Commander: Shoot down non-nuclear Rockets/Missiles

Unless you have some specific example from that channel, the few I randomly clicked on support my statement: those are small map fights.

Most of SupCom players switched to small map fights because the gigantic map fights were turtle fests. You needed some ability for an early rush or else it was a pure basebuilding game. Biggest I saw on that channel was 10x10. SupCom supported up to 80x80 IIRC. (Even the 10x10 I watched was a lot of basebuilding with one guy hiding under a mass of shields).

"Be educated" indeed.

No true Scotsman fallacy. You said SupCom was pretty much only turtling. I provide dozens of examples of games with aggressive players winning through mobile units and early attacks. Then you claim that only "true" games of SupCom are played on 80x80 maps.

A commander that shoots down non nuclear and walls that are high enough to absorb artillery rounds flying into your base, I think would be very handy. My personal opinion however. If someone decides to turtle behind walls and there commander, then just get them from orbital or via air

All maps are "true" maps.

In SupCom, most of the maps were avoided because of the turtling problem. I think your argument falls a little flat when you consider that within about 3 months post-launch, it was really hard to find anyone willing to play any of the bigger maps.

It would be like if nobody wanted to play PA except on scale 2, single-planet systems. You'd apparently argue that the game is just fine and nothing is wrong with it because it plays great on a particular subset of maps. I'd argue that the fact most people are avoiding most of the map possibilities means there is something wrong with it. There was something wrong with SupCom. The main thing that was wrong with it was overly good defenses, if you could play on a map big enough to avoid an early rush threat.

Meanwhile, I'm enjoying PA on larger worlds. I don't think an early rush threat is necessary -- it's hard (impossible?) to create a base that's both totally defensible and generates a good income. You must skirmish over metal extractors. This keeps the game from bogging down the way SupCom did.

I only think this would be a pro and con situation, because the commander could buffer like a wall against missile spam, but he also would be baited to the front and in an exact location. This means sniping, with artillery and bombers being able to get that commander killed for coming out.

A good player could do this in moments of seeing their missiles being shot.

I don't know if i like the idea, but it works.

And? The game was good and had sufficient variety on 20x20 and smaller maps. The big maps were just there so they could claim to have huge maps on the back of the box. And I'd like some evidence for your claim that "most of the maps" are large. There weren't really that many. If the engine magically supported 1,000,000x1,000,000 maps, your argument says that it would be a worse game for doing so, even though the rest of the game is identical.

I am saying exactly that. Really, Size 4 planets are too big anyway. All you get for playing on them is loads of extra micro manually ordering up long queues of mexxes, horrible framerate issues, loads of wait time while your units move around and the knowledge that the game will probably crash or someone will DC before it's won or lost. Huge planets are just a crutch for people who can't handle the early game.

I wouldn't mind a small Tactical missile defense upgrade for the commander to stop maybe 1 missile every 30 seconds... Not very many units use Tactical missiles but when they do... they can assassinate a commander relatively easy.

Have to wait and see if there is tactical missile defense coming soon.

@jurgenvonjurgensen @Slamz

I'm noticing a slight derail in this thread into map size and proper conflict time... I'd reccommend making a new topic to discuss this issue

I think you misunderstood my post.
I never said "invincible unit" - I just said "super unit" - of course it should have it's strengths and weaknesses, like everything else in the game. Major weakness is obvious - you loose it == you loose the game. That's a weakness no other unit in the game has.
So to balance it out it should have Dgun (which isn't in the game right now) and preferably also CIWS.

That's way too few. With that speed - it's a waste of time to implement anti-missile weapon on a commander as it wouldn't impact the game in any noticeable way.

What I'd like to see is is taking out an option of using tactical missiles to snipe commander. Preferably: completely (eg. refire rate of 0.2s), but I'm fine with limiting it's refire rate to stop only 2 or 3 tactical missile launchers focusing fire at the same time.
Remember that using commander to stop tactical missiles is EXTREMELY risky strategy, as you not only move your commander on a front line, but also make it freely snipe-able by artillery and any air units in proximity. So taking such an enormous risk should lead to some notable rewards.

I played a game yesterday in which my commander got sniped by two t2 missile ships (can't think of the name), it only took two hits to kill my 4/5 health commander, I wasn't even able to respond in time it was so fast. I think that there should be SOME better way to defend your commander from this rather than running inland and wasting the commander's precious abilities.

Forgive me if I'm being a simpleton, but I thought the point of size 4 planets was to enable massive battles by cramming as many players on it as possible? Size 3 worlds can handle 6 to 8-player matches well enough but what if we want to go beyond that?

Or they're there for people who like gigantic battles across huge maps.

Just because you like large maps doesn't mean you're somehow terrible at the early game.

But it comes down to the Commander's Role, which is to build bases. The commander is Ultra Focused on that aspect.

Mike

The biggest thing a big map does in PA is force you to fight for control of resources. You can queue up a bunch of mexes but what really matters is how well you can protect them because the first thing I'm going to do is find your base and then circle around it at a safe distance, destroying every mex I can find. If you aren't able to do the same thing to me then it's game over: your economy is in the gutter relative to mine. Fighting to control territory is a big deal on a big map.

That was another problem with SupCom, incidentally: not only did you have shields but you had metal makers that you could put inside the shields. Once you got past the early game (if the map was large enough for there to be something other than an "early game"), metal extractors became irrelevant. Circling your base to destroy them would barely dent your economy and you could just safely sit inside your turtled up base.

PA, Battle for Middle Earth 2 and to a large extent TA have all been unique in that they are more about strategic map control and economy whereas I found SupCom, Starcraft and just about every other RTS to be more about build order and micro.

We really need commander cloaking from TA. It consumes a ton of power (more if you're moving) and is useful for breaking assassination attempts.

You could still be revealed from short range so it wasn't a total invisibility cloak, but it would deal with situations where some cannon had a lock on you from 3 screens away.

To be fair that was mostly addressed with Forged Alliance. FA was known for having much better dynamic play where Map Control was very important.

Mie

Personally, I think this ability isn't nessesary. But letting you shoot down some missiles and rockets might be a nice ability. But only as long as it doesn't stop every missile, just a few will be shot down. Maybe it will be a commander ability.

I Found It!

Commanders and what we know so far.

These are the posts of the great Neutrino himself.

Please, pay extra attention to the last post. IMHO I sincerely doubt that Neutrino will make the commanders much strong.

Well, based on what he said (i'm not re-quoting all of that, that'd just be silly), I think that we should try for commander cloaking like in TA. It was very inefficient, but good once you got a huge t2 eco, and kept your commander fairly safe, while not making it invincible or excessively difficult to kill. On top of that, it would even promote land based (naval and air too) assaults, even at end game, because orbital laser platforms are no longer commander snipers, and nukes are just shooting blindly.

Perhaps somebody should start a simple poll to see if people would like commander cloaking or not.

And of course we should ask Neutrino if that is a viable option, I don't think he said no to that specifically.

Edit: This is at Neutrino, if he reads this or whatever: Are your ideas of the abilities leaning more towards differences in, say, visuals rather than actual game play, i.e. lasers instead of cannon, missiles instead of lasers, etc? You could probably code them to be the EXACT same stat-wise, but just take advantage of the visual differences of the commanders.

You clearly have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. Please state your username and global rating for anyone to consider you seriously.

ZaphodX. Learn to differentiate Forged Alliance and SupCom.
Sometimes that is important.

What was your username and rating for ranked play in Total Annihilation and on which service did you play? I'm sorry, but if you didn't win any TA tournaments in 1998 then you have no idea what you're talking about and don't understand good gameplay. (Bam! I can play "elitist douchebag" too!)

But I think the best evidence for my case is that SupCom 1v1 ranked play maps were all 5x5 and 10x10. On maps that small, you had to fight the T1 ground battle and you couldn't just turtle up. What you're forgetting is that SupCom was sold as a huge-map game with huge, experimental units. It wasn't sold as a game to be played on maps the size of a typical Starcraft map. But the game bogged down on a 40x40+ size map because (wait for it!) defenses were too powerful and it became a turtlefest.

Meanwhile, you could have a competitive game of Total Annihilation on any size map. TA defenses were thin enough that T1 bomber rushes and, later, stealth fighter rushes and artillery duels could all provide a satisfying war of attrition at any scale.

My fear is that if we add too many SupCom concepts (especially shields) we will ruin the huge-planet, multi-planet play that I think could make PA unique and outstanding.

I actually appreciate a good turtle but there has to be vulnerability. A single Holkins should always be a threat and not just ping uselessly off of shields until I can build a bank of 10 of them.