Reclaim your commander for the win?

So I'm a little surprised I haven't seen people experimenting with this. According to pa-db the commander is worth 25000 metal. Why not reclaim 10% in the early game to get a boost of 2500 metal? I usually only play PA casually so I haven't messed with it in 1v1, but it seems like in some game types it could be a big advantage. In team games with shared armies the importance of just one commander is a lot less. I'm sure it has potential in 1v1 as well (just somewhat limited), it would just be more high risk high reward. I have had good results in FFA or team games where there's not a lot of starting metal. It can help you go fast orbital or fast advanced.

My basic method is to go Kbot first, then after making a couple fabbers I make a combat fabber while making extra energy with my commander. Then I just tell the combat fabber to reclaim my commander until my metal bar is full. Building metal storage is always a plus as well.

Reclaiming costs precious energy and precious commander hp and exchanges it for not so precious metal.
It's a flaw in the current economy system that will need to be fixed to introduce wreckage mechanics: Reclaiming costs energy and energy is rather important.

And that method has stopped working ever since combat fabbers started to require energy for reclaiming as well.

But apart from that, just as @cola_colin already said, it's not really worth it, given how the PA eco is currently balanced. On most maps, before teching up to T2, energy is much more difficult to gather than metal. Get 6 mexes up, and you get the same 2,5k metal within 60 seconds from them, without the need for additional pgens just to power the combat fabber.

Besides, 2,5k metal isn't that much. Especially if you are cutting back on base construction in return, as the energy invested into reclaiming is not available to the operation and construction of additional factories. In the end, it will probably even make you fall behind the classic expansion maneuver.

i would be still against fabbers reclaiming for nothing they should have a minimum energycost attached to them .. maybe half the cost they use for fabricating ...

We had this discussion in all detail in a different thread already, and I think the conclusion was that you need to differentiate between what you are actually reclaiming. There's a difference whether its one of your own units, an enemy unit, a wreckage or a natural feature. It's the same command, but the context is different depending on what you are reclaiming, and so should be the cost and effectiveness. It depends much on why you are going to reclaim a certain object, either to use the reclaim feature as a weapon, to harvest additional resources, or to reclaim unused/missplaced units you already payed for yourself.

i stick to my statement weither you reclaim scrap, rocks and trees or enemyunits or your own it comes always down to you gaining extrametal than what you normaly get with your extractors only, and recycling isn't free either ...

If you reclaim enemy units, you are also weaponizing the reclaim feature as you are not only giving yourself an advantage, but you are also hurting your enemy by the same amount. That essentially doubles the economical advantage you get from reclaiming, compared to reclaiming metal from neutral sources. If you reclaim unused, own structures you are not even getting an economical advantage as it was metal you already owned, you just didn't use it yet properly.

yea at which case you should know to build your stuff propperly beforehand
and iirc you yourself argued that a group of fabbers would be too weak for aggresive fabbing .. and yes you would get a net gain on metal but again at the expense of spending energy .. its basicaly converting energy to metal .. also here is the thing if you destroy an enemy unit and then reclaim it afterwards what is there any different than to just rightout reclaim it? you would get that net gain of metal anyway even if reduced ...

Also, I believe the default wreckage value is 0.5, so that 10% will only get you 1250 metal, but cost 2500 if you want to repair it.

You shouldn't be able to reclaim your own commander, or any commander. Devs need to add a line of code to stop this madness.

i disagree with that ... if you can build something together you may as well be able to dismantle it ...

the problem you seem to have with it is trolling

Why, you could in every other TA-Like?

Because it doesn't make any sense. It either has some use like the OP is suggesting, which would be wrong obviously as it should never be advantageous to reclaim your commander, or it has no use in which case it shouldn't be an option.

Reclaiming an enemy commander is more of a gray area, but it's still a lame way of winning.

There is no reason not to have it. Reclaiming the commander isn't "OP" because both players could do it. Plus your commander both loses health and I don't believe you even get the whole metal value. At one point reclaiming your commander with combat fabs was a part of the meta!

Why take options away? That doesn't make any sense.

Personally I'd remove the ability to reclaim any live unit. It just doesn't make sense. How can you reclaim 99% of something and have it still function 100% never mind your command unit!

I'd rather matches be won and lost based on player decisions which have some basis in the real world. Is it really the case that you could build an advanced factory, reclaim it 99%, and then build another advanced factory quicker than you otherwise would because of it? if so, that sucks... why should a quirky irrational move like that give you an advantage?

reclaiming is basicly recycling ... and those are machines ... a machine can be build, repaired, dismanteled, destroyed and rebuild ...

Re-read what I just said. I could try and explain it to you again but I would struggle to do so any more clearly.

How can a unit be 99% dead and still function?

Health values don't make sense in a realistic way, but it is an acceptable break from reality that works for the benefit of gameplay.

This is just wrong and I wish people would stop doing this.
Both players being able to do something makes it fair, but that doesn't make it balanced.


Also, in TA, reclaiming a unit wouldn't give you resources until the reclaiming was finished.
Reclaiming in SupCom, I believe (but am not sure) that you didn't get anything at all, it just killed the unit and yielded a wreck.