Starcraft vs SupremeCommander vs Dawn of War.

[Falconius]

I'm just curious to hear your oppinions.

To me these 3 games represent totally different approaches to RTS.
Starcraft seem to go for the e-sport RTS scene.
DoW goes for the e-wargamer who prefer infantry squad action.
Supreme Comander goes for the title of biggest battles.
Odd irony in the name though since you have no other lower-ranking officers that you command: the game should have been called Supreme (overworked) CORPORAL!

[deathand999]

 supreme commander is the worst looking game i ever saw. u cant see shit ugly graphics no fun
 after i tried it for 5 min i said i will nerver playe rts again..
 world in conflict changed all that lovely to the eye and full of action try it.

[Schorpie]

sc and dow are very simular in gameplay.
infantry squads aren't that unique anymore, BFME fe also represents it.
Maybe u should add WC3 to the list, with the use of strong heroes (who are able to level) it has a little RPG factor, but ofc it stays a RTS.
Or Z, maybe somewhat less know, but it is a RTS where u aren't able to build any units. (it is automanaged, based on the terretories u posses)

[Khan]

Ah Z was an amazing game!

[MrFlibble]

I haven't played Supreme Commander but since it's a "spiritual sequel" to Total Annihilation I guess both titles have at least something in common... Somehow, being an RTS fan, I didn't like TA at all. The only good point about it IMHO is the excellent, excellent soundtrack (I think it was recorded live performed by an entire orchestra). And of course I understand that TA was the first true 3D RTS game.

Sorry if it was a bit off-topic

[Caid Ivik]

SupCom and TA are nearly the same, just you have few new features, like the engine, three parties, zooming, shields, upgrades for your commander...but also it can be easily modified

[MrFlibble]

To me, TA badly lacked a plot, and it also seemed to me that the player is presented with lots of different units at once (if you've got enough resources that is), to which there is no introduction in singleplayer. Like you know, with each mission you get one-two new units and in games like War/StarCraft they're also properly introduced so you learn how to handle them. And TA was the game where the functional similarity of the sides' units really annoyed me (unlike WarCraft 1 and 2 for example).

[Caid Ivik]

in Warcraft both sides had same units, even their hp/damage/etc stats were equal...they were tactical, you had limited resources and it was more about fast reactions and rushing

SupCom and TA are more strategic, you have many possible strategies (which are to be found in quanta of units) and often it is enough to build up, maintain growth, and then lay waste

[Falconius]

No worries MrFibble, everyone responded off topic.
This "list" is not so much about which game is the best, as such.
It is more about the aproach of the game design.

I chose Starcraft from the Blizzard side because it has proven to be a very enduring game.
Atmosphere played a major part in the design. Often people say that the game is well
balanced, but it took a few patches, and some people still think the balance can be improved.
There was also some humor here and there: the game didn't take itself too seriously.
With the release of Starcraft2 coming up, people are again excited about this golden oldie.
However, it is very possible that the designer of Starcraft2 will make a total mess of things.

I chose SupremeCorporal because of its design philosophy. To me it seems like the designer
of this game made the typical mistakes which has helped RTS games into its current stagnation.
Have some accidental tactics and strategies +- available for the player and give him lots of toys
to throw around on suicide missions. Its a proven way of creating a RTS blockbuster, eh?

Dawn'o War had much more to prove.
Comming from the same stable as games like Homeworld, people had high hopes for this title.
Also important is the fact that the WH40k fiction/fluff behind the game is vastly better developed
than most of its competition, almost on par with the Starwars franchise.
The most important point to bear in mind is that people were playing WH40K games long before
Dune2, right? This gives DOW a major edge over the competition: its design was influenced by
the work of real game designers, as opposed to the lead designer=lead programmer problem that
has plagued especially RTS games on PC.
For example: a programmer is incapable of understanding that soldiers in a tight spot can panic
and flee from a fight.
It is sweet how you can paint your army and customize the weapon load-out of each squad.
The all-round design aproach succeeded in giving the player an alternative to the table-top game IMHO.

[Apollyon]

I think DoW makes for fantastic single-player and network games. Online, the battles are impressive and interesting but the units are in reality deceptively homogeneous, and there are blatant problems with balancing between sides.

One of the problems with RTS innovation is that often designers take it too far. A perfect example is Perimeter which came out a few years back. The gameplay is incredibly original in a great many ways -- but disorientingly so. The end product is more frustrating than fun, despite being an admirable piece of work.

Supreme Commander did well off the back of TA, and off the back of the huge amount of press coverage it received: 'zomg big armiez!' etc.

The other two games, Starcraft and DoW, work for quite obvious reasons. SC takes the narrative approach, combining RPG elements with the RTS and in so doing involving the player to a much greater degree and providing an impetus to continue playing to the game's denouement. DoW bases itself on an established design- and fan-base, which is both a sound creative and marketing strategy. Of course, DoW could well have been awful. Plenty of Warhammer games have been bad in the past. Luckily, DoW does quite well with increasing the importance of various features, such as morale and squad upgrades, and the gap between infantry and vehicles.

[Sven]

SupCom seems better than StarCraft for those who want large-scale strategy and some kind of realism. StarCraft is for those who want their computer to be able to run a large-scale war at more than one frame per second. (Okay, so maybe it's my computer that sucks. )

[admiralxgmx]

I've played various RTS games, here is my take on them.  It should be noted that this is in response to "Starcraft vs SupremeCommander vs Dawn of War.".



StarCraft: Brood War
Fantastic game and personally, my favorite video game.  It combines all the elements needed to make a successful game.  It's still got about 1 million active players who log onto Battle.net each day and is still sold wherever games are sold (even though it was released in 1998, over a decade ago).  Multiplayer Use Map Settings is what really separates this gem from the rest of the games out there, Multiplayer Use Map Settings on Battle.net, along with stat tracking, ladder, tournaments, live tech support, channels, automatic patching, a anti-hacking/cheating system, ignore lists, forums, friends lists, etc. make Battle.net the most popular online gaming service ever (statistics show that Battle has 10 times more players than Xbox Live).



Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne
Warcraft III is StarCraft, but 3D (and some hero units can hold items and level up).



Warcraft II: Battle.net Edition
Think of this as a pre-StarCraft form of StarCraft.  For both races (including the Elves with the Humans), the Orcs and the Humans (which joined together with the Elves) are pretty much the same.  There are however, a few small differences between the two races' units' statistics.



Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War: Dark Crusade
A fun game, I played it on single player.  I tried it on multiplayer, it's sort of a rip off of Battle.net, but then again, so is pretty much everything else since Battle.net was the first online gaming services to have chat rooms, friends lists, etc.  However when I logged in, I couldn't play games, some sort of firewall problem, I tried to fix it but, StarCraft is better so I haven't really gotten around to fixing the problem yet.



Star Wars: Force Commander
This game got horrible reviews, but don't let that fool you, it's actually a fun game.  The game is (unlike most RTS games) not based around resource gathering.  In fact, you don't even gather resources, you capture enemy (and neutral) Command Bunkers and get command points to create units, structures, etc.  The multiplayer for the game could use a little work, it relied almost solely on the Internet Gaming Zone, which is now pretty much defunct (the service exists in name only, no games actually work on it, but it is still a technically a corporeal entity).  The game is considered by many to be the first 3D RTS game ever.



Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds: Clone Campaigns
Take Age of Empires II: Age of Kings and rename the units "Lando Calrissian", "Luke Skywalker", "Princess Leia", "Chewbacca", and "Han Solo" and you have Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds.



Dominion: Storm Over Gift 3
This game is alright.  It is kind of a rip off of Command & Conquer though.  The game is the "sequel" (more like spin-off) to G-NOME, which is a combination of a Mech Simulation, First-Person Shooter, and Third-Person Shooter.  However, unlike G-NOME, this is a RTS.  So you have the same four major factions (not including Sheridan Rebels, since they all died in G-NOME), these factions are the: Union (Human), Darken, Scorp, and the Bendian Mercenary Provisional Republic (Merc).  The game is extremely glitchy and had several problems in development.  One such problem was 7th Level (the developer and publisher of G-NOME and Dominion: Storm Over Gift 3) going defunct, as well as the company that picked up the title (Ion Storm not knowing how to make a game, just like the new publisher ( Eidos Interactive) didn't.



Age of Empires
Originally a good game, however, it needs better multiplayer.



Age of Empires II: Age of Kings
Age of Empires but with better graphics.



Strifeshadow
I've only played the demo of this, but it seemed like it had potential.  It has a few problems though, there is absolutely no way of knowing what to do in the game (as there are no instructions), and nobody plays it.  It has a system similar to Battle.net, however, unlike Battle.net, nobody is ever on Strifeshadow.



Star Trek: Armada
A fun game with a system similar to Battle.net (that system is called the World Opponent Network).



Star Trek: Armada II
Not as good as the first one.



Star Trek: New Worlds
Not worth buying, it doesn't even work (not right anyway) on Windows XP.



Supreme Failure (I mean Commander)
Chris Taylor forgot how to make a RTS and so he made a game that was worse than Cybernoid (don't download that game, if you do, you might kill yourself, but you have a better chance of killing yourself if you go on the official Supreme Commander forums).  Unfortunately two forums modeled themselves after the official Supreme Commander forums, these forums are The Warcraft Occult (The Warcraft Occult isn't quite as bad however), Forum Sector (don't click the link to Forum Sector, it is a child pornography site [it used to be a StarCraft fansite, but then rustyslacker joined and started posting some stuff, including bad pictures]).



Total Annihilation
Extremely awesome, it's just like Battle.net,  you can play for free on PhoeniX WorX.



Total Annihilation: Kingdoms
Not as fun as the first one, but still fun, nonetheless.



Golems
Don't buy this.



Majesty
It's pretty fun, and different.



Command & Conquer: Red Alert
Fun.



Command & Conquer: Sole Survivor
Fun.



Command & Conquer: Red Alert II: Yuri's Revenge
Fun.



Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun: Firestorm
Fun.



Battallion Wars
Thank god I'm done with the Command & Conquer games, now then, Battalion Wars.  Battalion Wars is a console RTS game (for the Nintendo GameCube).  It is fun.



Dune 2000
A Dune game!  But Frank Herbert's Dune Online is better.



Age of Sail
It is very slow paced.



Shattered Galaxy
A fun MMORTS game.



Warcraft: Orcs & Humans
Where is the Battle.net?



Theatre of War
One of the oldest RTS games that is still on the market.  This came out in like 1994 and you can still buy it.




Shogun: Total War
I haven't really had much experience with this game, so I can't say much about it.

[vota dc]

Long live the necromancer!

Starcraft Brood War is a masterpiece because the three factions are totally different in building system and military units.The only downside is that like the other Blizzard games you can't have a real mass of units and also units production is slow.

Warcraft III isn't Starcraft:the population cap is really low and there are a lot of RPG elements.However the factions are totally different like Starcraft.

Warcraft II I'm agree with you,but the difference is on the magic:the units are really the same save troll and elves that have different upgrades.It is so stupid to have a troll sturdy as an elf!

I played the regular Warhammer 40000.I don't like squad games,however I found funny because there is both meele and ranged combat and it remind me World War 1.

I'm agree with your opinion of Age of Empires.The bad things is that the piercing armor of units is low,so you have only to mass cavalry archer that are sturdy,fast and with a incredible range.

In Age of Kings armor and bonus are serious and massed cavalry archer can be easily countered.The bad thing is that infantry and archer civilization can be easily wiped by the siege civilization if they don't rush.Massed scorpion can destroy everything except the siege onagers.I modded this game:now siege onagers (and other heavy machines) count 2 population instead 1,the same for War Elephants,while knight and scorpion count 1,5 population.And of course I lowered the rate of fire of siege.Now the crossbowman has low rate of fire but does heavy damage and has a bonus against cavalry.

[admiralxgmx]

Long live the necromancer!

Starcraft Brood War is a masterpiece because the three factions are totally different in building system and military units.The only downside is that like the other Blizzard games you can't have a real mass of units and also units production is slow.

Warcraft III isn't Starcraft:the population cap is really low and there are a lot of RPG elements.However the factions are totally different like Starcraft.

Warcraft II I'm agree with you,but the difference is on the magic:the units are really the same save troll and elves that have different upgrades.It is so stupid to have a troll sturdy as an elf!

I played the regular Warhammer 40000.I don't like squad games,however I found funny because there is both meele and ranged combat and it remind me World War 1.

I'm agree with your opinion of Age of Empires.The bad things is that the piercing armor of units is low,so you have only to mass cavalry archer that are sturdy,fast and with a incredible range.

In Age of Kings armor and bonus are serious and massed cavalry archer can be easily countered.The bad thing is that infantry and archer civilization can be easily wiped by the siege civilization if they don't rush.Massed scorpion can destroy everything except the siege onagers.I modded this game:now siege onagers (and other heavy machines) count 2 population instead 1,the same for War Elephants,while knight and scorpion count 1,5 population.And of course I lowered the rate of fire of siege.Now the crossbowman has low rate of fire but does heavy damage and has a bonus against cavalry.

I agree with you too on Warcraft 3, I just didn't want to bother writing a extremely long reply about all the Blizzard/Battle.net games (that might seem biased), so I just stuck with StarCraft as the primary and threw the other two on the side as secondaries.



also
Sorry for necromancing this topic, I found it by searching StarCraft (was looking for a Dune total conversion for StarCraft).