[Suggestion] Spicing Commander combat micro up a bit

We have all experienced what is like to have our commanders at the front of our army and, eventually, clash with the enemy commander. The sometimes called "comm boxing" and, in general, any sort of commander combat micro, I think, is a very fun part of the game, both as a player and a spectator, as it usually delivers occasional exciting, fast-paced, high-skill/risk high-reward situations that can turn the tide of a game very quickly.

I believe that the extent to which commander combat micro is relevant in the current state of the game is quite adequate: commander being an efficient base builder for most of the game, occasionally dealing with small raiding forces or snipes and eventually being able to push a front alongside an army. This post is, then, not meant to be asking for more frequent or more relevant commander micro but for a revision of the existing one and possible additions/improvements to it.

We can take mins 6:00 - 8:00 of this video as a canonical example of what commander combat micro is in the current state of the game. We see that, apart from what we would expect from any confrontation of units in the game (formation, tactical unit movement, priority attacks... including both the commander and the army), the micro consists in the commander building walls and turrets. This is already fun to do and watch but I think it merely shows the potential there is in giving the commander a few unique combat micro abilities, indeed, similar to the already implemented Ubercannon.

My suggestion would be then to diversify the Ubercannon-like abilities (in the sense of needing to be microed by the player and that they cost energy upon activation; either keeping the Ubercannon as it is and adding a couple more or reworking the whole concept of "commander activated ability") so that commanders have a set of abilities that give rise to similar micro mechanics to the current "Ubercannon+walls+turrets". The result of this rework could very well be, for example, a set of three abilities as follows:

• Energy Walls: quite simple, a wall that only costs energy, spawns at once with the size of roughly 6-8 metal wall units and which is indestructible but decays with time at a rate that would make it last for a similar time that a metal wall would last in a very busy battlefield.
• Short range area-effect weapon: shorter range than the Ubercannon, slightly bigger area of effect and slightly less damage than the Ubercannon.
  
• Long range sniper weapon: slightly longer range than the Ubercannon, point attack that cannot miss if an enemy unit is clicked, slightly more damage than the Ubercannon.

These will be better options to use in occasional combat (but definitely not better if you are trying to establish a solid front line at some specific point) than metal walls and turrets because:

• They are faster, so battlefronts become a little more dynamic (you don't need to commit to an initial set of metal walls or turrets).
• They are cheaper (no metal cost).
• They do a better job at reliably defending your commander when you really need to (currently turrets may be built as a support fire for the army or to defend against boombot snipes the new weapon abilities should be balanced to prevent the snipes if the player is paying close attention; also another problem with the current use of metal walls as micro elements is that one is never quite sure whether fire is passing through the walls, I guess this is ok for static walls but the energy walls could be such that any frontal (not overhead) fire is absorbed while the energy wall lasts providing a less-confusing defense system for the commander in battle).
• They are more flavourful in the sense that the vision of a commander building static structures in the middle of a heat-up battle is a bit strange.

Keep in mind, again, that my suggestions only try to address and rethink the commander combat micro that we already know and love from the current state of the game so the APM necessary to deal with a forward commander should be the same since queueing walls, turrets and firing the Ubercannon is replaced by laying energy walls and shooting the two energy weapons. If you got this far in the post (sorry for the long post), thanks for reading and please, let me know what you think.

Where is the dislike button?

Few like micro. Most try to avoid it like hell.

There are many good reasons why encouraging micro in an RTS game (not tactical combat simulators like Starcraft and alike) is a bad idea. Most players already act rather poor on the strategic level as they are having trouble prioritizing their attention. Adding even more time consuming distractions only makes this worse, while it solely favors high APM players as it grants them even more possibilities to cheat themselves advantages by micro despite playing subpar on any higher level.

Playing on random generated planets and solar systems, as well as adapting to your opponents land control attempts is already hard enough as it is, even if you are not forced to pamper units by hand.

Especially when your commander is under attack, being forced to control him manually is the LAST thing you want. Unless you are talking about super early game Commander vs Commander encounters, you have always more important things to do than baby sitting your Commander. E.g. trying to flank with whatever resources you have left to prevent your base from getting obliterated...

Yeah, kinda interesting, but not within the scope of PA. If anything, we need less micro, not more.

Sorry, I'm really not into this idea. I like the fact that the commander is a weak "king piece" who is forced to build an army for protection. I would totally support having commanders with different weapons, that gives variety and a reason to choose a commander based on the system, but without forcing you to micro.

I'm sorry guys (@exterminans @emraldis @lafncow ), but, judging from what you mention, I think you failed to notice (maybe I did not stress it enough) that implementing my suggestion would not increase the amout of micromanagement attention that goes to your commander when he engages in combat (which, in itself, is something reasonably optional to the player, you may never move your commander to the battlefront if you so decide) as I only suggested a way to redesign the commander micro mechanics that are ALREADY in the game (really, watch minute 6:00 of the video to see what I mean, there is quite a lot of comm micro going on). If anything, implementing the above suggestion will reduce a little the APM necessary to deliver a similar level of combat efficiency, as you would be able to laydown (energy) walls that protect the commander without needing to hotkey and build each wall unit or straight line of wall units; also, the two different weapons are just a diversified version of the ALREADY existing Ubercannon, no more micro involved there either.

Except to use any of these effectively you'd need hotkeys.

I'm sorry @Zaphys, but I think you are failing to notice that adding any extra things that you can tell the commander to do increases the micro required to make them happen. If the commander has multiple abilities that are worth using, then I need to stop managing my army to use them. That's micro. I'm actually not even 100% against micro, but I'd rather it be medium-micro, like sneaking a platoon around the flank than "shoot sniper rifle there, blast shotgun here". These are cool ideas, but not something I would personally want in this game.

I really don't think it has a place in vanilla, but adding more abilities to commanders is certainly something that can be fun in a mod.

Back when tanks were OP...

They still are OP. It's just much more subtle than other units, like Dox.

They are the most cost effective land unit still, hands down.

Don't you use hotkeys for building walls and turrets already?

Well, since they are meant to be all Ubercannon-like abilities you will get the chance to use them as frequently as the Ubercannon... so, by definition, there will be exactly the same amount of APM devoted to microing the commander as in the current state of the game. Maybe I should have stressed in the OP but when I said Ubercannon-like I meant using the same energy consumption and the same cool-down mechanic.

So basically you would have a commander that can choose between 2-3 options each time it would be able to, otherwise, simply fire the Ubercannon. In the most conservative approach, you could have only the current Ubercannon and the energy wall (some sort of defensive ability) that replaces the clunky metal wall mechanics that happens in the current version of the game. As I said, I am happy with how the comm boxing and comm micro plays out now but I also think that building metal walls as a "dynamic, temporary" defensive commander skill is just a patch for something that could be coherently implemented in the game: commanders should have (they already do) reactive defensive abilities so implementing an ability that proves much more intuitive and efficient than randomly placing some wall units and hoping for the enemy fire not to go over it (it is never quite clear when this is the case and there is also the issue of units targeting the walls instead of other enemy units) seems like a reasonable thing to do.

I really don't see how you could argue strongly against these points and at the same time admit that the commander micro in the current state of the game is fine and acceptable as what I suggest leaves the amount and relevance of commander micro in the game basically unchanged.

I thought of modding immediately when I came up with this idea, it will be a really good environment to test different ideas. But as for implementing something new regarding commander abilities in vanilla at some point (probably not soon because Uber is already quite busy): @cptconundrum don't you think the metal wall micro mechanic is a bit clunky and unintuitive?

I think it's fine but what I don't like so much is that sometimes units shoot over walls and sometimes they don't. I just wish I could figure out a better way to predict when walls would work and when they are worthless.

Yeah, that's precisely what I mean by "clunky and unintuitive": not being able to tell how effective they are by looking at the nearby units... this issue was pretty much all that motivated this whole thread initially

Then I think the solution should be to make walls more predictable.

I don't think it should be possible to construct walls while under siege in the first place as it can heavily distort the outcome of an otherwise rather predictable encounter. The problem we have there, is that walls are quick to build - which is necessary if you want to span large distances - but that the commanders build power also means that he can place tiny wall fragments instantly. And even if you don't finish construction of the wall, you still get a massive meatshield.

There is actually a simple solution to that issue: Change the slope at which unit maximum HP relate to construction progress, so that walls only can withstand fire once construction is complete. Also increase the size of the wall fragment so you need less for longer edges, plus accordingy higher durability and cost for individual fragments, but in return this also means increased construction time per fragment. In combination with the former option it becomes virtually impossible to place walls when already under fire. As a positive side effect, it is also no longer sufficient to remove only a single tiny wall fragment to breach an entire wall, even Infernos had to chew a little.

In the end, the gameplay can only profit if certain actions such as wall placement are moved from the heat of the battle to the preparation phase as it enables both opponents to develop more fleshed out tactics in advance.

The easiest way to do what you want is to increase the atrophy rate of walls that aren't finished, but I don't think I like this. Removing walls from commander combat means you now have one less move you can use when this happens. The goal of the thread was to add more variety to commander fights.

Personally I think that commander fights are very exciting if you take into account every unit, since it is very rare to only have two commanders fighting. We have boom bot micro, dox micro, and tank positioning as well as air units that all come into play when two commanders get up close. There is so much more to commander fights than just building walls and shooting at the other commander.

That's part of the issue. There is already way to much going on in such a situation. Exiting to watch, that's for sure.

But also problematic since you are already APM capped in that scenario and there are way to many unknowns involved. By moving certain aspects out of the combat phase, you can gain the same variety, but with a lower APM cap which benefits the experience across all micro skill levels.

Not exactly, as atrophy only kicks in if construction was aborted, and only after several seconds. That mechanism serves a different purpose, mostly to prevent you from using unfinished blueprints to annoy your enemy.

tl;dr - walls of text (FILLED WITH LITTLE BRACKETED SUB-TEXTS) are tedious to read

much like micro managing a single overly important unit in a game that can regularly present thousands of units at a time.