the enemy doesn't think you know about and hasnt bothered to cover under his protective net

This is an example of some of the cool flexibility you had in TA, and I can only imagine it's the same or better on SC. I do know that during our long long battles in TA, there would always be a constant barrage of nukes flying between our bases while the lesser units fought below. It was quite irritating if you left screen shake on, until you realized how AWESOME it was. Just knowing that if a single one got through you were fucked... so cool.

I think I am going to lock myself in a room and just spend the day nuking the crap out of the enemy.

emergent gameplay = units missing their targets occasionally? Is there more to it?

This is from the guy that proudly put his name on Dungeon Siege... definetly going to wait for the bargain bin even if it gets good reviews.

I wonder how many different types of units there are going to be. TA had atleast 50 units for each side (after the expansions, not counting the hundreds of user-created units).. now there are 3 factions they might have to cut down that number ( or not )

Well, after reading that this game is now on my definitely-will-buy-the-moment-it-comes-out list! Hurry up and release it!

This game is going to supremely command me for a long time!

That was an awesome interview. I love the lack of PR speak, makes it so much more digestable.

Awesome interview - I never played TA - but I want this game now -

I want this game yesterday

Actually I'll take a good old RTS that I never played over WC3 anyday - does anyone know if you can still buy TA?

Outstanding interview guys. One of the best Chris Taylor interviews on SupCom thus far, and second to none in terms of the answers given.

Chris Taylor actually giving straight answers?! Supreme Commander draws near indeed.

This is really going to be great. I'd left RTS games for years, they were too 'dumb' I really fell for Dawn of War's 'polished' units and fierce gameplay/backstory

I think this game will follow my rediscovery of RTS games perfectly! At first the units in this game look pretty 'dull' and lifeless, but the 'idea' of it all, the second guessing I think will take away that pain...

I can't wait. Great interview!

You spelled hole "whole" midway through, Remo. Page 3 I think.

You get into this whole "I know that you know that I know that you don't know" rabbit whole,

Good interview though... I'm enjoying it, still halfway through.

I already know my favorite unit will be: "stealth field generators, you've got spooking systems for your mobile units that can make it look like there's a massive army approaching on radar when there isn't"

:)

That timeline on the supcom site is a really good read. http://www.supremecommander.com/ -> recon -> timeline

Fantastic interview. Nicely done, Chris.

that quote from the article is a perfect example of why he's so revered among RTS game designers: his forward thinking. he actually does stuff that players want to see - a sort of tangent innovation: now screwing up what works, but tweaking it in ways that will provide interesting gameplay. plus he thinks ahead to how the game will grow and change over time like the machines we play it on will. look at TA: it came out in 1997 and folks were able to mod into it, even as barely mod-friendly as it was, and released new content for a good 5 years and the gameplay coming from that has lasted to this day. i expect even more from Supcom and am confident he will deliver.