Commander Reclaim Ruins PA

I was also thinking this would be a good way to nerf it. You'd have the cost of a combat fabber and it's high energy use per second but with much lower metal per second in return. And the rest of the game wouldn't be affected.

I love this tactic! but the obvious trade-off is your opponent has a commander at <50% health. Making the bumblebee snipe viable!

In ranked i have defeated a gold, and even uber level player using the bomber snipe, it only worked because they had reclaimed most of themselves .... I never beat these guys in straight up matches, it felt really cool to have to counter the new strategy. I say keep it? Making it slower sounds smart.

It's great making a gamble.... putting all your eco on the line into a single assault!

This needs to be fixed for the simple fact that it doesn't make sense. You shouldn't be able to reclaim your commander at all, there is no argument for being able to do so.

An idea could be that when reclaiming you only gain metal from wreckage structures and units. This would also fix the problem. This would however remove the option to reclaim any structure and units to gain metal even if that isn't used by most its still a intrestring strategy.

I like this idea, reclaiming can only be a weapon to living units and structure.
I hope it can be implemented into the game by balance patch rather than server mods.
Currently, I feel that the commander reclaiming is overused in 1vs1 ranked games.
The players who do not reclaim his commander usually simply lose due to the T2 leveler rush.

Interestingly, original total annihilation was configured that when reclaiming, you only received the resources once the whole object had been reclaimed. That means you could reclaim say a factory for resources, but you not a commander (as you'd have to kill the com to receive the resources).

So you should not kill the enemy commander when he is in low HP.
You need to reclaim him to die, and you suddenly get 12500 metal in your mass storage?

Unable to reclaim commander in TA. Assuming as he had no naval defence. But was a good trick to find the enemy com by clicking on the radar to see which unit can't be reclaimed.

But it's a trick to reclaim your factory just before the last bomber or bb shot hit. Or firing at your own unit to get its health to 1% and then reclaim for a faster metal return.

Yeah as Clopse says you couldn't reclaim the com- but for anything else, you get the metal in a lump sum all at once, rather than streaming. That was same in SupCom I believe? First time I came across streaming reclaim was in Spring.

Com reclaim is a silly unintended consequence, but to go as far to say "com reclaim is ruining the game" is a stretch. However, I don't think com reclaim should be a strategy.

My complaint is more regarding common sense. You are deconstructing your most important unit's armor to make more units. A lot of more units. How can we reclaim enough metal armor to make 10 levelers when 5 levelers can take him out. Why does the commander have so much useless/inefficient metal in his armor? With all that metal the commander should be able to fight off 15 levelers easily.

One of the best counters, that I have noticed, is air sniping. If you can produce enough bombers (20-25) and fighters (15), right after they produce their t2 factory. You still have to plan for it ahead of time, of course.

Most players who reclaim the commander just rush the T2 factory.
If you fully reclaim the commander, you can get 12500 metal.
Thus, you can take 20% hp of commander to get 2500 metal, which is very powerful in early game.
And it is still very difficult to kill the commander by bomber since it still has 10000 HP.

Once the T2 fabricators are obtained, the player can establish the T2 eco.
Soon the levelers can strike the base of the enemy.

I don't play ranked any more, but com's build meta was bot, mex, energy, air, energy, energy, tank, T2 tank (on most maps). Even someone using a com reclaim strategy who doesn't stall, the fastest you can complete the t2 tank is about 5 min mark. They still have to build a t2 fab and some levelers which takes you to about the 7-8 min mark before their tank death ball can roll over to your base and kill you at the 9 or 10 min mark.

What is your available counters?

1. Lots of boombots... enough to counter the sparks and doxes? Hope for a snipe opportunity?
2. Lot of doxes and try to overwhelm? Lob strat?
3. Expand like crazy to try and counter the eco boost from the com reclaim (good luck, fabs eat your eco too).
4. Lot of air to counter the early eco boost by attacking expansion and preventing dox raiding on your expansions and snipe are possible with weaken coms.
5. Play it straight and hope you get lucky or are better than the ubers/plats who generally use com reclaim/eco boost.

Or you can give in to the dark side and just use the com reclaim strat.

Aaaaaaaaawh yessssss join the dark side

All of above can also be done and used with commander reclaim.
The players who rush T2 leveler do not just camp in their base.
They can also expand and harass their enemy.
It is also a good idea to play dox spam with commander reclaiming.

The real problem is not how to deal with the leveler.
The advantage of commander reclaim is the eco.
And the player with better eco can simply do more things, including scout, harass, and counter sniping.
Usually, attack is the best defend.
When you have more units in early game, the number advantage can make them even stronger later.

I was always so frustrated by the lump-sum reclaim of TA, because you could spend ages sucking at a piece of wreckage and if your construction unit gets killed or distracted at the last minute, you get nothing. I much prefer the complexity of PA that tracks the remaining metal in every piece of wreckage and lets you stream it as needed.

Well in general I prefer it- but reclaiming your commander for metal... I dunno.

Right. Fix the OP commander reclaim meta, but don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.

I also prefer the streaming reclaim.
All we need is to avoid or nerf the commander reclaim.

Possible options:

1. Directly disallow the player to reclaim his commander.
2. Decrease the price of commander to 4000 metal or even less, make the commander reclaim much more risky.
   The side effect is that the repairing commander becomes too cheap.
   This may make the commander too good to absorb the damage.
3. Reclaim units and buildings which are still alive does not provide the metal.
   Only the trees and wreckage can provide the metal when they are reclaimed.

streaming reclaim was in FA, and I prefer it greatly to lumped sum reclaim

streamed reclaim works great and works perfect for how the economie works in this game.