Idea for teching up Commander for late-game use (not the SupCom way)

A lot of people here (probably) play FAF, and there your ACU is, given the right upgrades, a real powerhouse. Watching it destroying armies during the early game is just as rewarding as seeing it jump-starting high-tech fire bases or production complexes during mid and late game. Yes, you always want your ACU to be safe, but the reward you get for playing just a little bit more risky is great.
In PA that's currently completely different. You use your commander only during the early game to fend off those first one or two ant raids and from there on you basically just hide him in and tell him to support a t2 fabber. And if you have been playing FAF for a long time, this just feels so wrong.

Don't get me wrong, I don't necessarily want all the upgrades from FAF, I think that's not the way to go. But it would be really nice if you could use a t2 factory to upgrade your commander so that he can then build t2 tech on his own. This single upgrade would be enough to keep the commander valuable throughout the whole game.

I like to think upgrades are used to supplement his role in the base as the game progresses. It would be nice if he wasn't to terribly easy to kill off later with the introduction of levelers. Or delegated to assisting the orbital building or randomly walking around to avoid laser satellite death.

I would be okay with even a minor upgrade such as 1.10x more health or D-gun range increase or even extra vision to help with survivability.

I can understand the argument that people don't want the commander to suddenly become a R.P.G. hero with massive regeneration and add-ons for added D.P.S. that can have him roll into an enemy base. I think Uber would know a good balance in between extremes.

Exactly!

Right. I don't want him to be a powerhouse. But I don't want your only option to be "Run away" when an attack comes later game. If he could at least defend himself or live more than like 20sec vs any kind of half decent attack while running away I think I'd be satisfied.

If what I have read recently is correct, repairing engineers are all you need to make a commander invincible.

yeeees.. put ashley in the bin.

Most of you are missing the point completely.
The commander is supposed to be a sudden death mechanic.
Assume a 1v1 situation with optimal/maximum growth on both sides as the game starts.
For the first five minutes of the game the commander is practically invincible. (unless you walk into turrets, for you pedants out there)
As the game goes on the commander becomes relatively weaker. This introduces the concept of volatility.
In the late game, the commander is so weak that just one mistake will lose you the game.
In a proper game your commander will almost always be on the edge of death and you will spend every other moment sweating about him.
The stale scenario that all of you are describing where you hide the commander behind rows of turrets and just leave him assisting a factory is an edge case where both sides are content with "turtling".
I hope you guys understand what I'm getting at.

Don't be afraid of the turtling scenario because it shouldn't happen. Late game commanders are super weak by design. If your commander is hiding behind a finite number of defenses and still alive, that means your opponent is bad.


Edit: Imagine a game where there is an abundant amount of ways to snipe a commander. You are no longer afraid of being overrun by your opponents army, instead you are afraid of being sniped. Do you see how a weak commander plays a necessary and important role now?

That actually as pretty poor comparison because the Commander should still be doing useful stuff instead of just simply being no longer a liability.

Mike

Until the engineers die or the attacker starts shooting faster than you can repair.

That is an interesting way of looking at it...

'xcept you can't ever sweat for him in PA because he's either dead man walking or 100% fine and unharmed, never ever anything in between. you can never make it back from near death.

Movie comparison : You can't imerse because you know your hero is at no risk or are certain he is going to die.

I seriously doubt that the commander is supposed to work as a sudden death mechanic, at least I hope that that's not Uber's intention.

Assassination is perfect, kill the commander and win the game, easy to understand a challenge to pull off. However, that only works if the commander stays capable throughout the whole game, which currently is not the case. In PA a few Levelers can kill a commander faster then a Monkeylord can kill an ACU in FAF. And that doesn't just feel wrong it also turn the commander into an liability at some point. During the early game your commander is an asset but later on the risk-reward graph for using it to do anything outside of a secured base/planet is off.

The more I think about it the more I believe that what GPG did with SupCom/FAF was the right choice. Upgrades keep your commander on par with the rest of your forces, he doesn't suddenly become that weakling that has to be protected and babysitted all the time. It's still easy to kill a FAF ACU, but at least he doesn't die to a few stray units that accidentally get to shoot at him for 5-10 seconds.
If you want to keep the commander viable throughout the whole game an upgrade system is pretty much your only choice (unless of course all units deal nearly the same amount of damage). The commander has to be relatively weak during the early game to stop players from just using it to rush their enemies, but later on he needs more hitpoints and probably a little bit more damage.

Whats bad about the commander being a weakling that you have to protect? Would you rather be forced to wipe out 90% of the enemy base before attempting to kill there commander? A weak commander (still not weak by my standards) makes the game more interesting because it means the player with a disadvantage can still win.

But it must be balanced correctly, and not so powerful that the commander becomes a fighter itself. @lilbthebasedlord has a good point in that your command is supposed to be protected but at the same time I also feel that it goes down too quickly in the face of T2 or an orbital laser.

From the points raised in this discussion, I'm beginning to think that my suggestion needs a redesign. Something more towards a small step up in armor and fabbing capabilities with very little or no weapons improvement. The armor and, if included, weapons upgrades would bring the commander up so it's not as drastically overpowered by T2s, but still has to stay safe. The fabbing upgrade more just be a little icing to make teching up your commander worth it.

The commander doesn't have to be a powerhouse. Even a fully upgraded FAF ACU can be dealt with rather easily if it is not well protected, it just doesn't die to random attacks. In PA that can happen cos the commander is way too weak, in fact, his role is more that of a builder than that of a commander as we know him from TA or SupCom/FAF.

A weak commander also doesn't improve the chances of the weaker player. I'm actually quite convinced that it works the other way around. Once you are behind you can't use your commander to establish a fire base or to threaten some of your opponents lesser protected mexes cos since you are behind chances are that you opponent hast the necessary spare forces to snipe your commander. And by necessary forces I mean a hand full of t2 units. He doesn't even need make a semi-dedicated attack.

That's really a comment about the current state of the game. This can be fixed through health adjustments, DPS adjustments, units leading shots etc... not upgrades.

I see you disagree with the foundation that my argument is standing on.
Consider this:
The objective of the game is NOT to build bases and armies. The objective of the game is to kill your opponent's commander. You can destroy every single unit(except the commander) and building and still not win the game because you haven't completed the objective.

It's not "just a challenge", it's the objective.

If your commander dies in the late game because he is too weak, then that's your fault for not responding fast enough, or not predicting that situation.
The game is won by the person who makes the least amount of mistakes. As the game goes on fatal mistakes become more and more costly.
If your game has progressed into the late game, that means both you and your opponent are equally good, until one of you make one very small mistake that costs a lot because it happened in the late game.
Commander weakness is what keeps games short. Now, before you start yelling at me how games are supposed to be hours long and people can disconnect and reconnect: Supremacy mode.

That's exactly my point. Except there is no "protecting the commander" as if there is some shield you can put around him. There is however, making sure your commander doesn't die. It's a constant cat and mouse game.
Commanders should die to snipes and snipes should be destroyed by armies. This game isn't about who can build a bigger army and overrun the other. That only happens when every party knows how to not get sniped. Yet you still have to worry about being sniped.

The same thing I said to Tatsu applies to this. Player initiated upgrades are not the answer to this, game balance is.

No, a weak commander definitely helps the losing player and keeps the winner on his toes throughout the game.
I've won many times in FAF when my opponent had 3/4ths of the map and I had 2 TMLs.

The commander doesn't die easily. You either exploit someones silly mistake of leaving the commander exposed, or you overwhelm it with force. The commander doesn't die from a little bit of raiding with a few units.

You say that the PA commander doesn't compare to the TA commander. I think your wrong. Both commanders are stupidly strong at the start of the game, then they weaken off as move/better units appear. They are both good builders, in fact the TA commander is a better builder then the PA one.

As for your other point. I didn't say it was easier for the worse player, I said the player with the disadvantage has a chance of winning for a longer period of time. They just have to catch the enemy out.

Just make the uber canon more like the dgun in range..the uber canon as it currently stands is pretty useless with its extremely short range..tanks, bots etc can just stay out of its range with good micro..but any ways the comm def needs a little more something in the late game. I'm going to miss the Billy and microwavelaser hint hint lol

What do you mean by that? How is your suggestion going improve the game as a whole?

Well everyone is complaining how adv tanks kill coms so fast..a counter to that could be the uber canon with range. Give it longer range to kill adv tanks before they can kill him. Also to balance this they could make a longer uber canon shot drain much more power & shorter shot drains less ect! If you read the wiki on OC this was it's main purpose : As unupgraded commanders become outclassed quickly against T2 units and are all but helpless against T3 units, the overcharge cannon will often be your only chance of survival if your opponent gets the technological edge over you. On the other hand, the overcharge cannon is a deterrent against throwing small numbers of expensive T3 land units against the enemy ACU.

Did you not read any of my previous posts? Do you really think you're right?
Steve Thompson's chin is in my signature, are you really going to disagree with me?