Commander lategame powerup?

The commander is most definantelly a good unit early-game, however it seems to become a slow target onace the enemy has a recognisable army, simply screwing up the dps and health wont work becouse it will make for even more comm rushing, instead there should be a factory capable if building decoy commanders and upgrading the real one. Giving him a powerup so it looks more awsome and capable of annihilating small armys but in doing so becomes incapable of getting off the planet or build structures untill "deupgraded" at the factory. What do you think? Is the commander great as is or does it need morw late game power?

+1 for decoy commanders, although Uber have been quite explicit in saying no upgrades of any type.

My view is that the way they dealt with this in TA was probably the most elegant solution to this type of problem I've seen. In TA, the commander had a range of powerful abilities no other unit had- specifically he could capture units, d-gun (well we have the Uber cannon which is similar in concept if less devastating), and the big one was cloak. Now the key to this was that the commanders special abilities (cloak in particular) required vast amounts of power to use. This meant that early game you *could* use it a little with care (and lots of e storage) however this ability didn't come into it's own until late game when you had multiple fusion reactors to keep it fed.

This meant the commander grew into his abilities during the game rather than being upgraded. I really don't see a problem in implementing this in PA. The other key thing about the cloak was it shrouded him from visual only (he was still visible as a radar dot) so to be truly invisible it required radar jamming as well. This was key as there were no cloak-able radar jammers- meaning one way or another you could always find him eventually.

The reason I went for a "commander factory" was becouse the selfupgrading in sc is kinda noncanon to this as there is no selfgeneration either. The factory then also has more use as a upgrading and deupgrading station becouse it makes decoys and maby combat engineers with actual weapons, also uber has stated that they disliked units having abilities and didnt wanna go farther then the ubergun as ability so wre pretty much stuck with an high health engineer target that has a peashooter compared to the horde of tanks combined if they dont add one of our measures to make him worth risking instead of fleeing when a big hoard comes (and get killed by bombers) keep good ideas coming: maby auto-upgrading, making commander stronger over time?

+1 for commander cloak. I'm pretty sure Uber confirmed commanders would have abilities. I even remember them saying that the abilities would vary between commander types...

Yeah, although I think that based on the latest information those abilities are really just the choice of weapon (this is from the Custom Commanders stuff they posted recently):

Choices Being:
1: Uber Cannon
2: Laser Cannon
3: Missle Launcher

Mind you there are still quite a lot of things missing- wreckage is only really a token gesture at the moment- it formed quite a significant part of the game in TA especially (being able to both reclaim or resurrect it). I'm also hoping that a capture capability is added, as well as radar jamming. And again cloak for the commander would be great and make him allot more useful late game.

I think giving the uber canon longer range and making it similar to the dgun in that it goes thru multiple targets would give the com much more power. The uber canon is to much like o c which to me was not as good as the dgun

It's amazing how well the D-gun was originally designed. It fit the game from a surprising number of angles. But then again no one would've liked TA enough to make a successor if they didn't get some things right.

Overcharge feels like a cheap knockoff by comparison.

How about introducing bunkers which could be used for commander lategame protection?

i'd be happy with any kind of making commander better lategame

Bunkers? As in non-overlapping shields that require a one-time metal investment instead of a continuous energy investment?

I see a lot of y'all are new here. And welcome to the forums!

Uber has confirmed no Commander upgrades and no support/decoy commanders.

Here's what the Commander abilities will be like. Not quite like what you're describing.

Uber has also confirmed that there will be no cloaking at PA release (maybe later though). I think cloaking a Commander is a really bad idea. The maps are so large that even if a player has full control, then it'll just turn into a very boring for everyone game of "find the Commander."

This is even answered in the FAQ.

That's not a difficult problem to overcome.

While being helpfull on the abilities point, it is still my opinion that the commander is kinda useless after a while other then a very good engineer, wich i find sad. But simply making him stronger won't work becouse that will make defending the base early game too easy. is there any indication they want to change that?

In Total Annihilation there was no problem with cloaking commanders/units as they were visible on radar.
PA only needs to copy TA mechanics to be perfect.

There are a lot of threads talking about this.

The Commander is the general. It isn't supposed to be in the middle of the fray. Sending your general, the unit that if it dies you lose, into the center of the fray is a poor strategic choice.

The whole design philosophy of Planetary Annihilation is one of large scale. Massive armies. Not a single hero unit running around destroying everything.

Uber wants the Commander to be a liability. That's why the entire game is built around the concept of losing when the Commander goes boom.

The Commander is the most efficient builder in the game. Keep it building all game.

Oy. PA cannot copy TA. TA is not a perfect game. Also, TA was a single map. PA is a series of a bunch of maps way larger than TA ever could be. If PA copies TA exactly then PA will fail.

Totally agree, I think a few big (customizable?) abilities that the commander "grows into" is the most elegant approach. I'm not a fan of a specialized factory, etc.

@ Brianpurkiss
How so?
Enlighten us all with your expertise and knowledge.
Fact is late game radar coverage is pretty much every where.

I already understood that, i just wish the commander to put up more of a fight in the end, i find it anticlimatic when it just says boom after a few hits from a decent army, at least make him powerfull enough to kill a good bunch before he dies...
I do understand why you'd think i was thinking in that extreme, becouse many people do. but I do understand how the commander not being too strong would be more fun. also, nice ending line there.

Could be implemented as shields or building with shield which would consume energy when active but the main cost in bunker concept would be that commander is grounded while protected so actually no need for introducing other constant costs.

Of course it wasn't. But when a game does something right, it does something right. There's no point trying to reinvent the cloaking wheel.

Large maps are already showing problems even without cloak. The solutions for finding Commanders can be very easily adapted to breaking his cloak. Once again, it is NOT a difficult problem to solve. Finding a Commander can be as easy or difficult as anyone damn well pleases.