Gas Powered Games may have been upon the brink of closure, it may have been three years since the game’s release, and it may have been two years since the last patch but Supreme Commander 2 has received a new update that provides a hefty reworking to the games mid to end-game stage.
According to Gas Powered Games’ announcement post, the patch has been in the works off and on for the past two years, and, speaking to PC Gamer, developer Steve Bauman wanted to make clear that “there’s nothing of any significance to the timing of the patch.” He wouldn’t want anyone to think that the company’s recent buyout by Wargaming.Net has spurred development of the strategy series, now, would he?
The focus of the patch is reworking the game’s economy to increase the importance of resource management, particularly in the late stages of a match. The key to this is a two-part change to the mass extractors that fund the core economy. The first change is that the baseline rate that mass is collected at has been halved, significantly decreasing the amount of Mass you can accumulate. But, to counter this, mass extractors now slowly increase the rate at which they collect resources; after 18 minutes of life they double in their effectiveness, repealing the baseline cut.
What this will mean is that protecting your mass extractors is now vitally important because losing an extractor isn’t a simple fix to come back from, you will have a temporarily hobbled economy until your replacement extractors can gain veterancy.
Here’s the full change log, copied in from Steam:
Fixes and Improvements:
– Mass Extractor Veterancy – Securing and protecting mass deposits is now vital to mid-term and long-term gameplay. Base unit cost and base Mass output has been reduced to half of the previous values. Mass Extractors will slowly increase in effectiveness as they accumulate veterancy until at 18 minutes they double their effectiveness.
– All units built at Land Factories have had their visual scale reduced by 25%.
– Players are now able to see the health value of enemy units.
– Fix for veterancy bar not displaying properly.
– Fix for Illuminate teleport ability overwriting the transport ability.
– Fix for Air units not receiving their LOS buff after being built.
– Fix for Pullinsmash ability remaining active when placed in a transport.
– Fix for some abilities to be activated more than once if activated very quickly.
– Fix for redirector not redirecting nukes if the launcher was previously destroyed.
AI:
– Updated the way the neural networks train. Integrated new neural network dataset.
– Improved AI’s use of transports
– Fix for AI bases not realizing their extractor spots were full.
– AI is now able to build on floating islands and mesas again.
– Fix for AI trying to expand to areas it cannot reach.
– Fix for scouting positions that were under water.
– Scouts will try to avoid defenses more.
– Fix for AI engineers trying to reclaim something it cannot path to.
– Fixes for AI microing.
– Fix for AI determining a platoon’s min firing range.
– Neural platoon code cleanup.
– Fix for AI not building Aegis.
– Fix for AI not scouting with land when it has an air factory, but no air units.
– Changed the way the AI counts the number of air attack units it has.
– Adjusted when the AI will build a radar in an expansion.
– Changed the rate at which threat from mobile enemies decays.
– AI platoons will now take threat into account again.
– Added ability to adjust AI aggressiveness.
Networking Improvements:
– If a player in the lobby does not have a connection to you a red ! will appear as their ping.
– Adjusted max packet size to use Steam’s max packet size.
– Removed redundant pending connection cleanup.
– If Steam reports any connection error, other than timeout, we will close the connection and log it. If the reported error is a timeout we log it and ignore it. Networking will handle the timeout at this point.
– Fix to the connection adaptor when it transitions to a resting state.
– Ranked matches that desync will now immediately end and be counted as a disconnect.
– It will now cause the game to desync if a player modifies memory to give them free research items.
– Army research data is now part of the sim checksum.
Balance Improvements:
– Factory experience value increased from 1000 to 1250.
– Gantry experience value increased from 1250 to 1750.
– Factory TML upgrade now prioritizes structures over mobile units.
Cybran
– Executioner Class movement speed reduced from 5 to 4. Minimum range of 20 added.
– Magnetron cooldowns increased from 30 to 45 seconds.
– C-Rex health increased from 51300 to 60000.
– Intellitron health increased from 1500 to 2000. Cost decreased from 90m/300e to 80m/275e.
– Loyalist speed increased from 4 to 4.2. Weapon range increased from 17 to 18.
– Executioner Class RP cost increased from 6 to 7.
– Kraken RP cost decreased from 12 to 10.
– Sea Operations cost decreased from 8 to 7.
– Naval Vision boost increased from 75% to 100%.
– Structure Sonar RP cost increased from 1 to 2.
– Intellitron RP cost reduced from 5 to 4.
– Cobra RP cost reduced from 2 to 1.
– Power Detonate RP cost increased from 4 to 5.
– Land Regeneration effectiveness increased from 100% to 125%.
– Land Health effectiveness increased from 20% to 25%.
– Overcharge RP cost increased from 9 to 10.
– Core Dump RP cost decreased from 4 to 2.
Illuminate
– Buhbledow build time decreased from 145 to 130. Cost reduced from 800m/2800e to 600m/2100e.
– Harvog speed increased from 4 to 4.4. Weapon range decreased from 17 to 16. Cost reduced from 44m to 40m.
– Wilfindja sonar increased from 60 to 150. Vision increased from 28 to 75. Health increased from 8000 to 10000.
– Sooprizer now has radar stealth.
– Quantum Floating RP cost reduced from 9 to 8.
– Electroshock RP cost increased from 6 to 7.
– Land Damage II RP cost decreased from 7 to 6.
– Harvog cost decreased from 3 to 2.
– Wilfindja RP cost decreased from 7 to 6.
– ACU Range RP cost increased from 3 to 4.
– Angler Torpedo RP cost increased from 3 to 5.
– Core Dump RP cost decreased from 5 to 2.
– Harvog AA upgrade damage increased from 8 to 10.
– Weedoboth Scorch Bomb damage decreased from 25 to 20. Damage radius decreased from 3.5 to 3.0.
UEF
– Jackhammer health reduced from 40000 to 30000.
– Poseidon movement speed reduced from 5 to 4. Minimum range of 20 added.
– Mega Fortress cost increased from 1000m/3700e to 1100m/4000e.
– C-230 Star King Extreme health increased from 10000 to 12500.
– AC-1000 build time increased from 110 to 130.
– UEF Land Factory Shield health increased from 6000 to 10000.
– UEF and Illuminate Mobile AA health increased from 750 to 875.
– Titan speed increased from 4 to 4.4. Weapon range decreased from 17 to 16. Cost reduced from 42m to 38m.
– Transport Capacity increased from 10 to 15.
– Land Build Time reduction increased from -10% to -15%.
– Bomb Camera Duration RP cost reduced from 2 to 1.
– Air Heavy Shield RP cost increased from 6 to 7.
– Land Damage RP cost decreased from 5 to 4.
– Sharp Shooter RP cost reduction from 3 to 2.
– Jackhammer RP cost increased from 8 to 10.
– Combat Engineer RP cost reduced from 3 to 2.
– King Kriptor RP cost reduced from 11 to 10.
– Poseidon RP cost increased from 5 to 7.
– ACU Health RP cost decreased from 3 to 2.
– ACU Damage RP cost decreased from 4 to 3.