Most of the abilities listed here take energy to function. This is deliberate. The primary reason is to put a generic "tech level" on these devices, in a fuzzy way that is easy to upgrade or use on demand. The secondary purpose is to limit Comm rushes, since most tools will not be viable or even available until the game advances. No Comm upgrades are required- the idea is that a Comm starts with everything he needs, and activates more options with infrastructure. Starting tools - Commander Suite Comment: That central cluster of technomagic which provides control over your forces and causes "game over" when you die. - Resource generator and storage Comment: Provides starting income (a mex and a few solars worth), and initial game resources. Helps get the early game going. - Commander Nanolathe Comment: If you are reading this forum, you know what a lathe does. Builds the first tech level, allows for capture, reclaim, etc. All that good stuff. ~~~~~~~ Low tier - Fast legs Cost: very low upkeep (no more than starting income) Effect: Dramatically increases movement speed. Extra: May inclde other non essential systems like radar, stealth, and self repair. Comment: Limits the Comm rush by draining resources for rushing speed. After a few minutes you turn this on and basically forget it. Note: It's basically a "summoning sickness" for Commanders, to give bonus resources for staying still and building up. - D-gun Energy cost: Moderate Effect: Kills things dead Comment: We love this gun. It blows things up good, but suffers from very limited range. Mostly used to fend off starting units and raids. Becomes pointless as enemy numbers swell. ~~~~~~~~ Mid tier - Shield Generator Energy cost: Varies (low upkeep) Effect: Blocks most, if not all incoming damage. Damage is deducted directly from energy stores. Fails at a critical threshold(0 energy, custom setting?). Extra: Passively protects against instant death weapons (D-gun, special). Comment: A defensive option used as a last ditch defense early on, and as a powerful HP buffer late game. Weak against high DPS, focused fire, which easily overwhelms energy production. Strong against expensive, low DPS weapons like artillery, bombs, and OHKO type blasts. Note: Certain special units (like nuke defense) may have an inferior variant with personal storage and finite (fast) recharge. All damage is ultimately deducted from energy, being inefficient, expensive, and a complete life saver. - Cloaking Generator Energy cost: Moderate(stationary), Very high (mobile) Effect: Commander is invisible, stealthed, and can only be detected by nearby (ground) units. Disables all systems except basic movement. Most actions break cloak, including the [fallout] of apocalyptic weapons. Comment: The best defense is to not be seen. Mid game detection includes Commanders. Late game detection includes weapons of mass destruction. Note: A number of extra downsides can be added, such as metal consumption(or no resource generation), loss of shielding, loss of movement speed, loss of self repair, and loss of vision. - Comm Scanner Energy cost: High (per use) Effect: Subspace ping identifies(and vaguely locates) all commanders operating in the current [large area of space]. Extra: Reveals your Commander to everything in range. Detectable by probe scouts. Comment: You can run, but you can't hide. Note: High tech radars may have a similar ability, if you don't mind building them everywhere. ~~~~~~~~ High tier - Emergency Recall Cost: Special structure, Commander cooldown. Effect: A precharged [technobabble] teleports the commander directly to a designated [recall beacon]. Comment: Is your favorite planet going to blow up? GTFOutta dodge! - Improbably Lethal Cannon Cost: Special structure, dedicated worlds. Effect: Launches upgraded doom charges out of the D-gun. Long range. Limited use. Charges are produced and stored at [high tech structure]. Extra: Apocalyptic weapon. Reveals cloak and irreversably damages or destroys worlds. Comment: What's more lethal than a total collapse of space-time? A disintegrating total collapse of space-time! A [bad idea] is [technobabbled] into the Commander's D-gun, disintegrated, and fired. Point it up for a handy nuke/asteroid/orbital/theological defense. Note: The facility blows up real good and may demand a constant energy upkeep. Other doom weapons may be good, but this one is uniquely for the Commander. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Comments? Ideas? Like/dislike/hate?
Simply using energy costs instead of stuff like modules or research has the elegance of simplicity, and if it can be pulled off it may be the best option to scale the Commander power (and relevance) with the game. The problem is to balance it. The consumption of each feature has to be scaled accordingly to the energy generally produced at the phase of the game it's intended for, and when we want it to be a major tech choice (focusing on energy for a Commander rush instead of, say, a second factory), an expensive option and then a nearly free bonus. I have no idea if it can be balanced well if at all ; this will probably ask for the game to be pretty advanced before we can try. But it would be great if Uber tried this option. Specifically about the "Apocalyptic weapon" (or the Recall), it is not only balanced by the need of energy but also of a specific structure. It's another option beside modules and such, and it's probably a good idea for it to be only for end-game "superpowers". With energy cost only, in the end-game, either all options become affordable or the Commander could acquire the power of a (energy-costing only) super-experimental, something we probably don't want. So linking it to another facility is probably better, particularly if it has to come back to refuel. As a side note, I'd like for the D-Gun to have fire stances. Default is that it fires manually only. An "automatic" stance, for end-game when the energy cost is negligible, makes the Commander use it freely as if it was a normal weapon. An intermediate stance may also be a good idea, when the Commander will use it by itself, but scarcely. We could even have an "emergency only" setting for when the Commander AI estimates that firing it is needed for survival, though this may be unnecessary with the other ones. Such stances may be useful for other abilities as well, possibly even with a priority system, not unlike units and constructions should have.
You might find this useful Commander Abilities Poll Interesting. Has it actually been confirmed that we will have interplanetary/galactic radar of some sort? Could be interesting to have it linked to the commander in terms of gameplay.
IMHO the most interesting point here is the idea of making the Commander scale simply though the energy cost of the abilities.
I love the idea of powering doomsday weapons with the commander. That means you give the player a reason to have his commander in the middle of his base instead of camping out underseas in some wasteland. By making him an integral part of your infrastructure, you limit the ability to hide him outside of battle and never seeing him again, at least if you want to go end-game tech.
I agree. Like the commander would have to travel to a death star to power/control it? And also agree any special abilities must require resources, including doomsday machines.
I never really agreed with having a vastly upgradable commander. In Supcom the commander was easily outpaced by higher-tier engineers and upgrading the commander always felt like a waste to me. In Supcom 2 it was more a case of requiring loads of dedicated research that was vastly more important on any other unit than your commander. So no: i don't really agree with commander abilities. On powering Death stars: great idea, but here too: i think the commander as a fragile unit is fine.
The D-gun was a great idea, good for defending against rushing and also a good way to keep commanders away from each other.
Most of this is crap. There's no real reason not to just build something else with such and such functionality, like normal. Such as the apocalyptic weapon. That exists, and is called a nuclear missile. The commander does not need to fire it himself- he ordains that it be constructed, and gives the order it be fired. Issuing the order to the commander seems pointless when the structure or unit could just have that functionality independently. Orbital scanner? Build one. Shield generator? There's no shields in PA, but just build one. It doesn't have to be on the commander. Cloaking was present in TA, but its energy cost was somewhat prohibitive, preventing much nonsense with the ability. In my opinion commander cloaking was not a good decision since it can make games drag on which really should not, and did not add much. Cloaked fusions (possibly even underwater ones ugh) and cloaked commanders together are just a way to irritate a victorious opponent. The win condition and the end condition should parallel as closely as possible. And cloaking the commander is not really that useful. I suppose it lets you safeguard your commander against air strikes in a much more organic way than a retarded ability like Hunker. Still, in my opinion PA can easily do without cloaking as a mechanic entirely. The dgun is effective at destroying early rushes, including tech rushes, and acts to keep the commanders apart. It was a great idea for TA. Could be tweaked a bit for PA, but solid concept worth looking at.
There is two actually, depending on how you take the problem. First, a Commander needs some way to scale, or it will end up being a simple "kill to win box" liability after the next five minutes, where the only tactic is to hide it somewhere. Something is needed to keep the Commander from becoming stupidly irrelevant and vulnerable. Second, if you have a Commander equipped with those, it is more interesting to use them than build a unit doing that. After all, the unit will cost metal, energy and buildpower to be built (and probably energy to run), while the Commander will only cost energy to run. Now, some of the suggestions here may not be ideal, but most are still interesting. The D-gun makes the Commander offensive abilities scale with the army power. Things like fast legs, cloak, shield and emergency recall makes it less vulnerable, and allow a bit more tactics. Improbable weapon gives it a unique end-game weapon to keep it useful when people are hurling nukes around. Depending on how it works, it would be different from nukes as it would be shorter-range and not stopped by anti-nuke. Similarly, using the Commander to take control of a metal planet is another way to keep it relevant in the end-game.
I like nearly all of these ideas, so good work. The one criticism I have is extending the com's health using energy. Whilst I'm sure PA won't get exponential to the degree of FA, it is inevitable that there will come a point where it is possible to snowball your economy. So if the commander has as much health as you can produce energy, he would be effectively unsnipeable until you'd dismantled his power network. Some people don't like snipes, but they're missing an important point: it provides a way for a player on the back foot to capitalise on his opponent's mistakes and claw back a victory. Without the risk of snipes you'd basically be just playing Ecowhore Annihilation, which would greatly reduce complexity and get old very fast.
I'm pretty sure the shield thing would be limited, so you couldn't just snowball it. We can even imagine several levels, for example a first shield with (example numbers meaning nothing) 1000hp and consuming 10e/s, a second one with 3000hp for 100e/s and a third one with 10 000hp for 1000e/s, though this may overcomplicate things.
I don't think there is anything wrong with having a combat focused commander(I think we got it pretty spot on in BO:ACU) but PA, when compared to Supcom/FA needs to be handled differently due to how the Tiers will be set up in (supposedly) in PA. Seeing as both tiers should be fairly equivalent in terms of power the only real scaling factor is the size of the army. Also has there been any indication of Commander Upgrades/Abilities from Uber? Mike
Damn ledarsi. I'm sorry. I didn't know she was your girlfriend, she never said! :lol: Nah, I tease. It's good to have some competition to pick apart ideas and see where they fail. ~~~~~~~~~General thoughts~~~~~~~~~~ That is true in some sense. These abilities are meant to be unique, or at least mostly unique. The Comm is a unique, super special unit. Abilities that benefit a single unit will always benefit the Comm the most. Even if they did work for other units, they would not be as efficient, as effective, or as meaningful as they would be for the Comm. But that's the treat. These systems are NOT on the Commander, per se. Everything is provided from an external source. For most features, simple power will suffice. For the elite features, an extra structure is required to activate. Just as a player can invest in infrastructure to boost his Commander, his opponent can destroy infrastructure to degrade the enemy Commander. As a player loses ground, the Comm loses access to his abilities and becomes easier to destroy. Does this not satisfy your "Win condition == end condition" concerns? ~~~~~~~~Shields~~~~~~~~~ There are no shields because there's no function for shields. I just provided one. This shield is not your standard HP buffer. It is not a simple on/off system. It has more in common with a consumable, where you spend Energy to gain HP. The health bonus functions on a curve, where you gain exactly what you have in excess infrastructure and no more. Creating shields as a unit is disingenuous because the ability does not duplicate well. They all draw from energy, after all. Two shields can absorb no more damage than one shield, and a hundred shields fare no better. Creating a unit that constantly flatlines your economy is generally a bad idea as it will wound production, base defense, and hurt any other units that depend on energy for their abilities. This ability is largely about spending every last drop to keep a critical unit alive. Only a handful of such units exist in the game, and one of them is the Commander. Common units have no need for it. That's the tricky part. The shield is directly tied to the economy, so it scales with the economy. Creating excess energy for the Comm means building excess infrastructure, which means you need more territory, and a single Comm can not defend it all. Generally, I expect the shield benefits to diminish as over investing will hurt your army and be vulnerable to raids. ~~~~~~~~~~Cloaking~~~~~~~~~~~ That's a problem with cloaked energy, not cloaking in general. Don't allow cloaked energy. Problem solved. The point of cloaking is to drive combat away from the Commander. This is a game where planets are round, and travel options like unit guns are far more common. The safest solution against thousands of units is to not be found. Some of the cloaking considerations have been discussed elsewhere. One solution is to turn decloaking into a property of major weapons. Nukes and asteroids create disturbances that, while not necessarily dangerous, can disrupt the cloaking generator in a vast area. This makes apocalyptic weapons ideal for flushing out cowardly commanders. Other solutions might exist (like an earthquake machine), but the basic premise is that cloak stays "strong" and "revealing" is expensive. TotalA also includes a number of other cloaking weaknesses, and I liked all of them. Cloak can be revealed by nearby units, for example. Running an enemy Comm over with your army is a perfectly cromulent win condition. ~~~~~~~~~~~Comm Hunting~~~~~~~~~~~ The teleport beacon is built into a structure partially to make it high tech. However, it is also a deliberate way to reveal the Commander's escape routes to the enemy. A spotted Comm can not suddenly appear on barren world, simply because he can only self teleport to giant beacons. Other Comm hunting tools are deliberately built into the Commander. This is partially to make cloak effective against common units. It also helps create a "final showdown" to add some personal touch near the very end. The scanner is deliberately built for Comm hunting, and the apocalyptic weapon is ideal for Comm killing. The D-gun shield has some consideration. Mostly, a D-gun rush stays funny for about 5 minutes. The shield protects against D-gun because it must. Whether the shield must be on, or if it works passively is a mere balance tweak. Indeed, every world would ideally have an orbital scanner given the chance. In fact I even listed that special radars would be suitable(at least, for occupied worlds). The Comm also gets one because he can move, has the same tools as the enemy Comm, and is thus ideal for the hunt. Hunting down Comms using common units is still possible using apocalyptic weapons, destroying the enemy economy, securing terrain with radar stations, army patrols, and some plain old luck. What isn't possible is taking a hundred/thousand units, flying over the enemy base, and right clicking the Commander to end the game. ~~~~~~~Other~~~~~~~~~ Hmm. Nope. Don't think so.
