Agreed. TA was what inspired Supreme Commander in the first place; SupCom is basically a remake with it with even more features, units, and cool shit.
Even back when TA was made, though, it still had a ton of pretty kickass features in comparison to other RTSes- bullets had trajectory, and would actually impact on hills if they were in the way, you could have units queue up complex order paths (move here, then there, then start patrolling these two points), etc. When units explode, their parts legitimately fly everywhere dynamically, instead of a static death animation.
The economy system is pretty unique, being limitless and exponential; whereas in Starcraft/Warcraft late game the map runs out of resources, that just
doesn't happen in TA. Also, resource consumption is done in real-time. If you order something built, instead of up-front costs, it's a steady drain relative to the progress, and if you stretch yourself too thin your construction will slow down.
A lot different than most other RTSes of the time.
Wonder if I ever play it, it would tell me what all the fuss about is from those SIs.
As for what the fuss is about, basically wanking with biggatons and exponential growth, since the lore is about factions with basically ex-nihilo resource generation that have demonstrated the ability to construct planets of metal and true Jupiter-brains. Oh, and cloning with each clone having full memories.
The lore was kinda silly, basically Singularity comes about and humans are mandated to upload their minds to machine, abandoning flesh. Some folks didn't want to. Humanity-that-became-machine is the Core, and the flesh and blood humans are the Arm.
The two factions basically fought for a thousand years til the events of the game which is a pretty generic story about blah blah doing some battles and turning the tide.
Having said that though, TA's soundtrack still holds up as one of the best video game OSTs ever created.
Forest Green is the best goddamn theme and I will fight anyone who says otherwise.