History VideoGame / SupremeCommander

* AIBreaker: Completely walling in your base (either a perimeter of walls or simply walling in canyons leading to it) will break the AI of enemy ground units - they will simply drive up to the wall, and come to a complete stop. In the single player, the AI enemies will then spam gunships and T1 bombers, which are easily countered by SAM turret spam.

* AlwaysAccurateAttack: Cybran T3 air superiority missiles will ''always'' hit their target.

*** Units will often run into each other when moving en masse, and will often have their well positioned lines of death be replaced by a messy line of tanks, bots, and support moving with no rhyme or reason, often causing section of a n army to be completely lacking in support units that are all clustered in a seperate part of your moving army.

*** The hover mechanic is independent of the amphibious attribute which is what the AI checks to see if it can be attacked by torpedos.
** Units do not attack walls (unless it's an engineer set to attack-move or patrol), allowing the player to set up labyrinth-like killing fields with walls, with a 1-block wide entrance that forces enemy ground units to enter one at a time, all while being fired upon by point defense turrets. The UEF are particularly good for setting up killing fields, courtesy of their [=T3=] Ravager turret.

** The importance of Radar is that it allows units to fire at enemies beyond visual range. The catch is that Radar cannot differentiate between real units and spurious contacts created by jamming. Because of this, base defenses can be fooled into continuously firing on "phantom units" (which only exist on radar but disappear when brought into visual or omni-sensor range) to no avail which allows other units to safely approach the base. Of course, this is [[JustifiedTrope entirely intentional]]; indeed it's what jamming is ''for.''

* AttackOfTheFiftyFootWhatever: The Galactic Colossus, Ythotha, Monkeylord and Megalith. The huge siege bots and ACU's are two to three stories tall and these things make them look puny. The cheap infantry bots you expend in their dozens are taller than trees.
* AuthorityEqualsAsskicking: Played with when it comes to each faction's Armored Command Units. On the one hand, early on, they struggle with Tech 2 and Tech 3 units in a direct fight, and are crushed by Experimentals. On the other, how many RealLife military commanders ride around in a HumongousMecha that can lay waste to an entire country and at the same time construct an entire army, navy, and air force within a few hours all by themselves? It can be played pretty straight [[MagikarpPower with the right ACU upgrades though:]]
** The UEF ACU's modest damage can be almost doubled, and it can get a large boost to its self-regeneration to make it more durable. It also has the widest range of Back upgrades, including a powerful Personal Shield Generator (that can be upgraded to a Shield Dome for the ACU's Escort units), a Personal Teleporter, as well as ''Tactical Nuclear Missiles.'' Since they count as Tactical Missiles, Strategic Missile Defense systems ignore them, and while the range is limited and it will put a strain on your economy, it [[MacrossMissileMassacre builds at the rate of tactical missiles too.]]

* BenevolentArchitecture: You can get resource production bonuses by building storage units next to mass extractors, mass fabricators, and energy generators.
** The only downside to close-knit construction is this: The more buildings you have close together, the more painful it becomes when an artillery bombardment or a well placed nuke comes in and sends all of your hours of base building down the drain.

* BrainwashingForTheGreaterGood: Princess Rhianne is capable of this by using the power of The Way. Colonel Arnold is on the receiving end in the campaign and, if the Aeon achieve victory in the original campaign, ''she does this to the entire galaxy.'' Ditto for the Cybrans, whose Liberation Matrix alters the symbiont brain in a fundamentally similar method to UEF loyalty programming.

* DeathRay: The Cybran Heavy Microwave Laser, most notably mounted on the Monkeylord. It has the highest DPS of any weapon in the game, capable of melting an ACU in seconds. The best part about the laser is that it can be mounted on the Cybran ACU, which also happens to be capable of complete visual and (non-omni) radar invisibility with an upgrade, allowing it to simply walk into an enemy base and start slaughtering.

* EscortMission: The fourth UEF mission has an escort sequence, with the character you are supposed to protect being in an unarmoured truck while the enemy have very long range weapons at their disposal.

* ForeverWar: The conflict between the three factions, barring occasional changes like the Earth Empire being replaced with the UEF, have been fighting for over a thousand years by the time the game takes place. You show up, however, at the potential end of that war.

* FriendlyFireproof: Applied to most single-target units, but not applied to anything that does SplashDamage, so it's pretty easy to accidentally lose your base if you don't set your mobile artillery to passive mode.
* GameMod: Some really excellent ones, but the most notable is probably 'Phantom' which is a free-for-all mode where 1-3 players are randomly and secretly designated 'Phantoms' and given a considerable resource bonus. The non-Phantoms (Innocents) have to identify the Phantoms and kill them for the Innocents "team" to win, while each Phantom as an individual has to be the last man standing. A really good Phantom player can [[ManipulativeBastard misdirect the innocents into killing of each other and the other Phantoms before turning on the survivors and finishing them with his superior production.]]
** of special note is the Forged Alliance Forever community driven mod. It's basically a whole platform to keep the multiplayer alive, including frequent balance updates.
** It'll be easier to just list the game's [[http://forums.gaspowered.com/viewforum.php?f=7&sid=51195ea225f612848726d75348f77667 mod section]] on the developer's website and its [[http://www.moddb.com/games/supreme-commander/mods Mod DB page]]

* MagikarpPower: [=ACUs=] start out (relatively) weak, having trouble dealing with some T2 units and most T3 units. However, all of them (and the smaller SACUs) can be upgraded to have more firepower, abilities, and health. The Cybran ACU can become ''completely'' invisible to radar and visual (or get a personal teleporter), can carry the [[WaveMotionGun Heavy Microwave Laser]] - the single most damaging direct-fire weapon in the game, capable of killing other [=ACUs=] with almost no warning - and build T3 buildings in seconds. The Seraphim ACU likewise is almost at the same danger-level as experimental units when it is fully upgraded. The UEF's ACU is no slouch either - being able to upgrade to be able to launch tactical and later strategic missiles.

* {{Nerf}}: GPG removed the Titan's missile launcher a few builds before release, and forgot to change the description, this also nerfed the Loyalist as its missile redirect was the counter to the Titan. In the expansion, all tactical missiles lost their homing capability, making them only effective against buildings and slow moving units unless used in a {{Macross Missile Massacre}}. This also nerfed the Loyalist by making the missile redirect pointless unless standing still, which will get them killed so many other ways.

* NotPlayingFairWithResources: The AIX cheats with resources, though the game ''does'' tell you it cheats. The players and non-AIX AI players can invoke this by building the Aeon Paragon experimental resource production building, which basically produces infinite energy and mass [[note]]There actually is a limit - 10k Mass, 1mil Energy - but it's so high that virtually no one will get ''close'' to reaching it.[[/note]], allowing the player to crap out dozens of experimental units in mere minutes.

* PhotoprotoneutronTorpedo: The Aeon Illuminate has strategic bombers which drop "quark bombs". There are also "graviton bombs", "neutron bombs", " proton artillery", "meson rockets", and a "quantum beam generator". Slightly averted by the UEF's use of gauss cannons, railguns, and napalm, but they also use plasma weapons and antimatter artillery.

* SchmuckBait: The fourth mission in the first game's Cybran campaign will conclude as a failure if you try to kill the enemy commander early by punching through her base and units in an open attack. She even taunts you that she rigged an important building to explode if you attack her.

* TacticalSuperweaponUnit: Tier 4-Experimental units. Unlike most examples, these are fully spamable, and while certainly big and tough and able to mop the floor with armies, to take on the enemy base requires either squads of the things or a supporting army of mooks). They're so X-box huge that they often get built directly on the battlefield by Tier 3 {{Worker Unit}}s. While each faction has three (four with the ''Forged Alliance'' expansion pack; these are listed last in theor respective sub-list), some fall under the purview of a straight {{Superweapon}}, and one is a superpowered generator.

** Though aircraft carriers, as ever, play this trope straight, even though they're big enough to qualify as actual warships, they're still nowhere near large enough to contain the dozens of aircraft they carry.

* WaveMotionGun: Most Experimental units and T3/Experimental Artillery are armed with [[{{BFG}} huge guns]] designed to annihilate anything that gets in their way. The Cybran Heavy Microwave Laser takes the cake, however -- it has the single highest DPS of any weapon in the game, has {{hitscan}}, and [[MagikarpPower it can be carried by their ACU]]

* OutOfCharacterMoment: Marxon in the UEF ending is seen begging Rhianne for forgiveness before the planet he's one is destroyed by the Black Sun. This runs counter to to the Aeon campaign where he tried to overthrow Rhianne.

* DoomedByCanon: In every campaign Colonel Zachery Arnold is killed during the battle for Black Sun.

** Pathing can be very bad on maps that aren't completely flat.

** By contrast, the UEF only has two instances of rogue commanders, [[spoiler: Colonel Arnold, who joins the Aeon after being "enlightened" by Princess Burke]], and [[spoiler: Brigadier Fletcher, who's an AbsoluteXenophobe who puts the final mission in jeopardy by turning on the Coalition and attempts to take Black Sun for himself.]]

*** the Fatman is a Land Battleship with an integrated MobileFactory and bubble-shield generator.
*** The ''Atlantis'' "Submersible Battleship," which includes aircraft carrying capacity along with nuclear torpedoes.

*** The ''Monkeylord'' is a huge SpiderTank carrying a sustained-fire microwave laser cannon and "Electron Bolter" autocannons.
*** The ''Megalith'' is a GiantEnemyCrab robot with an integrated MobileFactory. It's intended as a naval unit, and has more torpedo weaponry than anything else.

*** The ''Scanthis'' is a gigantic self-propelled GatlingGood howitzer tank that launches storms of {{Neutron Bomb}}s.

*** The ''Galactic Collossus''is a HumongousMecha with a tractor beam hands to prevent escape from its EyeBeams.

*** The ''Tempest,'' a huge, disc-shaped submarine MobileFactory warship armed with several torpedo launchers and the ominously-named Oblivion Cannon.

*** The ''Awassa'' is a huge flying-fortress-type bomber armed with nukes able to kill entire armies.

* AllUpToYou: {{Justified|Trope}} in the 4th and 6th missions of the expansion - [[spoiler:yoir alloes for the mission are eliminated due to betrayal, and the circumstances prevent you from getting anymore before things go pear-shaped]].

* AllYourPowersCombined: Achieved through StoryBranching in the expansion -- you receive [=sACUs=] from Commander Fletcher (U.E.F.) and Rhiza (Aeon) during the final mission. If you play as a Cybran, then you have access to all three factions' arsenals. If you manage to capture a Seraphim factory or engineer, then you can use all units available in the game.

%%* AMechByAnyOtherName: Bots, Armored Command Units ([=ACU=]), and support commanders [=(sACU)=].

* MagikarpPower: [=ACUs=] start out (relatively) weak, having trouble dealing with some T2 units and most T3 units. However, all of them (and the smaller [=SACUs=]) can be upgraded to have more firepower, abilities, and health. The Cybran ACU can become ''completely'' invisible to radar and visual (or get a personal teleporter), can carry the [[WaveMotionGun Heavy Microwave Laser]] - the single most damaging direct-fire weapon in the game, capable of killing other [=ACUs=] with almost no warning - and build T3 buildings in seconds. The Seraphim ACU likewise is almost at the same danger-level as experimental units when it is fully upgraded. The UEF's ACU is no slouch either - being able to upgrade to be able to launch tactical and later strategic missiles.

[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Epic-sm_2238.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:350:Yes, that's two entire ''fleets'' [[MoreDakka duking it out]].]]

* ILoveNuclearPower: The UEF. Their Tier 2 and 3 generators are fusion plants, and their commander mech can be fitted with a backpack missile silo, which can hold one nuke and one counter-missile.

* BiggerIsBetter: Tech 2 units are larger and more imposing than Tech 1 units, and are themselves smaller than Tech 3 units. [[UpToEleven Those are then dwarfed by Experimental Units.]] The bigger units leave larger explosions too.

* ObviousBeta: ''Supreme Commander'' was heavily promoted as a [=DirectX=] 10 showcase, with unit creation and mapmaking tools both promised. In the end, the game featured none of these things out of the box, with promises of a major patch -- as time went on, it became clear this too wouldn't happen. The game also included faction balance issues that had been identified in the Beta, dodgy pathfinding, poor optimisation and a raft of bugs. Some of these issues have been fixed by further patching and the ''Forged Alliance'' expansion, and even more have been fixed since by the modding community.

** The UEF Mavor is the biggest ''gun'' in the original and the expansion, being an artillery piece with antimatter warheads. While it's attack power is comparable to T3 artillery with a slightly faster fire rate, it has (almost) ''no range limit'' and it has much better aim; it can fire a continuous stream from one corner of an 81x81km map to the opposite corner with reasonable accuracy, and ''will'' wear through shields and devastate your base.

** The UEF is trying to hold too much territory, spreading it's forces too thin and losing the initiative to the Aeon. Building Black Sun has consumed much-needed resources and the Cybran Nation is interfering with their Quantum Gate infrastructure.

* AMechByAnyOtherName: Bots, Armored Command Units ([=ACU=]), and support commanders [=(sACU)=].

* NumberOfTheBeast: The Cybran T3 strategic missile submarine, the ''Plan B'', consumes 666 energy per tick when building its nuclear missiles.* ObviousBeta: ''Supreme Commander'' was heavily promoted as a [=DirectX=] 10 showcase, with unit creation and mapmaking tools both promised. In the end, the game featured none of these things out of the box, with promises of a major patch -- as time went on, it became clear this too wouldn't happen. The game also included faction balance issues that had been identified in the Beta, dodgy pathfinding, poor optimisation and a raft of bugs. Some of these issues have been fixed by further patching and the ''Forged Alliance'' expansion, and even more have been fixed since by the modding community.

* NumberOfTheBeast: The Cybran T3 strategic missile submarine, the ''Plan B'', consumes 666 energy per tick when building its nuclear missiles.
* ObviousBeta: ''Supreme Commander'' was heavily promoted as a [=DirectX=] 10 showcase, with unit creation and mapmaking tools both promised. In the end, the game featured none of these things out of the box, with promises of a major patch -- as time went on, it became clear this too wouldn't happen. The game also included faction balance issues that had been identified in the Beta, dodgy pathfinding, poor optimisation and a raft of bugs. Some of these issues have been fixed by further patching and the ''Forged Alliance'' expansion, and even more have been fixed since by the modding community.

** The Cybran Nation are the most sympathetic faction who simply want to free Symbionts from being used as slaves by the UEF and prevent the Aeon's attempts at extermination. But while they don't mean any malice their actions are shown from the UEF's perspective to undermine their efforts to fight against the Aeon, not to mention they would lead to years where all planets were trapped in isolation [[PortalNetwork quantum gates]] being destroyed and rendered useless.

** Princess Burke of the Aeon Illuminate found that due to fanatical commanders like [[OmnicidalManiac Avatar Marxon]] The Way has been corrupted and is little more than a justification to carry out horrific purges across the galaxy. Because of this, she enacts a plan where she spreads her consciousness throughout the galaxy using Black Sun and effectively performs mass BrainwashingForTheGreaterGood in order to end the Infinite War.