Commanders role on the Battle field

Discussion in 'Planetary Annihilation General Discussion' started by canadiancommander, December 12, 2013.

  1. brianpurkiss

    brianpurkiss Post Master General

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    Of course he should not have a role in the front lines. He's the leader and strategist. He dies, you lose the game. You don't want to put that on the front lines.

    But if you're talking about a more active role in the battle, then of course. And guess what, he currently has the most active role in the entire battle – controlling all of the units. If the Commander dies, all of your units shut down. That is the most active role in the battle.

    Commanders are already very powerful. If the Commander was any more powerful, then the entire game would be nothing but Commander battles and PA wouldn't be a large scale RTS anymore.
    beer4blood likes this.
  2. cptconundrum

    cptconundrum Post Master General

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    That's why I think that if he is getting any buff at all, it should come with an energy cost that is too high to take advantage of until you have a good advanced economy going. Go ahead and make the uber cannon into a true d-gun, but make sure it requires several thousand energy stored up each time it has to fire.
  3. KNight

    KNight Post Master General

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    The Commander's role? Building.

    If your Commander isn't Building something, his potential is being wasted. The only time your Commander shouldn't be building something, i when he's going somewhere new, Like a New Planet, Moon or Asteroid, to build something.

    Mike
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  4. brianpurkiss

    brianpurkiss Post Master General

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    But then he gets waaaay buffed anyways late game. Just look at the latest match I posted where over 24 nukes were fired.

    And as for the energy required for dgun, that also most likely will be OP depending on how it's balanced. Then the point of the game is to build a factory, and then spam out as many energy plants as possible and rush with the Commander.

    In Halo Wars, one of the Covenant Commander's special move was to call down a laser beam from space and it required energy to run. However, if the first thing you did when the game started was to send your general straight at the enemy and have your base build nothing but power, there was absolutely no strategy, no anything, that could stop it.
  5. cptconundrum

    cptconundrum Post Master General

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    But by the time you have enough energy and energy storage to send in the commander, the other team has levellers and pelters waiting for him. The d-gun would really just become a great defensive weapon later in the game, but wouldn't end up getting used all that often.

    I don't care how good my commander's gun is; I'm not sending him in against an opponent that has had 10 minutes to build up defenses, get advanced units out, and scout my commander's position. If the other player is any good, he'll be raiding enough to keep you from pulling this off anyway because you have been ignoring building an army.
  6. bobucles

    bobucles Post Master General

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    The PA commander is tough, long range, depends on its base weapon, and has a single TERRIBLE ability. It is a copy of the Supcom Commander, except without the upgrades it needed to properly work. Overall it's a 4/10 for "poorly thought out, kind of dull".

    The TA commander was kind of squishy, short ranged, and utterly dependent on abilities to survive the late game. It was the best kind of commander, which did its role properly and had proper scaling defenses for every situation(8/10 for doing it sorta right). This can be realized once again, but due to dev goals it won't happen.
  7. brianpurkiss

    brianpurkiss Post Master General

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    So it wouldn't be possible to send in the Commander until 10 to 15 minutes in?

    A basic energy plant generates 500 energy per second. If the first thing you do is build a bot factory and then send your Commander straight towards the energy, it wouldn't be difficult to have a lot of energy plants to power that dgun.

    That's the biggest inbalance created by buffing the Commander – the opening few minutes, not the late game.
  8. cptconundrum

    cptconundrum Post Master General

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    Then make the uber cannon cost more? I'm not even saying that changing the commander is a good idea or would make it all that useful as a weapon; I just think it is possible to let the commander get stronger as the game goes on without adding any upgrades.
  9. brianpurkiss

    brianpurkiss Post Master General

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    But then if you make it cost more, then the Uber Cannon can't be used until late game and then it'll barely get used.

    How can the Commander get stronger without adding upgrades? If his strength changes, its being upgraded.
  10. cptconundrum

    cptconundrum Post Master General

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    Right. The complaints are that the commander is too weak late game, so the possible solution I offered is to give the commander a new weapon that only really becomes available late game. Personally, I would side more with what you are saying. The commander is mainly for base building, and only has a weapon for defense. I don't really think an insane d-gun would change that though. My idea takes the uber cannon out of the early game, making the commander less effective early on. Later on, you wouldn't send him into a base no matter how powerful his gun is, because he can still die just as easily.

    *Edit*
    I am not calling this an upgrade because all the abilities are in from the start. It isn't the commander that is being upgraded, but your base.
  11. bobucles

    bobucles Post Master General

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    The d-gun does not work that way! If there is enough energy storage, the weapon can be used. Economy only controls the fire rate.

    That is why the TA d-gun worked, and why the supcom overcharge clones do not.
  12. brianpurkiss

    brianpurkiss Post Master General

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    I agree with what you're saying. So the results of this change will be that the uber cannon pretty much never gets used. :-/

    What are you talking about? I'm not talking about how the gun works.

    I'm saying, if the uber cannon cost increases, then it won't be valid until late game because the energy cost will be too high. If the gun can't be used until late game, then it'll practically never get used because the Commander wont' see combat late game.
  13. nanolathe

    nanolathe Post Master General

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    The D-Gun can be fired without the need of any extra storage in TA. Worked fine enough in that game.
  14. cptconundrum

    cptconundrum Post Master General

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    Pretty much. I think my idea would answer the balance complaints some people are having, but I'm not sure it would actually make the game more fun.
  15. bobucles

    bobucles Post Master General

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    And I'm saying you're completely wrong. The d-gun was used regardless of what the player has for income. The only attribute energy changes is the weapon's fire rate. A single good shot early game transforms into an automatic gib-gun late game. And that was GOOD.
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  16. melhem19

    melhem19 Active Member

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    well i think that the commander should be balance according to its type
    eg ( a Quad legged commander should a little faster than a bi-legged commander)
    and a tank commander should be slow but have a heaver armor than the theta or delta
  17. kalherine

    kalherine Active Member

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    Is this PA community so small ,i always see the same 4 or 6 guys comment!
    Wake up ppl we need all.
  18. nanolathe

    nanolathe Post Master General

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    Generally speaking, wheeled vehicles move a lot faster than any number of legs.

    I have no idea where the misconception of ' tanks are slow ' came from.
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  19. brianpurkiss

    brianpurkiss Post Master General

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    What are you talking about? There's 17 different people talking in this one thread. Even more in other threads.
  20. Gerfand

    Gerfand Active Member

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    Make Com more powerfull and rename the game name to Dota/LOL, and the Genre to MOBA
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