I ... have fallen behind with watching Zaphods videos.. I think I'm still to finish with build after 58772. CommRushing. Once the bane of the forums. Do these still occur? And how frequently? Edit: involved - perpetrator, victim, spectator or teammates?
Actually Zaphod comm rushed twice in one day this weekend. Once was by accident, the other ended up in a rush to get the hell out of there. Did you know a comm and a group of fabbers building turrets go at roughly the same speed
Comm rushing is effective when your enemy goes hard econ and doesn't build any military. But a couple laser towers can do a ton of damage to comms and severely hinder any attack. Enough turrets can kill a commander really easily. So I don't think it's a problem at all at the moment, but once (if) turrets get nerfed, then comm rushing will become a lot more effective I think.
If we are spawned close to each other I sometimes do slight commander push to force some turrets and put fear in people's minds. I also use it to support catapult push. Those are still pretty rare cases, Commanders are currently very weak.
Com rushing is easily shut down by T2 of any kind. It's OP in "special rules" no T2 matches though, which is a problem. You shouldn't need to have to go to T2 to stop a com rush.
I haven't played any PA in a while (uber give me next updaaaate) but from what I remember of the current build I never comm rushed. I still used my comm offensively in the early game to head of scouts and tiny raids but T2 shuts the comm down hard, and because T2 rush is the only real strategy the comm is out of his depth pretty quickly...
I often com push, rather than rush. I don't believe in ruining into an opponent's start base (and its a bad move 99% of the time) but moving a com near to an enemy early on and putting up turrets and walls is a great way to focus their attention while you sneak units around to kill expansion and e production. The current com is quite safe from t1 and with walls around he can retreat if t2 ground approaches... This is no use on large maps however and com pushing does slow energy expansion.
I see. The results are similar to what I was guessing. I'm a fan of rushing in general, but ai think a position where the com is being used for a comm push, not a full out rush, is probably a good balance.