Somehow I've had my head under a rock and not hear until after buying and firing this sucker up that SC2 dumped the rate-based economy in favor of... what every other RTS has done.... what... WHAT?!

I even skipped the demo, not for a moment even considering the possibility of the singular most identifying game mechanic being dissolved in favor of the status quo.

The rate-based economy is what solidly set this franchise apart for what, 13 years? It was made of gold for so many of us. It meant not having to micromanage every little engineer unit and every fine detail of base building, not having to baby sit every factory and tally up units coming off of production. Those simple, elegant rates distilled so much complexity in a pair of beautiful numbers. It freed us from burying our nose in the screen and watching our wristwatches and allowed us to focus on *strategy*.

Rates, boundaries, shapes, limits, strategy... now it's just another sci-fi RTS. Why on earth would you toss over a decade of tradition and unique audience base to go head to head with Starcraft II? Why would you take something you, uniquely, did well, and simply try to reach parity with the competition?

You'll get used to it and the SupCom 2 implementation still has less limits than a game like SCII.

More stealth/radar play, bigger maps, some rebalancing work and a couple more units are what this game needs. Eco itself really isn't that bad.

Not bad at all, a step backwards to make a few steps forwards, or at least sideways.

That's the problem. It's principally SCII/et al. with some of its own flavoring thrown in; some different units, unique abilities, adjustments to weapon ranges, damage... these are variations on a theme. The economy was a fundamental game mechanic that effected wholly different patterns of thinking and interaction.

A step sideways for sure. But why follow in someone else's tracks? Blizzard has awfully big shoes to fill.

I still see a rate based economy...

StarCraft II didn't invent its own resource system, it's much older than that. It also doesn't have infinite queues, infinite resources and a near-non-existant population cap. In other words: SupCom 2 is hardly merely filling the shoes of someone else, let alone the shoes of only a specific sci-fi RTS competitor.

Anyway, everyone's reaction to the changed eco is one of disappointment (was the same with me) because stalling allowed more flexibility but I never considered it to be the most important aspect of the game. Lack of bigger maps and some other omissions are much more tragic imo. Some things are simply better and it's still enjoyable overall.

Seton's Clutch in SupCom 2 feels like a 10x10 map in SupCom 1, that's not grand or impressive at all, it's just not SupCom, period. I am not asking for the feel of an 80x80 map, just the 20x20 and 40x40 range is missing completely and that's quite painful for big team games.

Larger maps were possible in SupCom 2 as GPG said before release, still waiting for them (if they'll ever come). While they're at it they could implement proper stealth and intel warfare again as well.

we did the maths at one point; it's about the equivalent of 8km.

Nothing like the preperation and observation of a large army marching toward a base you know you're going to decimate! Especially if it's as strong or as big as your own! I think people want that suspense of being able to march their units of a good 3-5 minutes destroying their foward bases and mexs. The current march time is what... 1-2 1/2 mins? sooo dissappointing

didnt read alert 2 had the same economy system as FA? what's older? TA or RA2?

No red alert didn't. The command & conquer series has almost always used the same system (barring generals, Red Alert 3 and Cnc4).

As for the rate based economy - It was interesting, but honestly once you are past the first coupla minutes in supcom 2 your base hums along just like it did in FA with factories churning out units, Gens pumping out power.

You have to be joking.

"OHHH YEAHH I'M SO EXCITED IMMA MARCHING MY ARMY FOR 5 MINUTES THIS IS ALMOST AS GOOD AS WATCHING PAINT DRY OH WAIT WTF IS THA..."

*bombed by T3 bombers*

On maps where it took a long time to travel, no one in their right mind ever did land because it was a massive waste of time and resources. Why bother spending stupidly wasteful amounts of time traveling large expanses and micromanaging their advance when you could just build lots of bombers and do the same thing (kill the enemy com) in 1/10th of the time?

This is something I had hoped SupCom2 would improve on.. making land viable in any map larger than 10x10-20x20. Turns out they just got rid of large maps all together.

Though that's still dumb to say because Setons Clutch is still pretty large.

That's why they added unit cannon's, space temple, Jumpjets and transports/experimental transports.

Hmm... the ting of sarcasm I was hoping to enduce wasn't realized... bad communication... again. >.>

Reduced travel time is a legitimate issue affecting gameplay. Intel is only as useful as the minimum amount of time it will take the identified group of units to impact yours. The shorter the travel/build time, the less meaningful intel is.

Who sat and watched armies in SC1? Part of the beauty of the rate/deficit system was that individual waves of units were utterly disposable, the key was in maintaining a flow of units into penetrated ground, covered with combined ground/air support, rolling forward with advanced bases and experimentals...

The game was more like managing phase-space than about building the right single attack force or winning one engagement.

I agree the previous design made the information war much more vital, but I think its tied as much to the focus on unit/resource flow as it is map size; that plays a huge factor and its a bummer to see that you're playing in a closet now, but you can theoretically make larger maps for any RTS. It may create room for variations in tactics, but you still basically have the same interactions and decisions going on.

Seton's is the same size in both games (1024x1024), the units are just bigger.

Shouldn't be hard to put together a scaling mod if you want the units to be more like FA size.

PATIENTLY waiting for buddy over in the mod section to get er dun. Although, school first i suppose!

Did you look at the map quality itself? Did you see the texture detail?

Setons in supcom2 is just ugly compared to supcom1 setons... You clearly see that the trees and everything was removed to make up for good console performance and to "optimize" the pc performance.

don't feed the trolls

Wow, it is a good thing you are here to tell everyone why we did things the way we did.

Is Setons even on the Xbox? It's 4 player max on that system.

I think the intelligence war in SupCom2 needs to be improved greatly. More use of stealth, no omni sensors (!), shorter radar ranges. The reason I don't want omni is because in FA, T3 intelligence was:

1. Get to T3
2. Build/upgrade to stationary omni
3. ?????
4. Profit.

Omni had too much range, and way too much radar range. Stealth was depreciated.

Waves of units are still disposable in SupCom2; I'm not sure how others play it though. There is no intrinsic relation between rate-eco and disposable units. That is more of an infinite resource model attribute.

Combined ground-air attacks were only used in T1/T2, and usually with land dominant (at least to my skirmish/MP experience). T3 was the domain of air power. Does anyone actually use large T3 land armies in a stock FA game (not the 2X no nukes no air 20 min NR stuff)? On any map, never mind the large ones? Because the only time I've ever gathered a T3 army of more than 5 units was in the campaign.