Supreme Commander

Supreme Commander is an insane clusterfuck of an RTS which has skyrocketed to fame in the RTS community for what is apparently it's only redeeming quality: the Strategic Zoom feature.

Origins

In 2007, Gas Powered Games released the only game they have ever created that has gotten them any media coverage whatsoever, called Supreme Commander. Due to the insane over-ambitiousness of the game, it is rife with imbalanced gameplay and overpowered units, which forced them to release over 9,000 patches in order to fix their mistakes.

Soon after its release, it was heralded as revolutionary due to one design feature called "Strategic zoom". Admittedly, this is a very cool feature. Too bad it was initially attached to such a poorly put together game. Never mind the fact that the game had quite a few other revolutionary or at least good features that were found in no other RTS game at the time that they never fucking bothered to advertise or explain, they just stuck to using strategic zoom as their selling point and never mentioning anything else, thus leading people to play the game for ten minutes and then give up thinking the game runs on the "Strategic Zoom" gimmick. And who plays tutorials, anyway?

Essentially, rather than the standard RTS which has the camera either locked at a certain altitude or offers only minimal zooming function, Strategic Zoom lets you zoom all the way out to see the entire map. A nifty feature, since when you do this you get to see all the beautiful terrain and features.

Gameplay

You walk around building shit and blowing stuff up in your Armored Command Unit (ACU). Its supposed to prevent rushes, but if you defend with it the enemy will just send their commander as fire support for their rush. You can upgrade it, which is probably the only good thing for the Seraphim as their upgrades basically make the ACU invincible, and it comes to your house and fucks your mom in the ass.

In addition to the strategic zoom, you get a HUD that takes up at least 100% of your screen, like most RTS games. In this HUD, you can find all the extremely useless buttons you will never be pressing, and none of the ones you will (Such as "quit game", I can't figure this out how to balance my economy). The HUD was made much more ergonomic and smaller in a patch and in the expansion, showing how, much like Windows, this game needs a million patches to make it decent.

If you have a small fortune left over from your deceased Jew, you might be able to make a down payment on a PC that can run this game at full quality. As far as anyone knows, only the FBI and Jesus have computers that can run this game at full quality. However, if you do manage to somehow do it (Some argue it can be done by hooking fifty ordinary computers together) the graphics go from horrible to above mediocre.

What really requires you to have a beef-monster of a PC is the enormous clusterfuck of thousands of AI running idle while you try to make that Czar.

The resources are fairly simple, you have mass and energy. You gain each and lose each at a steady rate, so rather than your factories stubbornly refusing to make units when low on resources, they just make them really fucking slow if your consumption outweighs your production.

Also, don't be fooled by GPG's tales of "strategic warfare" - This game is about zerg rushing the enemy to death. While the game admittedly gives you far more strategic options than most other RTS games, such as transports, advanced waypoints, realistic stealth, and other things, the simple ability to mass produce units to a nearly infinite amount cancels it out, so no one who wants to win even bothers doing anything but that, thus breaking the game and rendering all the strategic features unused.

In all fairness, with the expansion and all the patches, the end result is a pretty decent and awesome game at times, but getting to the awesome parts means learning economics, and due to the average gamer's low IQ, the game fills a very small niche, and thus isn't that popular. A lack of good guides also apparently contributes to this niche factor.

Plot

The Aeon found some aliens that taught them some hippie religion, the Cybrans broke free of electronic slavery, and the UEF is butthurt because now the Aeon thinks they're nutjobs and the Cybrans resent being slaves, so the UEF decides that it would be better to simply blow these two factions up rather than, I don't know, do peace talks or some other faggy shit like that. The Cybrans keep their dead professor named Dr. Brackman artificially alive, who was ironically the one who enslaved them in the first place. The Aeon elect a Princess named Rhianne Burke, which makes no fucking sense because princesses are born, not elected or 'chosen', and in order to be a princess there needs to be a mother fucking King. While they are doing this political shit, the UEF starts building a giant superweapon called the Black Sun which will use quantum gates to fire a big laser anywhere in the universe they fucking feel like.

TL;DR: The UEF gets pissed off and starts building the Death Star.

In Forged Alliance, the plot becomes even MORE disposable, as all three factions have put aside their differences after having their shit handed to them by Black Sun to fight off an alien race called the Seraphim, which is seriously kicking everyone's ass. Also ironically, the Seraphim were the alien race that showed the Aeon their peace religion. After teaming up, you're tasked with kicking the shit out of the alien fuckers.

Factions

Every RTS has factions. Admittedly, GPG has done a fairly good job at giving each faction their unique feel- by making some units horribly overpowered and some so weak they would lose an arm wrestling match to Richard Simmons. This is ironically funny; many people who play the game for five minutes reach the conclusion that the game sucks because the units are too similar, but after playing for a long time one would realize the exact opposite is true.

Aeon

Feminazis with glowy eyes. No men allowed, except one old pedo who jerks it inside his command suit. Only idiots play Aeon, as they, being women, are the weakest faction to play as.

Their theme leans towards emphasis on shields, a lot of hover units, and units that are very good at what they do but lack flexibility.

Units of note:
T1 Tank: Brittle and breaks like sugar glass, but too much fucking range.
T2 Tank: Always misses, and one has never, ever hit the enemy, partly because they fire so god damned slow.
T2 Missiles: The Aeon tactical missiles seem to be afflicted with aspergers, as they swerve around in retardation and never hit what their aiming at.
Galactic Colossus: The most evilest bastard in the entire game. Sends everyone screaming like little school girls when it's spotted, as it has over 9,000 health and destroys any non-experimental units with ease.
Tempest: A giant submersible battleship with a giant fucking plasma something cannon on top that destroys everything in one hit, moderate torpedo weaponry, and the ability to construct T1 and T2 naval units. For unexplained reasons, contrary to what one may think, completely fucking useless.
Czar: The giant U.F.O. from Independence Day with a big giant laser in the middle except without shields, which is ironic considering the Aeon's emphasis on shields. Is such a big target that it is sometimes accidentally destroyed by ground artillery, but no matter because due to it's size it's most likely to do the most damage falling on the enemy. Can build and store air units but no one ever uses that feature.
Paragon: The solution to the economic crisis, if it wasn't for the fact it cost so much to build. Once you get it up you can mass produce anything in five seconds.

Some argue they have excellent PD and shields, but as these structures cost over 9,000 mass per second and take at least 100 years to make, you're gonna get rushed if you waste time building them.

UEF

Nazi commies who want to conquer the other factions to bring peace. Their final solution to the war, unlike the other two factions which have reasonably peaceful solutions, is to simply blow every enemy planet the fuck up with a big fucking laser they're building.

The UEF's theme tends towards blocky units that are relatively slow, high armor, high weapon arcs, and turrets that turn so slow you'd think the crews were cranking them with a tiny handle.

Units of note
•T1 Light Bot: Imba, and WILL be microed every fucking time you're about to shoot at them.
•T2 Amphibious Tank: If the enemy is a UEF and at T2, and you are neither, and he gets a few of these, you are fucked.
•T2 Assault Bot: ~~Cost Effective~~ Overpowered.
•T2 Heavy Tank: Rendered useless due to the T2 Assault Bot. The only advantage it has is armor, but in practice this matters little.
•Fatboy: Supposed to be a mobile factory, but everyone just parks it inside their base and uses it as a big fucking turret.
•Mavor: One of the cheapest units in the game. Only balanced by the fact it takes years to build unless you use over 9,000 engineers, but once you get it up you pretty much officially won. It's a giant fucking artillery with a good rate of fire, extreme firepower, and can shoot anywhere on the map.
Disregard that Mavor sucks cocks now thanks to the expansion changing it from pinpoint accuracy to damn near useless thus not worth the cost.

Cybran

At least 100% of top-rated players are Cybran because the Cybrans are the most fucking overpowered zergling shits ever. You can win a match ahead of time by picking Cybran.

Their theme is speed, stealth, high rates of fire, relatively weak power per individual shot, artillery that is so innacurate it takes over Over 9000 shots to hit a Fatboy, low armor, bad shields, precision direct fire weapons that fire so straight they couldn't fire over a curb, multipurpose units, and lasers.

Units of Note
•T1 Heavy Bot: If you're playing vanilla, make over 9000, which only takes about four seconds, run them at the enemy base, and squeal in basement-dweller delight as your opponent's puny forces fall to your zerg rush.
•T2 Destroyer: Can actually sprout legs and walk on land, but it's guaranteed that at least ten seconds after crawling onto land it'll be destroyed by something.
•T2 Submarine Killer: Might as well be an upgraded T1 submarine. The name makes no fucking sense.
•T2 Amphibious Tank: Unlike most amphibious tanks, this one drives on the ocean floor, which would have a lot of merit if it wasn't for the fact it's torpedoes are weaker than being hit by a foam ball, and even with it's low profile allowing it to stay hidden in shallow water it's main guns for some reason just never manage to kill much of anything, even in a surprise attack.
•T3 Siege Bot: Nicknamed "The Brick" because it literally looks like a brick on four dumpy little legs. A stubborn little bastard that refuses to die.
•Monkeylord: A giant spider robot with a giant fucking laser. As of Forged Alliance it is the cheapest experimental and yet one of the most lethal. It's fast, has stealth, and once it gets inside your base you might as well bitch and quit the game.
•Soulripper: A giant gunship that somehow manages to be overpowered as fuck despite it's guns being weak relative to it's size. Build at least five of these and you'll win the game.
•Scathis: A giant mobile artillery with multiple barrels that rotate in a completely illogical fashion. As of Forged Alliance has the range of the Mavor, so the fact that it's mobile means little. Has a higher rate of fire than the Mavor but never hits anything because it's about as accurate as a person with Parkinson's disease trying to throw a dime into a cup that's twenty meters away.
•Megalith: An amphibious giant robot crab with battleship guns and tons of torpedoes. It's supposed to be geared towards naval support but since it's built on land and walks on land it is rarely used in that function. Can also shit bricks.

Seraphim

Added in with Forged Alliance. Nobody fucking plays them, because aside from combat upgrades for the ACU and the T2 bot they fucking suck, as almost every unit does front-loaded damage and gets killed before it fires a second shot.

Their aesthetic theme is being alien, and GPG tried way too fucking hard. Every single one of their fucking units is asymmetrical to the point of being beyond illogical and pieces of many of their units just levitate in place. Their naval units alone are visually mind rape.

Aesthetics aside, their theme is a mix of many of the other factions distributed randomly throughout their tech tree. Certain units show the jack of all trades, master of none philosophy of the Cybran, while others show the single-purpose of the Aeon. They all, however, consistently look impractically retarded.

Units of Note
•T1 Artillery: Overpowered to the point of insanity that people use these instead of the Medium Tank.
•T2 Amphibious Tank: Think of the UEF T2 Amphibious Tank but weak to the point of uselessness.
•T2 Bot: "Cost-effective", AKA Overpowered as hell.
•T3 Siege Tank: See T2 Bot
•T2 Cruiser: Has no normal guns but has a rapid fire laser missile launcher for no reason, and also has the most powerful anti-aircraft in the game.
•Experimental Bomber: Hell, essentially. Think of a fast Czar that can never be stopped and is guaranteed to launch it's giant bomb at least once. The fact that it turns so slow doesn't balance it at all.
•Experimental Missile Launcher: You'd think aliens would be more creative and original, but no. It's basically a super nuke that builds much faster than a normal nuke and needs two anti-nukes to destroy. Up there with the Mavor in the overpowered as shit category.

ACU: The only ACU in the game to get ridiculously imba combat upgrades at a low price. Of special importance is the restoration field, which turns your ACU into God so it can simply regenerate any amount of damage instantly. Get the upgraded version of that with the weapon damage upgrade and the full nano-repair system and you're ready to simply walk into the enemy's base and destroy fucking everything with overcharges. Alternately, you could spring for the t3 engineering suite in lieu of the weapon damage and simply reclaim all his energy generators and lol as his base shuts off.

Strategies

1: Pick cybran
2: Build a land factory
3: Make at least 100 mantises
4: Run at enemy base
5: Blow up enemy base
6: Masturbate at your new rating
7: ????
8: Profit!

If you plan on playing as someone other than Cybran, you might actually have to be creative in order to win, something that Cybran players have the ability to safely neglect.

NOTE: This strategy only works in SC Vanilla, in FA you actually need over 9000 factories instead of one.

Skirmish AI

The AI in Forged Alliance and Supreme Commander is extra retarded, sending units at you in steady lines or small groups so they can get ripped to shreds by your turrets before they even get in range to fire. The AI also has the annoying tendency to build over 9,000 of fucking everything, making them hard to wipe out as you blow up their eighth land factory. In addition, if fired on, the enemy ACU will:
1: follow you until it either kills its target or dies, or
2: Stand in one spot and have a seizure while you shoot it.

This makes the enemy ACU really easy to kill, since it will stand there shooting at your army rather than retreat behind its base's shields and turrets. Since if you lose the ACU you lose the game, it makes an easy win.

Online

GPGnet promises fast matchmaking and ranked matchups.

What you get is fifteen minute connect times and smurfs.

TheCoreCommander is the overlord of GPGnet and will ban any trolls on sight and rage alot, pissing him off is a favorite pastime if you don't mind a ~~chat ban~~ IP ban.

TheArmCommander is pretty much AFK 95% of the time, so he can't be trolled, he also doesn't remember the ban command. He likes jacking off to House MD and considers it a masterpiece.

GPGbot can be easily spammed by saying WHAT PING, as he was coded by an amateur.

80% of the accounts on GPGnet are actually Sir_Loui, Zock, TheBigOne, TheLittleOne, or TAG_ROCK_. The other 20% are Matiz_pl_. By making smurfs, they can feel good about themselves by raping noobs like you by getting around the rank-based match-up system with a smurf.

The games are shorter than the connect times, as the average game against a smurf lasts under thirty seconds, and the connect times take over thirty minutes.

As of 2013, most players actually switched over to the following ...

Forged Alliance Forever

Autism or GTFO. That's what it boils down to ...

So, you wanna play Supreme Commander ONLINE, don't ya? You wanna figure out how it's like fighting those gigantic battles that the trailer promised you.

Well ... prepare for some MAJOR fucking disappointment.

Some fantards made this extra lobby browser so your Steam version is actually compatible with other versions of the game. The major fucking problem with this is, that the entire userbase of this lobby-system consists out of elitist tryhard faggots and smurfs.

But no, NOOOOO, that's not actually the BAD part. You wanna know WHY it sucks? THE RATING SYSTEM.

Yes, they built in a score system to rate your wins and losses, but instead of giving you a fair starting score, they actually reward you with NEGATIVE BLACK SCORE every time you LOSE. In fact, lose about 5 huge team games in a row and you're already at -400 and it will stay like this, PERMANENTLY, unless you fix it the hard way. It shows up in black ugly letters how much of an abomination you're supposed to be. This should be called: passive ethnic cleansing.

Good luck being a new guy who just went through all the campaigns and skirmishes and tries to get the hang of the real multiplayer battles by joining teamgames. Nobody will ever play with you again and treat you like a nigger. Do you have problems with your mass production and ressource management? BETTER GO LOOK AT SOME REPLAYS NIGGER, AS NOBODY WILL EVER FUCKING EXPLAIN IT TO YOU!

If you want to look it up you might find some guide for retards that explains how the influx system of the ressources works, BUT NOT HOW TO PROPERLY USE IT TO YOUR ADVANTAGE. So prepare to get constantly zerg-rushed while everyone blames you for being the cancer of everything.

Unlike other shitty games, like League of Legends, having a negative score here excludes you from EVERY SINGLE GAME, be it a "noob game" or a "Seton (That map with the landbridge) 700max (Max Score 700)" game. Yes, you're basically banned from ever playing again.

No really, nobody wants to see you again in the game when you lost a few times, ever. So you might aswell just start again with an alternate account or do teamkilling with nukes (if you get so far to build a launcher), as your only option after this is to go hardcore and play 1vs1. You will totally enjoy soloing against a 30 year old basement dwelling neckbeard smurf who rapes your mass extractors as you helplessly try to build your first army and get an even lower negative score.

Supreme Commander 2 ... you mean they made another one?!

GPG being the sick jews that they are, they decided to make another Sup Com game titled Supreme Failure 2. Despite Square Enix's involvement, they surprisingly had little to do with the massive disappointment this game turned out to be. Due to mainstream RTS players (C&C fags) bitching and whining, Chris Taylor finally caved in and watered down the game because the original was "TOO HARD!!!111111" and no one could figure it out because the average gamer is autistic and needs the game to tell them when they don't have enough resources to build something. What we ended up with was a shit mix between Command & Conquer and Dawn of War, average to small sized maps, and none of the things that made the original Supcom have unique and redeeming qualities. AKA, shit to appeal to mainstream RTS players.

Add in gimmicky, clownish experimentals that look like they belong in a Command & Conquer: Red Alert game, and you get this massive failure.

Cybran-

Cybranasaurus Rex- A giant mother fucking robot lizard that shoots fire, and has legs that shoots plasma grenades.

Kraken- At first, this thing seems pretty beast, but then fail all expectations. Its a giant robot squid that has -9000 health. It can shoot multiple targets with its laser tentacles but it just keeps firing at the first unit the gets in its personal space. Dies in 3 hits.

Bomb Bouncer- Completely useless. Its supposed to redirect anything that fires at an arc angle, but the enemy will just spam direct fire tanks and make the artillery go straight at 5000 power per 30 seconds just to get rid of this abomination for you.

Megalith II- Nothing like the first one. It twin giant lasers will fire on the closest mass extractor even when you told it to fire on that Fatboy that's fucking up your army. Has little to no health, dies right when it walks out of the factory.

Monkey Lord- GPG thought it was a great idea to Jew. Of course you get a couple of shitty maps and a few other useless units so you don't feel like a total cock sucker. Overpowered as fuck still.

Illuminate-

Universal Colussus- Nerfed the health, made it smaller, and now has four giant penises on it's back.

Czar II- Take the original Czar, add a couple of rotating blades that do nothing, give it the speed of light, and nerf its damage and this is what you get, only good for dropping on the enemy base when it dies.

Space Temple- Lets you teleport to the enemy base but fails since they can teleport to yours as well.

Urchinow- Supposed to be a long range tank but gets killed before it actually does anything use full.

Airnomo- Supposed to completely fuck up air units but gets shot by artillery three seconds before it can kill those bombers that are fucking up your base.

UEF-

Fatboy V.II- Got rid of its shield, cant make units, and nerfed its range.

King Kriptor- Giant robot that was stolen from Warhammer and has two giant laser cannons that can only kill one unit at a time. Useless as fuck.

Noah Unit Cannon- Actually pretty fun. It fires an army of units into the stratosphere and they fall into the enemy base where they will get killed one at a time by point defense.

AC 1000- Despite being a gunship, it can only attack structures. It takes 10 hours just to kill a mass extractor with this. Not that it matters, its gonna die from the wall of AA Turrets that your enemy built cause there not retarded.

They also replaced their Tech Tree with a Upgrade System so that there's no super Tech 3 unit you can make an army of and win. Apparently Chris Taylor was on coke when making this. When you play you will realize that whoever your opponent is they will hide behind there 50th shield generator, so the only way to ~~win~~ play is to build over 9000 artillery guns and shell the living fuck out of the enemy.

Trailer

Spring

There is also a free game called Spring, which is like a CPU-friendly version of Supreme Commander that is exclusively multiplayer where everyone plays 8v8 on DSD and just combomb each other.