Commanders do we really need then in open field?

That's what we've been saying, the commander should be your primary builder, especially when you need to send a single unit out onto a new planet/moon/asteroid.

Mike

What if his build power(efficiency?) was increased as your economy use increased? So the initial game start would be the same as it is, and his build power would non-permanently increase by a percentage based on how large your economy is.
So late games where both players are burning 300k energy would have about a 10% (arbitrary number) increase. These values would need to be affected by some perks and drawbacks, like if a player is using 300k per sec but is still 100k in the negative there should be a drawback to that bonus. A player that is using 300k but has a final economy excess of zero would get 100% of the 10% bonus because he is exactly at the bonus line. The bonus would probably have to be tiered to prevent certain exploitations. Early mid game that point when you get that first couple advanced power gens up should give you a subtle increase to your commanders build power.

I think something like that would at least keep the commander out of obsolescence in late game.
We would not necessarily be giving the commander upgrades, but instead as a commander becomes more influential in army and economy, that the character itself is in line with the rest of the team.

Increasing his efficiency is practically pointless. Your Commander is already the most efficient builder by a huge margin and it doesn't make a difference in how he's used because he's instantly outclassed by any T2 engineer. He needs to have more build power, not efficiency.

As for it scaling with Econ, that sounds like a very slippery slope that's quite open to abuse. Maybe if you inversed the power with efficiency, so as one rose the other tanked. maybe...

... but that's a lot of rather pointless fiddling around to achieve what a simple boost to the Commander's base build power would also achieve.

(Not to mention that the economy is already borked when it comes to energy spending so I don't think adding in a variable build efficiency would help any.)

If your commander is being sent to another planet in a late game scenario, it is far from useless in practicality. If a commander can get a factory of each unit type up and running very quickly, he could be the centre piece of a colony force.

I had stated "build power(efficiency?)" as it has to be one or the other, I am not sure what defines build power since metal is allocated 1 to 1 ratio. So unless build power is defined by creating more output than the actual supply is generating then I would consider rate of metal use from existing supply in a fair 1:1 ratio vs how much power required per metal applied to be efficiency.

Yes it could be exploitable, thats why it would have to never be based off of a firm percent increase. There would need to be tiers of bonus one would have to acheive. If a person puts the time into making lots of energy at the cost of not working more on his military effort, then he has to do so in large chunks to acheive the bonus. Sure a bonus gets applied to a commander but then it swings back in full circle, which would indeed look pointless. It would only be more effective in circumstances where a commandeer being supported by the usual late game fabber masses is not going to be possible since he was just sent off to a moon on his own.

Build power is a measure of how fast a unit can put down Metal. The Commander (and all T2 Fabs) have the same number: 30m/s

Bump the Commander to 45 or 50, and suddenly he's a much more powerful builder since he's putting down metal at an accelerated rate, which means faster building of any structure he starts or assists.