ACU snipes

Starting with it or as an upgrade?

Does it really matter? The upgrade cost is already integrated in the ability's design. Build energy to use the D-gun. Build more energy to use the cloak. Build more energy to move while cloaked. Build yet more energy to use the shield. Build even more energy (and potentially a supporting facility) to use the teleport. Want to use them all at once? You better have some massive powerplants, bub. Otherwise they don't do anything.

There's no need for these particular tools to demand an upgrade. If the player can't afford it, then it's not available. EZPZ.

I like it.

No. Cloak, and your opponent snipes the one radar blip that doesn't show up on his visual sensors. It only worked in TA because TA's interface was from 1997.

Yes. Flexibility has a cost. Just limiting all abilities by their energy cost is a lesser limitation than an upgrade system. In one you have to make choices. "Gun or T2 first" is a big choice in FA, and the very act of getting an upgrade is a risky choice as it immobilises your ACU, so if you're caught off guard you have to either cancel the upgrade and lose the resources invested or try and fight with an ACU that can't move or OC. Your system, on the other hand just means power spamming until you have the ability to do anything. There are no choices because every ability is unlocked through power spam.

Dedicating a fusion reactor to powering your Commander's cloak so he can play at being a few engineers is not using your Commander properly. That fusion reactor costs more than the engineers you're effectively getting, and the engineers are more flexible. You may as well send him off to hide in a lake if all you're going to do with him is build things.

Irrelevant. The shields slightly more than double an ACU's health in that case and use 50% of your anti-snipe budget. Twice as much flak and you still stop a gunship snipe cold unshielded, and flak is actually more effective against bombers due to bombers' tendency to cluster and their lower HP. You just have to design your base in a less retarded way and put your flak in front of your ACU rather than slapping it down wherever so your flak doesn't even start shooting until the bombs have been released. It's almost like formation has a big impact on how effective things are.

Then make it both cloaking and stealth.

By cloak you mean complete, undiscoverable cloak which makes ACU invisible for anything including some kind of OMNI radars and visual detection? It also should hide building animation so you won't give up location of your ACU by just building stuff around. Well, cloak is nice thing, it doesn't prevent from sniping if enemy could guess where your ACU is located (by attacking location), but smartly used it will prevent sniping at all.

Which means that this upgrade would be must-have for everyone and there would be no eng-game sniping at all, which is not good. Maybe then it should be upgrade that is incompatible with some other good thing, so you may choose what you want most - additional resources boost (for example) or safe-protection for your ACU.

Well, yes, we saw that in intro video, like ACU moved to moon and build-up a base there, but this hardly could be called "hiding".

But point is, that at this point we don't actually know capabilities of space-travel, so we don't know if sniping is possible at all (if it's not possible to send a huge army at arbitrary asteroid without a lot of lengthy preparations - this can't be called sniping). So, well, we need info from Uber to continue on that, probably.

But my point, I guess, will remain the same - as long as I would not feel like my ACU is obligation - it's usefulness would be always more than risks - I would be happy. I just tired of constant underwater ACU sitting - like it is a fish, not a warbot =)

Well TA had not Omni Radar because only 2 units could cloak like this, And a cloaked commander in TA cannot build or shoot without becoming visible, nd with a 200 power drain while standing and a 1000 power drain while moving (As commanders are already slow) the commander will be a costly unit to hide and move.

And isn't guessing while he is hiding kinda inferred, but really that wouldn't be sniping but more like hunting, which is more then acceptable.

The reason to not cloak him would be because your commander cannot do anything, and is a large power drain while moving. With a cool down from use he could even be stunned while de-cloaking and Cloaking to prevent a quick dash away from enemy forces.

Oh, just give commanders stealth and cloak, what could possibly go wrong? Ninja d-gun rushes wouldn't become the dominant tactic or anything. Pricing stealth+cloak in a way that won't make sneaking into someone's base and D-gunning (you can't Overcharge buildings in FA, but even then the Cybran ACU stealth/cloak is extremely expensive) all their eco OP would make it useless as a defensive measure.

You are the kind of nay-sayer that will (or at least should) be gagged 10 minutes into any game design discussion. Not productive at all.

It costs 1000 power to move while cloaked, so it won't be overpowered.

The D-Gun also cannot be used while cloaked, in fact you can only move while cloaked and nothing else. And with a charge up and cool down time it would be even more balanced.

And as a defensive measure, it would continue functioning as long as you haven't already lost.

It works in TA, and it will work here.

But if you really feel it might be OP, you could try scouting for the power plants and by building a base that doesn't all explode from a single D-gun shot.

A cloaked com in TA is still detectable by radar, a top level player could recognize which radar dot is the com by its moving speed.

That's why I suggested we change it to include radar stealth as well, in exchange for the inability to act while using it.

Good. I gave it a cost. Power. Power isn't free.

Your point? Commanders are the most advanced units in the universe. Nothing suggested so far has turned him into an unstoppable killing machine. Using more features gets progressively more expensive, automatically, without the need to attach anything new. It also makes the Comm innately dependent on his existing bases to provide an energy source for his abilities, thus base building is always vital.

This particular cloak is the TotalA variant. It broke very easily and thus is mostly defensive in nature.

It's not an upgrade. It's not meant to be. It would not serve the correct purpose if it was. It's an innate ability that no Commander should leave home without.

The simple fact is that one commander has to survive against thousands of enemy robots. Another fact is that no amount of combat prowess can solve this. Cloaking works because it can be relatively cheap, and it automatically scales with the conflict. More land == more space to hide, and weak detection options => more difficult to find.

Most of your concerns are based around the Supcom style of cloak+stealth, and with Cybran ninja commanders. That is not the case here. It's not possible. There's not enough energy to cloak when nothing is built, and there's definitely not enough energy to cloak AND move. The TotalA cloak is a very fickle techology and difficult to use offensively. Even with stealth it is an inherently dumb idea to place your Comm naked behind enemy lines.

Since all of the suggested abilities demand considerable infrastructure, which takes away from tanks, they don't lend themselves well to a rush strategy. Slowing the commander down with upgrades only matters if rushing with some ability is a problem. Nothing here gives the Comm any particular lethality on the field, only extra abilities to not die, IF he remembered to build something ever.

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The D-gun has its own issues, of course. Game balance is tricky when both sides start off with a really good unit, and especially with a gun like that. So let's theorycraft a bit.

I guess this is where the shield comes in. Let's say the shield blocks D-gun shots, even if it's not active. Both commanders are now incapable of instagibbing each other. That's one problem solved. The weapon was fairly short range, so it was pretty lousy against base defenses, and the default comm laser was simply awful.

The tricky part is dealing with the rush. It's really impossible to spell this all out, as a ton of factors are involved. Starting resources determine what the rusher can utilize. Rush distance determines how long the defender has to respond. If economic growth is good, the defender has more options at his disposal. If the defender can turret up for defense, he gets a major advantage. If the defender can flank and destroy the attacker's only power buildings, then the attacker loses his primary d-gun weapon, and potentially any benefit from his shield. The attacker now has no income, no base, and no ability to crack the enemy. It's game over at that point.

The rusher can always win, of course. This all boils down to having a good defensive advantage, which is as easy as standing in front of one laser tower.

So you can't move when you're using it and you can't shoot when you're using it. How is this different to hiding in a lake?

In TA you didn't have stealth. Not a comparable situation.

Sigh. Power is freely convertible from one task to another. You can choose to turn off your Omni or your airspam or your shields or your Annihilator or any other power-whoring building to power up your cloak in an instant. It becomes a tactical choice not a strategic one.

Okay, you're asking what my point is when I've shown that your proposal removes a strategic choice from this strategy game. I wonder what it could be.

TA had radar jammers which act as stealth emitters, so I believe it does.

and the TA commander could move while cloaked, costing more energy when he did.

But stealth DID exist in TA. So yes, it is still comparable.

TA Commanders easily found themselves lost admist a sea of tiny radar blips. The only way to catch him was to exploit the minimap, or to hunt down radar jammers. It was more than adequate defense against radar for that game.

That changes with the more powerful Supcom strategic zoom. Pure cloak is very useless when radar can cover everything and an individual target can simply be zoomed in. The solution? Just add stealth. It has already been mentioned a dozen times. C'mon man, step it up you're falling behind.

This is making 2 bold assumptions:
1) that radar is strictly land only, thus forcing a sonar station for every lake and puddle that exists, everywhere.
2) that units can't simply walk underwater and flush him out.
The difference is that one method actually works at keeping the comm hidden. The other is trolling the game while you wait to die. There were also glitches in the other games where stealth and cloak didn't properly break when energy ran out, and indeed cloak didn't like to break at all. Fix those, and the target stops hiding when it is supposed to be revealed.

Uh, noooooooo. Reallocating scarce resources is always a strategic choice. That scenario just happens to take effect very quickly. The situation is dubious at best, because it's a bad (***) idea to run energy that close to the edge.

If the infrastructure is there, why not keep every comm tool active? If it's that much of a concern for the enemy, he is more than welcome to assault the energy source. This is deliberate. To stop the commander, you can:
A) Get lucky on patrol, overwhelm his defenses, and kill him
OR
B) Stop his power source, laugh as he pops up helpless, and kill him
OR
C) Screw it. Blow everything up.
No matter how you grok it, that's one more strategic option than before.

Hold on, hold it. Stop. Wait.

What choice is it removing, exactly? Please be specific.

EDIT: There is likely some confusion over my use of "comm shields". I am referring to something very different from the old system. Instead, it is a literal "Energy barrier" system that uses energy, direct from storage, to prevent incoming damage. It is a last ditch defense that will flatline all but the most powerful energy economies. No upgrade is required, not that it would be useful without huge fusion plants, anyway.

There could even be an unit only dedicated to killing Commanders. As long as it is very difficult to do so, though.

He he, like some kinda paralyzing unit to hold the commander in place?

Maybe, who knows

I think Darth Vader had one of those. Maybe two.