Commanders and what we know so far.

Okay, a lot has happened since this thread got going, so I'm redoing this first post to account for new info graciously provided by Neutrino.

Alright, so with all this, what does the updated picture look like? Focusing more on the Abilities themselves as we don't know all that much about the core commanders traits yet...

EVERYTHING SAID HERE IS SUBJECT TO CHANGE AND SHOULD ONLY BE CONSIDERED AS A SUMMARY OF STATEMENTS MADE BY UBER STAFF AT THE TIME OF COMPILATION.

Abilities will come in 2 flavors;

-Special Equipment for the Second Arm
-Passive Abilities

We don't have any details of what exactly they might be yet specifically, Neutrino mentioned in passing "It's probably going to be limited to a few weapon types and a few activatable skills" I'm assuming that's in reference to the Second Arm stuff. I also theorize that commanders with alternate movement types(tracks, multipeds ect ect) will gain that via Passive Abilities.

All commanders come pre-packaged with thier Abilities, a player will never be able to change a Commander's abilities, and these abilites will not feature any upgrades mid game, you get'em right from the work go and they don't change.

At this Stage Neutrino has said "Probably closer to 5 than 10!" in regards to the Total number of each ability type, so drawing it in tighter, say 5-7, making there be anywhere from 25 to 49 different possible combinations at this time. I theorize there might be a larger selection of passive upgrades compared to the Secondary Equipment types, but impossible to say.

So there will be commanders, a lot of them, ones we know so far(01/30/13);

Progenitor (KS Backer 50$ and Up)
Alpha (KS Backer 90$ and up)
Theta (Pre-Orders and KS Backers)
Delta(???)
Custom Commanders(KS Backer 1000$ and up)

How much of an improvement these abilities are Dependant on balance of course, but I imagine the differences will be fairly minor, I'd ballpark somewhere in the range of 10% differences. Also there are some things that shouldn't be affected by abilities, most importantly resource generation, build speed and (if applicable) what can be built by the commander.

Now I can already tell what some of you guys are already thinking, "ERMEHGURD PERH TER WERN!" And no, no it's not in the slightest, or rather, if particular ability or combination of abilities ends up being Overpowered it only has to do with the ability or abilities involved and nothing to do with P2W, Neutrino himself has said they aim to make it balanced.

Speaking of balance, lets also take a second to look at how the Commander affects the game balance.........it doesn't unless to do something like making one build faster or self generate more resources. Overall the commander has a very local influence, it can't project any force aside from the fact that it can build armies, artillery cannons and giant Bases. the idea that the commander alone can win the game outside of unlikely situations like Comm Dueling.

All in all I really like this system, if they use a baseline for all commanders and use 'abilities' to make up the differences, the abilities become standard across all commanders they are used on and make it simple to appreciate the changes the abilities will have on the commanders without having to memorize about all the separate commander's stats. I also assume there will be some way to view the commanders and thier abilities in detail prior to a game.

CUSTOMS

So now a Bit about custom commanders. In essence, they are created in the exact same was as 'stock' commanders, except the back gets input on the visuals and selects the abilities. There isn't anything more to it, if we follow the assumption of a standard stat baseline for all commanders the idea Custom commanders won't be any more powerful than any other commander, just different, they might have a unique combo of said abilities, but unless the balance of the abilities is skewed(which....you know....can be fixed) they won't be any more or less powerful, just different. Making sure there's a way to view commanders and thier abilities in the lobby is important, but because the number of custom commanders available for playing with(102 x 5 = 510) is such a small, SMALL portion of backers(0.1154839%) even if they use it exclusively.... it's just not something stressing over in the big picture of things.

Mike

I didn't realize commanders would have different abilities. Can I just say that I don't like this at all. It's the worst thing I've heard about the game so far. The feature seems needless at best, harmful at worst, even with Neutrino's guarantees.

Really, what's the point. It opens a whole can of balance worms even if it's not P2W. Strictly speaking, it nullifies the advantage of having only one faction. Now you will have more "commander factions" than most games have full factions, they will never be fully balanced, and the beautiful symmetry of the game is ruined.

Does Uber want such imbalance at the core of their game? Why can't the differences between commanders be purely cosmetic? Surely most of the backers who paid for special skins wouldn't mind?

I hope commanders cannot make the direct change in tech tree and basic stats of unit but have some interesting abilities can make small or big change during gameplay such as regeneration field (anyone recognize Seraphim ACU here?) or kind of a gravity manipulator (limited control of gravity of a planet that make units move faster or slower).

How about adding an extra game option which does not allow other than a standard commander?

I like the idea. I could add some twist to the game. But I think it is important to know which commander the opponent has taken.
About balance problems, I think people are overreacting. If PA is unbalance because a commander move sligthly faster or has 100 more hp, it mean that the game has more fundamental problems.
The only problem I foresee is people getting angry because they lost to a commander and put the blame on the balance when they actually were just outsmarted.

I remember playing starcraft and seeing so much people complaining about balance when they actually could not have a proper economy working.

I think that you are grossly overstating the importance of a single unit and it's impact on game balance. As Knight said, so long as these abilities do not have an impact on resource acquisition or build speed then I would say we are safe.

As far as the p2w statement, Neutrino said that none of the abilities that the Alpha, Progenitor, Theta or Delta commanders have will be unique. What will be unique is the specific combination of abilities.

For example if there are, for the sake of argument 50 commander abilities, and each commander has 3 of them, then the alpha would be the only commander with the combination of abilities 2,30 and 43. Another commanders may well have abilities, just not in that combination.

The act of balancing commanders really cannot be that difficult. I don't mean that as an insult, to you or Uber, I am just acknowledging the fact that they do this for a living and have done so with whole factions of unique units. If they can balance 3 armies of unique units plus the commander upgrades present in FA, then I dont think it is a stretch to assume that they can balance commanders of which players can only have 1 on the field. All other things being equal (and they are with a single unit pool). they only really have to balance abilities against one another.

Furthermore if you want to look at something that is potentially a bigger "balance issue" look to the planet generator. If maps are randomly generated each time then I would say that is a FAR bigger random influence than a commander, considering it encompasses resource availability and terrain based defensibility.

I think the concept for commanders as they stand are fine and are not the big issue that people seem to think it is.

Well, like somebody just said, I think its a bad, baad idea. Commanders should be purely cosmetic. All this sounds like fun, many abilities and such, but thats to much to balance and why we even need this? SupCom upgrades changed that every commander have all sounds most balanced. I dont want to be forced to play with one commander in a long game, I want to change abilities like in SupCom, to what I need right now. I thought that all those commanders are just cosmetic, but now... Im just sad.

If it wont change, lets have hope that this idea, Uber devs idea for now, will succeed.

Well the devs seem to think they are up to the task of balancing commanders. If Uber thought it would be too hard to balance it they wouldn't be proposing to do it this way. Balancing commanders against each-other doesn't seem nearly as difficult as balancing faction unit pools.

In addition to this Uber have stated that they will be watching it actively during development and post release. If there really is something that turns out game breaking, it isn't locked in. Uber will adjust and rebalance accordingly. This is is something that is likely to happen even with the regular units as well, it is just part of making any competitive game.

In SupCom you may have been able to adjust your commander as you played, but you were locked into whatever faction you were going to play weren't you? on top of which your commander only got the abilities and became more useful further into a match.

Personally I think this is a much better solution. You get to pick the style of play you want to use in that match by picking the commander up front, with the abilities already loaded in. It is easy for the opponent to know what your capabilities are by looking at the commander which will be visually distinct from the other commanders. And by picking your commander (ie faction) only one unit is "locked" as you describe, as opposed to an entire unit pool as it was in SupCom.

There's also the fact that if there is a good bunch of commanders and a few are inherently overpowered, people will attach stigma to those that pick these overpowered commanders, possibly choosing to not play with them.

And if symmetry is what you want lophiapsis, just pick one of the stock commanders and always play using them and try to find others who agree to do the same.

Ability balance will be hard. It's not like abilities change over the course of the game for free (unless they're planning on the ARPG/MOBA style of commanders getting experience for new skills).

I am definitely against the idea of commanders generally being better/worse than other ones.
Even the small differences in starting HP greatly affected the balance in FA.
I'm all for them looking different. However, being able to choose different advantages will be very hard to balance.

Hmm

Realistic view: They will most likely be somewhat unbalanced at release, but hopefully not gamebreakingly so.

Minor imbalances tend to not be noticeable at launch becuse people havent learned how to play yet, so hopefully it wont be any major imbalances thats noticeable (by the devs) even at launch.

(Sure, people will complain about everything being unbalanced right of the bat, but early at launch its much more likely to be rage for a lost match then a valid opinion since players havent learned to counter most things, etc)

Optimistic finish: But i have faith that Uber will manage to get them balanced after a few patches (if said patches are mainly dedicated to balancing them).

Still, I will be stuck with those abilities sometimes for a looong match. Not like. It "looks" like good idea, but it doesnt have to be good. There are those things in development, that people think will be fun, but theyre not at all. I think this is that thing. We will see, thats up to Uber.

Keep in mind that PA is going to be very dependent on team play. It just happens when a lot of players hit the field. This will give much more freedom of abilities that can be allowed and denied to individual comms. For example, a planet hopping commander will work hard to expand while a defense commander protects the base. They do not have the same team role, so they do not need to worry about being "equal" in the same sense.

Some abilities may not work well together. For example, an uber shield that drains from the economy only works well if your team is feeding you tons of energy. It does not work if everyone is trying to use the same shield.

The demands of 1v1 competitive matches are far more strict. There would likely be a smaller list of usable Comms, because making true equality across a range of map types is extremely difficult.

Individual Comm balance isn't a big issue in PvE. These commanders could very well be a powerhouse that incorporates every major ability, because why not?

Not really. Everyone will just pick that Commander. Unless they can't. Then it will cause problems.

Eh. Those aren't abilities. Those are attributes. A big enough change in attributes might count as a special ability, but attributes tend to work at a very specific game scale. A good ability scales with the game and stays relevant for a long time.

I strongly disagree that commanders are required to be the same. I've discussed the matter before. I do however, think that at least at the very start of the game the commanders need to be the same.

I suggest this for 2 main reasons:
1. If a commander ability is instantly available (as opposed to unlockable or upgradeable for example) then it gives rise to the situation where a commander ability will make certain commanders better choices than others purely because of it's effectiveness in the early game. Increased build power or a more powerful main weapon being such examples. Whether this is something that Uber want to promote or not is another matter. Either way it has the potential to make the game very different.
2. In the event of the above scenario, the obvious response to this predicament is to nerf the ability (as mentioned by Neutrino in the For Backers Only: Introducing the Delta Commander topic- Probably rendering it inferior compared to other choices late game and therefore effectively removing it as a valid choice. This can only be bad and yet it's prolific in past games.
3. What else could happen is that the abilities might be that marginal that it won't matter anyway. It's a shame, yes - but having a huge advantage granted to you 'for free' at the start of a game might not be the best way to implement the abilities. The trouble is that for me it just ruins the whole point of having abilities if they have such low impact on the game.

So I would like to know what other people think about this. I might be making a mountain out of a mole hill. It is it's just one unit after all... Albeit one unit that heavily influences the early game. Though, for example: Is it so wrong to choose a commander that is suited to a rush map? After all, we would think nothing of picking the fastest car for a long straight track in a racing game. In fact - if you don't you're doing it wrong.

Additionally we have seen in the previous games that late game the commander does tend to be superseded by other units for a multitude of reasons. Maybe because other units are available in large numbers making them more effective or perhaps it's just too risky to use the commander for certain tasks, which leads us to another previously asked question; how do we keep commanders current throughout the game? OR maybe a better question; do we need to? At some point the commander needs to transition from the feared adversary to the fragile king-piece that needs protecting from the enemy. This has to happen for the game to end.

I'm leaning to the mountain out of a molehill thing myself. What makes this so different than what SupCom/FA did? All the ACUs there had different stats and upgrades.
UEF was the only one to get engineering drones and a dome shield generator.
Cybran was the only one to get torpedoes and stealth.
Aeon was the only one to get chrono dampener and sensor upgrades.
Seraphim was the only one to get group regen and... Actually that's their only unique ability I think.

Alright Kneejerk reactions! Replies in no particular order.

I agree, I assume we'll be able to see the player's commanders in the same way you can see factions in other games, possible a little pop-up can appear when mousing over a particular player to show the commander/abilities in more detail or a special screen might be easier in games with many players.

Agreed, the Commander abilities should likely on affect the commanders themselves, or if they do, it likely needs an arbitrary limit to make sure it can be easily measured. Using the Seraphim ACU, the Regen aura might not have been so bad if it only affected a set number of units instead of everything that fitted within the radius. This is on top of the abilities not affecting resource generation, build speed or what can be built.

I also agree that the abilities should not affect the army in terms of available units or boosting units arbitrarily(ie Tank B gets 15% more HP)

In stock SupCom/FA, the ACUs don't really change via the upgrades, they primarily got better at what they already did, and that was needed due to the way Tiers were set-up. In PA it's looking like there will not be "strength gaps" between the 2 Tiers, so while you're commander can't change, it won't need to in the same way the SupCom ACUs needed to.

True symmetry would require he pick the same commander as his opponent.

Wouldn't the abilities not changing just make it easier to balance?

I'd like to hear some reasoning as that wasn't my experience with SupCom/FA.

I feel that "Abilities" is being used as a bit of a blanket term, technically they could be seen as passive abilities.

I don't strictly disagree with you that attribute/passive abilities work on a specific scale, but if Uber goes with a Tier system where the second tier isn't outright more powerful like in SupCom, so the biggest issue facing commanders is the scale/size of the army, not so much the units that compose that army, even 'regular' abilities will have a hard time scaling in comparison to an army, at least for the ones that would interact with an army.

@wolfdogg(sorry, you're post is pretty long ;p) It all really comes down to each ability needing to be handled, there are lots of options for balance like energy cost, cool down and the actual effects of the ability itself.

Mike

Please re-read my post. I was not suggesting that there was an issue with commanders having different abilities. I was simply stating that they should be identical at game start, like the commanders you reference in your example.

The difference you have failed to spot is that in SupCom/FA the commanders all started the game with identical stats and abilities. It was only through upgrades that the differences emerged later in the game and again, only at a point when players chose to 'purchase' them. That and veterancy, but we'll ignore that since it won't be making a comeback in PA.

@Mike:
Sorry, the post was long, I think I was struggling to get my point across. My basic premise was that you could argue that certain commanders might be suited to different scenarios. My comparison to race cars I thought was quite clear. It's "horses for courses" as the saying goes.

What I will say is that I thought the way commander upgrades were implemented in SupCom/FA was quite astute. It was a convenient way to ensure players started on a level footing and also allowed commander upgrades to be of a significant magnitude by making. My concern is that in a situation where these 'upgrades' are granted from the onset as abilities, they would be required to be less significant to stop the commander being a super-weapon at the start of the game. Therefore, the differences between the commanders would be so marginal that they might as well not be there.

What I would rather see is commanders loaded with a pre-determined set of upgrades that are unique to that commander, thus maintaining the horses for courses concept while maintaining a level playing field at the game start and allowing the upgrades to be of a significant magnitude that they actually make a difference to the game.

Honestly after reading threads like this I bang my head on the desk and sigh.

It would make our lives easier to just say they are cosmetic and be done with it. Should we just do that and kill all this stuff?

The idea that this would somehow unbalance the game is, IMHO, ridiculous.

Please dont.

I agree to this ^.
Say 1 or 2 sentences on the livestream about it and call this topic"done(no further explanations)"