ACU snipes

Erastos, did you seriously just get butthurt over how I decided not to include the entirety of a fairly long post? I quoted absolutely none of it, so it's not that I went and grabbed one section of your post and misconstrued it. Nothing to get mad over.

I agree with the rest of your post though, certainly.

A sort of tangential example, but i liked how in Company of Heroes, as long as both players were of similar skill level, the battles would turn into 'realistic' and grindy territory pushes. It made it feel that no matter how many men each side threw at the other, you would always have to poke and prod at your enemy's weak points otherwise it would be a simple stalemate.

It was very hard to just roll into thee enemy base and demolish the HQ without very VERY concerted efforts from your forces. You'd never win with a blob rush. That, on a 'hundreds' scale, is what I'd like to see and have imagined would form the meat of the combat in PA. Of course, minus the cover systems, unless it wasn't too much trouble.

I pretty much agree there. It should never be easy to snipe an ACU unless your opponent is actively making it easy to do so (which may not simply = keeping him on the front line).

it's easy to snipe with frontloaded DPS, e.g. Bombers. SupCom had a lot of frontloaded DPS units like Mercys, hopefully they tone that down in PA.

Commander being able to upgrade and remain significant in combat unlike SupCom would be interesting too.

glared over a couple pages of this thread ...
and my god is that a sad picture it gives ...
people whining about the possibility to be sniped and losing to cheese ... QQ ...
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you want to prevent snipe or cheese? then simply preppare the propper counter for it be it offensive and/or defensiv AQAP ... simply as that ... you can´t always blame the developers for bad balance ...

the comm itself could be upgraded and significant till mid to lategame..
thing is at some point i don´t want the game to continue forever
and experimentals and assaultbots f.e. were ment to overpower commanders... i mean
they weren´t called commander killers for no reason ... the rest is about how you use your comm together with your army and other arsenal ... imo the options were provided ... if you don´t/don´t know how to use them then that´s your problem ...

Strat bomber spam can still take out a commander relatively unopposed.

You know a fully combat upgraded commander can 1v1 an experimental and win?

lol. maybe in black-ops

edit, with facts:
here's the weakest experimental, the monkeylord, for our example let's pretend it has 0 veterancy and does 4000dps with its' microwave laser + it's 200dps bolters for a total of 4215dps and 45000hp
http://faforever.com/faf/unitsDB/unit.php?bp=URL0402

here is the strongest ACU, UEF, let's pretend it has all the HP/Shield upgrades and shoots only overcharges (ridiculous) for 3600dps and a cool 50000hp (36000 being shield)
http://faforever.com/faf/unitsDB/unit.php?bp=UEL0001

50000/4200=11.8
45000/3600=12.5

of course thats neglecting that the monkeylord also outranged an ACU

Actually even Stock it's possible, also depends on the setup, but OC is very powerful weapon against single targets, the flip side is that even a fully upgraded Stock ACU cause handle the Experimental's Mass cost in T3 units, there are just too many targets to take them out in time with OC.

Mike

That's perhaps one of the major things missing from OC, any significant splash damage. But against many targets, damage upgrades do wonders with just the regular gun.

The D-gun can 1v1 an experimental and win. That's kind of WHY it exists.

There's nothing inherently wrong about killing experimentals with your one-of-a-kind game ending "don't let it die" Commander. However, it's probably a better idea to not get into that situation in the first place.

i'm gonna be honest, there is no way a lone commander in an open field can beat any direct fire experimental 1v1 full health and the fatboy can just kite

I just realized something. Easily snipable commanders turns it into a competitive escort quest. And we all know how much fun that is :<

Toe-to-toe, no. But with a bit of luck and some clever positioning it's doable. I had a game not long back on Fields of Isis where a Monkeylord was bearing down on my ACU and thanks to a bit of air support and the mazer firing elsewhere I got the bastard down with a couple of overcharges. There's little more satisfying.

The laser ones are tougher to beat because they bring you down so fast, but fatties and ythothas and other units with projectiles you can get with a little bit of dancing.

Snipes are only viable in FA due to one person pouring all their resources and attention into one attack, leaving them open to other attacks.

Snipes don't work against a player who pays attention and has intel.

the problem is of a snipe, a snipe just delivers the payload where it's needed, the survival of the unit delivering it is of no importance. you'll find it's unmpteen billion times easyer to snipe then to protect againt one.

You'll find yourself caught between the hammer and the anvil and bending yourself into shape and before you know it you just be playing at "being the first to snipe" like everyone else.

and that's not what we want.

again you assume much, as much as you're convinced you're able to protect against a snipe it just isn't the case so far in PA alpha. I can bomb your commander anytime I want and no amount of anti air or fighters can stop it. not because the bombers got through but because the bombs did. I've tested this and it has proven a winning strategy.

Not so in PA perhaps, the Commander in PA will have a new role that was only even used in the Early game for TA and SupCom, that is creating new bases, the same reasons it's sent in to start the game are the same reasons to use it to start a base on a new Planet, moon or Asteroid. And it's hard to 'snipe' a commander when it's on a completely different chunk of rock.

Mike

so, are we going to have cloaking ability for commanders or a decoy commander for this issue?
there has to be something... right?

While decoy and cloaking would be one answer, there are new ones that PA can do that no Prior Game could, going to a different planet as outlined already.

Mike

Thing is, if it's not possible to launch high-alpha units out of several unit cannons that can one-shot a commander, then it also would not be possible to attack a planet defended by a sufficient amount of gunship-type units at all (since you need to have lots of units to overcome that kind of rapid-response force). And if you try to solve that problem by making unit cannons so expensive that a unit-cannon-snipe is non-viable, they wouldn't be good for any purpose at all until the ultra-lategame.

On the other hand, decoy commanders and cloaking don't introduce that level of nested problems.