Send scouts. Find the commander. Send enough bombers. jobs done. Send oh well... etc etc I for one would like to see decoy commanders. so its not that easy to find the commander. Its simply a distraction. And not that hard to implement.
The only issue I see with implementation is that, now we have so many custom Commanders, there would need to be code that would detect your current Commander model and duplicate that for the Decoy. I'm not sure if such code is exposed to modders at the moment, but I'll look into it.
Additional: What would happen with multiple players with different Commander models on the same team and which Commander should be the template for the Decoy? Would this template change over time as Commanders are destroyed to maintain the illusion?
I wonder if there's a way to make a factory recognize default commander and make it the build template. I'm not sure, but I could see creating a whole tab of commander decoys (this is feasible at the moment but probably not the future) in the bot factory.
Again, I don't know where the code is that holds the player's Commander choice in memory. If I could find it I might be able to do something with it... but as it stands I can do precisely nothing.
No wait. It is a lot of work, but he is right. If every commander, has a special blueprint parameter, that only lets them build a special unit copy of themself, unarmed, possibly for the cost of 2 factories, it could work. I say that in the same sense, if you ported TA commanders in the game with their whole army, you could give them special blueprint parameters not to build PA units and just to build ARM units or Core units. That is adding approximately 16 subcommanders even right now though (not model just reference those from real one). Maybe would take much work making jsons, or would leave exclusive commanders behind.
Eventually we're going to have decoy commanders. Viola, problem solved. Even if it is a problem. And if you're winning every time with only bombers... then your opponents suck. Bomber rushes don't work on players who scout and defend properly.
Some opponents suck, and some more stuff to play around with never hurts. Assuming everyone will be fairly good, is overthinking. Usually best thing to do, is just make sure if you are worseish, to learn and also to play people your skill. But you shouldn't design a game around highest skill, what always happens is it assumes the highest skill uses X and the highest skill knows how to counter X, so when lower players play there is no counter to X that isn't intensively high level in speed or reaction or economy balance. That, and everything from A-Z otherwise is so UP because everyone can counter them but a really skillful player can somehow use each one for a small task if rigged very technically.
I am all for multiple strategies and counters. I advocate for that all the time. I just don't think decoy Commanders is the best thing. I'd prefer a cloaking Commander.
Both. That is the optimal amount of ******* with your opponent's head. It is a 1v1, you scout and find 2 commanders, you aren't sure EITHER are the correct one.
Wouldn't this work via using your default commander in the armory. Whatever that is set to, is the decoy commanders base model?
The opponent could still guess correctly. We would still have the same thing, except that random chance is now involved, which is arguably even worse. Entire games could be decided on whether the player with 70 bombers decided to right click commander A or commander B. Really though, I don't think there's much of a problem here. If the enemy has that many bombers, someone with no anti-air is going to lose even if they don't go straight for the commander. The bombers will still win by destroying his army and all his mex; the game would just end in three minutes instead of 20 seconds.
In my experience, if you can sacrifice an army for a commander, you score a bigger benefit than the number of structures you could have killed. The commander has stupid high health, but some units have dps to health that they can all dump one shot into a commander but couldn't survive long enough to find 5 seperate mexes and pgens. It would at least be good for a laugh. If you think about it, spending the unnecesary metal on a decoy when your losing isn't smart either, but meh. Imagine sending the decoy very visibly with one army, 2 decoys with another army, and the real commander in another army. The enemy considers them all a joke, then 1 really causes a problem, maybe gets picked up just in time to save it after causing a wreck. I am also working on this right now. With permission, will be pushed to statera, and with enough interest, standalone. So far, I got 5000 health decoy made, cost 2500, has weaker commander primary, basic fabber build arm, no ubercannon or death bomb. Made by commander, will be a decoy commander of each existing commander, using the existing commander json and the decoy commander "parent" as the "base_decoy"
Or we could allow the uber cannon to shoot at air, or add flak or something to the commanders to give them a optimal way to counter air rushes.
Something like that, athough i still like the idea of confusing the enemy. It has several tactical advantages. For example it can be used as bait. beceause what the game basicly comes down to is to pinpoint 1 single target in the entire universe and drop everything on there. seems redicoulous when seeing the scale of PA. in SC you had a commander which you could upgrade with shield and everything. In the end, still not immune to a bomber spam. The great benefit of the engine that PA is using is that you can actually use manouvers to kill the enemy. True strategy in that regard. unlike al the other rock paper sciccors "strategy" games out there.
