Com Repping is OP

How do you explain all the best players using this from the very beginning of alpha and no one ever calling it out as OP before you?

I also have experience. I fight these kinds of rushes and I perform them all the time. I'd say that only 1 out 10 com duels result in a draw.

This is theorycrafting. Realistically the player that dives into the other players base gets surrounded and his fabbers die to the flanking Doxes and no, turrets aren't useless. They kill the enemies Doxes easily and can even kill fabbers if the enemy is reckless. If you have a Laser turret you can place your commander infront of him and your laser turret wont go down and you can place your fabbers behind him to repair him.

If you have a laser turret in the first three minutes you've lost the game, and if you build a turret after you see you're being attacked, you've lost the game. They cost a thousand metal and take almost two minutes to build with a single fabber and can't be initiated by a com.

That's not answering the question. If one side reps their com and the other side doesn't, how often does the non-repping side win, lose and draw? 1-in-10 duels resulting in a draw doesn't help your point if the other 9 go to the side which more effectively keeps engineers repping its com.

Appeal to authority. Also the fact that they're all using it just shows how essential it is. I can't believe you're okay with a unit that grants the commander 135 hp/s regen for 180 metal. You could halve that rate and it'd still be great (and still 10 times better than repairing other mobile units). If you can make something half as good and people still use it, it's a sign that it was OP before.

EDIT: More testing. I actually lost a game. But to someone who simply built more engineers and had half build turrets and half rep each other and his com. It seems that the only time Com repping doesn't win is when Com repping wins.

No, you haven't lost just because you make a laser turret in defense as a response to a commander rush.

Scouting is the key. I don't suggest that you make a laser turret before you have scouted the enemy but in some situations if you scout the enemy commander and you got enough time, making laser turrets in defense can be a sensible thing to do. Personally I'd rather just surround the enemy commander with Doxes.

Don't build it with single fabber then. Your commander can assist.

You are arguing that a commander rush with supporting fabbers is OP. I don't agree as I know this from experience. If the enemy arrives at my base I will have the advantage as my supply line is shorter and I can repair my commander even more than my enemy can.
Repairing the commander is very strong but both sides can do it so it is not OP.

Yes. Commander repair is essential in a commander duel. Just because you can nerf and it will still be used doesn't mean that it is OP. You can nerf fighters by quite a lot and they will still be used because there are not any other unit that competes with their role.
You could make an argument that commander repair was overpowered if every game or many games came down to who could repair their commander the most but it doesn't come down to that. There is counterplay. If you send out your commander alone with fabbers I can surround it with Doxes or bomb the fabbers for example. If you stop to make defenses against my troops your advance will stop and I can make Pelters to counter your defenses or kill your fabbers.
If you just rush in with a force of your Commander, Doxes and fabbers defenses will destroy the Doxes, your fabbers will be left ripe for the picking and once your fabbers are down I can hunt you down with my commander with trailing fabbers repairing him.

Anyway. I wouldn't mind if commander repair was nerfed. It will change gameplay and commander duels. It will make it riskier to use the commander offensively. Once the commander can actually hit moving Doxes it might remove some of the current counterplay against commander rushing so it might be a good idea to nerf commander repair.
But is commander repair as a whole OP currently ?
No.

It seems we are operating under different definitions of OP then, if you'd be happy with a 50% nerf but still not consider it OP.

Well I'm using Sirlins definition of balance.

http://www.sirlin.net/articles/balancing-multiplayer-games-part-1-definitions.html

Commander usage got a lot of options like:
Base rush.
Expansion harassment.
Tanking for an army.
Kiting Ants.
Expanding against the enemy.
Building in your base.

However offensive use of your commander early in the game requires a response from the enemy commander. He can't just run and hide and keep building but he have to chose if he should face him on the front with all his force, divert his units to attack the enemy base, if he should go for a base trade or make defenses.

A nerf to commander repair will affect these options in different ways. Maybe increase their viability overall but more likely decrease them.

How important should early commander usage be in close spawn positions? It is up to the developers to decide.

To compare Commander repair to something else: Are basic powerplants overpowered or underpowered?
It is kind of a silly question because there is no alternative at start. You have to make them anyway.
Changing power plants change the gameplay but just saying that they are overpowered or underpowered is not that informative.

you could try to kill his Eco, when he don't have agressive units.

I agree with the lameness of this strategy it should be changed.........I have has success in countering it since someone surprised me the first time. I make my com assist a fab that runs away building lasers, now the cheaper single barrel while I run targeting interference with dox to keep my comm safe. Once his comms health is below mine I give Chase

If the commander doesn't have use in a close spawn position, what exactly is the point of him?

It's like the end game in Chess. You need to use your King to achieve victory. If the King was basically useless in that endgame wouldn't be about strategy, but who had more effective counters to their opponent. The offensive capability is needed for that balance.

Stormingkiwi, you are making an inappropriate analogy with chess.

In chess, the game begins with all the pieces on the board. Because pieces can be captured but cannot be created, over the course of a game of chess pieces disappear from play. Consequently, once the board is relatively empty, the king becomes a relatively more powerful piece.

In RTS games including PA, the board begins relatively empty and becomes increasingly populated as players construct more and more units and structures. This means that, if the commander does behave like a king in chess, that the commander itself should be much more powerful at the beginning of the game.

As in chess, the king (or commander) is a fixed quantity. When there are more other pieces on the board, and when there are more powerful pieces on the board, the direct effective strength of the king/commander is relatively less.

One principle of the TA style of game is that the strength of the commander is used to make rushes less effective than in games where the player begins with no military capability whatsoever. Once enough other military power has been created, the commander itself becomes less powerful in and of itself. However, in Assassination style games, it never becomes irrelevant. The commander becomes a King to be protected, not an experimental to be used instead of a large investment in smaller units.

My analogy is in a close spawn position. Which is quite like a game of chess with promotion of pawns.You have to use your king to allow you to promote pawns, and you have to use your king to allow you to prevent your opponent from promoting pawns.

There are two strategies.

You can both rush pawns to the end of the board, promote to Queen, and then both players have a Queen and a King. It's more of a draw strategy - the game takes longer.

You can attack the enemies pawn, remove him from the board, and promote your own to win.

In a close spawn position, the most viable gameplay is early rush.

You lose out on promoting your base by marching your king across the board. Com repairing means that although his pawn has already been promoted, you can maintain tempo by undermining the extra material his pawn has gained.

There are some free for alls where you do spawn right next to your opponent, or you have a crappy metal start and have to use your commander offensively. If com repping is viable it means that those situations don't become a "gg" because you don't have the 30 seconds extra build time that your opponent has.

It's perfectly ok. It gives you an option. Fabs only heal 10 metal per second. If it's taken away, and fabs aren't able to heal your commander, then it just means that those spawn situations are drawn out battles. Which basically means it's a loss for both of you, because there is a 3rd player who will happily stomp you.

Does that make sense? I think we're talking about com rushing here. I see it as perfectly valid because it means your opponent has to defend against it effectively.