Commanders and what we know so far.

DON'T

Don't worry wolfdogg, it wasn't long in a bad way, just too long to quote.

Your method is certainly a valid option, I just feel its more than is needed, I feel the SupCom/FA ACU upgrades were more so about keeping up with the tiers rather than expanding the ACU's abilities.

I think that Overcharge for example scales really well, it's powerful enought to kill any mass produced unit in one hit, but because you need to target a unit and it's AoE is relatively small it's hard to really have it affect more than 2 or 3 units at a time and all the reasons it's useful(or awkward) in T1 are the same in T3.

That's exactly why we need threads like this, to show and guide people to the reasons why it's a perfectly fine system! Don't give up on it!

Mike

The best way to know is to try

Allow me to speculate on the abilities for starters.

if there will be 10 abilities in the pool to start with (for example) then there wouldnt be alot of difference overall. If it becomes so that those who got the progenitor and alpha commanders get a large advantage abilitywise or special abilities that no other commanders will have, the game gets unbalanced depending on the abilities they recieve. This also depends if its a passive or a active skill.

If for example the Progenitor boosts armor/hp in a certain area around himself for 20% more hp to units, he will automatically win earlygame fights. Why? if the enemy makes just about as much units and uses his commander which doesnt have such a buff, will automatically loose the battle(unless he has some other factor that comes into play that can balance out the battle). So now what i do not hope is that everyone who did this and that (support 2 win) will have the upper hand through the entire game. I have high doubt they can balance this so every commander will be just as useful and viable to use.

They havent specified what their definition of "abilities" are. But if you ask me, they should be activeables.

Well i dont really wanna discuss this unless i see what they are planning to release as "abilities". Commanders in general are interesting already. However i do not want to play a game where i get limited because the other guy figured out that he was going to support the game, recieved 1-2 limited commanders, and easily wins the early game battles due to the bonuses that one commander gives. This, is not something thats easily balanced. Unless some commander which has the same abilities as the limited commander, but that would kind of be stepping on the fact that it is 2 limited commanders which should have their own abilities. This includes the Theta commander, which was for the people who pre-ordered the game.

Active abilities can be single-target, high damage abilities, AoE damage, support skills.
a few examples i can come up with are:

- Missile barrage: Medium damage AoE ability
- Nanobot could: Gives units high regeneration in area of choice for a small duration of time
- Uber cannon?

This is some sort of discussable if or if not it is a win-or-loose. If a missile barrage can ruin a entire t1 army and just let you get walked over without issue because the other commander didnt have a ability which could balance it out. Nanobot cloud seems like a viable support skill which could give an edge in battle, but doesnt last long and you could avoid fighting while its active. Skills like Uber cannon which are supposed to be single-target-high-damage are strong lategame due to the damage to single-target heavy units, but wouldnt be viable earlygame due to mass production of t1 units which are easy to replace.

If they give every commander their own set of rare abilities which would be for example:

1 active ability who every commander have (Uber Cannon)
1 passive ability.
1 random unique ability.

It would give people reasons to use different commanders for different tactics and strategies.

So i have concerns. With logical reasons ofcourse. But i have big expectations I like the idea of having special abilities however, and this is just discussion text.

So please dont kill me over writing this.

Yeah see this isn't the kind of thing anyone wants, we know how that ends up thanks to the Sera ACU, I'm thinking Commander abilities will focus on the commander itself mostly, aside from attack-based abilities(like the Uber-cannon or you're missile idea) and if stuff like that is too powerful, it's not strictly the commander's fault, but solely the ability and it can easily be tweaked, or removed if needed.

Mike

I can only say: In Uber we trust!

Uber isnt Valve (that have money and time) and really cant try and annihilate this idea in the middle of creating game (or can they?). Lets hope this idea will work out. I cant really say this IS bad, because I havent seen this in game, maybe this will show up as bad/good in alpha.

I'd rather want abilities, than what was in supcom1-FA-2. the tier upgrading was really boring and repetitive. We all want the best of UberEnt, and what UberEnt can produce. Although you can't deny that all we are doing is speculation based on what you guys say and the low information we recieve. It can't be helped either.

This.

Just to be clear there is no plan for commander "upgrades" during the game.

In addition the abilities won't be things like "make the navy stronger". They will be things like which kind of primary weapon or some passive skills. No plans for global changes based on the commander.

Adding this to the first post as well, glad to see I was on the right track!

Mike

I think you should stick to your guns and perform it exactly as you had intended/stated in the Delta Commander thread.

You are right, it is ridiculous to assume that you and Uber would be incapable of balancing units because they are different. I don’t see the commander balancing to be any different from balancing the unit pool. If somehow, the naysayers are right and balance is bad you can rebalance.

I think removing commander ability by commander type variance would be a mistake. As it stands we have a unified unit pool, we get ONE unit which is unique and to homogenise it all and make the difference cosmetic only would be a shame. I trust you and the rest of Uber to be able to balance the various commanders (honestly it never entered my mind that it could be that big of an issue in the first place)

I’m with knight on this one, it would be harder, not easier to balance if the commander abilities were subject to change in an unlock fashion. In any case I think it unlikely that it would happen this way, Neutrino has stated before that he strongly dislikes the concept of having veterancy, as it negatively impacts the readability of any given situation.
I’ll add that it is big assumption to state that a commander with a set of abilities would be inherently worse or better than another. They will most likely support different strategies and styles of play but that just makes them better suited to some situations than others. This is more trade off and specificity than ‘worse and better’. Considering most people do this in their unit choice and strategy anyway in a RTS (not many people will build equal amounts of all potential units and if they did it would be a terrible waste of resources) all this is doing is making your choice of commander a part of this.

Male biology teaches you to never give up when something is hard!

Team balance is not 1v1 balance, which is not PvE balance. It is impossible to treat them all the same way, so don't. Let each of them evolve on their own.

A wide variety of abilities works well for team balance, because a single comm does not have to stand on his own. Balance is allowed to be more MOBA-like, in the sense that each Comm is providing a valuable support/tank/other that has synergy with the rest of his team. Does a Commander want a double capture beam or a built in space rocket? Uhh sure, why not?

A very strict selection of abilities works for 1v1 balance. This is mostly due to the "must win" crowd that knows a game can be won or lost based on your Comm choice. The comms may simply be pre-chosen as the "ideal 1-3 options" for the map, and players have to make do with their play style. This would actually serve as a great tutorial for teaching each individual Commander, on top of being a fairly competitive game type.

PvE balance hurts no one's feelings. The Dawn of War campaign gives their Command units a huge range of upgrades that you won't see in multiplayer games. So give me level 50 Commanders with a multishot ubergun, triphasic quantum shields, and a teleporting space rocket bike. I want it all! :lol:

The stuff listed in my comm abilities thread is pretty much built with a 1v1 or PvE Commander in mind. There's no way a team Commander needs all that stuff.

Gotta love how everyone tells neutrino not to give up .

Good community, have a cookie, you deserve it.

Some good points bobucles. I am going to be nit picky and comment on this point you made, and make some general comments based on it and how it applies to Commanders

I think you are pretty spot on in stating that the "must win" crowd in competitive 1v1 have a tendency to boil gameplay right down to core mechanics/statistics and try and produced distilled strategies which can be heavily influenced based on the map (the reason why games like Starcraft 2 spend so much time tweaking maps, and that certain maps are prefered in competative play). However the procedurally generated maps we are going to have in Planetary Annihilation throw a spanner in the works in that regard.

Please note I am definitely not saying this is a bad thing, quite the opposite actually. As we all know this game is going for macro gameplay rather than the esport micro heavy gameplay that we tend to see in Starcraft 2 and its ilk.

Thus the kind of skills Planetary Annihilation will reward will be more about adapting to a situation organically and looking at larger scale strategies; Rather than dealing with a regimented system of hard counters and rock paper scissors mechanics, where the importance of micromanagement, APM and balance to the finest degree are paramount.

The TL;DR version is that the idea of "commander balance" becoming some insurmountable problem is even less relevant as there is inherent randomness in resource availability and terrain arrangement that could tilt the game in one of many directions every match. Add the ability to damage and remove terrain, as well as whole planets and that adds a whole other level of macro level impacts that dwarf any perceived issues with balancing a few abilities on a single unit.

The thing that I dont understand with people thinking the abilities on the commander will make it unbalanced. So for this I have a few questions for those people. And anyone else may answer them as well.

1. After you get yourself well positioned and situated from an economical stand point, what are you going to do with your commander?

2. What roll will the commander play in your game against your enemy player or enemy?

3. Will you ever be sending your commander to the front lines?


Now my answers.

1. Probably Ill have enough engineers to take over the bulk of the work and put my commander somewhere safe and leave him there until needed for a larger project.

2. The commander will play the roll of the start up economy before I can support everything with engineers and then hide in the corner in the fetal position sucking his thumb. (yes that was a joke but he will be sitting in a corner where he will be protected)

3. No no no no. There may be the slight possibility but most likely no. I will probably transfer him to an asteroid far far away.

@Neutrino:
I apologize if my posts on this subject have contributed to you regretting announcing your intentions for commander abilities. It wasn't my intention to make you break your desk, rather just to probe your thoughts on what kind of abilities you had in mind and how they might be implemented.

I would like to know your opinions on passive abilities like resource allocation units in SupCom, for example. I think this one is particularly interesting to me and it highlights just what I am trying to get at. How can this ability be implemented in such a way that early game it doesn't guarantee a win and yet it is still relevant late game like it was in SupCom. The two seem mutually exclusive to me.

Personally I wonder if that is a particular ability that is best left out of the game. However, there are more abilities that ask the same question. Such as; nano repair or extra HP. Also, offensive abilities like increased firepower or auxiliary weapons have the potential to either be OP game early on or be meaningless soon after. I didn't mean to cause offense or come across like I thought that you wouldn't be able to balance abilities between different commanders, I just wanted to know how much you intend abilities to influence the game.

Interestingly, no one has talked about abilities overlapping between some commanders or what potential load outs we could be seeing in the game...

The abilities I'm thinking of are much simpler than what you are envisioning and only effect the commander, not the entire army or global stuff. There is nothing in the list that should change the overall effectiveness of your army. It's probably going to be limited to a few weapon types and a few activatable skills (e.g. cloak).

I suspect you'll be seeing a good number of predefined, symmetrical solar systems for 1v1. It has more to do with the nature of a 1v1 game, which is a direct contest of skill between 2 players. With known maps comes known commander choices and map tactics. It also brings a brutal community which demands crisp controls and perfect balance. Since it's not really the game's selling point, it doesn't need to fleshed out too much.

As soon as you break the 2 player barrier, many more things are fair game. Randomized worlds, a full assortment of abilities and general dickery hit the field. Teams will still compete, but the balance issues will be one of Comm combos, rather than any individual being OP.

That is, after all, why they call it the "terrible twos".

How would Commanders scale with their armies as the game advances?

I'm concerned that the Commanders becomes useless as the game progresses. There won't be unlocks or modules, so it can't evolve. So how will the Commander, with fixed abilities, will manage to scale?

Bobucles' solution to have several abilities for early, mid and late game, "locked" by their energy cost, sounds like one solution. But then, how would this work with the varied Commanders? Only one or two abilities wouldn't be enough for that, or there would be Commanders useful only in early game, or late game, which would be the same problem.
So they would have to have many abilities for each, which would still allow for variation between Commanders (both have a Uber-cannon, but one has cloak and the other has shield...)

Another solution would be to have abilities themselves scaling with the battle.
An energy-consuming ability may become more powerful as more energy is available. Firing the Uber-cannon more often, or even in automatic mode (please give it an automatic mode), or even with higher settings (more AoE, more damage...).
Another way is to have the ability itself being more powerful when more/more advanced units are around. A repair field, and/or repair speed partially on the unit's % of total HP, for example.
The problem is that all those abilities would have to scale more or less as well as the game progresses, which may not be easy.

Anyone else find it ironic that early in the piece people screamed and shouted about the single unit set and now they get upset about any form of faction differentiation?

Excellent!

Upgrades add micro and, even with visual changes to the model, make "reading" its abilities on the battlefield far too obtuse.

Commander abilities that add a bit of "flavour" without making major changes sound just fine to me.

Personally I'd even lose the activatable skills and leave everything passive.
For example a permanently cloaked commander could have low health, combined with the standard with inability to fire without revealing yourself, and it's sneakiness is now balanced against a reduced ability to defend an early rush.

However, I would prefer you stick to your guns (pardon the pun) on anything you feel strongly about.
Consulting us for our opinions is admirable. But nothing is successful designed by committee.

I reject your premise that they should scale.

I remember an interview with Jon at the start of the KS campaign in which he described the interesting game-play that comes from Commanders being like a Chess King and Queen rolled in to one.

Early game they are a huge asset that get your war-machine rolling. Later on they start to become vulnerable and need your protection.

I love the choice presented, do you gamble playing aggressively with you comm and risk being sniped, or do you play conservatively with it but risk ceding some map-control?

All I can say is poor uber… personally the commander looks awesome.

And I’m not going to speculate on what the abilities, or stats or balance etc. of commanders are until we start to see more information. There are reasons why game design documents are ridiculously big…
What they are doing sounds amazing from the information we have been given so far (taking the 20 pages of chatter by fans with a grain of salt…)