Should Commanders have a veterancy/upgrade system?

Hello forum, this is essentially my first post. However, I've been watching it diligently for a few weeks. First a little background to my question.

I was playing Supreme Commander, and found myself thinking about the veterancy system. I never found it particularly useful in normal units and base defenses, as the difference in health wasn't enough to be significant, and veterancy systems are really only useful for micro games, which this obviously isn't. It also had the issue of T4 units "feeding" on lower tier units, and being ridiculously overpowered for it. I remember reading that Mavor (He is Neutrino, right?) said he was against it, but that they would be tracking unit stats. I think that's a great way to handle units, but I don't think it fits Commanders.

As I see it, commanders are the only micro-heavy aspect of the game, and with good reason. It's your persona on the battlefield; it represents you. As such, I think having an experience system fits it really well. Being able to level up your commander gives it a greater tactical flexibility, and upgrades allow you to modify it for your specific play style. Some people use it aggressively, and some people prefer to use it entirely for support. I think using such a vital unit in a high risk way should warrant some level of reward for its actions/survival. In fact, I think it would be cool if the two, experience and upgrades, would be combined into one. You kill enough units, or perhaps earn enough experience based on kill types, and gain a tier of veterancy. Besides health and regeneration increasing, perhaps give the additional option between increasing movement speed or targeting accuracy. This could change on a by-level basis, and key levels (For example: 3, 5, 8, 10) could provide a more significant option, such as a cloaking field (if implemented, of course), missile launcher, jump pack, etc.

Another reason I think this would work especially well in this game is (to my understanding) how they're doing factions. Having a single pool of units, but many (I think I read 100 somewhere, but don't quote me on that) different commanders to choose from. It hasn't (to the best of my knowledge) been confirmed whether or not the differences will be ability related or purely aesthetic, but I'm definitely for game play differences. As long as balance is well ironed out, I think that's one of the coolest things that can be done. I always loved using the Cybran commander as an invisible strike unit, and equally loved using the extremely powerful bubble shields of the UEF Support Commander to protect my army. The staunch differences between the commanders was always one of my favorite parts of SC.

Thanks for reading, and whatever you choose, please discuss why in the comments.

The one good argument I have heard against a veteracy system actually came up in another thread about joining games mid way through.

The idea goes that, if you have ever seen a game of League of Legends, the biggest factor in losing a match is not your enemy but your own teammates. My least favorite game concept: "feeding" is when you get a string of easy kills by toying with an inexperienced or unskilled player, which allows you to upgrade your own units.

So if your heroes leveled up Warcraft 3 style then it would encourage stronger players to pick on weaker players in a match to level up. And it would discourage people from letting just anyone on their team. Without veterancy everyone can attack without fear of leveling up their opponents, and you are more willing to take all the help you can get.

On the other hand I do like the idea of resourced based commander upgrades, because it forces you to make a decision about where you want your resources to go. Investing in a single commander unit is a bit of a gamble because you are concentrating a lot of power into one spot, also if you are playing an assassination game and you lose the commander then that's it.

Also upgrading the commander is entirely a choice of the player, which puts the risk on the player who decides to wade into battle with their commander, and not in the game lobby with the person who let you on their team worrying about "feeding".

Veterancy is confirmed for not being a feature, and rightly so, because it didn't really make any sense. Why do giant robots get better at things by doing them? It's not like you can have your army get stronger by telling them all to do a lot of giant robot pushups. And it rewards the fiddly micro of concentrating kills onto already veteran units.

Upgrades on the other hand are pretty necessary for the commander to not be overpowered at the start or a liability at the end, but they're also a solved problem, since SC's system worked and there's not much that drastic changes would accomplish.

I have to say I'm not that sold on a veterancy system for the commanders, particularly when, as has already been noted, people might want to join games partway through - though I'd say in any strategy game not being in from the start will be a crippling handicap in any case, and I can't think of any counterexamples off the top of my head. In any case, without unit veterancy I'm not sure how meaningful commander veterancy would be.

The upgrade system is a different matter. In FA, the upgrades were absolutely crucial in determining whether you could use your commander offensively, and made the ACU relevant beyond the first few minutes of the game as more than a simple kill-me-to-win beacon. There was a decent amount of specialisation on offer (though often in 1v1 play not all of that specialisation was relevant or useful - nano-torpedoes, I mean you), and the options to turn your commander into an early-midgame offensive unit or a mid-late-game resource and construction unit were particularly important. Without an upgrade system, the commander either has to start the game as a late-game unit - in which case, it's basically an unstoppable face-crusher until the late game rolls around, making building other units a bit pointless - or it's always a puny early game unit, simultaneously vital (because you lose if it dies) and irrelevant (because it contributes nothing to your actual war effort in the late game). The upgrade system solves this, and solves it hard.

EDIT - what the guy above said.

That said, the Supcom 2 system of research and points was rotten. I never want to see it again. Please, o dev-gods, never again.

Also, about experimentals with veterancy, yes, that was the whole point of the monkeylord. It was designed to feed on low-level units; if you saw one coming, you were supposed to kill it with small numbers of powerful units and not let it get near where you kept the stacks of T1 power gens left over from early game...

I feel the upgrade system is needed to customize your commander to your play style, and to keep them relevant and alive in late game.
As for veterancy I was initially for but after reading the post above me I have changed my mind. But I think it still might find a place in the galactic wars, depending on exactly how that works, if there was one mane commander and a growing number of support commanders (so you can fight on several borders) you might want to let only the support commanders gain veterancy as they would be weaker vs. the mane commander early game and could let the player with less area and only the one commander stand a better chance if attacked by some one not committing to the assault.

I see it as just the opposite. Assuming a linked upgrade/veterancy system, a player joining a team part way through could make a significant difference for his side. By using his commander aggressively to upgrade it, he could fight a guerrilla war with a unit he wouldn't be able to afford if upgrades were linked to resources. While that might be very risky, it's like you said. Any player entering part way is seriously disadvantaged.

these kinds of arguments are worthless. something doesn't have to "make sense" in order to be fun or "awesome".

Make it stop.

This pretty much summarises what I would have said. I'm all for resource based upgrades for the commander, there is a greater pro/con trade off in diverting material and energy resources into a single unit, and it doesn't necessitate throwing your commander into battle to do.

It makes more sense to me for this to be an economy trade-off rather than picking easily won battles to ramp up your commander. For example players might want to invest in commander survivability upgrades in the event that they're attacked and not want their commander to see the front lines. Such players should still be able to work on their commander if they want to pay the price in resources.

Upgrades definitely yes, use Forged Alliance as a template as it's mostly spot-on. Even nano-torpedoes have their uses, they can swing a game where sea control has been lost (Eye Of The Storm is a prime example of a map where this can happen).

Vererancy I'm unsure about. I like in FA the way you can render T1 spam obsolete with a high-vetted commander, and I like how you can sometimes be saved by a sudden jump in commander health. But are these objectively desirable game mechanics?

Both sound good to me.

Frankly I have always wanted to turn my commander into colossus commander, or some kind of experimental.

That's what I love about TA, your commander is your greatest weapon and has the greatest weapon in the galaxy, SupCom commanders feel so wrong.

And considering the importance of the commander in a assassination game, why not let commanders become the harbingers of death?

Would that not be awesome?

Sure, turning your Commander into a death machine would be great, and more generally some form of upgrades (be it SupCom-like upgrades, external chassis or something else) will be necessary to keep the Commander relevant other than as a bomb magnet after the first few minutes.

But no veterancy please. Apart from the fact that it's just wrong for an ages-old giant robot to re-learn how to shoot stuff at the beginning of each new battle, it would also favour aggressive Commanders against defensive or support ones, and you would have the Monkeylord syndrome back, where it's better to self-destruct your swarm units instead of making them fight.

The flat way I see it, nothing should get veterancy but perhaps make it createable as a player mod, and upgrades are possible but not necesary as you could actually make one of the top tier structures house the Commander, as it would prevent really ANY 1 hit ganks late-game except an easily avoidable planet-killing attack. It would essentially make the housing structure as a "damage cap", and once the structure is destroyed and the commander is out then you can drop him as fast as the damage can be dealt. It just stops overkills by the structure absorbing the outstanding damage threshhold.

I am against the veterancy system on everything except the commander himself, and only then if the commander only gets veterancy through his own kills. That wouldn't affect anything exept epicness really, not game outcome.

However, the concept of AIs being able to learn and better tweak their actions based on experiences is supposed to happen by 2032. Robots will basically really blur the line of sentient intellegence, as they are supposed to one day be able to record experiences and perform better based on past performance, seek out and analyze data on their own to discover new information, come up with "better judgement" on what they should do without any living person telling them.

SMNC: Karl's Character Background
"[He] often points to his recent "Most Improved Combatant" award as evidence of humanity, as 97.4% of social learning theorists agree that cyborgs perform their duties at a constant rate of perfection rather than with degrees of learned competence versus physical ability."

Karl "levels up from experience" in combat. Karl IS Human. Lol.

I think this has already been discussed and agreed, but just be on safe side please, please include a kill counter for each unit, even if it does nothing functional.

THAT will function to add the mods in the game. Player-made game modifications, hopefully some interesting ones that make the counter actually tie into a veterancy system. Some simple old school, some possibly creative like an added unit ability with cooldown or a unit "second wind"

Even if only the commander gets veterancy, it still encourages ensuring the commander (or should we say "Your Hero") gets all the kills off enemy units ("Creeps").

That kind of counterargument is more worthless. "It doesn't have to make sense" can literally be used to justify anything. It's a game about robot armies blowing each other up, not a game about arbitrary entities performing arbitrary actions to other arbitrary entities because nothing has any context.

So, how does being able to learn translate into instantaneously getting better armour and weapons? And why are these robots being forced to relearn everything after every fight?

Haha. In TA, the Commander was even more of a liability than in SC. No shields and no upgrades meant that in the late game, he was either cloaked or hiding in a pool because his hitpoints were vastly outscaled by the ability of Hawks to do damage. Hardly the greatest weapon in the galaxy when he has to cower in fear after the first few minutes.

No argument can be made for or against a veteran mechanic that does not also equally apply to upgrades, as both systems require time spent in the game, and so the specific mechanics of how the increased performance is achieved isn't quite as important.

If the intent is that people could join at any time, then for the game to be balanced, all of the new player's units, including their Commander, must have an equal level of efficacy to the existing players units.

I think that the TA style Commander is not a suitable archetype to determine how useful a Commander unit will be throughout the game, as jurgenvonjurgensen has stated, because their relative capability was quickly eclipsed by other units in even the earliest tiers.

As such, I'd voted for neither system to be in the game.

I dont think that is true. I see the differences regarding upgrades vs veteran mechanics to be as follows:

Veterancy rewards players only for getting their commanders into a fight. If a player is sending their armies to do the fighting instead, the player doesn't get any benefit. Therefore the Veterancy mechanic only benefits one style of play which is not good. It also encourages a player to hold their armies back to let their commander mop up the kills, so people will structure their combat around the Commander. Again this affects strategy within the game by constraining the tactics which give you advantages for your Commander.

Upgrades on the other hand are a trade-off of the players economy. At any stage a player can chose to divert resources from whatever they are doing (army building, base building, defence/economy building) and use those resources to upgrade their commander instead. This means regardless of what strategy they are implementing, they can upgrade their commander to suit their style of play, and the player will have to weigh up the pros and cons of taking that hit to their economy.

Finally it just makes more sense (as others have mentioned above) for new abilities to come out of materially based upgrades rather than through experience in the field.

With this in mind I feel that upgrades make a lot more sense than vetrancy and I for one would like to see it implemented in order to help the commander remain relevant as a match progresses.

Combat takes time. Building an economy takes time. Both are intrinsically time dependent because to accomplish either you require time spent playing the game, and so the specific mechanics to perform them becomes irrelevant.

It doesn't matter whether your combat is good or bad tactics, whether your economy is strong or weak, both will require time spent in the game for either to manifest.

We can accept that the relative strength of the economies is an acceptable imbalance, because it would be impossible to balance a system where one person could develop their economy for hours and another for minutes and yet both being able to produce at the same rate.

What is being rejected is the basic idea that the efficacy of any one single unit can change throughout the course of the game to become more useful. The only thing that should be impacting efficacy is the strategy of the player, not the game mechanics themselves, because it creates a handicap for any player that has not been in the game for the same amount of time.

If a new player fails, it should be because their strategy fails, not because the tools they have at hand aren't as effective as another player's.