[REQ] Multiple Commander Per Player Option [AGAIN]

Still requesting this. Would necro the last one, but that art has been banned in Cyrodil for years, besides... I am fresh out of black soul gems...

Would be nice to have a more customizable custom game lobby.

Notice Below:
-Army is the lowest divison
-In the "Armies", are any combination of number of players and commanders. Players in the same army control the same stuff and share the same color. Commanders in the army slot is how many commanders spawn with that army. Each player gets a number of commanders, for the sake of "their starting spot is where their assigned commanders land", despite control being shared. It works both ways as well, multiple people can be under the same commander, in which case you only need 1 commander and can have multiple players. The "player occupying the upmost slot" chooses spawn location.
-Number of "Armies" per "Team". Armies all share control and color. Teams can be comprised of 1 or more armies. Multiple armies have their own color and control, but are "allied" with other armies on same team, as in they win together and don't fire on each other.
-Numbers of team per game, all teams are "opposing" and can be made up of any number of armies and players and commanders.

This is all for the sake of giving players the most control over configuration.

Players can have 2 players share 1 commander just for the sake of more micro-control over unit armies. Players can have 2 commanders per 1 player, for the sake of doubling 1 player's starting buildpower at the limit of how fast they can order them and divide up attention. Players can have any combination of "1 team with 4 players sharing 1 commander, against 1 team with 1 person using 4 commanders, against 1 team with 2 seperate armies with 1 commander a piece, against 1 team with 2 seperate armies and 3 commanders and 1 player and the other with 3 players and 1 commander".

Optionally shown:
-Army Color Primary-secondary using any combo of available colors for each, SUPRISINGLY DONE LAST UPDATE! WOO! #goUber
-Commander death ends player control, whether or not they continue control after their commander dies, this is hard to tell if it would work so I would scrap that.
-Armies give excess eco to allies, should be optional, for hardcore mode turn it off so armies can't be helped economically by other armies and are independent albeit friendly.
-Diplomacy, allowing teams to unite while "armies" remain the same. Control never changes, just who is "friendly". Add the current option of "allied teams can win" to this. Also add this to team games, and add the ability to unally to armies that started as allies.
-Commander death ends game. To be specific, how many commanders an army has to have to continue, and how many armies a team has to have to continue. That way, if a team loses an ally it can be game over for the whole thing, or if an army loses a commander it can be game over even if they have another commander. Of course, this also allows non-assassination mode, where commanders don't end game at all. NOTE: In absence of assassination mode, make the overall "game over" criteria be that an army reaches 0 metal income. That way, armies can't hide units forever like land mines. They must retain at least 1 working mex or commander or even jig.

You can simplify this greatly by removing the Team divisions, and just having it as a drop-down menu of either team numbers (like sup com) or symbols (TA) next to each army. I don't really get the need for multiple commanders per-player; it seems unnecessary given the eco can already be modified. Without it, the UI can be greatly simplified:

ARMY 1. Team: [dropdown]
Player 1 [checkbox: has commander]
Player 2 [checkbox: has commander]
<Add Player>

ARMY 2. Team: [dropdown]
Player 3 [checkbox: has commander]
Player 4 [checkbox: has commander]
<Add Player>

<Add Army>

The checkboxes allow you to turn off additional commanders in an army, so multiple players can control less commanders. The UI should warn if you attempt to uncheck this for every player in an army (needs to be at least 1 commander). This could also be implemented as drop-down list to select the commander instead (with an option to select no commander).

An alternative in order to let you have more commanders than players in an army, is to allow player slots to be assigned to an existing player. For example, an army has the following players:

Player 1
Player 2
Empty

Clicking on a player name/empty displays this drop-down:

• Empty
• Player 1 controlled (does not display if you clicked "Player 1")
• Player 2 controlled (does not display if you clicked "Player 2")

"Player X controlled" means an additional commander is spawned under player X's control.

I think this would be a very smart feature. It would actually give a lot to casual multiplayer in particular, or indeed to singleplayer. Raevn's suggested simplifications seem good, but I would say that the option to give each player more than one commander is a really neat feature for Trophy's proposed system. Assigning multiple lobby slots to a single player seems like it could make things more confusing overall, so I'd go with Trophy's idea. I also like the clarity of the hierarchical designations in Trophy's post - you'd just have to make sure that players could see very, very clearly who they were playing with/against in the lobby menu. Perhaps by making sure that enemy teams had a red outline around them, and your own was similarly outlined in green?

But yeah, cool feature, and would actually work well with an overhaul of how PA handles spawns and spawn locations in games. Which, now that the mapmaking tools have been amped up in power, I think it also might benefit from.

Fun idea! This would make League of Commanders possible to play in 1v1.

Give me a moment, stealing your quote...