OMG Uber Cannon Actually is Undeniably OP. Please Reconsider.

In my recent games against the AI, I have found that any comm dual ultimately comes down to who spams the UC the most.


I assumed this was just a problem vs the AI.


However:


I think my pontificating about the Uber Cannon invalidating units, and hence any chance for a non-commander based rush, has been made abundantly clear in this extract from ZaphodX Video.




Take away Zaphod's bots.

Zaphod still wins that engagement.

In my opinion it is very clear that the Uber Cannon does stop early game rushes, and also mid-game rushes, and potentially late-game rushes. And mid-game army victories. And late game army victories.

I have made a number of posts in that other thread about the UC and transports and stuff, won't repeat them here.

If you use formations then uber cannon isn't that strong. His opponent clumped his army so much to the point I start to question his willingness to win the game. Commander + land army is still better than pure commander. Commander is also pretty slow so you can hit in other places. We just have to take slightly different approach to the land fights, commander should be treated with much more respect. I think it's pretty cool that attacking opponent's commander without your own is pretty hard to do. You can always bring your own and then take down his comm.
Commander should be scary motherf*cker and it is so now. It's great.

You do understand that scathis is in the process of balancing it. It was most likely placed high in order to figure out where the proper balance lies. Also please look at this thread.

There is a sticked thread about this

OMG Uber Cannon is so OP. Fix now!

I really enjoyed watching that game. The other guy lost because he overextended and clumped everything together. Going for the greedy kill cost him dearly. Even better when he complained in chat about it.

Really like how the commander can be used offensively. The D-Gu.. Ubercannon should take more power to fire repeatedly though, but that's a tweaking issue really.

Agreed Commander should not be pushover. And its balanced imo, only counter to commander is another commander. But while this is balanced its no fun, game from strategy turns into click fest aka starcraft 2.

Also lol at suicidal ai commanders walking into my base.

Exponentially more, the longer you spam it.

Wut?
seriously though, sounds like your obsessed with rushing. Try and new strat?

I think kiwi is very well aware of the other thread, hence his satire in the title of this one...

Number of worthwhile points you do make.

None of which I agree with.

The formation is redundant. When you spread them out more, the blob does less dps against com. The uber cannon dps is reduced by the same amount.

The uber cannon shots just need to be spread out more against the spread out blob.

Unlike the OP version of the pelter, turret rotation speed is fast. Without commander, units suck too much. Less units can fire at com (and reinforcing units get caught in splash)

And a bunch of units in optimum half moon get eaten by smaller group units flanking them.

Even with a commander, the commander fight still relies on faster fingers, more energy, most ubercannon. With an army, same deal. Lone commanders army is actually best served attacking the power, because lone commander counts on the fact that his ubercannon out does the dps of the army and enemy commanders UC combined. There isn't strategy there, it all comes back to the UC.

Even without any army at all, so long as lone commanders UC is quite a bit faster than other commander's UC, victory to lone commander. Try it against the AI.

The commander is just a version of the old pelter.

Rushes here are 'commander is alone, I attack with army, commander has ubercannon spam and no army, commander does win'.

Also, Zaphod does early harrass in all those videos, then gets out produced, gets caught with his pants figuratively on the ironing board, and pulls it back thanks to commander defensive action. Little bit too much defense post early game.

The comments scathis made was that the commander's UC would not be over powerful late game.

As that is clearly not being achieved (assuming that basic and advanced are not T1 and T2, but backbone and specialised) several things could give to change that. Like someone told me in a thread just today.

As this is a video game forum, I think it is well within my right to offer constructive criticism/feedback, regardless of whether or not that has already been noted by the relevant parties, without everybody getting defensive about it. Scathis has said what his goal for uber cannon balance is, and it does not achieve that in this patch.


I know balance is still being worked on. If that wasn't the case, I would not provide feedback.

Thanks cwarner. Good clarification.

Commander should be powerful all game. He could shoot rapid fire nukes and it would be balanced because everyone gets 1 and you can't build more than 1. If you have all of 1 type of unit (tank), or even all 1 unit type (ground) you are gonna have a bad time... As you should. You command an army, not just a tank squad. Act like it FTW

You're right, taking an army of t1 bots in to try to swarm the commander is going to take a massive number of them. It's probably not a good plan. A better plan might be to bring some shellers along to harass from distance. Or maybe he could use his mobile army to try to pick off other objectives such as factories, energy, or metal extractors to create a bigger economic advantage, and potentially use that economic advantage to win the game. Putting him under in economy will also slow down the uber cannon availability (yes really).

The commander is a badass, and he should feel like a badass. Turning him from his relatively un-badass state before in to a badass has invalidated a bunch of techniques that involved a simple spamming of units, even basic units. Now it is more of a puzzle how you take plan to take him out. I think that makes for a better game with decision making to be done.

<3

The current uber cannon forces you to actually beat the other player before you kill him. You really need to take out the other player's energy plants before you have a chance at killing a commander using t1 units. Unfortunately, most of the other good ways to kill a commander involve air.

Moving to balance.

The counter to a commander individually, is a vanguard. That uber cannon isn't killing that vanguard, too little damage, and the splash don't means ****. That vanguard is killing that commander, it actually out-dps it and I believe it even outchases it and it definitely doesn't require power or is as expensive and expendable.

Besides that, gil-e kill commanders no contest still and relatively nothing an enemy can do about it. Once they notice anything more than 6 gil-e shooting commander then it's dead by time it walks away.

t2 bombers obviously, as well as gunship.

Naval ships.

Orbital sattelites.

Holkins.

Nukes.

Halleys (used for their intended purpose)

Quite a number of counters to the commander. The only thing that doesn't counter the commander, is itself without a better economy or backup, and anything early game without positioning (multiple spread out directions and large numbers of them)

However, the early game stuff is actually in fact a counter to a commander too, because it kills bases and economy, and that gets the commander killed. So you are using t1 to achieve another counter to the commander: better economy, and/or the delete key depending on the enemy's choice of game-over.

for me, the commander is almost never the first target, unless he is glaringly overexposed. if, for example, he is isolated, and i have a swarm of gunships, you bet your *** i'm gonna rush him for being so dumb.

but for all intents and purpouses, trophy is right. there's more than one way to bring down a commander. units alone is not always the best idea

The Commander is still rubbish against T2 units of any sort. I think just about 10 of any T2 unit will waste him. 10 T2 flame tanks I doubt he can kill fast enough even with ubercannon spam. 10 T2 sniper bots can straight up snipe him to death. 10 Shellers and the Commander better have some fancy dance moves and keep doing them.

The ubercannon is really only for blasting T1 units. Attacking a commander with T1 ground is basically pointless. On the bright side, the commander is really slow so just avoid him and kill everything else.

The ubercannon also sucks against walls. If my commander is behind a wall (far enough to avoid the blast radius), can your commander hit me with an overcannon over the wall? I don't think so but maybe someone can confirm. And commanders can build walls now, so.....

The only problem with the T1 transport rush was that the enemy commander could plop down and kill a couple generators (literally 25% or more of your power at that point) before you could possibly get there to wall him off. There was just no time to see it coming.

I think they're too scary. Right now you need to do as much damage as quickly as possible before your opponent and reacts and assumes direct control.

Admittedly though I haven't spent much time puzzling out my kills as I just try to gain air superiority and then gunship him to death. Seems simpler.

Actually, there is something I wanted to post at release, and never made a thread. Meh, here is as good a place as any to poop it out. *GRARRRGHHH* ...AHHHhhhhh that feels better.

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Okay, the complaint is simple. 1 click per Uber Cannon is lots of micro, also requires your attention to be on commander. That OBV should be a toggle. Perhaps by default to be off, and if modded can default to on, but definitely a toggle. That way, your commander automatically fires Uber cannon when able unless out of power and no longer requires you to spam click nor even have attention on commander since his default retaliation when toggled will be to fire Uber Cannon and continuously while he has the energy.

Besides that, throw in a larger cost per shot so it is less viable for either commander in early-game rushes (early game against units the commander doesn't need more than 1 every few seconds). I like how with energy storage you could literally use UberCannon in full scale combat, but it does cost a bit of energy, requires the storage, and by time you have it t2 units are a bit of danger now.

The laser shot he fires otherwise should be the toggled off option of fire AS WELL AS the shot fired when energy deficient.

Really, that adds the most to the cannon right now. It was too bland before as well as micro intensive, but this makes it viable yet risky yet not all-in-to-win either, and it makes it normalized as a weapon.