Discussion: Early Game Commander Rushes

The problem with a defensive structure is.....why don't I just build it in your base?

I think I would prefer this, though...

I could see this being a big problem.

That's exactly the problem.

If a Commander death kills a Commander, then there is no defense against a Commander. If someone Commander rushes you, your options are: lose your base, or lose your base and your Commander.

Well, that's going to be a problem until then make the Commander not a walking bomb!

Except walking bomb isn't the issue. Walking uncounterable-tank is the issue.

Why not have commander death "kill" the player who owns that commander? So rushing with a group of commanders could result in getting some number of those players dropped from the game. This makes sense to me anyway, because I always think the commander is the brains of the operation, so when he dies in a team game that player no longer gets to contribute their skills.

There would have to be an improved UI for showing you which commander was you for this to work though (more than just "cc" I think).

This doesn't solve the issue with lone commanders away from the group, but if you took the risk of making a base far from your friends, shouldn't you suffer if you get caught? As a team, trade off between making lots of bases early, and being able to wipe out nearby bases with a comm rush.

Make the commander unable to shoot in team games?

Could have the commander require a cool down time after landing on a planet to turn his ability's back on?

Like starting up his reactor again takes time?

The idea would be that its cooldown between shots is long enough that a decent-sized infantry group could overwhelm it (perhaps, say a 3-second cooldown), so you would need to have something to quickly kill enemy infantry in order to get away with that. And if you can achieve infantry superiority in the enemy base, then you deserve to drive off their commander.

Meanwhile, the defending side can screen their anti-commander turrets with other defensive turrets, forcing the attacker to try for superior tactics, rather than just charge in whenever they have more commanders in that area.

I walk my commander into your base and build the turret.

It kills you commander while mine repairs it and kills your bots.

What if Commanders were unable to damage other Commanders, but could still destroy other units? Or if they were only able to damage each other after a timer expired after the beginning of the match?

Well then I walk in, and kill your stuff and you can't stop me.

Once multiple planet spawns are in place commander rushing will be a thing of the past. Also Anti Bot specific weaponry will make such rushes absolute. A flame tank in Tiberium Wars would be a massive counter to MCV Rushes and the same could be said about Red Alert with the Striker VX for the Japanese. A new unit will be able to tip the scale of the commander rush and multiple planet spawns will hinder it even more. For now the game isn`t finished so nerfing a unit that currently needs a spawn feature in place or another unit to make it less OP is just redundant.

You can also make the argument that because MCV rushes existed in Command and Conquer as well as Photon cannon rushes existing in starcraft ( as well as Base rushes from the terran) that a commander rush is a viable cheese strategy. It should exist but nerfing the commander itself is just counter productive. Right now the commander rushes are OP but its a viable strategy taking it away makes the game dull.

I guess the argument in OP is that there is no way to survive a multi-commander rush.. then it becomes the only strategy instead of a viable one.

If said turret costs 50% more than a double lasertower and has similar HP, then what would happen is that the commanders walk into your base while losing considerable HP to your anti-comm turret(s), start building it, it gets killed by a defensive Pelter, then the commanders retreat with one on low health due to taking additional fire from your anti-comm turret (and if they advance to kill the Pelter, they expose themselves to even more fire from anti-comm turrets). Building structures in an area requires that you control the area first - and part of the utility of having an anti-commander tower is that it reduces the ability of multiple commanders to control an area simply by being present

Honestly I have always seen multi commander rushes fail. Usually because a team of more than 5 players will be on a huge map and all you need is a large amount of pelters and walls to defend against commander rushes. Pelters are a pretty hard counter and T2 defenses expand upon this even more. Catapults and Nukes are the easiest ways to kill a commander rush so one could argue that rushing to T2 is a counter to commander rushes. Levelers are another thing. If you have at least one or two levelers accompanied by ants which act as a human shield than you can clean up commanders no sweat. Doxes if they signal out a commander will annihilate it as well and even though I believe slammers are useless one could say that the slammer is the ultimate commander chaser.

Commander rushes can be stopped but when they do happen the player must have intel, not stick to T1 and have a good array of defenses which is basically the same as a regular game with no commander rushes. Commander rushes also can be stopped by an organized team of commanders as well. There are so many ways to stop commander rushes I just don`t see them at all in the slightest OP

the only way is to make base defenses hurt the commander more making it dangerous to rush them.base defenses tier 1 dont even put a dent into them

I know in supreme commander 2 the best counter was a pd under factory shield, it required a base to set up aswell... So you could not place it down in someone else's base.
Without shields recreating that balance in PA is quite hard, a stronger defence building doesn't work because as state it can be built by the attacker to cause more damage.
What about the other use for the commander, we know they are balanced in 1v1, so that we don't have to change the commanders attack. Is it possible to boost the commanders economic advantage so it is a bigger risk to not have them working on economy at the start.
That way if someone chooses to overwhelm a commander they lose that starting build power

That's a common game mode request. But should be an alternative game mode, not a fix to a problem since it introduces another host of problems. Mainly, making gameplay less enjoyable for a player simply because of a poor spawn.

But then all I need is 10 bots to walk my commander into your base. Unless... maybe it has a long range but only against commanders? But then this turret just starts getting lame quickly.

That is exactly my argument. Right now, Commander rushes are the best strategy. Move in with 1 more Commander than your opponent and then you win the entire match. Therefore the only strategy is being the first one to attack with Commanders making the entire game a major fail.

But if we buff Basic Defensive structures then they'll be way OP like they were half a dozen patches or so.

All in all, it's a huge issue. It'll be very difficult to balance this in a way that doesn't break the rest of the game.

The only thing I can seem to think of is make it so army game modes all Commanders must spawn together.

That is exactly my argument. Right now, Commander rushes are the best strategy. Move in with 1 more Commander than your opponent and then you win the entire match. Therefore the only strategy is being the first one to attack with Commanders making the entire game a major fail.


Commander rushes arn`t the best strategy, they are the riskiest strategies in the game currently. If me and my team goes in with our commanders we don`t know how its going to pan out as a team with a lot of pelters or has even one leveler can win the engagement. Also a more micro intensive commander team will come out on top so thats another thing the micro of the player is fully tested. Units like the doxes can destroy commanders and ant swarms will destroy them out right. Also if you`re playing a team match chances are that your team will have a sprawling base which means one blast won`t kill the game and neither will a second blast. A good assortment of base defenses or T2 units or counter commander micros as well as a mass of T1 units is all you need.

There are wayy to many ways to counter commander rushes to make them OP. They arn`t the best strategy as you can use your rushing commanders for building up your eco, rushing out your units or not being one commander closer to losing the game.