An Unorthodox Commander Idea

Everyone pokes holes, but no one iterates on any idea to try and fill them.

Also, last I checked this forum was for proposing and improving ideas. Not having a word war where the argument with the fewest holes in it at the end of the thread wins.

I see you're unfamiliar with forums. http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=forum

Also, theres plenty of iteration on ideas being suggested, you've just got the blinkers on.

No I'm not, I just had the (mistaken?) hope this one could be different.

And it's more of a person-specific thing I'm targeting, jurgen is a very hit-and-run style of poster (poke token hole in idea, berate person for coming up with idea, book it till theres another one to do so with)

How do you think you do that? First step to improving an idea is to identify the flaws. Second step is to figure out whether those flaws are structural - can you fix them, or is the idea fundamentally broken?

There are plenty of ideas out there which are inherently terrible, no variation on a truly bad idea will have any merit. For example, giving every unit a randomly generated list of hero abilities activated by mouse gestures, each of which has its own graphical effect and is accompanied by an action movie style one liner. This would break the game completely, take huge amounts of dev time, and annoy the hell out of players in multiple different ways. This idea has no redeeming features and if anyone were to suggest such a thing the discussion should not be 'Oh maybe if we changed the mouse gestures to buttons that'd be better?' it should be 'No! Get out!'.

So whack at the structure of the idea till it turns into a usable one? Inspiration can come from tons of sources and throwing up one's hands over a "terrible idea" is just a cop out so one can avoid thinking about how to make said idea better. At worst, that "bad idea" can be a springboard for good ones (is there a way to use mouse gestures in a good way? what place do abilities have, if any? Can voiceover lines be used at all?)

Have you ever heard the expression "you can't polish a turd"?

(aside from the fact that you can, in fact, polish a turd; look up the mythbusters episode on it)

Where do I go to find the people who don't want to throw stuff in the trash bin for disliking some implementations or aspects of proposals?

You may want a shiny turd of a game, but I do not.

Ever heard of sweeping the baby out with the bathwater?

All these ideas are still on the forum though rcix. If the devs spot an idea they like and think they can work with then I'm sure they'll use it.

I kinda like being able to have different styles here- this could be a cool idea. It would obviously have to be balanced, but it could add a whole 'nother layer of choice for the start of the game.

For example, everyone could start off in orbit around the planet (not synchronous orbit), where you could choose where to start your base by 'shooting' your commander down at the planet. The commander 'housing' satellite could then function as a space station (maybe get energy?) or a satellite (giving you a bit of aerial recon) early game. They could be made very weak, making them easy to knock out- but they could increase choices early game (I'd rather start here, etc.)

Wow thats an awesome idea.


So say a drop commander? Falls from a satellite early game that can be used for say a specific set of things,upgrades if you will.

I think upgrades could be

Energy Station: A fast temporary early game energy boost. (Satellite deorbits later)

Recon Satellite: A temporary early game recon, could aid against rushes. (Satellite deorbits later)

You know what you've got when you have a gun that fires a projectile with some momentum? An engine. And of all the places you can hit, directly below you is actually the hardest, because your projectile has to do a full circle of the planet before it hits.

Well excuse me for having standards. I post positive comments when I see something worth posting positive comments for. Good ideas are hard. Ideas people think are good are easy.

Keep it up. No forum needs a flood of poorly thought out ideas from children. Every forum needs users who critique things.

There's "critique" and "that idea is bad and you're an idiot for thinking of it". Which jurgen has directly stated at least a couple times. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go ignore him so i can keep putting out my "poorly thought out ideas" in peace. Edit: sigh, no ignore feature

...Point the "engine" down? Yes, there's some motion imparted as a result of being in geosynchronous orbit, but since that motion matches planetary surface movement...

And the obvious solution is to try and shoot down ideas instead of make more of them into good ones?

How about it just drops an SCU?

I'm sorry, but it doesn't work that way, the projectile would retain the same horizontal velocity and would just end up in a really funky orbit. The way you do this is you actually decelerate the projectile to remove it's orbital velocity, then it falls down. If you almost kill it's velocity you put it in a really elliptical orbit near the planet at it's closest (See GTO). By getting the deceleration just right you can end up with what is technically a suborbital path and land anywhere on the equator.

BUT the Earth rotates! So as your projectile was falling from it's zero velocity the Earth would move away, so in order to hit right under you, you need to leave just the right amount of little velocity so that it catches up with the stop right below you.

So if you want to shoot right below a GEO commander, physics implies that it should be able to hit at least anywhere on the equator. Also, we're talking small nuke levels of kinetic energy, you'd probably end up killing your own base.

I would like it to work, but I think an orbital commander is too radically different to work in the game. An aquatic commander would be interesting, like only has torpedoes, moves faster under/in water...

Heh. You could just take the engineers side of things, take a bad idea, improve it, and make it your own.

And seriously, laz0rs. Problem solved. Fire in in the opposite direction with equal intensity and the commander stays in geosync. You people are funny.

But anyway. I like crazy ideas, and there are some ways to balance this. Make it so that the commander builds buildings internally, with the same amount of time it takes to normally build the building, then send it down to earth. There's loads of ways to make a lot of the problems work.

But the one problem I see that would be nearly impossible to deal with would be the fact that you can't really rush this commander. I'm guessing that some games will be decided early on, with land v land and that's it, and this commander would kind of prevent that from happening. And I don't really know how you would address that.

An air commander, now, that would be slightly easier to deal with.

menchfrest basically nailed why orbital weapons that can only shoot directly below them don't make sense. In addition, any system you use to deorbit your projectile can be fired slightly off-axis to impart some lateral momentum, which allows for a firing solution for anywhere not on the equator as well.

That's not thinking like an engineer. Nobody who calls themselves an "engineer" would make a solution that uses twice as much energy as is necessary to be more complex and less useful. Rube Goldberg isn't supposed to be a role model

And I just started dropping turrets in the middle of your base.