Hi again all. I just was thinking about the commander and how he becomes very weak (see TA) at mid to late game because of massive unit rushes or sniping attempts, etc. How about a Cocoon building that you could garrison the comm in when you think that you base is about to fall...? It would be extremely durable, so that if you base fell, it would give you maybe 5-10mins to get units in to rescue your commander. While he is in the cocoon, he wouldn't be able to shoot or produce resources and if the cocoon gets destroyed with the comm inside then the comm gets either destroyed with it or ejected from it. The build time and resource cost would be substantial, but it could potentially save your bacon if you have multiple nuclear strikes or a massive army headed your way and you just cant either get out in time or cant quite get there, it could give you an extra minute or two to save the squishy. Toughts...?
I'd hesitate to mess with the risk/reward mechanic of (over) extending with your Comm. I say build a better turtle base for that substantial cost. And if you take your commander away from it and out in to the woods then deal with the consequences.
Perfect! And then after a few hours the commander emerges from the cocoon like a giant rainbow colored mecha-mothra, smiting his foes with his laser eyes. ...but for serious, I'm not down with this idea. Just beef up your base!
I wouldn't hate a supreme commander 2 style hunker for the commander as an anti-sniping mechanic, but adding an entire building seems a bit unnecessary. I am very against the idea of a commander surviving multiple simultaneous nuclear strikes or a big invasion force by itself. If your commander is in a doomed base without a way out, you probably should lose.
That's kind of why I started a thread on making the commander late game viable. Uber has said no Com upgrades. But instead of Commander-based upgrades, maybe he gets stronger as you access more tech from your arsenal? Example, you Get a T2 Tank factory, then your commander gets more HP. You get a T1 Air factory, and he gets some basic AA. A T2 Bot factory, and your commander gets a gun upgrade. Thus, it's in your best interest to explore and expand on your tech tree. Not only for offensive power, but rather defensive. While I think your idea of a cocoon may be well intentioned, I would rather the Commander be a force to command fear. Perhaps instead of static shielding, maybe he could warp to your nearest Planetary Base? Give him like a teleport ability with a 60 second spool up time?
Like I mentioned before - the commander should be a liability. He is the only unit you need to destroy to win the game (in the classic mode anyway) In the beginning he should be too strong to be destroyed but after the base has been established and some units start accumulating then the commander needs to go defense and in hiding. The game should be about trying to hide your commander, trying to find the enemy commander and in the meantime battle with gazillion units to do so.
Those are basically commander upgrades though. I'm pretty clear on Neutrino's "no commander upgrades" meaning "your commander's stats will not change during gameplay". It means they can balance the other unit stats based upon that; if an artillery unit can do 10% damage to a commander per hit, it is because it is intended to do 10% per hit, not because you forgot to buy the extra HP option. All numbers are mutable at this point, and TBH I wouldn't even worry about having balance conversations until at least the beta. Alpha phase is for making sure the basics work, beta is for adding the polish. There's no need to worry about how well your commander can survive a bombing run, until the bombers are actually in-game and working Some, myself included, see this as a natural progression of escalation. The commander, as your King piece (the game losing one), should be potent early game, able to shrug off small assaults while you get to the important business of building a world/galaxy-conquering army. However, a world-conquering army should be able to easily dispatch a commander; that is the point of it being world-conquering. What you get then, is the hard to define line between "what is small enough that the commander should be able to handle it solo" vs "what is big enough that it should be a serious threat to the commander". To use TA units to illustrate the point, most people would probably agree that a commander should be able to dominate 5 Peewees by itself, and that if 20 Bulldogs roll up, the commander should be in serious trouble if you don't have any backup. If you actually want a commander to be more powerful than 20 heavy assault tanks, I would suggest that you have an unreasonable expectation for commander power, and that the final balance for PA will likely be one you are not happy with. Since the commander is your King piece, you need to protect it, and the game as such is going to be about your methods of protecting your commander vs the opponents methods of trying to destroy it, plus your methods of destroying your opponents commander vs their methods of protecting it. That's pretty much what any strategy game with a King piece ends up as. Some of the historical methods of sniping, e.g. bomber stacks in TA, can be mitigated by engine design; if you can't infinitely stack units, and if defenses target units uniformly, then those methods are no longer viable. Some other methods I would argue should still be viable; "send in enough bombers to blot out the Sun" (e.g. 10+ bombers per enemy defense or unit on the planet) is a completely realistic method to turn a commander into scrap, should the game somehow get to a stage where you have enough bombers to do that. An asteroid wiping out their main base, followed by 100 bombers sent to the enemy commander's new drop point (where they have only built 5 defenses so far) should be a game winner, in my opinion. Again though, balance discussions are better left until the main engine and units are all implemented, e.g. the beta. So far what we have seen is effectively proof-of-concept code, not the finished game; everything regarding units is still subject to change, there are no guarantees that any of the units you saw in the 3rd May livestream will even be in the finished product, never mind looking anything like they do now
Commander safety is a concern unique to the Commander. Just give it time. These things will change as new units get added, old units get tweaked, and mechanics get polished. The Comm can't really be complete until the rest of the game is.
'Quality' of units may be decreasing, but supposedly, quantity of units on the field will be increasing...well, by a lot The tricky part with leaving the commander's stats alone is that, as has been mentioned before, he basically transforms from a queen to a king, and it becomes a 'who can hide their commander the best' game. I personally think that, somehow, the commander should scale with the game, just not perfectly with it. Like, imagine the game following an x^3 function, and the commander following an x^2 function. That's how I see it in my head at least. How it scales is the part that you'll have to come back to me on Mind you, no one is proposing that the commander be an unbeatable monster. Just that it stays relevant in the game as something besides a glorified engineer.
i just hope the commander isn't relegated to sitting in a puddle (or bubble shield) for most of every game
I know what you're getting at, but I personally don't take issue with the way Comms go from being and asset to a liability, I think it makes for a interesting gameplay mechanic. The biggest issue I take with upgrades is their lack of readability, sure SupCom made changes to the models, but they were so slight you'd be hard pressed to pick out all but the most obvious at a glance. Best idea I've seen so far in this vein is to be able to build the comm an exo-suit. Discussion seems to have centered around it being an experimental-level upgrade but there's no reason why it couldn't be something more modest.
I like that idea a lot. It almost takes the 'upgrade' part out of it, since it's an external build process that likely your engineers can construct, just like any other building. Actually, an exo-suit model could provide a lot of gameplay flexibility. Anyway, personally, I have nothing against the FA model of Coms losing power over time. It still proves to be a fun experience (though I mostly liked playing my stealthed, super laz0r Cybran >.>). Really, I just think that by allowing the commander to progress with the game, it makes commander and end game more flexible, and provides other options to winning that are equally viable (let's face it, end game can be as simple as mass up a bunch of strategic bombers, then it's simply a matter of finding the COM). It's a contestable point for sure. It will be much easier to start critiquing when we get our hands on the game . note: as an aside, I only ever played against my dad, and we usually played on either 40x40 or 81x81 maps, so I might have pigeonholed myself into this viewpoint :? .
Exosuits don't really suit the Commander, as Gurren Lagen they might be. The Commander's finite size exists for a reason (in TA this was explained as a limitation of the Galactic Gate), and if being larger was an option it would already be that way. If the battle gets too large for the Comm, the best solution is to simply leave. Rockets can't be THAT expensive.
a cacoon may save your hide from a nuke, but not a meteor. i think this would be viable for early to mid-game, an interesting idea to avoid early harassment. Im for it. Realisticly, which civilization since the birth of long-range artilery and aviation and such hasnt designed a bunker?
i think being able to hide the commander in some kind of bunker is actually a good idea, it shouldn't be very expensive, but it shouldn't be very hard to blow up either. the point would be that you can build many of them, so that your opponent dont' know in which one your commander is hiding. but anyway, i agree that the best idea this far is the power-suit :mrgreen:
