Supreme Commander
Basic principals of playing a SupCom
1. Resource Management
2. Tactical Analysis and Combat
3. Strategic Overview
To play SupCom effectively you need to balance your time focusing on all three of the above accordingly. Time is precious when playing, so every minute or so stop to think where to focus your time.
Be sure to check the gallery for examples!
Resource Management
Having a strong economy allows you to build a mammoth force to crush your enemy, build experimental super weapons and nuclear arms, all to lay waste of your enemies pathetic force. Increasing your economy requires resources however, so you need to balance this with building an army and increasing your base.
Adjacency Bonus
When you build certain items next to other things it will have an effect on it, for example, building a pgen next to a factory will reduce the power requirements of the factory.
Pgen next to fact - fact uses less power
Pgen next to fab - fab uses less power
Pgen next to arty - arty reloads quicker
Mass storage next to mex - mex generates more mass
Building Farms
Because upgrading mex is so expensive, it is a good idea to build a fab farm (see sketchpad). Fab farms are easy to kill, as a bomber needs only get two shots into a pgen and the farm will cascade and destroy the entire farm, so a good idea is to build a few smaller farms instead of one large farm. Build T1 farms at the start of the game. A good idea is to get sets of 3 engineers to build a diagonal line of pgens, a line of fabs next to that and a line of pgens next to that again. When you get to T3, you should quickly start building small T3 farms, and never stop doing it. Most people will build only one T3 fab next to a T3 gen, and build lots of those duos, however if you feel your defence is good you can save more power and space by building 2 gens and 2 fabs in a quad farm (see gallery).
Upgrading Mex
This is expensive, farms are actually cheaper, but upgrading needs to be done if you want to get to T3. Upgrading a T1 mex to T2 costs 10 mass for a short time, so make sure you can afford it. If it is going to deck out your mass then it will cost you for a long time before you recover. You can assign engineers to assist the upgrade to increase the speed it takes, but at the expense of using more mass to get there. Upgrading T2 to T3 is very expensive, it's better to build T3 farms if it's practical at the time, however upgrading a mex is normally quicker.
Mass storage next to mex
This is also inefficient. Best to do it around higher level mex only, as the storage costs a fair bit. Also only do it if you dont expect the mex/storage to get attacked.
Tactical Analysis and Combat
Start Build Order
An effective start build pattern is:
Chose the factories you build based on your strategy.
Rush attacks
The best defence is a strong offence - very few commanders have the balls to attack when they are being attacked. If you attack your enemy early on their technological growth will be halted and they won't be able to secure much land for mass income. Be very careful when you choose to abort your attacks. You need an advantage over the enemy to make an attack fruitful. Have more units than your enemy or a higher tech level. One the first T1 PD goes up, avoid it with T1 units. Either overwhelm it or trump it with T2 to continue an attack on that position.
Harassing
Harassing, or as some people call it, raping, is a good way to hamper your enemies initial development at a low cost to you. This must be done early in the game, and requires you to be annoying by thinking outside of conventional combat ideologies. Good ways to harass are to beat your enemy to air and build bombers to get mex and farms. Other ways are to quickly send 1 or 2 tanks around the map to hit lone engineers building mex/defences. Hitting fab farms are very effective ways to hamper your enemy.
Cascading Explosions
Volatile buildings, and some units, will create a large enough explosion to blow up the adjancent building. Some buildings are pgens and fabs, some units are Cybran T3 bots and SCU's. The best way to set off an cascade is to hit pgens, any tier, they'll all go up with a bang. It is however important to note that the UEF have extreme trouble triggering cascade effects. UEF T1 bombers for example, may only take out a few pgens/fabs when bombing a T1 fab farm.
Commander in Combat
In smaller maps, or maps that have a middle line where defence lines will go, it is important to get your commander out in combat as soon as possible. The commander is very effective against T1 units and will force a retreat where the enemy doesn't have PD's or his own commander near by. Counter the commander with T2 units, point defences or your own commander. When T2 is reached, be very careful of your commander, as T2 will out-gun the commander, and the enemy can build tactical missiles or artillery that will get your ACU by surprise. Best idea is to have him fall back to your base.
Securing resources
At T1 and T2, fight over mex locations. Be weary of the amount of resources you dedicate to acquiring those mex locations, remembering that the mex needs to out-way the cost of your troops and defences. If the combat gets too furious then instead just harass the location to make the cost not worth it for your enemy. At T3 it's cheaper to build T3 farms instead of fighting for mex.
Decapitation attacks
Although possible at T1, this is mainly a T2 tactic, and some less manly players will make it their game strategy. At T2 you can discretely build large numbers of bombers or gunships and attack the enemy ACU, or build tactical missiles near the ACU. If your enemy leaves the ACU near the defence lines, tactical missiles are a great way to take the ACU down without any warning to the enemy at all. Make sure you build up a few missiles before attacking.
Protecting your Commander
At T2 you should start thinking about ways to stop the above happening to you. Move him to a safer location with plenty of point defence and air cover. If you in range of the enemy, build shields and tactical missile defence. At T3, he should definitely be under a base shield if he's on land. Good ways to keep him safe are:
Lots of point defence and anti-air (T3 sams are great)
Keep him shield by base shields
Build the shield commander upgrade (UEF, Aeon)
Build a stealth field generator and keep him near that, or build the commander stealth upgrades (Cybran)
Build the HP regeneration upgrade (Seraphim)
Place him in water
The last point is a great way to stop land and air attacks on your commander, including artillery and tactical missiles, which rules out most forms of decapitation attacks. However, the waters are dangerous to those who know them. If the enemy knows you are in the water and has you sonar range, T1 subs will quickly destroy an ACU or T2 torpedo bombers can do a nasty amount of damage. To avoid this, keep him near land, but completely submerged, so if you are attacked you can quickly switch the enemies requirements by moving onto land, where subs and torp bombers are useless. Also be aware that a destroyer will get you on both fields, but the enemy needs naval supremacy.
Strategic Overview
Land, Air and Sea Supremacy
Strategically you should consider where you are going to place your strengths and weaknesses. In an evenly matched game this is generally a choice as simple as moving a chess piece. Focus your factories and resource allocation on either land, sea or air, or a selected mix. Each force has it's pros and cons:
Air Supremacy
This prevents attacks from bombers and flying experimentals (Czar's, Soul Reapers), and allows you to make your own attempts at bombing the enemy. It also allows you to use gunships or bombers to attack ground and sea forces. T3 air defence will quickly halt base bombing attempts. Air supremacy can stop land players moving troops via air transports.
Land Supremacy
Perhaps a default option, land is the conventional field of play. A strong base defence will hold most land attacks, but defence alone won't stop land supremacy. Experimentals and overwhelming numbers will soon break a good base defence. Having ground supremacy gives you the mex for the land you control, and prevents most ground bases experimentals causing trouble (GC, Monkeylord, Fatboy). Land supremacy is dangerous in the enemies hands, ALWAYS contest it. Lands biggest weakness is water dividing land masses. Use air transports and ferry lines to move your troops over water. Requires the enemy not to have air supremacy.
Naval Supremacy
Having naval supremacy can be nasty, depending on the map. In large case this may just force the enemy to move further inland, however in most cases this can stop the enemy using the sea as a refuge for ACU's and SCU's, and offers great abilities to bombard bases. Bases can't move, so hitting resource farms or even commanders with destroyers or battleships is very deadly. Navies are not vulnerable to air, T2 cruisers are the most effective T2 unit against air. Large numbers of cruisers can eliminate an enemies grip of the skies.
Stalemates and Breaking Stalemates
Normally at Tier 3 you will find stalemates start to form. When you see these forming, you should act quickly to work around them. Most commanders will rarely change their strategy, so think ahead of a way to trump their strategy. Look for their weak spots and exploit it. If an enemy has had an uncontested land defence, then building a land experimental or land battalion will break what the enemy expects to be flawless. Look for holes in air and naval defence, ALWAYS SCOUT the enemy, watch for nuke silos going up and keep an eye where the commander is. CHANGE your strategy to exploit the enemies. At T4, you can move from a massive naval production to a massive air production very quickly by reassigning your engineers to work in mass on air factories. You should always dedicate large numbers of engineers to unit production.
Battalion Sized Armies and Strategic Deployment
At a developed T4 game, anything less than 50 T2/T3 units is just an escort. Scout your enemies and determine the level of base defences and ground/naval forces and build a battalion great than what you need to overcome that, keeping in mind the rate at which your enemy will produce units in the time it takes you to get there. When moving a battalion, either build another one or have your production constantly reinforcing your original battalion. Once you battalion has arrived at it's destination, send them in Normandy style, rush past or up to artillery if you can. Have your artillery stay back and hopefully the enemy will fire on your seige units. Expect massive losses. Deploy your battalions carefully, dont attack bases front on where they are stronger, hit or make weak spots, send nukes or bombers ahead to open up holes if need be.
Experimentals
Experimentals (T4 units) are used for two things - surprising your enemy and destroying them, and breaking stalemates. In a developed T4 game experimentals start to be used like T1 units at the start, and you need to have squads of T4 units before they are effective. If you can, make sure they tip the balance of existing battles. A fatboy is a great way to break a T2 artillery war, a GC or spider are great in T3 unit battles and surprising your enemy by emerging from the sea. Czars and Soul Reapers are great at getting bases off guard and attacking other experimentals. All land experimentals can walk on the sea floor.
Nuclear Warfare
The pinnacle of a Supreme Commander game is when nukes are flying by in numbers. Nukes are the be-all and end-all of Supreme Commander. When the games becomes nuclear, silos should be built like T3 farms. It's rare a game becomes this big, but it changes the game a lot if players can maintain a stalemate for this long.
The first person to build a nuke has something of an advantage. They can nuke inbound land forces and navy production mostly uncontested. A nuke on an undefended base or ACU will end the game, so be weary of nuke production. You get no warning until the nuke is launched, so scout out for silos. Your nuke defence, although expensive, is cheaper and faster to build and produce missiles than nuke launchers. The arc of defence is also exaggerated, so don't rely on a nuke being stopped at the fringe of your defence parameter. Build multiple nuke defence silos! Make sure you cover everything important. When nukes become large-scale, expect multiple simultaneous launches at once. Your defence can only shoot one missile at a time, so for 2 nukes launched, you need 2 defence silos. Make sure you keep the defence silos stocked, get engies to help if they get low on missiles.
Target your nukes carefully. Don't waste nukes on un-scouted territory. Scout ahead and WATCH the scout, look for the T3 icon with a dashed verticle line. This is the nuke defence silo. Select a T3 engineer and select your own defence silo and place it over theirs to see the parameter of it's defence. Note that you will probably get a successfully detonation in it's fringes. Shield are useless on nukes (this may change in Forged Alliance, where nukes are seemingly less effective).
