OVER 9000!!!

In this post, I’ll offer some tips about the basics of the User Interface (UI) of Supreme Commander 2 which will, in my opinion, help you become a better player.

Turn on all overlays (weapon, intel, and “always render strategic icons”), except the “strategic overlay” which I hate, but you might like. The “strategic” overlay attempts to “smartly” display circles around “groups” it thinks have things in common (like a common location or order) and enables you to click them via circles when you zoom out. I think it’s useless personally, because for me it gets in the way of selecting individual units or groups, but check it out to see what it offers.

My interface settings.

Watch your radar coverage closely. What areas of the map do you not cover? Do you have arty or fatboys which cannot use their full weapon range due to no vision? Get an engineer going and make a radar for them!

As you build battle structures (arty/AA/PDs/TACs), watch their weapon ranges. As you command units, mind their weapon ranges as well. A lot of tactics (including “kiting” – going backwards with units which have a greater range like “brackman” arty or megaliths while being attacked by units with a lesser range like tanks or assault bots and doing damage while they can’t reach you) rely on CLOSELY watching the weapon range of your units and keeping the enemy units right at the edge of that weapon range, where they cannot fire at you but you can fire at them.

Ranges, ranges, ranges...

A lot of the game is about vision/scouting and exploiting a difference in attack ranges. Make sure you know what your capabilities are and try to estimate the opponent’s.

Get to know your shortcuts! Not everything in the game needs to be done by clicking the mouse, and knowing a few shortcuts to features you commonly use can improve your gameplay and enjoyment considerably.

A few common shortcuts which I use are:

• Holding “Shift” – puts the “queue” overlay on and enables you to “queue” actions such as building buildings, etc. This is one of the things that makes Chris Taylor’s games so fucking amazing! Learn it, use it, enjoy it.
• “B+M” or “B+E” – when an engineer or your ACU is selected, “B” enters a “build menu” where you can select what structures to build. “M” is for Mass Extractor and “E” is for Energy (Power Generator). Very useful to start the game off quickly.
• “Tab” – opens/closes the research page.
• “Enter” – chat.
• “Shift+Enter” – team chat.
• “Ctrl+Z” – selects all units on the map which are the same as the unit(s) selected. Useful to “catch” units which have come out of your factories.
• “Ctrl+1 to 9” – creates a group of the selected units. It also works for structures! When you have mass convertors, it’s very useful to assign them to a group so you can quickly hit the “mass convert” button regularly by selecting the group.
• “1 to 9” – selects the group of units created above.
• “Ctrl+K” – “Kills” the selected unit, making it suicide. It has a 5-second countdown during which you can press Ctrl+K again to cancel the suicide order. Seems like a pointless command at first, but… what if your building is being captured by an enemy engineer? Ctrl+K it so it doesn’t fall into enemy hands – or better yet, structure detonate it if you’re Cybran and do some damage!
• “Ctrl+J/Ctrl+T” – Jump Jets for Cybran and Teleport for Illuminate. It’s very useful to be able to do those things quickly to teleport or jumpjet out of a heated battle to the enemy’s weak spot, or past his/her defenses. Be careful so you don’t press Ctrl+K by mistake instead of Ctrl+J! The former command will suicide your units in 5 seconds instead of jump jetting them!
• “O” – overcharge on your ACU – if you have it unlocked of course.
• “Alt+right click” – does an “attack move” – moves units while making them attack any enemy units on the way until they’re destroyed. VERY useful for attacking air with air, or attacking an area where you don’t want concentrated damage, but would rather have a somewhat more “even” destruction.
• “S” – stops a unit and erases its order queue.
• This one is not really a shortcut, but be mindful that you can click an icon of a unit when  you have a group selected in the bottom “bar” with the left or the right button to respectively select only those units or remove those units from the selection. For example, you have a mix of units, but you want only your MMLs and unit arty selected? Drag a selection box over all units, and right-click any units but the unit arty and MMLs in the bar. Finish with a ctrl+z if you want all of those on the map. Alternatively, you can shift+click one MML and one unit arty, and then ctrl+z to select all of them.

Play with those shortcuts, get to know them. Even more shortcuts are available. You can press F1 at the main menu of the game to take a look at the rest and decide if you like any of them.

The user interface of Supreme Commander 2 gives you powerful tools and means to convey your exact plan and convert it into orders very effectively. Learn how to do it so with less clicks, and more quickly!