Read Op 1st Addition Of Supplemental Assistive AI's For HumanvComp Matches and/or Human v Human?

Thats a Fair way to aoproach the unit and i agree

Lol, I just realized, how did this become a unit suggestion and not a UI suggestion?

I was assuming anyone can do this from start of game, and that it was an option to toggle AI control of your units.

Why would it be tied to a special unit? Would be epic to literally "produce allies" until to make your own stuff you must instead teamkill them liberally.

I want sub command\decoys to serve with a dustinct function other then "look pretty"

I thought the entire point of this thread was to discuss sub-commanders as a unit and how they should actually help you "command" rather than just being a unit similar to the commander. I seem to recall when I first heard about sub-commanders from Supcom that they were "supposed" to function similarly to the way I described (rebuilding lost structures and maintaining bases), but I guess they never got that far with it (or I hallucinated that the idea existed before).

I think it would be cool to have them, but as I stated before they should in no way be more intelligent than a player, in the same way that a fresh officer is no substitute for a 5 star general.

Sounds like what you can select to start off with in allies from Red Alert 3.

However, either having an ally system with AIs where they dynamically respond to pings by sending army support at your pings or consider expanding to area-selection you specify or such, it would be neat.

I considered this idea early before alpha, to allow newbies a learning tool by assigning AI control of any of your units and the AI will use them like that was their limited unit army, like if given a fabber they will expand eco with it and you can take it away when results are achieved, or you can give it a factory and it will build armies and even raid with them or mass them if you wish, and you can cap how much eco the AI uses by just assigning it the mexes and pgens you want it to use and it can only use that much eco (like it thinks thats all the eco allowed it).

Just that UI idea alone is very flexible, and very possible to mod in. Expand it with custom player programmed "ai decision" for certain tasks, and you could select not only what units the AI has to play with but also what it is to achieve with it (what it targets in raids, what it builds to raid with, whether it raids or responds to your defence, what it focuses on in expansions such as artillery or additional factories, you selecting it's playstyle basically).

I just think it is an interesting tool, to allow newbies to assign AI control of their commander early game and watch the AI's decisions from game start to established economy. Technically, a human player can still make dynamic decisions but this is an interesting tool to lax micro on a new player or start them off or really lax micro on any player or allow them to multitask by the AI doing raids and army while they establish infrastructure and base expansion or vice versa.

It is also a good idea as a modifyable AI ally options, as well as some form of AI ally communication system to tell them how to help you or play, as well as that "ally AI" being a buildable commander in a game where you start with no allies initially.

Remember, these are all good player mods, entirely possible to make, and entirely enable/disable/limit within pregame lobby. This stuff would definitely expand the life of the game and the user friendliness.

It were this that meant when I said dumbed down:

How are you gonna achieve this without "dumbing down" the AI?

If you give the AI a task it will perform the task differently depending on those scaling factors?
I do not like that.
An assisting AI needs to be predictable because otherwise it is gonna do seemingly dumb things from the assisted players point of view.

How many fronts I can manage at the same time depends on my opponents performance, how complex the interaction are at those fronts and how powerful the UI is. If the enemy is just suiciding into my superior defences it might even be possible in PA for me currently.
Strategy for me is about expecting and countering the enemies moves. In order for me to do that I need the capability to at least view my progress on the fronts. If I am to fight against 39 opponents I need most and foremost the capability to assess my troops capabilities and my opponents capability. Against capable opponents, leaving the fronts without surveillance should mean my defeat on those planets as there is no strategy involved between me and my opponent regardless of how much automation or AI you add to the game unless you go into AI development territory where simply having the best AI gives you the victory.

There are arguements to play games with this feature, and to play without it.

One is that with a multi monitor or even quick-keyed view locations, people should be able to control multiple things with a mild amount of "speed clicking", enough that anyone should be able to do and a competitive starcraft player could do if deprived of 36hrs of sleep.

Having it be a unit is still a neat idea to have, but I anticipate someone making it as a UI mod really soon after release. Good news is, barring they used Creative Commons rights, you are permitted to copy a lot of their work and simply apply it to a buildable commander via adding commander to a t2 fabber's blueprint as a nuke-expensive structure.

Assume you have no fog of war could you then manage 39 fronts? Against a computer? Do you agree as games progress that players should be thinking more about unit allocation then building allocation?
If my unit im suggesting was as strong or capable as an opponent ai then it It wouldnt be balanced.. but the factors i mentioned will adjust say the speed of action..

I haven't played the current AI enough to know how well it does. Are you sure that the current AI can handle 39 fronts? I don't need to win all fronts to win the game if I can just bombard it from orbit. Does the AI go orbital yet?

I don't think this is a good approach to automation or AI assistance. I think that automation should strive to do trivial actions optimally and I don't see how you can change it without "dumbing down" the automation or AI.

does Obama micro manage every aspect of the United States?

After reading 6 pages I have reluctantly decided that the idea is flawed because the impact on your economy is so unpredictable. Your're playing as a super advanced robot... why not build friends? the idea is sound, but the implementation described is not.

It did give me THIS idea though... instead of building a subservient helper bot... build an actual commander. A full blown AI player who is added as a new player allied to your team (but not sharing your team).

After he's built you could move him out to a new location and activate him. As soon as you click "go" you lose any form of control, he has his own economy, and he does his own thing from then on. Just like in alliances your surplus resources would assist each other. This kind of addition would also make it a fun detail if at the start of the match you see an allied asterous drop your commander off at your start location and then fly away.

A commander would be a very late game unit built from an advanced factory and would cost far more metal than a nuke, but it would be fun to seed a large solar system with lots of helpers. They wouldn't be to OP because they would start with nothing in a system full of well established players at war. If you see one starting up near your base just commander snipe him and move on.

I'd bet Obama could be a Starcraft 2 tournament player, judging by how much micromanagement he opts to do.

Jokes aside, that was another good point. What if this game in the future could support 30 planets? Would you want to play the whole game? Would you want to cycle 30 battlefields constantly? Technically, partial AI assistance would scale the game better, no matter how big the game got one could use AI to cope with what they aren't focusing on.

Pfft, if I needed to take a leak, I wouldn't even need to pause it (or lack of being able to in a live match), I could just set autopilot (which I already do now with build queues, but with AI it could react to attack if I get attacked while gone to bathroom)

Ah damn messed up my vote
Wanted to have worthwhile against comp but not against human