Supreme Commander Universe > All other sci-fi

[Badsearcher]

This is not a value judgment about the narrative quality of SC canon but let's just consider that maybe part of the appeal of Supreme Commander's canon might be that in a straight fight the things that exist in Supreme Commander's universe could beat the combat forces of other science-fiction canon's very reliably.

Let's take Warhammer 40k vs Supreme Commander? Oh, the Tyranids are this scary devourer of worlds? Bah, give an ACU some time around some mass deposits and it will have soul rippers up that will mop up those crunchy bugs like it's nobody's business. Oh? That Imperial or Chaos titan might slow down a commander a bit but while an ACU under the right circumstances can knock up a Galactic Colossus in less than 30 minutes it takes the Imperium of Man decades to build a Titan, (assuming they haven't lost the blueprints).

Starcraft? Well, Battlecruisers seem to be very ambiguous in how much damage they can actually do but the amount of ASF a Seton's player can cook up in less than an hour has to just be able to tear it to pieces. A siege tank can't be any stronger than a Pillar tank and an Ultralisk might have at most as much hp as a brick but a brick is a ranged unit. And Terran Marines? Oh my, you have to figure that enough t1 rushes on enough planets and while all it costs an ACU is a few minutes of its time, it wipes out an entire generation of young men.

You can say it's comparing apples and oranges but why is that? I think it's just because Supreme Commander is the only sci-fi game canon to acknowledge the absurdity of thinking that with future technology that any sentient race would use anything but robots to fight and use anything besides nano-technology enhanced automation to produce all of its war material and throwing in a few brains onto the battlefield to manage the whole thing. Pretty much the only defense you can make for any other kind of universe is the notion of technological setbacks in the future, religious objections to robotics, or some kind of other advantage to using sentients such as psychic soldiers and such.

The one thing I can say is that if Supreme Commander had had more expansions (no, not gonna mention SC2) then it would have been fun for there to be an 'organic' race like the Tyranids which could have distinct bio advantages like all units automatically self-heal and stuff like that. Perhaps even a 'demon' race but that's getting way out there for what SC has represented.

[rootbeer23]

[Badsearcher]

The only saving grace I can think of is that Space Marines would either drop pod or teleport on or inside of ACUs and attempt to kill the commander or plant a charge onto the reactor (but a personal shield could probably cancel that possibility). Also, since a lot of Warhammer 40k forces use more dangerous but less expensive warp travel instead of quantum gating then the much bigger and more powerful ships could serve as a counter balance to what ACU's are able to cook up. (For that matter, does the Supreme Commander universe even have space battles?)

Rootbeer, thank you for that image, where is it from?

[Valki]

@rootbeer23: +1

Starcraft? Well, Battlecruisers seem to be very ambiguous in how much damage they can actually do but the amount of ASF a Seton's player can cook up in less than an hour has to just be able to tear it to pieces. A siege tank can't be any stronger than a Pillar tank and an Ultralisk might have at most as much hp as a brick but a brick is a ranged unit. And Terran Marines? Oh my, you have to figure that enough t1 rushes on enough planets and while all it costs an ACU is a few minutes of its time, it wipes out an entire generation of young men.

One thing battlecruisers can do, same for carriers btw, that ASF's can't is fly in space or planets without atmosphere.

It's called orbital bombardment, and the indestructibility of the Novax offers canon proof that a landed ACU force is entirely helpless against orbital bombardment.


However, all your guesswork in regards ti siege tanks, pillar tanks, ultralisks and marines is purely speculative and I'm not going to participate... but there is a way to settle this. We would have to find benchmarks in the game.
The amount of energy (kinetic or otherwise) required to destroy a rock must be assumed to be identical in both franchises if the rock is the same size. If said rock is destroyed by 1 siege tank in 5 minutes, and 1 pillar tank in 10 minutes, then we can safely derive the conclusion that siege tanks deal twice as much damage as pillars. Perhaps I will scour the cinematics of both games to get some benchmarks...




However:
LOL - Supreme commander is certainly NOT the best universe, fiction wise.

And if you are just talking in terms of firepower then, I'm sorry, the Star Wars universe will quite literally vaporise it. A single stardestroyer does barely fit on a 5x5 map, and 3 star destroyers can melt the entire surface of a planet in a Base Delta Zero operation. - That is not mentioning the death star that will snipe your ACU along with the planet.

[ColonelSheppard]

sry but


Atlantis > everything

[Flynn]

The only saving grace I can think of is that Space Marines would either drop pod or teleport on or inside of ACUs and attempt to kill the commander or plant a charge onto the reactor (but a personal shield could probably cancel that possibility). Also, since a lot of Warhammer 40k forces use more dangerous but less expensive warp travel instead of quantum gating then the much bigger and more powerful ships could serve as a counter balance to what ACU's are able to cook up. (For that matter, does the Supreme Commander universe even have space battles?)

Rootbeer, thank you for that image, where is it from?

lol this is strange. It's a sarcastic gesture, what are you thanking him for? It is Q from Star Trek: The Next Generation, if you must know

[rootbeer23]

i find it strange how you find the misinterpretation of ambiguous information strange.

[Golol]

sins of a solar empire universe beats everything.
7 capital ships have the length of a fucking planet.
and starbases are defense weapons that have like 1/4 the size of a planet

[Flynn]

i find it strange how you find the misinterpretation of ambiguous information strange.

Yes, the image you posted of Q from Star Trek was ambiguous. It was however, reasonable to assume it was a sarcastic gesture. Even if it wasn't, what did it contribute to the thread for the OP to "thank" you for it?

[eXcalibur]

sins of a solar empire universe beats everything.
7 capital ships have the length of a fucking planet.
and starbases are defense weapons that have like 1/4 the size of a planet

the units in SOASER are way too big. it is not realistic to think that capital ships are about 500-1000 km long.

try out the "infinite space" mod. it has a scaled down version, which at least tries to correct this mistake.