Commander Explosions

not when its death means the destruction of the entirety of the enemies infrastructure. the commander is important, but not more important than everything the other player has. having a base against someone who doesnt have a base is generally going to get you the win

A commander explosion doesn't destroy a whole base.
The commander explosion is much smaller than a nuke.
You can also spread out your base to decrease the impact of a combomb.

not when you play a particularly small map. when you play a particularly small map, there isnt enough time to build a spread out base before the enemy commander is at the door. the blast doesnt need to be an entire nuke, its target isnt nearly as big as what you would throw a nuke at

again, this is a pretty niche problem, as it is only an issue on extremely small maps, which are not the focus of the game in the first place

This is an issue in team armies games, on small maps, where you are willing to sacrifice a significant amount of your early build power to take out a significant amount of their early build power. And if you don't win immediately, you become much more vulnerable to sniping later in the game.

Comm bombing can still be a viable tactic in the right situation, but it certainly isn't an instant win 100% of the time. I think this really adds variety to games that might otherwise stick too much to a set formula.

Wouldn't it be a better idea to bind every player to its own commander in team games? So if you loose a com that player is also defeated, like in normal game mode. The army sharing and all other stuff be the same, only coms are bound the the players.

It's a possible solution but could invite a new form of grief as currently the commanders are shared just like everything else, so it would be entirely to easy to eject players from a game. Maybe if they can make the commanders only usable by it's controlling player something like this could happen.

Mike

Community problems require community solutions.

Player controlled units have been fine for every other RTS. There is no exception here.

And how many other RTSs have full control sharing for team armies along with a singluar unit whose death is central to the win condition?

Not many I'd wager.

The problem is that if you retain full control bu link a players ability to participate to a spefic commander there is nothing stopping me from just selecting some/all the commanders on my team and self destruct them to kick a specific player or just flat out end the game.

Mike

...then don't share everything? This problem has already been solved. Stop reinventing square wheels.

Isn't that exactly what I suggested? I just added the caveat that there might be some edge cases that need some consideration that maybe we haven't foreseen.

Mike

You could possibly solve it as thus :

Everyone shares everything in shared team games right? The player IS the commander right? That's THEIR persona in-game. This means if your commander, the one YOU started with, blows up, you have no more control over units in-game, and can spectate and view the game only from your team's side.

In this respect, players will not want to risk combombing because they'll completely lose their ability to control anything, it'll also make commanders a much more viable target while continuing to keep the everyone shares everything playstyle.

Thoughts?

Remember that these mechanics have to be designed with organized as well as public teamgames in mind. The quoted suggestion has a problem in the case of organized teamgames.

In an organized teamgame it does not really matter who controls what. More generally we should assume that the team acts as a single entity and no individual player preference is at work. This assumption has to be made to ensure that PA is not broken when played as a teamgame. With good enough team players it turns out that mechanics which shuffle control and resource allocation within a team don't actually affect the mechanics of the rest of the game. So this player-centric view of discouraging commbombs as no effect on balance.

The case of disorganized public games is very different. Shuffling resources internally is a good way of influencing individual players to play in a way which benefits the team. With the right incentives built into the mechanics of interal ownership it is possible to make uncommunicative random people play in a way which somewhat approximates teamwork and good play. These incentives can quite easily make people play in ways which negatively impact the team.

It obviously has no effect on balance, it's not supposed to. It's supposed to stop people from throwing their commanders away. It not only works, but has actual effect in gameplay proven by SupCom. When nothing is shared if a person dies, all their stuff dies with them. The team loses a player and this has drastic effects on the game at hand. That's a fraction of your team's APM that's gone. Losing one of a two-player team cuts your APM in half. 4 player team games cuts it by 1/4. This idea of discouragement works and there's proof of it and the consequences when you ignore that discouragement.

Don't forget that Total Annihilation started the commander design and completely defined the gameplay around it. The commander is the representation of the player in-game. That's the reason you lose when the commander dies. The reason you protect it so dearly, the reason it goes nuclear when it's destroyed, and the very same reason it was the most powerful unit in the game with the famed Disintegration cannon. This idea completely changed the way you played TA compared to any other RTS and I feel it's being stepped on and/or ignored.

That said, I agree that the game should be seen as a team game, where the idea is everyone shares everything. If this is the case, and you have a functional organized communicating team, why are you combombing in the first place? If your argument is saying it's a direct result of unorganized teams, then why should there be any change to the nuclear blast when team games are designed differently from allied games?

Before you answer that, I know there's no relation between combombing and organized vs unorganized team games. Your statement implied there was, so I'm curious where you're trying to go with it.

I think we have a disagreement in terminology. By my definitions you are contradicting yourself. This implies that you are using different definitions so to fix this I will highlight the contradictions that I perceive. This should give you plenty of information about how I don't understand what you are saying.

Let me rewrite this idea. Every player on the team is able to control every unit that any player on the team owns. In effect teams are the only things which can own units, the players on the team control them all equally. Each player starts with a commander, this commander is identified to them somehow (maybe it has their name). Each player is tied to this commander which means that if it dies they are unable to control and units on their team. Is this an accurate rewriting?

This is not the suggestion in my previous paragraph.

I am also not sure what you mean by 'balance'. When I say that something has 'an effect on balance' I mean that the existence of the thing (mechanic, unit etc..) changes how good players play the game.

For an example if there was a unit which is worse in every way than some other unit then nerfing the already pointless unit has no effect on the balance. As another example say the 1v1 rules are such that the commander that explodes first loses, so if two comms explode the initiator loses. In this case the actual parameters of the commander explosion have no effect on balance.

In a 2v2 the commander explosion obviously effects balance. The game continues after one commander explodes so the effect of that explosion has an effect on the game. Sure, there can be costs associated with losing your commander but there are costs associated with absolutely every action you take in the game. The fact that an action has downsides does not prevent anyone from taking that action. Actions with drawbacks are vital to the way the game (or almost any game) works. An action may have particularly large drawbacks which means that you will only perform it when it yields a large payoff.

Here you are just appealing to venerable authority and not even referencing the gameplay effects of the mechanic. I hope the mechanics are decided by what makes a game which plays wells, not tightly constrained by some lore.

What do you mean by "why are you combombing in the first place". Have you placed some stigma on combombing? Is it a tactic used by scrubs as a last resort and which a well organized team will never need to do? Do you share my meaning of the word combombing?

Combombing is when you attempt to use your commanders death explosion as a weapon. It when you choose to send your commander into a group of enemy units with little expectation that it will live but with the hope that it will deal enough damage in death for the sacrifice to be worthwhile. I thought I had to clear this up because you might mean combombing your allies, as in trolling.

Also, how is a team game distinct from an ally game?

Why do you think there is no relation between combombing and organized games? The priorities of the players are different in each case. Say we have a large teamgame in which both sides are fairly even but one side could gain a significant advantage by combombing a certain part of the map. A well organized, seriously competitive clan would send a commander to that location because they think that they will win the game from that position. They do this because each player of on their team is interested in the team winning above their own enjoyment of, or even participation in, the game. If we have a game in the same situation but with a bunch of random people on a public server I think it is extremely unlikely for them to take the combomb opportunity. None of the players want to be not playing, that would not be fun.

I am saying that disorganized games are often played poorly because player priorities contradict the priorities of the team. I am not going anywhere in particular with this idea. It is just a really good thing to look out for when designing teamgames (or even games in general). The 'good' ways to play the game should align with the fun ways to play the game. Otherwise people will have a choice between playing well and having fun and this is a stupid choice for them to have to make.

This concept is very relevant for the combomb situation. Combombing is generally seen as a bad thing to encourage players to do. Players are usually discouraged from combombing via personal penalties, not penalties that apply to the team. This means that people playing teamgames will eventually have to take these personal penalties if they want to play really well.

Finally, a note on the Lineage Solution. This is a penalty of combombing which causes all 'descendants' of a commander to die when it dies. This can be quite a large penalty for the team but it can be mitigated with good play. One player might be set aside in case a combomb is needed later, in an extreme case they could be relegated to assister duty and never actually construct a factory of their own. This leaves them free to commbomb.

Yes actually, all of that. That exactly.

Ah, I probably misinterpreted your statement. I guess the explosion from the commander I perceived as miniscule to no effect in comparison to losing a player. I know losing a player is very, very bad in a balanced game where everyone is arguably even in skill. In my opinion, a player's APM and ability to command, be it macro or micro, is much more valuable than a sacrifice, but I realize I wasn't thinking of tactical sacrifices being a viable choice if that's what it takes to give you the upper hand, or simply a fighting chance in a scenario that you couldn't possibly win from a strategic standpoint.

Well, if you as a player isn't defined with a commander, then in effect, it wouldn't be any different from playing any of the other RTS games that lack it. I know there's way more to TA, SupCom, and PA than just the commander, but I don't think it's impossible to balance the game in a way that plays well while including the design that everyone has a commander. I don't really see that as a lore thing at all, I see it as what defines the game, what makes it different from all the others.

SupCom was larger, had more core units, massive maps, huge mods, so much more potential than TA did with the 3d maps and etc, but lacked the balance and charm TA had because it was so basic. PA is different because it's a completely different scale, round planets, multiple planets, entire solar systems. They all follow the idea of centering the game around a commander in comparison to any title in the Red Alert, Tiberian Sun, Starcraft, and Warcraft series lacking this feature. That's why I see the commander as such a big deal.

Yeah, so I hadn't read this when I wrote about the ultimate sacrifice above, and to be honest I think it's partially both to me. (Not the trolling part, though) I'm not really a fan of the tactic where you can just.. bomb the base's defenses with a commander and then roll in a tactical force designed to assault and destroy anything in it's path. I understand the choice at a strategic level, and fully realize it's legitimacy as a viable situational tactic, but I feel that in current multiplayer design, you can just use the commanders willy nilly if done correctly, and for example take out the entire enemy base if the situation allows.

This feels very cheap to me because it has no real effect on your team's ability. None of your team members have bitten the dust, none of your economy has disappeared, none of your front line structures or units have been destroyed, nothing happened. Sure, you have one less target the enemy needs to destroy, but that's not nearly as big of a handicap as sacrificing a com in the enemy front lines, or in the enemy base. The enemies lose a large area of their base, a large force, or possibly both with a severe lack of penalty shown to you.

Yeah, in allied games random players wouldn't make this sacrifice because they don't want to not be playing. That's exactly the reason why I was going to suggest this very thing for team games. It wouldn't be such a cheap tactic because you lose little to nothing, and would still be viable as a sacrificial tactic for more organized and professional players. When I said organized vs unorganized games, I meant all of it in team games, not allied games. Probably either read it wrong, took it differently, wrote my reply wrong, or a combination of the above. This tactic is very well-perceived in allied games, and I've seen a lot of hate for full-share in supreme commander, which is almost the exact same thing we have in team games in PA minus the fact that you lose a player in SupCom while keeping units, while in PA you lose a unit (the commander), and keep the player. It may be a single unit, but it's still backwards from SupCom theoretically. The APM doesn't change, your team's ability doesn't change, and your eco doesn't change either. (minus the miniscule amount from the commander, comparative to just a few adv power plants)

Yeah, I see your points here and agree with them. I just know that 'fun' is a relative term which is different for many people, so I'm sort of weary that the game will be 'fun' for a certain type of gameplay, but then I, or maybe others here may not find it fun.

Do you have an example of personal penalties for combombing in team games of like small, medium or large sizes? (Yes, I want fries with that. ) I'm trying to be open about things, so if my idea of taking an allied game penalty for teams into a team game isn't as viable, (not exactly sure why it wouldn't be) then educate me on things that could be done. This is a legitimate request, by the way. Not sarcastic.

Yeah, this is one thing I realize now about the way full share vs everything dies is different. If I understand you correctly, you're saying the commander itself dying, losing a player, and losing any items under that commander linage are, in theory, completely separate from each other.


I know there's a whole lot of complexity beyond the point of which I currently understand, but I don't want to look at the game and think to simply to just do [this thing] and it'll work. I realize that I sometimes don't always see things as separate entities that can be changed individually because I only see my personal bias viewpoint. This revelation came to me the other day on Skype with a friend when I realized a lot of bad things I experienced with them over the years through coincidence of failure, lack of informed decisions, or other such shenanigans wasn't always what really happened in it's entirety. I can't replicate the knowledge of others and now I hate this about myself because I seem to make so many wrong decisions (either when making up my mind, or by actions/inactions), even though I do everything I can to educate myself on said decision before I make it.

Edit'd for clarity.

Personally, I'd like to see the Rules / Match Conditions feature, if it's not already going to be in.

Ability to turn off Nukes, Air, Land, Artillery, Orbital, yadda yadda yadda. Just include an option there for no Commander nukes.

exactly! the more options given to the player the better i think. the base game is great, but fiddling with mechanics to play in an entirely new way is great fun. whether it be turning off commander explosions, or locking all advanced units, locking air units, locking point defence or whathaveyou, the more power to the player in tuning the game to play the way they want the better

Note however that when you tune the game to how you want it to play there might will be even less players that are used to playing the game like you do and want to play it the game like you do.

I am in favour of a lot game options and making it accessible to the player.
One thing is that you should be able to save your settings so that you can easily replay the game in the same settings. Actually a viable alternative is that every game setting you change makes your hosted game a "mod" and that it shows up in the lobby that you have altered the game settings.

That's true, but I do mostly only play RTS games with one or two of my friends who enjoy them, or against AI.. I'm too insecure to play against randoms, because I don't believe I'm very good. When my friends and I do play, we're normally on the same team versus AI.