Once nukes, tier three units, long range artillery batteries that can fire across entire maps, and experimental monstrosities enter the fray, commanders are a lot more vulnerable. The Aeon Tsar's energy beam eliminated an enemy commander within a matter of seconds, for instance. A flying Cybran scarab-like experimental unit was able to decimate most of a well defended base in one pass, before it was eventually shot down. As powerful as these mega units are, they take forever to build. With only a few engineers assigned to constructing them we were informed through a popup tooltip that approximately 39 minutes remained on an Tsar's construction. These units are also a massive drain on resources. From our experience, we had to significantly augment our energy and mass production before even attempting to start the build process. When we finally had everything ready to bring a Tsar to life, it still took about 10 minutes even with a gaggle of engineers focused on its creation.

Building up anti-nuke defenses along with energy shields to ward off artillery barrages are requirements in any long lasting game. If you're caught without anti-nukes ready to intercept incoming missiles out of the sky, you can almost be sure you'll either lose or have to endure a painful rebuilding process. Nuclear blasts do as they should in Supreme Commander, namely blow the crap out of everything within a large radius. While it's a huge relief to eliminate an incoming nuke with your defenses, it's gleefully empowering to launch multiple nukes at multiple parts of the map and have them hit.