Unlike other RTS games, where units must be sized to fit reasonably on the screen, the zoom range in Supreme Commander will allow for diversity in unit size. Previews have confirmed that there are units so large that they crush smaller units as they travel and some will not even be able to fit on a single screen at the minimum zoom range of Supreme Commander (such as a battleship, which will take up an entire two screens). The scale is large enough that Supreme Commander will feature sea and air battles as well as nuclear weapons at a realistic scale in addition to land battles.

To accomplish this, Supreme Commander will use fully 3D terrain that is dynamically tessellated as the camera is moved around. Both units and maps will also use normal maps in order to allow for a large amount of detail.

The balance of units in Supreme Commander will be different to most other RTS games; the GameSpy article explains that, as with Total Annihilation, Supreme Commander will be a simulation. What this means is that units will operate using true Newtonian physics. Unlike most RTS games, where weapons are artificially limited in power or range to balance the game and use a die-roll function to randomly determine if a projectile successfully strikes its mark or not, Supreme Commander will use the natural weaknesses of units to keep things even. For example, a very powerful and accurate bomber squadron can devastate a base rather quickly. However, bombers must fly relatively slowly if they are going to accurately bomb a target and the enemy can defend with air units that can move very fast and would have little problem hunting down and destroying the defenseless bombers. Another example is the advantage of holding high ground; projectiles fired from artillery based on a hill would be assisted by gravity in damaging the enemy. These physics will also come into play with respect to hits/misses of projectiles. For example, a tank rolling and firing will have a lower hit rate than one that is stationary while firing.Other naturally limiting factors will come into play, such as the time and resources that go into making more powerful and advanced units

The system requirements for Supreme Commander have not been released, but there is speculation that a rather high-end system would be needed to run the game at the maximum settings.[3]

Although Supreme Commander is designed to take advantage of the special features in Windows Vista and DirectX 10, the game neither requires nor is specifically designed for either program. All capabilities of the game, including the dual-monitor support, are still supported in the DirectX 9 version, although the DirectX 10 version might have improved graphical features.[4]

Although the final game's system requirements haven't been released, the requirements for the Beta 53 version (not the final game) are as follows:

Operating System: Microsoft(R) Windows(R) XP (SP2 recommended)
Processor: 1.8 GHz or greater; 3.0 GHz or greater, dual core, recommended
RAM: 512 MB or greater; 2 GB recommended
Hard Drive: 8 GB available hard disk space
Video: GeForce 6000 and up, or ATI 9600 and up required (128 MB video RAM or greater, with Vertex Shader / Pixel Shader 2.0 support). ATI X800 XL or greater, nVidia GeForce 6800 or greater recommended
Audio: Sound card or on-board audio component, speakers or headphones
Internet: 56.6 Kbps Internet connection required; Cable/DSL speeds with 24 Kbps upstream per opponent recommended.
DVD-ROM