Making the Commander Late Game Viable

I have seen mention of the commander not having upgrades.
I have also heard mention that this isn't going to favor turtling either.

One thing I enjoyed about SupCom was that I could scale my commander as the game went on.
Maybe shields to beef up defense, a stronger gun, or more building options.

It made the commander that king/queen unit rolled into one.


Just curious what people think about this subject?

Considering that the units used wont scale either (Tier 1 being the stock units and tier 2 specialised units) theres not realy a big need to scale the commander anymore (There may still be a need, but if there is its not as big).

A lot of people are still wrapping their head around T2 not being 100% "stronger" than T1.

I would much rather see it inversed, make the commander a huge liability that you must defend to survive. Make him jump planets and hide so your opponent doesn't kill you while you try to do the same to him.

The only way that the commander doesn't "Scale" is in Army size, in a 1 on 1 it should be able to deal with most/all units(some would obviously be more suited due to Burst or frontloaded damage and such) with it's large amount of HP, regular weapon and Possibly Special Abilities.

But the thing to keep in mind, is that the commander is always Important regardless if it can take on an entire army single handedly or not due to the game losing condition of it's death.

Mike

With T2 being specialised, commander viability is less of an issue.

That said, I'd wager that it still has the potential to be a really big issue.


The following is a simplification, but I think that matches will scale outwards, not upwards. By upwards, I mean; 1-Gun-Tank is beaten by 2-Gun-Tank.

I think upwards scaling is what caused ACU's in SupCom to become liabilities as time when on.

Mainly what causes Commanders to become less viable in the late game is that units are produced in such numbers that in order for the commander to compete, it would have to be a 1 unit army killing machine on the level of a game ender experimental.

Doing that however will just lead to the Commanders going 1v1 in a micro war in the early game instead. With extra units acting to try to tip the scale in your Commander's favor.

It can still compete if you bring your own army too (Keep the commander in the outskirts of the fight to prevent him from being insta killed by to much focused fire).

If the enemy has a army and you dont then you should lose the fight.

It shouldent be too easy to kill a commander (It should be able to handle a small force by itself and a "medium to large" force if it has a slightly smaller "medium to large" force on its side too), but it shouldent be too hard too kill him either.

I disagree. This makes the optimal choice obvious (hide him away from almost everything) and removes a possibly meaningful and interesting option or options.

I want to play like a Klingon would, on the front lines with my 'bots. Making that impossible would leave me a sad robot

D-gun is all he needs to be viable. Other than that, protect him or lose. Also, maybe we will get decoys, and on a galactic scale a decoy would buy you a lot of time.

When there are a hundred units on each side of the battle, BOTH sides are going to take casualties. Guess who's going to die first?

I'm not kidding when I say "No amount of ridiculous Comm buff will make this work". The Commander is ONE unit. The enemy is LEGION. He's. Going. To. Die. It could happen at 20 tanks, 100 tanks, 1000 tanks, or 20 asteroids. At some point, no force in the universe is going to keep the Commander from dying in the heat of battle. So don't put him there!

Don't take that as a challenge to create an even more powerful commander idea guys!

... im not sure i would call 20 astroids ramming into a world "the heat of battle".


But either way your logic is kinda flawed, of course the commander is eventually going to die if you use him in combat, but hes eventually going to die if you stay away from combat too.

The game will allways end with the death of a commander regardless if hes actively used on the front lines or not. The "heat of battle" will allways be chasing your commander, avoiding it wont allways help you, while confronting it may (depending on the situation) be a good idea.

Lets say both you and your opponent have 100 tanks each, if you use your commander in battle (at the outskirts of the battle to prevent instant kill by focused fire) and he dosent you will likely win that fight (unless you make a mistake resulting in your ACU getting destroyed, off course), and winning a fight may (with a big M) result in winning the war.

Its obviously a high risk strategy, but that doesn't necessarily make it a bad strategy (In real life i wouldent recommend high risk strategies, but in a game lossing means little so high risk strategies are more easily accessible).

That has nothing to do with his late game viability.

If I have 5 Mega-Bots, vs your 5 Mega-Bots + Commander... He dies first.

Regardless of how well you "upgrade" him. He dies first. No ifs, ands or buts.

Mega-bots? Ohh you mean the ones mentioned in the backers forum? The ones that are "purely a thought/visual experiment"?

If those are added they may end the commanders viability when the players reach the tech/economy to start building them, thats true.


But i dont think we should discuss backers (and preorder'ers) only content in the public forum.

Mega-Bots is a catchall I use to describe any powerful, single unit, be it asteroid, KEW or Giant Battleship.

This has nothing to do with the backer forum.

I see, but there might not be such a thing as a "powerfull, single unit". Since there are no tiers ingame and no confirmed experimentals.

Astroids are weapons of mass destruction so i dont consider them "units" and we dont have enuf data on how they will work to draw conclusions on how they can be used against a commander (For example, will anti astroid weaponry be able to target a incomming astroid from anywhere on the planet? Will there be a way to detect the astroid from far away so you have time to move units/the commander out of the way? etc etc etc?).

I guess it's a definition issue then. I do consider Asteroids as "units".

Also, if the Battleship in the Whitebox isn't a "single powerful unit" I don't know what is.
That thing has guns bigger than most of the land units.

Well i did explain my view on the astroids, we simply have to little data to know how they would effect the commanders combat viability late game (even if we call them units or weapons), reread my last post if you wish to comment on this statement.

I agree that the battleship is a "single, powerfull unit", but the battleship cant be used on most Battlefields.

As far as i know several planet types dont have water at all, and even if they have water they have to have water near enof to the battle field so that the battleship can fire on your commander. We also dont know if the commander will be good in water or not (submerged, torpedoes?), if the commander is given some torpedo weapons it may be usefull even in a 5 vs 5 of battleships (since said battleships arent made for destroying submerged units).

So the commander would still be viable in combat in most cases.

I'm not saying the Commander can't be effective in battle. There is a lot of fun d-gunning early rushes and pushing out to control the map. I'm saying there will ALWAYS be a tipping point where the Comm can't participate in battle any more. At that point, the Comm becomes a greater combat liability than a combat asset. That's why every step of the way, I keep pushing for Commander specific roles.

The best solution is go straight to the lore. Commanders are the seed that ultimately conquers and destroys worlds. It makes sense that they would excel at planetary expansion over every other unit in their arsenal, because they ARE the unit for planetary expansion.

However, if a rag tag team of time traveling heroes manages to ruin everything, I'm out. The Commander should be well prepared for such a situation.