When comparing Starcraft vs Supreme Commander, the Slant community recommends Starcraft for most people. In the question“What are the best LAN party PC games?” Starcraft is ranked 9th while Supreme Commander is ranked 12th. The most important reason people chose Starcraft is:
There are three selectable races in the game, Terrans, Protoss and the Zerg. The Terrans being human, while the other two are alien races. What makes the game stand out is that each race feels exceptionally different from one another, each with their own personalities. This makes for a different experience depending on what race has been chosen to play with.
Specs
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Pros
Pro Tons of personality that keeps the story and gameplay interesting and entertaining
There are three selectable races in the game, Terrans, Protoss and the Zerg. The Terrans being human, while the other two are alien races. What makes the game stand out is that each race feels exceptionally different from one another, each with their own personalities. This makes for a different experience depending on what race has been chosen to play with.
Pro Built-in offline LAN support
Being an older game, Starcraft suports offline LAN due to not as many people having internet back when it was released. This is something that many games (including Starcraft 2) regrettably do not feature anymore.
Pro Well balanced race selection keeps the gameplay fair
The game is fairly well balanced, so nobody gets an advantage by choosing a certain race. While each race will have their own unique abilities, the balancing of these abilities allows the game to play even handed, with no real advantage to any race.
Pro This game can be downloaded for free
Blizzard is now offering the original Starcraft (titled Starcraft Anthology) as a free download.
Pro Highly specialized units that are easy to learn but hard to master
This helps keep the game challenging and interesting even at a high level of proficiency.
Pro Simulation of every shot
If there is a large building in between the line of sight of the player and the target, your units might hit the building instead. To compensate you can use artillery or missiles. However this type of full scale simulation is at the expense of CPU power.
Pro Massive battles with plenty of outcomes
Battles can involve hundreds of units. This allows for even experimental units that can single-handedly take out entire armies due to their sheer size. This way there is room for experimentation in what can works, or just to see what outcomes they have.
Pro Unlimited zoom increases visibility
You don't need a mini map to get an overview of the Battlefield: simply zoom out using the scroll wheel. If you want to "jump" somewhere else just zoom in to that exact spot.
Pro Authentic real time economy
When you spend resources on a building, they are not spent instantly but rather over the course of building. The same goes for collecting. Your buffer is small so try to match your spending rate with that of gathering.
Pro Rewarding, high skill cap
This game can satisfy you for hours. It offers a high level of play that not only takes a long time to attain but is also very rewarding when mastered.
Pro Advanced command system
By holding the shift key, you can see the commands you gave as an overlay on the map. Drag and drop commands to adapt them whenever you have to.
Pro Fundamentally different factions that are well balanced
Each faction in the game will have different abilities, units, transporters or stations that are unique to that faction. While one faction will have an advantage of a hovering engineer, another will have the advantage of a driving engineer, each being prone and un-prone to particular kinds of attacks. Somewhat like a rock paper scissors scenario where it will all balance out in the end. This way it keeps each faction feeling unique, but at the same time disallowing any to have too much of an advantage over the others.
Pro Asynchronous tech system
Upgrading one factory doesn't magically upgrade all the others. Decide wisely how much you spend on advancing in tech. Low tech spam can sometimes still be an option.
Cons
Con Old and outdated
With the original release dating back to 1998, the game is quite old now and its graphics are not on par with current game offerings.
Con Lacks widescreen support
Starcraft is only available in a 4:3 resolution. However, a hack to make it work in widescreen can be found here.
Con Stand-alone add-on Forged Alliance needed for stability
Vanilla game has balance issues, which is why it is recommended that the user installs the add-on, Forged Alliance.
Con Steep learning curve and need for planning involved
Supreme Commander takes a while to pick up and learn how to play well. Since everything in the game happens slowly, you need to plan.
Con Developers abandoned the game
However there is great community support in which they have released patches in order to fix outstanding bugs as well as support hosting a map vault where players can download community made maps to use in the game. There is also a matchmaking lobby tool available here, which makes finding online matches to play pretty easy.
Con Large battles with a poor CPU is not recommended in 4v4
The game can slow down significantly in large battles and on huge maps when there are a lot of players. This is especially the case for those using lower-end PCs.