Lasers: Beam vs. Star-wars

I think different colour lasers should mean different damage output so it would be easy at a glance where the damage dealing is coming from

Supreme Commander. Cybran Rhino tanks. That is all. Those are the best lasers I've seen in any game, RTS or otherwise, and they seem to be beam-styled, albeit pulsed. And definitely what I want to see from laser-carrying units.

I just looked up that rhino tank you mentioned. Could only find the amphibious one which is shown here:

This one does look good though! Like a railgun, with two beams, joined by a bit of lightning, and some general flashes of lightning as muzzle flash.

Tachyon style beams are great too though I think.

+1 for finding a video which brings me back. Seeing such a close-up view of the units, their healthbars, watching the battles and explosions close up reminds me of my days playing Total Annihilation.

Supreme Commander simply doesn't have that in normal gameplay because you're too busy playing dot wars, taking actions, and making decisions.. you never have time to zoom in so close because you can't see anything other than the few dozen units that would only fit on the original sized TA resolution.. you'd lose the game by wasting time watching the units be awesome.

Gotta say, when you're not forced into a camera angle that really shows the action.. you tend to forget how amazing it is just to watch that kind of scene play out.

Yes it's true. Even for PA, lots of the coolest sounds (like bots running en masse) don't get heard really. If you go into freecam and follow your bots all pursuing a fleeing commander it's truly a LOL moment. It'd be great with all these multiple views to have a cinematic/replay camera to highlight those great moments from good perspectives.