Supreme Commander 2 is the title of a sequel to Supreme Commander that was announced in November 2008. It is developed in a partnership between Gas Powered Games and Square Enix.
Public announcement[]
"London (12th November 2008) – Square Enix Ltd., the publisher of Square Enix® interactive entertainment products in Europe and other PAL territories (Square Enix), today announces that Square Enix, Inc., a U.S. sister company headquartered in Los Angeles, California, and development house Gas Powered Games Corp., a U.S. company headquartered in Redmond, Washington (Gas Powered Games) have formed a strategic partnership. With the commencement of this strategic partnership, development has begun on SUPREME COMMANDER® 2, a sequel to the award-winning real-time strategy series.
Background[]
The game is set 25 years after the events of Forged Alliance.
Since the defeat of the Seraphim the alliance forged by the UEF, Cybran Nation and Aeon Illuminate has held becoming the CDC (Colonial Defense Coalition) and resulting in 25 years of peace. During this time the three nations have intermixed and some of their military recruits are even trained together at the same institutions. This includes the campaign's 3 protagonists - one from each faction - who become friends at their academy.[1]
However, the peace is brought to an abrupt end by the assassination of the newly elected CDC President. Each faction denies involvement while blaming the others and war erupts yet again. The campaign follows the stories of the three friends and their relationships as they are forced to fight one another. [2][3]
Since Square Enix's games have been largely associated with the role-playing game genre, their games tend to elaborate more on the character's feelings and aspects rather than the whole picture. The original Supreme Commander is quite indifferent towards the character aspects, pointing more towards the factions as a whole instead of outstanding 'heroes' within; especially since you don't really play as a character in the game, as you are the character. The story of this new game seems to be based on these three characters' experiences instead of the more nationalistic story that the original Supreme Commander used. Having this fresher, character-based storyline may prove to be a success, but inevitably someone will notice the obvious story difference.
Various sources [1] [2] have revealed the names of the three main characters:
- UEF: Dominic Maddox
- Cybrans: Ivan Brackman
- Illuminate: Thalia Kael
Factions[]
The Cybran Nation and the UEF will return but the Aeon Illuminate has been replaced by or renamed as "The Illuminate."[1]Why did the Aeon get a name change? Taylor felt that the Aeon units were to hard to identify on sight so they needed a complete redesign. Taylor also said "I don't know what it is, but I think about The Beatles...we all live in a yellow submarine" while looking at the new Illuminate transport. He also described the transport has a "high identifiable image, rather then some kind of nondescript high-tech, sleek, chrome crescent [4].
The Illuminate will not have a navy, rather most of the Illuminate's units hover and therefore can cross water. [5]
The only mention of the Seraphim is that they have been "destroyed" and it seems that they will play no part in Supreme Commander 2.[3] Chris Taylor also said that to have a 4th race (Seraphim) in Supreme Commander 2, your computer would require more than 4GB of ram so one reason not to add the Seraphim was for performance. Also at the end of Forged Alliance it seemed as if the Seraphim could have never reached the human race again after the rift was closed. The final scene after the Cybran Campaign, the last of the SC2 Campaigns, shows Dr. Brackman linking up with a Seraphim brain, possibly the Seraphim Support Commander captured in the second mission of the Supreme Commander Forged Alliance: Operation Down.
Experimentals[]
The New Universal Colossus. More screenshots can be found Here
Standard UEF Transport, not the experimental as previously thought
Supreme Commander 2 will feature approximately 25 "outrageous" experimentals in total. They are divided into "minor" and "major" experimentals with the latter likely more powerful and expensive.[6] Possibly, this division is intended to compensate for the loss of tech levels and/or to capture the feel of both the powerful experimentals of Vanilla SupCom and the more affordable experimentals of Forged Alliance in one game. Experimentals may be deployed from the Experimental Gantry before completion, Chris Taylor calls this 'half-baked'. The result is a fully functional experimental, but every ten seconds it runs the risk of complete and permanent failure.[7]
Units[]
The units look relatively standard, with identifiable AA, Ground, Air, and Gunships.
Upgrade system[]
An image of the UEF air upgrade tree, with the AC-1000 Terror Unlock hovered over.
An image of the UEF land upgrade tree, with the Fatboy II Unlock hovered over.
The "clumsy" tech system of the original Supreme Commander has been abandoned in favour of a more traditional tech tree with boosts, upgrades and unlocks to allow early units to remain useful and competitive even in the late game. Chris Taylor commented about the old tech system saying "We found that when they hit (Tech 3), players would take all of their obsolete units and throw them away like fodder. That's not strategic!" [4] There are now separate tech trees for land, air, naval, structures and the ACU. Boosts are increases in basic stats (e.g. speed, armor, firepower). Upgrades adds new weapons and functionality to units. Unlocks allow you to build certain units. You require points to unlock units which are earned by building research stations. The lack of tiers has led to a rather minimal number of units compared to the original, most of which now server up to 4 roles. For example, The destroyer and cruiser class ships of Supreme commander have been merged into a single "cruiser" vessel, which can adequately defeat most threats. The following have been mentioned:
- UEF Land
- Unlock Mobile Anti-Missile
- Damage: Increase Damage
- Health: Increase Health
- Unlock Fatboy II
- Unlock Personal Shields
- UEF Assault Tank: Rockhead (Upgraded via the land tech tree, although it is very likely these upgrades apply to all units, not just the Rockhead Tanks [8])
- Increase Barrel Length: Increases range, accuracy and Muzzle velocity[6]
- Increase Number of Barrels: Adds an extra barrel
- Add Anti-Air Weapon:
- UEF Air
- Unlock Gunship
- Cluster Bombs
- Unlock AC-1000 Terror
- UEF ACU[6]
- Regeneration: Increase Regeneration
- Anti-Air: adds Anti-Air Weapon
- Energy Income: Increases Energy Income
- Tactical Missile Launcher: Adds a Tactical Missile Launcher
- Range: Increases Range
- Torpedo: Adds Torpedo
- Vision: Increases Vision
- Hunker: Adds Hunker (Allows the ACU to "Hunker down" to defend)
- Hunker Effectiveness: Increases Hunker Effectiveness
- Jump Jets: Adds Jump Jets
- Chest Mounted Artillery
- Core Dump Technology - Used to prevent your ACU from going nuclear.
- Escape Pods - "Pops" the head of the ACU which will fly back to base and allow the player to survive the ACU's destruction. The body can be rebuilt from the head.
- Cybran ACU
- Speed Increase: Increases speed by 50%
- Jump Jets: Adds Jump Jets (can be upgraded to increase travel distance by 200%)
- Nanite weapon: Causes the Cybran ACU's main weapon to do damage over time.
- Cybran Air
- personal shields: Give all aircraft personal shields.
- Speed: Give all aircraft additional speed.
- Armor: All aircraft have additional Hit points.
Maps[]
a preview map.
The First appears to be a city, is Aeon or Illuminate in origin from the heraldic flags, perched on a cliff edge. It's dominated by a huge, semi-circular platform with an unknown structure in the middle (likely an objective) and four elongated platforms extending from it. Most of the battle takes place on this platform. There are also several mesas surrounding the platform which can also support bases and units. The Map has a greater sense of verticality than most RTS maps. This is the only map seen in-play, as it was the basis for the E3 video.
Other maps, seen only in screenshots, include:
- What appears to be a UEF stronghold or factory.
- A beachhead, with ruined and rusty towers, dominated by a walled metal fortress.
- A network of brown metal gantries, suspended over a crater walled with black rock. The equipment points to some kind of mine.
- A maze of thin, industrial gantries, possibly inside, judging by the darkened lighting.
A few remakes of original Supreme Commander maps are also in the game:
- Arctic Refuge
- Fields of Isis
- Winter Duel (called "Spring Duel")
- Seton's Clutch - Appears to have the same characteristics of the original. It does show a large area outside the usable area that was cut off in the original game.
- Finn's Revenge
Two other maps have been announced, when preordering from EB Games [3], you will receive:
- Emerald Crater - Underwater for a millennia, tectonic shifts have drained the crater, exposing mass needed to continue the Infinite War. Maximum Players: 4 (free-for-all)
- QAI Prototype Facility - Located high above the surface of New Terra, it’s one of the many test environments for the next generation air and land weapons. Maximum Players: 4 (2v2)
Engine[]
Supreme Commander 2 features a new game engine with new graphics, global illumination and state of the art pathfinding. The maps appear significantly improved over the original's heightmapped maps. According to Chris Taylor, the AI will be some form of "neural net AI." It is also stated that the game has more modest system requirements allowing more computers to run the game. In a interview for PC Gamer Taylor explained that he has a 3 year old computer instead of a "quad-core liquid-cooled whatever". Most likely he is referring to the steep requirements for the first Supreme Commander and Forged Alliance. In closing he explained "So, visually spectacular, but we have to do it while getting our performance requirements down. It's a conflicting set of goals.".
Minimum PC system requirements[]
| OS | Windows XP/Vista/Windows 7 |
|---|---|
| Processor | 2.6 GHz |
| Memory | 1GB RAM (XP) 1.5GB RAM (Vista/Windows 7) |
| Video | 256 MB VRAM DX9 compliant with Pixel Shader 3.0 |
| DirectX Support | DirectX 9.0 |
| Sound | No accelerated sound hardware required |
| Hard Drive | 4-5 GB, for full install & DirectX |
| Internet Connection | Cable/Broadband |
Recommended PC system configuration[]
| OS | Windows XP/Vista/Windows 7 |
|---|---|
| Processor | 3,0 GHz Dual Core AMD or better |
| Memory | 2GB RAM |
| Video | ATI Radeon™ X1800 or equivalent card
with 256 MB VRAM with Pixel Shader 3.0 |
| DirectX Support | DirectX 9.0 |
| Sound | No accelerated sound hardware required |
| Hard Drive | 4-5 GB, for full install & DirectX |
| Internet Connection | Cable/Broadband |
Video[]
References[]
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Supreme Commander 2 on square-enix.com
- ↑ E3 2009 Trailer
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 E3 2009 Supreme Commander 2 Demo and Interview
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 PC Gamer September 2009
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 E3 2009: Supreme Commander 2 Demo
- ↑ http://www.gamesradar.com/pc/supreme-commander-2/preview/supreme-commander-2/a-2010012710723373039/g-20090529134731841082
- ↑ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKCgxL5fx0o
- ↑ 1Up review of Supcom 2