It's exactly the same thing as a bunker but it actually protects you from 'snipes'. All a bunker does is raise the threshold of units/damage/whatever to carry out a successful 'snipe'. Moving your commander to a new planet on the other, not only does it pretty much guarantee that you cannot be 'sniped' by anything on the planet you just left AND have the bonus of using your best fabber to start a new base and get a whole bunch of Eco going to help you out on your original planet. I don;t get how you saw that you need a Bunker and follow it up with talking about the commander's "OP-ness", kinda conflicting. I think people will need to learn to wrap thier head around the idea that thier Commander is not the Ultimate combat tool, that is not it's purpose, it's purpose is to BUILD the army, not fight against it. To that end having Multiple planets is prolly the best that can happen to this genre because it makes so much sense, you don't have to invest into protection with no returning value aside from living longer, by sending your Commander off you not only provide a better level of protection but you can actually continue to USE him and start up a second base, a second resource income. When you compare the 2, I don't see what a Bunker can do to make it worthwhile compared to moving to a new planet. Mike
i might as well pitch in here. to this "mushroom" person, or whatever the name is of the guy that apparently has an ongoing crusade against anything defense oriented...... it's people like you that make people like me want a shield.......hyper-aggressive players is one thing that I cannot stand. also, i do take a bit of joy in imagining their angry faces when they realise that it will take more than 60 seconds to level my base ....mainly because it usually means rush tactics. and i will fully admit that i....well, i refer to it as "half-turtling." yes, i will send out attacks if i find the bastard, but you can bet your *** that i will want my defenses to be able to stop absolutely anything he throws at me. T1 artillery can stop enemy units before they get too close. bombers can be countered by good fighters, and the survivors picked off by AA turrets. both of these involve dealing with it before it has a chance to hurt you the (current) problem with catapults is typically this: by the time you realize it exists, is when you start seeing wreckage where your buildings should be. of course, you may have known about its construction a while in advance. but now you (likely) have problem B to deal with: the entire enemy base. all of the defenses, and likely, the enemy's complete attention at this point. so it literally becomes a case of "Win now, or die slowly" one of the few things that can save you now is to: A: already have a sizeable bomber swarm with which to snipe it B:already have a catapult of your own (in range) to counter-snipe it C:are already in a position to take out the Catapult, or the radar that directs its fire. all of these thing require you to effectively be prepared for catapults well in advance. if it takes you by suprise, there will be losses. and it won't be pretty. especially if the little bastard starts puting up more of them now i think i'll take a second and go through possible solutions: Solution A: Nerf perhaps the quickest way to deal with this is to make Catapults fire relatively slowly, cost more, ore perhaps be made more vulnerable. of course, with any balance change, comes little twats that try to find ways around it. so truly balancing it would take some work Solution B: Stealth a more creative solution, and aprarently is being considered by Uber (unless i'm dead wrong) this would effectively mean hiding your buildings from it, making it unable to target you. automatically, that is at this point i'm fairly certain you can still manually target the "ghost" of a building (you revealed it with scouting, but it's not within live radar range). Solution C: Shoot it down (countermeasures) in SupCom1 and FA, you had these neat little turrets that were effectively giant chainguns that targeted cruise missiles. they were, however, relatively expensive, were NOT 100% accurate, and could easily be overwhelmed. something similar may be apreciated. not the end all, be all of anti-catapult-ness, but something is better than nothing. Solution D: Shields obviously the most "taboo" solution, since the original TA did not poeses them. if i were to implement them myself, it would go like this: a small shield, about enough size to protect, say, one factory in any direction from a few missiles. it would go down after a decent number of hits from anything, say 4 to 5 missiles, or a few seconds from a tank assault. it would need to be able to be struck from within by bombers, or have itself drained easily by them. effectively making it only a temporary barrier from missile attack. yes, you would still need to go DO something about that pesky thing, but it should at the very least be able to save your bacon long enough to react properly. and with gusto. i will go on to wonder if perhaps orbitals will provide their own solution to catapults. perhaps we'll be able to fling lasers from above to punish the catapult-flinging bitch. but then again..... orbital catapults?........... (fffffffffffffffuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu-)
...Or you could blow up the catapult. Without shields, it really isn't that hard to pick them off. Assuming you are sustaining a sizable air force, 20 T1 Fighters to distract AA and 6 T2 Bombers for redundancy could easily destroy it. And mind you, I (personally) don't use early rush tactics, unless I'm going up against an opponent that uses them as well. If someone is going to spawn, set up turrets all around their base, and sit there, I can wait a few minutes to kill them. I have nothing against defenses, I use them all the time. I *have* to use them. However, I am against things that promote stagnant gameplay; meaning, gameplay primarily focused on who can build the most artillery, nukes, KEWs or tanks. It's boring, and makes me feel more like I'm playing Supreme Commander: Setons Clutch: Economy War Special Edition. Shields, countermeasures, etc. only exacerbate this because they promote spamming countermeasures just because artillery can be that devestating. I will take a page from another game, AirMech, where Artillery Countermeasures were proposed as well, and rejected because Artillery was the only reliable way to crack a turtle. In the end, there must be some way to eliminate a heavily defended enemy, and if he has nuke defenses up, the only way to do that is with Artillery. Mind you, TA had no countermeasures to long range weapons whatsoever, aside from microing units and shutting down enemy radar+scouts.
Or you could just build t1 fighters cheaply and easily and stop them dead with a far smaller metal investment.
To those people wanting to "stop this mushroom guy's hyperaggressive attacks" . . . why should you be able to do that and expect to win the game? If we assume n arbitrary made up points of attacking power is equal to n arbitrary made up points of defending power, we can start somewhere with this funny analogy. If mushroom is attacking you with n points of mushroom men, and you are defending with n points of Mario clones that can turn into magical shields. Your shields magically stop the mushroom men, but are still standing. The mushroom men are all obliterated. How is this fair? Why should Planetary Annihilation reward defensive gameplay?
Once again, traditional shields will not be in the vanilla game. Some sort of modified shield tech might be, however this is not certain. If you want shields, there is absolutely no doubt at this stage that there will be a mod with your classic shields in. If you don't, they won't be in vanilla. Everybody wins, and you don't even have to play games with one another. So can we drop this? Once and for all? I think we've proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that no-one is going to be convinced to changed sides.
I certainly agree moving your commander off planet would be effective to stop sniping, but that also takes him effectively out of play. I am not a fan of full on turtling, but I also have been in the situation where I have to fight multiple opponents on more then one front. When this happens you need to have your defenses bolstered by your mobile forces to win through an attack by both parties. I am perfectly happy with some method, and many people have voiced viable options stealth, radar jamming, increasing tier 1 anti air. I have used a screen of a few hundred fighters to make it hard to see the commander by having them patrol a mobius strip above my base. I would prefer to have some option to "duck" a sniping attach you see coming. Even a hunker would be good. At the end of the day the game will be modded to all get out and everyone will have everything they want anyway, I would just like to see UBER add content that would please most people and I am just giving my 2 cents worth.
How are you taking it out of play? Sticking your Commander in a Bunker doesn't let him to do anything, and if you're depending on a bunker to protect for Commander he is effectively leashed to it, he needs to either stay inside or close enough to get inside when threatened. Compared to moving him to a new planet/moon/asteroid it leaves him free to do what he does best, build! Mike
If you are watching you can generally see an attack with 20-30 seconds. Then you could move him to a bunker. I am thinking you could have lots of cheap bunkers to hide him in which would then turn the sniping run into a shell game. They could crack each one fairly easy, but it would take time. They might get lucky, they might not. Most of the previous games of this type had upgrades to make the commander either a seriously offensive weapon or a formidable builder. Either way you would want him close to the front lines to support the war effort since I don't think there will be any large scale army ferrying capability. I saw the troop cannon, and I don't think that will be used for shooting battleships, or experimentals (at least I hope not). I enjoyed the thrill of attacking with a decked out commander before because there was risk in taking him out of your defenses. But with the way it is currently shaping up I anticipate it being to risky to have him on the planet at all. Another option I haven't seen is having perhaps a Hunker type ability, though rather then make the commander more powerful I would be happy giving him some tents to hide under.
I'm with Mike on this one. The commander is, as the name suggests, a commander. He is there to oversee your forces - he's like your King piece. He is not there to accompany your forces on your front line, he is the progenitor of all your forces and they are there to defend him and attack your opponent's commander. Commanders in the army don't join the front line, they are the ones who direct the rest of the forces and call the shots. The role of your commander in the gameplay sense is to establish a foothold. His moderately powerful weaponry and unmatched fabrication speed reflect this. He is the first to land on a new world, throws up an outpost to gain a foothold and then assists the base as it expands. When you want to stake a claim on a new planet, you pack him up and fire him off there to do the same thing.
Doesn't change the fact that you're still chained to the bunkers, making them commonplace has far reaching effects beyond just saying that there are enough to always have one handy. I'd say such a structure as you lay out would be very damaging to the gameplay. As you say, it's like a shell game for the attacker, but that's down right boring and probably pretty frustrating to try and deal with, especially given the context of the over arching goal being to Kill the Commander. Not this time around; Mike
I am confused, you said that you agree with mike that sending him to hide on a secure planet is a good idea, but then you say that he is to be used in making a beachhead on a new conquest. This seems mutually exclusive.
Only if you're sending him to a new planet TO FIGHT. Which your not, you're sending him to an untouched planet/moon/asteroid in general. There are still instances where if you know the enemy only landed recently and if you want to make a Stealth base or whatever, fact is that to start a new base, you need to BUILD it, and that's what the commander is good for. Mike
I hadn't seen that quote about not upgrading the commander. I always like that you had to choose between making him a killing machine or building machine. That is a shame, maybe they will change their minds. If this stays true, hiding him will become normal, and no one will really use him. To me it seems that if you have a potential weakness but you get a significant gain, then it may be worth while to accept the risk. If you have a weakness that you can get rid of by not having him on planet, and there is no discernible gain it will become a no brainier to keep him off planet out of sight and out of mind. At this point what is the purpose of the commander other then to be put into a museum on a "safe" planet. The only motivational poster I ever liked said "A ship in a harbor is safe, but that isn't what a ship is made for" What is the commander made for?
Building Bases. Thanks to the Planetary Hopping mechanics this game introduces that's no-longer going to be a "One-Time" thing per match.
Building. I don't know how many times I can say it. How do you get a new base? you Build it! And given that the Commander is the not only hte fastest, but also most efficient Builder by far, it makes the most sense to use it to build a new base. Mike
Apologies, I will explain. When moving you a new planet, you are at once both well-protected and vulnerable. You are well-protected because you have removed yourself from the danger of direct attacks and sniping from the enemy on the planet you left behind. At the same time, you are vulnerable because you are all alone on a vast rock, with no protection and no immediate method of egress. You are, however, in an extremely strong position. If you have escaped in this way and your opponent has not, he is at the mercy of the full power of the base you left behind, while you are unreachable until he makes landfall on your new planet. Your position is strengthened by the fact that he will not want to land with his commander, as you will have a head start and he will be very vulnerable. Therefore, he will have to send fabbers, and he will be at a disadvantage on the new planet due to your ability to throw up a base and create an army at a much faster rate. I hope this conveys the depth of strategy that this mechanic allows. There are many possible strategies and counter-strategies to be employed here. By contrast, building a load of bunkers and squatting in them while bombers pound your defenses just engenders stagnant gameplay. It is merely a stalling mechanic, whereas avoiding snipes by moving to a new planet allows the gameplay to flourish and evolve. As Mike also pointed out, you would not send your commander to an occupied planet, or at least not one with any decent presence on it. That would be suicide.
Oop - while I was writing my reply, the conversation has moved on. As Mike and Nano state, the commander is there to quickly and efficiently build bases. His purpose is to stake a claim to new territory.
Assuming you can move smaller units to a new planet, why not just send a bunch of engineers. Sure the Commander has faster build rate then an engineer but a dozen are his match and if you lose them no big deal. Unless each planet has their own resource pool (would make sense) and you need the Commander meager resource generation to start building the base. I was thinking that the Commander is your military focus. He is unique in that you have only one and by moving him to the site you gain his strength as a front line combat engineer if you will. He represents the focus of your efforts and as your direct avatar is a super weapon. By bringing him to the planet you have significant advantage. Someone earlier mentioned chess and stated that he is your king, and in a way that is right if he dies you lose the game, but I would say power wise I would LIKE to see him more as the queen. Powerful and not to be left in disuse. Use him and you gain advantage, however you also risk losing him as well. I imagine that in a game empty planets will soon be occupied so at a certain point there will be no point to bringing your commander anywhere. So you will leave him at the point furthest behind your lines. He won't be touched and since he has no purpose forgotten. he will be auto building something on your home planet and that is sad for the mighty commander. He is a warrior right, you wouldn't bench Michael Jordan in his prime? Why spend all the time on the graphics for the Alpha commander and others if he is just going to be standing around in a desk job on the home planet. We could call him the president and give him a nice dog to take on walks.
