ACU snipes

That was a problem with air power more than with weak ACUs. Air units clump, and get first strike, and have better vision, and omni sensors, and superior speed, etc. etc. Of course ACU sniping from air was going to be like taking candy from a baby. Is that a surprise?

TotalA solved this by giving Comms the best cloak in the game. IIRC, the cloak was so effective that air units could never get in vision range (though even if they could it cost them the first pass). They instead had to resort to energy sniping to render the cloak inoperable, or be forced to use ground units for the search.

In PA, there is a vast field of maps where your commander might be hidden. Hiding an uber cloaked commander(get it? Uber? Eh? eh? oh forget it.) on some frontier barren world would be pretty ridiculous. No one would ever find it. However, if this level of hiding demands at least a minimal base to provide energy, then the infrastructure itself is a sign that a commander could be hiding.

Having read what people have said here, perhaps the best solution is to give all commanders a cloak like in TA?

Perhaps the cloak would be deactivated by any sort of movement, building or shooting, in order to prevent using a cloaked commander offensively?

One thing to consider is that in TA, once your commander was selected as a target, it was too late to cloak (cloaking won't break a target lock). Whether this is the desired functionality or not should be considered by the community.

I suppose we could get the commander to pick up some devious tech from the metal worlds, giving commanders a few tricks up their sleeves.

In TA the commander decloaked during firing, construction and reclaiming. The energy drain from a cloaked commander was 200 while on the move it would drain 1000 which in TA was the whole production from a fusion.
Unless you had a jammer the commander could be target on the minimap and jammer range was pretty low so even keeping the jammer alive around the commander could be troublesome.
Anyway, whats wrong with using a cloaked commander offensively?

The commander is fragile and the target for focus fire.

All I wasn't is the commander to be safe from sniping in 1 attack, and would prefer if the commander would have the ability to suit up for combat and withstand punishment form air raids and ground raids.

Cloaking, jamming and special ability's could all be upgrades, and would be goof if they weren't too far out of the way to get economically, but more costing in time, making him vulnerable and stationary.

I think Supcom showed how that one plays out. Invisible laser of death pew pew. Snipe the omni and it's GG.

The TotalA commander really got it right here. Cloak was mostly defensive in nature. Any hostile action would render it visible, and the comm wasn't a great combat unit late game. It's one of the few defensive measures that will remain effective no matter the game's scale, so it's a good idea to keep it.

Bah, that was obviously a glitch. Besides, even if you only catch one brief glimpse of a comm, you don't have to worry about missing with an asteroid. :roll:

Apples and oranges. All your example shows is that an offensive commander with supcom's mechanics doesn't work; not that an offensive use of cloak could never work. It's possible that a certain mix of mechanics could allow for a viable offensive cloak tactic without being overpowered.

Of course it was a glitch. The issue is that if cloaking breaks a target lock, then what's stopping you from toggling the cloak for the minimum amount of time (minimizing your energy expenditure). There's a little more nuance to the topic than you're giving it.

Yes. And as I mentioned, TotalA hit the nail on the head for this one. No special detection was required, because cloaked units revealed themselves. If they attacked you knew where it was, and defenders opened fire. It was only a matter of properly responding to it. Cloak made it easy to get units close enough to do some real damage. Sneaking past defenses is pretty damn effective on its own, isn't it? Add some round planets and you can be attacking from any direction too, so a backstab with cloaked units is even more juicy. Cloak doesn't need more than that.

Supcom showed just how silly a cloaked unit can be. Oh no, you have a giant death laser walking around your base! How EVER should you discover where the DEATH LASER is coming from? :roll: Seriously. It was pretty stupid. It's trivial for a robot to find an invisible source of hostile plasma and SHOOT IT ANYWAY. Oh look, the bullets are hitting invisible space. KEEP SHOOTING.

If you really want units to get past all forms of detection and be directly inside an enemy base... put the units directly inside the enemy base! Supcom2 had a ton of superweapons and special abilities that did this.

TotalA nailed this one too. Cloaking had a time delay to it, as every time it broke it took 5 or so seconds to reengage. Any incoming damage caused the cloak to fail. Once it popped in hostile territory, it was very difficult to get it active again.

So no, such a lean running strategy would not work under the TotalA cloaking system. The first cloak would break targeting, and then 5 seconds later your commander is screwed.

There is also the slight issue where cloaked units were still brightly visible to radar. It didn't matter too much in TotalA since the minimap made it virtually impossible to find cloaked targets. It mattered a bit more late game as units could gain the ability to automatically shoot them. Supcom got rid of this issue by adding stealth to the package. It's no big step to do the same here.

With a large power cost to completely drop off the face of the system, possibly as a commander upgrade (Up for debate).

And I would agree with the idea.

I'd like to address the core topic a bit. That is, the concept of a commander snipe.

You see, there are 2 things: the spirit of the game, and the letter of the game. The letter is what the mechanics actually allow and enforce; the spirit is the point of being here, the overall desired play path and goal.

In my opinion, sudden/easy snipes generally fall within the letter of the game but not the spirit. I, and I'm pretty sure I can speak for supremacy players when I say this, do not want the rug suddenly pulled out from under me because I didn't spend time looking over our shoulder. I want to get to the meat, which is throwing big armies at each other and watching the pretty colors. =p


Honestly, as long as there's a way to have a good supremacy like option, I think both sides can be happy.

Yeah, but your meat is throwing big armies at each other.

An assassination player's meat is making that kill, however it may come.

I'm not saying that your desired way of play is invalid, but you cannot claim that there's only one objectively-defined meat to the game.

But yes, both modes should be included. But it's not as simple as that; balance will favour way of play over the other. This is what the thread is about: "preventing ACU snipes [...]"

You should not be allowed to completely prevent ACU snipes.
At least imo.

I guess your best option would be to send him to the planet that is as far away from the enemy as possible.

At least we wont have to set up a barrier of planes to ensure nothing come past a line we draw on the map lol

I guess now it will be a circle of planes.

I am against early game snipes, and easy snipes.

How long is early game?
15 mins? after that length of time I think you are starting to look for kills, if some1 is not dead already.
Don’t know how long these games are going to last. Probably because they don’t know how big to make the planets. :s

I feel it is map size dependent.

But what I mean is that in assassination games, you should have to work for the kill.

Like you cornering the enemy commander next to some terrain, but your forces keep getting annihilated by his Giant Powerful Gun (D-Gun), however your massed forces around him prevent his easy escape, and the set up of a few defensive turrets seals him in, Leaving you to amass tougher units to finish him, bombard his position to force a brake out into your forces or potentially leave him time to get forces to liberate is position.

That way the kill will have been earned, it will be satisfying to have achieved it and won't feel like you cheesed the victory.

Possibly equipping him with good armor but a slow speed to prevent a true rush of the commander as well, because that was always silly in TA to have a 30second game where your commander and the enemy's duels with D-Guns, knowing that the death explosion would also kill you.

Sounds like a waste of time to take out a lone commander. If I have my whole military-industrial complex vs his single commander, I shouldn't have to wait long to get my victory. He knows he lost, I know he lost, lets just cut to the chase.

That's not really the spirit of a commander snipe anyway. Generally, both sides are pretty well off when a snipe happens. That's part of the reason a snipe is possible: your opponent fairly confident that they're winning, or at least not losing. That complacency is really the enabler of a good commander snipe.

No. You should make me work for the kill.

I am concerned that most of the people that are against ACU snipes seem to have the argument of "Well, I don't like having to keep track of my units, so please can you just not hit them/make it easy for me to keep them from harm?"

ACU snipes only come about if you've not looked after your ACU, at which point you deserve to lose. It's the most important unit in the game, so treat it as such.

Perhaps the word snipe confuses me.

I mean that a quick kill shouldn't be possible, like spamming bombers or rushing being able to quickly kill a commander, but if you beat my game then that's what happens.

It wouldn't be a snipe at that point, but just your average kill.

That's what I am arguing about. Not about me apparently not paying attention, but you being able to swoop in and win the game in 30's.

In the previous games, the ACU has had far too many hitpoints to be vulnerable itself to being killed. The kills then happened with bombers sniping out power generators, etc.

The ability to build missile silos and pick off an unattended ACU is something that sets Supcom apart from other games, and it's something that I think should stay.