ACU snipes

"What began as a conflict over the transfer of consciousness from flesh to machines escalated into a war which has decimated a million worlds. The CORE and the ARM have all but exhausted the resources of a galaxy in their struggle for domination. Both sides now crippled beyond repair, the remnants of their armies continue to battle on ravaged planets, their hatred fueled by over four thousand years of total war. This is a fight to the death. For each side, the only acceptable outcome is the complete elimination of the other."
—Total Annihilation Intro
http://totalannihilation.wikia.com/wiki ... nihilation

And this is really off topic.

I try to explain the first question here:
forums.uberent.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=61&t=40198

The second question is already answered:
More powerful units are simply too big for gating. They can only travel through conventional means.

True enough. They slightly explained that ARM controlled planets try to preserve some natural beauty, which is why their homeworld of Empyrrean wasn't stuffed to the brim with stuff.

In PA, it can be explained as part of the natural evolution of planets:
Barren World => Skirmishing Forces => Heavy industry => Metal makers => Barren Asteroid Belt

Humans might be present in the form clones controlling ARM units but the story is not about humans.

Does the Core commander have a human inside? Does the ARM commander have a human residing within? Propably but I don't know and I don't think that there is anything in the story that points either way.
Maybe the clones are so degenerated that they can't breed naturally anymore. Maybe the ARM has lost all what they fought for in the beginning of the war.
Maybe the Core commander is the last woman and is angered at the male ARM commander for leaving the toilet seat up.
Still a better lovestory than Twilight.

What happened to this thread. We were having a serious gameplay discussion last time I checked.

Dude just read the TA wiki

http://totalannihilation.wikia.com/wiki/CORE
http://totalannihilation.wikia.com/wiki/ARM

It has a lot of really good lore , most of witch was present in the manual.



Back on topic...

So it seems this topic has come down to 2 major opinions:
Adding to the ability's of the commander to extend assassination type games - I want this.
Keeping the general gameplay of the SupCom commander to retain the tense nature of the assassination game type - Zordon wants this I believe?

So whats left to discuss is anything, is how to have the first, without reducing the other.

... Those two goals are in direct opposition, they're fundamentally incompatible. If you make the commander harder to snipe it reduces the viability of sniping and thus the tension generated by the need to to guard your commander. You also make it harder to pull off clever wins by information warfare rather than just brute force.

I don't believe so.

With the right set up commanders cloak could be given the opportunity to temporary escape enemy fire while also damaging a players economy (Keeping the tension, the thrill if you will), but a player attempting to do so will also be temporarily vulnerable to enemy snipes (Assuming a snipe is like an actual snipe and not just a average kill) while attempting to start the cloak.

Commanders are then trickier to kill, but not harder (I hope that's not the problem, the actual difficulty of killing a single unit), making timing everything, a clever win by information will inevitably be more challenging but the pay off would be justified.

And by brute force? Do you mean by actually fighting the battle and doing enough damage to the major infrastructure to get the kill? I sincerely hope not.

Offtopic again.

I knew the war over the of consciousness from flesh to machines didn't start over a toilet seat but the sexual identity of different units and the commanders is not answered definetly. In the links you sent me the ARM commander is refered to by "his" 3 times implying that the ARM commander have a sexual identity of a male. The CORE commander is refered to as "he" 1 time. Wheather or not sexual identity of a patterned human brain should be refered to as he or she and wheather or not such an entity is still human is up for debate but the CORE commander could still be a human brain of flesh. The last of its' kind in CORE.

What would it mean? Maybe both suffered and had to give up something that is essential to their being in their struggle for domination.
Maybe 1 of the sexes became extinct. Maybe the warmachines of the ARM rationalized away the free will of the humans as their natural instincts and fears have been contained and their imagination subdued to become perfect warriors.
Maybe the humanity will be forever trapped inside the machines unable to walk the earth again.
The CORE are pure machines. Surely they would not be hindered by the lack of a sexual partner but they might have sacrificed something essential in their optimization for war.
Maybe the CORE algorithms no longer allows creativity or peace. Maybe the once immortal human consciousness have been sacrificed to look for the optimal strategy.

The information in the links you sent me does not reject theese speculations.

If they were to put a cloak on the commander in Order to stop getting sniped easily, it would almost be impossible to find him. Imagine trying to find one unit over multiple maps that can also cloak.

Yeah, It would eventually turn the Assassination mode into Annihilation mode.

Crap. You guys are just insane. Story matters, but not here. Story-wise usability of commander is not important here. And I already said twice why it's capability to travel though gates is not making ACU useful in the end game.

Now, there is three options:
1. Leave anything as it is now.
2. Add some additional use for ACU for end-game, so it would compensate the risks of not-hiding-in-lake/on-asteroid.
3. Add some very restricted getaway button.

Latest news on this points:
1. None, actually. Guys who want to keep everything as it is now not actually saying anything valuable to argument their positions.

2. a. Add some customization that will make an ACU super-powerful unit for end-game.
b. Add a structure ("reinforced lake", actually) that will provide additional strategic options if ACU plugged in.
c. Somewhat balance spacetravel in such way, that traveling by ACU is most convent way. (keep him engi, but make him only space engi). It's a tricky part when it comes to assaulting already "inhabited" planets.

3. a. Stealth with progressive (exponential) power usage. More time you in stealth - more power it eats. Manually triggered.
b. Teleport-to-nearest-beacon feature with cooldown and inability to choose beacon.

That's why I suggested it cost more power to run over time, meaning its cloak could only be used for a few minutes at a time.

Cloaking is not that dangerous early game, and comms reveal themselves midgame by the need to expand. The problem with cloaking is thus in the late game, when there are no more places to expand and an unlimited number of places to hide. Therefore, the tools for revealing cloak are only needed in the late game.

It's not a stretch to say that cataclysmic events are well known for their cloak-busting abilities. The principle is exactly the same as flushing out submarines with depth charges; blow things up and see what happens. All of a sudden, KEWs and nuclear EMPs are excellent tools to flush out hidden comms, and nowhere is safe anymore. Can everywhere be defended against everything at once? That's not likely. Can a commander run forever? Almost certainly not. The endgame remains as hazardous as any other time, perhaps more so as his only real defense is to keep on the move.

Yeah. So what? It's the END GAME. Everything has already happened. Can you make commanders relevant in a KEW snipe fest? If you can, let us know. Because as it stands, the only thing keeping a comm alive at that point is his ability to not get KEW'ed. No, sitting still in a command bunker isn't going to work on a planet that no longer exists. The best option for this endgame remains the same option that keeps commanders from hiding in the midgame- the ACU has better travel options than everything else.

Forcing a reveal is not necessary. Providing effective cloak-busting weapons is good enough. If players insist on a snipe, there's nothing wrong with paying for it.

In the meantime, we've already established a command unit that can survive on a single planet scale, holds incredible meaning and value for the multi-planet scale, and can even keep its tail in one piece on the KEW scale. I'd call that a damn good outcome from the original premise of not wanting his bacon fried.

I guess the developers can make the commander useful in lategame by making it a potential game ender(by upgrade options etc). The one start the war could also end it, seems pretty awesome to me.

You like to concept of being constantly invisible, aren't you? How exactly nuke/KEW on planet may reveal ACU on asteroid near other planet? Maybe enemy ACU is sitting on asteroid near YOUR planet. So what, nuke yourself?

Isn't that like complaining that become the commander has moved to the other side of the map?

If he is on an asteroid, he shouldn't be using the cloak, making the entire asteroid a target for destruction, especially if the commander doesn't have a escape pod on the go.

And if he does jump rock, he won't be cloaking on the way, just plot the trajectory and race him there.

That's my point. You hide your commander away on some planet, than when his radar picks up some scouts he turns invisible, the scouts miss him, and the opposing player now thinks that the planet he just scouted doesn't have your commander on it.

I have suggested before it would have a turn on time to prevent quick getaways.

And anyway, why would you not leave scouts on the planet and keep constant vision of the worlds?

and then, why not attack the enemy's power plants to reveal him?

That's my point. You hide your commander away on some planet, than when his radar picks up some scouts he turns invisible, the scouts miss him, and the opposing player now thinks that the planet he just scouted doesn't have your commander on it.[/quote]

I have suggested before it would have a turn on time to prevent quick getaways.

And anyway, why would you not leave scouts on the planet and keep constant vision of the worlds?

and then, why not attack the enemy's power plants to reveal him?[/quote]

If you were to try and scout every single planet in possibly 40 player map, than you might want to check the planet and than keep moving. He also might have a considerable amount of energy left over from his previous energy generators, and it would just take too long to finish a game after he has already obviously lost. And to keep constant vision over multiple worlds?? If each world is basically a medium sized map, you would need a lot of resources to keep constant vision of each one and the game would be drawn on even longer.