OMG Uber Cannon is so OP. Fix now!

That makes sense.
An example of this I was bouncing around in my head was that I first was about to propose to buff the bomb bot so it is powerful enough to fight of the commander. However I realized that would probably break the game in many other places. Like people i.e. would do bomb bot drops maybe 1 min later.

We are fixed onto the rushed commander drop because from a competitive perspective it makes no sense anymore to care about most other stuff. The game will be over once somebody does the rush anyway and since the rush easily has like 95% wins it will be done every time anyone tries to actually win the game.
We are sort of used to this thinking, because in most games we are often kind of helpless to the balance, with no dev caring about it anymore. So we have to find a way using the current balance. In that kind of situation you don't have to care what could happen 20 minutes in if you know a way to end the game in your favor or a draw in less then 3 minutes.

For a balancing attempt however you/we sure need to consider the effects on other parts of the gameplay.
We'll need to do 1v1s playing by a "no commander drop" rule I guess to get a feel for how transports work out in normal games. I can imagine they change a lot. Basically by introducing cheap t1 transports what we get is a way to negate the whole balance factor "distance". That's a factor lots of other balance was based on, not only early commander attacks. Gonna be interesting to see what else is broken. A good fix should not only fix the commander drops, but also other issues that probably will be found in the mid and/or late game.

A counter argument to this would be to first fix the first issue that pops up and only care about the other stuff later on an iterative basis. Currently serious games end at minute 3 or 4 in most cases. After that is fixed we will naturally reach minute 4, 5, 6, ... of the game and see what else can be a problem. Those problems could be fixed once we found them like that. Rinse and repeat until we reach a balanced game. Needs more patches though, but I can see it working just as much.

Can you post videos to youtube?


The twitch app has decided your channel does not exist

But that's explicitly what I don't want. I want to find some way to counter it instead of just giving up on it.

Look at like Star Craft. It took years for medics to be used in competitive play because people didn't believe they were worth it. Until one day someone won using them and then overnight became the new hotness.

Look at LoL. How many times have they released a new character that is "SO OP" in the first 24 hours but then Riot had to buff them two weeks later because people learned how to counter them.

This stuff happens. It hasn't even been 24 hours yet!

Matiz made a video about it a little earlier.

I think it's pretty understandable that these things do require some time in order to bed down and stabilise. However, I would be curious to know how you would measure how stabilised these things are. I'm purely trying to look at this scientifically. What evidence would you require in order to say that a particular strategy is overpowered? What are the unique testable predictions which would support or disprove the hypothesis that there is an issue here?

I've found that the t1 spider mine units that can be built in the bot factory do decent damage against a commander. If they move a little more quickly, having them on area patrol in your base would make a commander rush difficult because they could out run the blast of the uber cannon. They're pretty inexpensive and easy to make within the first few minutes. They don't seem to attack a target unless you order them to however.

i guess we should nerf transportspeed and buff airfabberspeed?

I think the easiest and least game breaking fix would be rather simple.

Move the Transport to the Advanced Air Factory and make it so the Transport cannot move the Commander.

If we make the transports dropping slower, then that could also help – and probably should be done to combat inferno rushes at 5-7min. Have it so they slowly lower down to the ground, making themselves very vulnerable to both the air layer and then for a second or two, the ground layer.

Different planets have no bearing. Or should have no bearing. First off, because plant biomes have little effect on air play, and if it somehow did alter gameplay and this worked on one planet type and not another, then that's even worse because then we'd only be able to play on one planet type.

And in these posts, players did try many many different playstyles and strategies.

Comes down to, "go air first and hope you get lucky enough to intercept." There's nothing that can stop a Commander at 2 minutes in except another commander with more energy.

Any strategy that would work against a 2 minute Commander rush would kill you for the late game since you're investing so much into defenses against something that may or may not be happening. So now you have metal invested in defenses and your opponent has an economy three times as large as you do.

Yeah this was how I lost one game. Commander couldnt shoot them with normal weapon. Next game I built extra scouts and ubered the ground in front of them. I think I am officially a pro rusher now.

Maybe we need fresh eyes to get a proper non air counter. But feel like we exhausted all options in the quest earlier. The timing of 2 mins cancels out many options.

What about a missile tower? Wouldn't that destroy the transport?

I understand what you mean. But the current case really is pretty extreme. A single game takes maybe 3 to 4 minutes with the commander drop. The breaking attack starts at minute 2. Not much can happen in those first 2 minutes of the game. So it is easy to do rapid testing while at the same time there is not much that actually can be done before the attack hits. There are by far not as many factors as you can have in i.e. LoL.
You basically need to build your normal economy (or you lose vs non commander drops) and once you have finished your normal very basic few eco buildings (again those are mandatory vs any normal playing opponent. Since you cannot scout at minute 2 you need them. Not building them loses vs anyone who is not doing the rush drop) the commander hits and you are dead.

Though we do not need to actually give up on it using rules, we can just start exploring air first starts. Because those will work vs the rush by being able to kill the transport with fighters. But always air first? Meh.

Glorious!

You scout where it is and attack from any one if the many other directions. Or land further out.

If you get lucky enough to place the missile tower in range of the incoming commander. And people who are good at this have a scout ahead, so they'd never get near your missile tower.

So. It wouldn't help.

all the player needs is to scout the misiletower guess its range and unload the comm a bit earlier .... wasted resources to enemy and no real defense gainst the commrush

I'm impressed over the heartache that seems to have popped up from just the addition of Transports, a functioning uber cannon.

I'm going to look at this thread in two days to see if this blows over.

I will say though, moving the transports to T2 isn't a valid fix but a band-aid idea. The idea to increase energy drain from the uber cannon makes more sense.

The uber cannon is not the main problem here. It's strong but it is balanced as long as it is mounted on a slow poke commander. Issue is the cheap transport makes speeds up that slow poke commander a lot.

what bout mobile aa such as aa bots and vehicles for patroll??

If you do not want to cripple yourself you can maybe have 1 or 2 aa bots. Those can be avoided using air scouts just as easily as a turret.

Even with a 100% counter, you're still playing rock-paper-scissors with build orders. Your only options are still comm rush, counter, or do a normal build and expand. Each option ties with a mirror build by the opponent and beats one of their other two choices.