Mid battle Commander drops!

Discussion in 'Planetary Annihilation General Discussion' started by Fenlig, January 11, 2013.

  1. Fenlig

    Fenlig New Member

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    Can a Player or AI join a battle at any time?

    I love my EPIC sessions of 1-4 hours and sometimes when i playing a skirmish and ive defeated an enemy I dont want it to end I want to tell the game to drop in 2 more enemy commanders let them build up and destroy them!

    Sometimes in a LAN session someone would arrive late and we would have already started a game, but we dont want to have to restart so could I allow my friend to be dropped in?
    I understand this is not for ranked matches but it would be an awesome feature!

    Anyone behind me?
    corteks and stormingkiwi like this.
  2. Pluisjen

    Pluisjen Member

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    Sounds interesting for those big LAN battles, but I think there´d need to be something to prevent the new drops from random death by accidentally being caught between two armies of older players.
  3. furyofthestars

    furyofthestars New Member

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    I'd like to see this as well, although I agree with pluisjen, something would have to be done for them so they aren't either dropped in the middle of a current fight or aren't left exposed for a quick strike.
  4. KNight

    KNight Post Master General

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    brianpurkiss likes this.
  5. neutrino

    neutrino low mass particle Uber Employee

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    Join in Progress? Definitely.

    Now whether you actually get a commander in all cases is a more interesting question.
  6. Pluisjen

    Pluisjen Member

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    Taking control of a part of another player's army or something would also be cool.

    Speaking of which, are there any plans to bring back shared unit control? I always loved that about the original starcraft, being able to control one faction with two players. And it's an excellent way for good and poor players to enjoy the game together (I might even be able to get my girlfriend to play that way, she always hates that I'm so much better at games but it wouldn't be a problem if we're sharing the army)
  7. neutrino

    neutrino low mass particle Uber Employee

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    Yes. Game is being designed from the beginning for shared army control.
    drz1 likes this.
  8. Pluisjen

    Pluisjen Member

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  9. torrasque

    torrasque Active Member

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    Joining a game with an army/commander could be interesting for the galactic war.
    A well fortified or connected solar system could be represented with backup players.
    So you not only need to win, but you have take an enough lead in army size to defeat the incoming army.
  10. zachb

    zachb Member

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    Well there was that one I made a long time ago
    viewtopic.php?f=61&t=36317
    and it did come up in a lot of other threads too.

    I remember a lot of people really liking the idea of unit donation to keep people in the game. You'd basically have a match with 2 or more "teams" fighting one another. And each team can have any number of players in it. When someone loses all of their units, or when a new player joins the game part way through, any of their team mates who are still in the game can donate some units to them so they can keep going.

    It would technically be a fair game, All the units still have to follow the same basic rules, you just have more minds actively controlling a huge army, but you wouldn't randomly have commanders popping up from out of nowhere. Also you couldn't really do this with the assassination game type because a player could still be active and doing stuff even if they didn't have a commander.

    Really no matter what you do it just comes down to a few facts about LAN parties.

    1. For everyone to have the most amount of fun at a LAN party, everyone should be in the same game. it's not very fun to sit off to the side playing Skyrim or whatever waiting for your friends to finish up a match.

    2. People will die in the middle of the match and need a way to stay engaged.

    3. People will show up late (after a match has already started up) and need a way to stay engaged.
  11. bobucles

    bobucles Post Master General

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    Perhaps a new Commander might not spawn right away. Instead, a new player could open up the opportunity to build a new commander. This might mean the ability to create new units directly under his control, instead of using shared resources.

    Large, long term games definitely have different needs than a quick deathmatch. There's a lot of food for thought.
  12. igncom1

    igncom1 Post Master General

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    So could you have a game mode with commander re spawns on?

    Like a kind of king of the hill mode, or possibly in the galactic war.
  13. Fenlig

    Fenlig New Member

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    I hope you get to drop in CPU commanders. I'd love to to setup a game just by myself build up a massive force and drop in 6 enemies to see how strong my defence is :D
  14. veta

    veta Active Member

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    if there's team control and economy isn't insanely exponential like FA, dropping into a galactic war game would actually be pretty cool. even if you didn't get a commander you could assist with the actual game management and battles.
  15. antillie

    antillie Member

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    Its hot drop o'clock!
  16. Fenlig

    Fenlig New Member

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    Hey Guys,

    Just wondering if this may still be added to the game?

    If I'm plying a AI battle and its getting a little rough I'd love to invite one of my friends to join.

    Thanks,
    Fenlig
  17. chronosoul

    chronosoul Well-Known Member

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    Holy bejesus. I didn't realize this thread was a year old.

    I have no idea if it is getting worked on. I'm pretty sure team armies is a start at which people can hot drop into the game with "the egg".

    We will see though.
    Fenlig and stormingkiwi like this.
  18. bmb

    bmb Well-Known Member

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    Join in progress is universally awful for gameplay. Having players enter or leave an ongoing battle ruins that battle, period. You can't stop players from dropping or rage quitting but you can make it more painless and make sure the other players are immediately presented with the option to end the agony and get back into a healthy pool of players.

    I don't want to join a losing battle, I don't want to join a win I didn't deserve, I don't want imbalanced teams managed by some automated system, I don't want to beat a different guy from the one I started the fight with, who is in turn different from the guy I had the middle of the fight with. I don't want my teammates at the end of the match to be alien to me from the beginning of the match.

    Awful awful. Horrible. Never.

    And I could go on. Servers are great, except for everything about them. Reminder that the reason Bungie created the matchmaking system in the first place was because of how god awful server based multiplayer was. "No one wants to play the old way any more", least of all me.
  19. Geers

    Geers Post Master General

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    You've given me an idea! Let's say you want a friend to join your game.

    In order to be able to, what if you had to build a quantum gate like in good ol' SupCom and "call in" your friend, who gets a support commander?

    This pretty much only works for invite-only though. Also there's the question of what happens if the enemy destroys your gate while the your friend is joining teleporting through. Maybe a temporary "skin-tight" shield, the kind that sticks to the surface of the gate which would provide protection to the gate until your friend arrives.

    Or maybe just a teleport beacon thing which costs practically nothing, because that's way simpler than my overly-complicated master plan.

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