GameSpy: In a recent magazine article, you mentioned a new feature where the computer would register panic or multiple clicks on a particular unit and take that into account when determining attacks. Can you go into more detail about that?Additionally GameSpy has articles about the game's land, sea and air battles.
Taylor: I'll give you an easy example. Imagine that you have a group of tanks and are approaching an opponent's base. If you have them all selected and issue an attack order in a traditional game, they will all attack the specified target, but this is not very desirableâ?æ as what you really want is a unilateral attack across the entire base. So, in order to take the command and control aspect of the game to the next level, we have three distinct kinds of attacks, all of which are communicated through the mouse clicks interface. A) One click - attack unilaterally, B) Two clicks - all available units attack a single structure but only fire enough to destroy it, C) Three clicks - It's Gary Oldman in The Professional yelling, "Get me everyone!!!"
The big deal with SC is that there is a galactic war going on in real-time and as the Supreme Commander, you can seamlessly zoom in and out of different battles, shifting from a satellite to ground-level view. The action takes place on land, air, and sea with a large variety of units, including "major units" that are huge, hulking pieces of steel many times larger than the standard unit. Think a Godzilla-sized unit marching along with your tanks.
Overall, the article has you coming away with the sense that Taylor is trying to reinvigorate the genre. He feels RTS games don't feature strategy of any kind and he's here to fix that. For instance, you can use a "Base Commander" to handle all resource management while you're off actually dictating the outcomes of battles. On top of that, he wants to create a sense of realism and scale that has yet to be seen; the battleships in Supreme Commander are so enormous, you'd need a dual screen setup to see the whole thing at the ground level view. Supreme Commander is set to release in 2006.
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