It's the first and probably only RTS game where I don't even care about my individual units and just send them en mass to the front line automatically. I literally count on the wreckage of the dead units to clog up the spaces where I am defending. In some sense the game is not tactical at all but really more about strategy and economy planning. There is very little micromanagement on my part and I love it.
I can't quite put my finger on why I don't like PA, but something about it just feels off. Which is a shame, I really want to like it, and the planet-smashing aspect of it seems like it would be a lot of fun.
I think the problem was that they worried too much about making it Twitch-friendly and forgot to, you know, create a fun game.
Also, looks like they jumped on Twitch bandwagon very early, Twitch coming out in 2011, and PA in 2014 ?
I guess that this comes from their previous game being some crossover between DOTA, Team Fortress 2, and a (proto-)Overwatch ?
Games need to be short. Games need to be fast and have continuous action. Buildup phases need not apply. Rushes need to be viable. Unit counts need to be restricted. Attack uber alles--defense need not apply.
A game design article recently had a good word for it: homeostasis.
Twitch-friendly games are ferociously anti-homeostatic. They want balance to be metastable--easily knocked off and then the imbalance snowballs to defeat.
Supreme Commander, on the other hand, is practically the anti-Twitch. It is strongly homeostatic. If you rush an opponent on a large map, your L1 units are running into L2 defenses. If you don't knock your opponent out, there is now a LOT of quickly harvested scrap metal sitting really close to his base and really far from yours. Defenses are strong and problematic. Unit counts are large.
Because they are in a different category, not (usually) played as PvP ?