Bandai Namco Reveals New Sci-fi MOBA Supernova

Supernova features significant gameplay elements of the RTS genre.

In a new interview with Gamespot, product manager Jason Schaefer revealed a lot about Supernova. He said that the team's primary focus was to craft a MOBA with significant gameplay elements of the RTS genre.

Supernova will allow Commanders to control what kinds of minions spawn, and offers a list of variations from the basic melee minion. They even go as far as to differentiate between ground and air minions. Each variation has a set of strengths and weaknesses, and altering the use of each variety will be the deciding factor for overall victory.

Second of the big two differences is the intentional exclusion of the last-hit mechanic. According to Schaefer, this was an intentional design decision:

"It was [removed] on purpose, and for a specific reason. When we look at other MOBAs that have that last-hit mechanic, it really emphasises the whole gameplay being really revolved around that. Especially early game. That's a very mechanical type of gameplay. With Supernova, we want strategy to count just as much if not more. By removing a last-hit mechanic it allows you to focus equal parts on working on your army and making sure your army is optimised and performing well. It makes it less about knowing the exact mechanics and executing the exact mechanics and more high-level, and forming a strategy," Schaefer said.

"Yes, timing counts for a lot on Supernova, but even when you're battling a commander one-on-one, we've seen that even a medium latency is perfectly fine," Schaefer explained.

"One thing we have noticed is the game is pretty stable and is still a good experience even if you have a semi-high ping. It's not really dependent on really low pings. So we've been happy to see that. That being said, we are making plans and starting the efforts of expanding different server locations throughout the world. The next one that we do will probably be based in Europe. We do plan to eventually have global support."

You can sigh up for Supernova's closed alpha here.