OMG Uber Cannon is so OP. Fix now!

haha that is awesome, but yeah it does seem kinda cheep.

And.. what exactly is the concern? A tactical decision was made to com rush an AI who can only do so much to react since it's still very in-dev.

That move against a human player may work once, maybe even twice. So what? That's not a fun way to play. Even one or two air turrets or fighters around the base would have shot your commander down IN the transport and you would have lost..

If you know no one's expecting a move, you might get away with it. But in a multiplayer gamer? That move would almost certainly have resulted in clopse's loss.

It's not a fun way to play, but that's not going to stop people from using it and it'd also ruin competitive play unless there's a gentleman's rule against it.

Do it fast enough and primarily target your opponent's energy first and your opponent can't stop you since you can Uber cannon your opponent to death before they can kill you.

As for the transport, all it takes is to land a little further out and to have fighter coverage. And even without that, it pretty much comes down to luck that you intercept the Commander since you don't have the resources for a proper coverage. And building missile defense towers would be a mistake that early into a match.

That very tactic is what killed Halo wars, and I was afraid that tactic would pop up with the new Uber cannon.

We'll see how it develops. But it could ruin many a game because it's such a difficult to block and boring strategy. But that doesn't stop trolls from exploiting broken mechanics to win because they prefer to win, even through boring means.

Guys, the patch just dropped... like hours ago. Give it a little time to sink in.

Let us see how this turns out over the coming weeks.

It's not the end of the world Yeesh!

Ah, I get the concern more now, though I still think you're drastically overstating how hard it is to counter. Time will tell, and Scathis said we find out by trying.

I don't think it is hard to counter but do we really want to worry about this happening every game? It just leads to both players needing to go air first, even without the com kill it's a strong tactic.

I love the mechanics of it costing energy, com being transportable and the uber cannon as a defensive weapon. A simple solution may be to have the com death explosion strong enough to kill another commander like in TA. You will have no gain from it early on and easily defendable when the enemy might consider the game lost.

I think you guys need to go re-read the post.

Give it time, I bet you find a good counter.

Also, gentlemen's agreements are exactly what the "check your premises" is about. Those agreements mean you stop thinking about counters because it doesn't fit your narrative. So, again, if you think it's overpowered, check what premise you're going off of and try something different, rather than just outlawing it.

Also, the Uber Cannon is not very effective against walls.

I love the new Uber Cannon, I've already tested out that cheese. I came up w/ some counters. I do think the Uber cannon should eat up a lot more energy. But hey, we'll see what happens.

*noted*: added 3 AA turrets to my build when playing against clopse on small planets.

mmm Cheese :3

It is not as if com rushes are new to us. An early rush is hard to defend against. More so in PA as you have so many different angles of attack you can choose from aided now by the air transport. The only counters I see that are effective is either doing the same or going air first. Then luck comes far too much into play with random spawns.

If someone can come up with a better way to defend this type of attack I would love go hear it.

I had thought about using walls to defend against it as I went to bed but again these are hard to build when you are trying to defend against the commander who can simply run around them.

I may be wrong. As you said time will tell.

And that's just 1v1s. With the army game type...

The thing about comm explosion killing coms, is the army game type. Just send forward one com, kill 3 comms. It'd be stupid not to.

I still think comm rushing is an issue, particularly for the Army game type. We'll see how the game develops...

True but now you wont need to attack the 1 commander with all 3, just meet his with yours and have the other 2 avoid the blast area. Still has repocussions to your economy and base. However gone will be them sending in 3 to one of your lone commanders and getting insta wins.

What I love about this thread is that Scathis pre-empted this discussion... Lets just see how it turns out. Uber have many more balances patches to go even after release....

That still means the advantage goes to whoever com rushes first. Since both sides lose a commander, but the defenders lose a large portion of their base.

I think it's a lot riskier in the team mode we have now as you can't be sure to scout all opponents bases and you can be pretty sure that one will go air first. That's the air transport of the commander rush. I wouldn't think it would be worth the risk of been spotted early if you take the walking way knowing all they need to do is walk out to you and self d.

I don't think it will be much of an issue when we have other team modes that have each commander in control of his own units.

Once again these are just what I think so are more than likely completely wrong.

I think it feels very double edged. I would have sent my fabbers to immediately assist my commander, also I would have mimicked the ubercannon spam. I can't guarantee I would win the exchange but I think that would at least end in a draw rather than win. Also the HP weakness of the transport leaves you with 0 mistake maneuver space. I would like to see this in action against a human.

The point was clopse takes out the energy first so only he can ubercannon spam (it takes energy, right?), otherwise it wouldn't be a risk because everyone would return fire in the same way and have the home fabber advantage.

Exactly. Advantage to the attacker. Take out your opponent's energy and... there's nothing that can be done to stop the commander – not during the opening few minutes.

oh.. so the uber cannon firing when no energy has been fixed.

Brian, this is a very old tactic dating back to TA. I think the power of the uber cannon looks about right.

There main counters to it:
1: an early fighter or 2 if you suspect someone is going to air drop.
2: Take out your opponents energy reserves and chase down the com with units.
3: In spring they made light laser turrets very effective against the com (they also had longer range than the 'D-Gun') so an early turret or 2 would deter an aggressive com move on foot as the com would sustain heavy damage in the process of bombing.

I think if anything is unbalanced at this point it is that the energy draw for the uber cannon is a bit low. In TA / Spring that build order would get you 4 maybe 5 shots with the d-gun, so enough to do some damage but it then leaves your com out in the open with no power left. The other thing that probably should change is that explosion of the enemy com should take yours with it (so in a 1 v 1 it results in a draw).

The result of those changes wouldn't stop people from going air-commando-ninja-com on you, but it would limit what they can do with it to taking out your starting lab and some energy and then having to retreat (and if you see them coming you just retreat with your com and start building again, so you end up pretty much even).