Commander suggestion: Build-rate scales down with Health

I propose the following gameplay mechanism alteration:

• A commander's build rate scales down linearly as that commander's health (HP) is reduced.

Currently a commander lathes at 30 metal per second under all conditions. Imagine instead if at 50% health, the commander's build rate was reduced to 15 metal per second. At 90% near-full health, its build rate is 27 metal per second. At 20% getting closer to death, it's build rate is 6 metal per sec. Etc.

Notes: The scaling could be stepped down in a set of increments to reduce the number of calculations involved during play. And it doesn't necessarily need to track down to zero (it could track to a bottom floor of 10 metal per sec @ near zero HP for example, if getting down to 1 metal per sec is just too low).

This change is proposed for the commander only, and not for other fabbers/factories, as I suspect that could be much more onerous to support, and is unlikely to affect gameplay as significantly. I also am not proposing to scale commander damage output per sec. The reason I think the build power scaling should be considered in the case of the commander though, is that I think it could help mitigate some current early game issues being discussed (com rushes), as well as allow for a shift towards implementing commander regen with a softer overall impact.

Lore and logic:
C'mon, it makes some sense. If the commander has just taken a solid beating (maybe took a nuke to the kneecap, or got carpet bombed for a couple rounds, whatever) and is left with a small fraction of health, should it really still be capable of nanolathing things just as well as at full health? The root source of all your team's nanolathing; that is what defines a comm (to me), and I think it's entirely appropriate that its current health should also be a direct reflection of its current ability to create and repair this war machine that it builds and controls.

Regarding rushes:
Scaling build power down with health should affect the viability of early comm rushes in a few ways:
- incurres a relevant penalty for tanking hits and aggressively rushing into the face of smaller blobs of attacking units. currently throwing another handful of ants or dox toward a commander seems too often to be a near total waste. at least with reduced comm build rate, there is a more tangible gain to those last few incremental units thrown in.
- build power is being reduced while under fire. will that missile defense tower even finish as you take more and more hits? more tactical and [ultimately] strategic decision making involved, IMO.
- opportunity cost. now in addition to the immediate lack of eco creation by instead rushing a comm, you can also add the cost of reduced eco or factory creation after that rush is done. rushes become marginally less effective than before. this affects defending comms as well, so lots of strategic considerations all around.
- multi-commander rushes. circle-jerking *ahem* circularly repairing your commanders with other nearby commanders would be less effective, especially when all of them have suffered at least some damage, and at very least would always take longer to accomplish. this disproportionately affects multi-comm aggressors vs defenders in my estimation. don't just run the numbers here folks; think about how this affects the risk-calculation involved. fabbers are often skirmish casualties, but a second (or more) comm ready to pour a guaranteed 30 mps back into another comm is a significant deciding factor in a continued forward push while far away from the best reinforcing fabbers available. changing that to "not 30, but something less" could be a huge factor swaying some aggressors back to home.

Regarding regen:
I've probably read less of the commander regen thread(s) than I should, but my impression so far was an overall acceptance of the concept, but hesitance about implementation details. My own leaning was toward commander regen being allowed, with a default behavior that regen is in effect whenever commander health is less than full. Players would have the option to turn commander auto-regen off similarly to how you can put factories in eco mode. And, I think that regen should not be active while a commander is building. Whatever his build rate is, it should only go to one task at a time.
Some ways the scaling build rate affects this regen sub-proposal:
- doesn't overly shock your eco output after a heavy strike on your comm
- adds strategic implications to allowing regen vs building stuff. allowing more regen will ultimately improve the rate of building more stuff; players can consider the balance appropriate for their current tactical/strategic situation.

Learning Curve:
Everyone has to learn PA's overall econ system, and there's a curve in that for some folks. Same here. I'm not sure how best to convey to players that the commander's build rate is impacted by health. Perhaps the same mechanism as eco stalling. Maybe an additional alert appears immediately after "commander under attack" until the player acknowledges it (once or a few times, then never again; configurable in settings), informing of reduced build rate. Other ideas welcome.

Final thoughts:
This took me some time to fully embrace, and i doubt everyone will like it at first. I do now think this mechanism makes sense for all lathing in game, but only propose it for the commander for reasons stated above (fabber units and factories gets over-complicated for diminishing gameplay-relevant returns).
I am certainly overlooking some things though. Fire away at it, but maybe also keep this in the back of your mind anyway, and consider it again the next time you encounter or watch [or engage in!] comm dueling/sniping.

if you propose to go that direction, i think i would only make sense to also scale damage done down as well. I think its a great idea!

Not good ... damaging an attaked comm in this case makes it even more difficult for the defender to save his comm ...

I think this would make an early game advantage an instant win and unbalance the game.

Consider this. I get a couple of factories up quicker than my opponent. I decide to send a small squad to harrass my opponent.

I manage to deal some damage to his commander. He is now suffering lost eco from my small attack AND his commander is damaged. At this early point in the game the commander would still represent a significant part of your construction capacity and would penalize you further for being a little slower than your opponent.

I like this in theory though, its a nice way to prevent com rushes. I propose these alternatives.

Cycle time on weapons increased with damage, maybe not until below 50% so your commander can still be effective early game defense.
Weapon range decreased with damage. Would stop offensive maneuvers as you need to be mobile with sight but would not affect defensive too much since they are coming to you.
Start up time on nanolathe increased but build speed not. This would mean less reactive nanolathing in combat but would not have a big impact on base construction.
Turn rate reduced - Would make path finding more difficult and slow you down when moving through a base to attack. Would not have a significant impact on base defence since you would likely be stationary most of the time.

Still same problem ..

What does this actually fix? Aggressive players aren't the only ones that take damage. Defending players get shot too.

You would achieve a much greater and more appropriate effect by not allowing Commanders to build and shoot at the same time. An attacking Commander is not a building Commander. If the latter wasn't so pathetically weak, that would mean something.