Discussion: Early Game Commander Rushes

I thought this thread was concerning early game commander rushes. Either way I'm not trying to discuss the TA mechanics exclusively, I'm merely trying to collect and share information so we can try come up with an alternative which could work for PA.

I'll reword again so it's easier to understand my question. What stopped people from sacrificing all but 1 commander in stock FA from doing the exact same thing mentioned in the OP?

I don't think the OP is talking about commander explosions being to strong. He does not mention commander explosions at all. Further more, why would the OP state you need 1 more commander than your opponent. You don't need one more commander than your opponent if your going to kamikaze.

Hmmm, debate has continued to rage while I slept. One idea I'll put forward:

The majority of players would like a faster early game, specifically, most people (at least from what I've seen) would like to be able to go factory first. The implementation of this is being discussed in another thread, but would this have a major effect on comm rushing?

As masterofroflness said, comm rushing becomes non-viable pretty quickly, I'd say ten minutes into a team game if not sooner. Would this problem be solved simply by having a faster early game, letting you get out those crucial early pelters/tanks whatever that dissuade comm rushing?

Yeah this works if they are seen early, or all your commanders are in the same location. All it takes is an enemy to scout and see what the best line through your base is to avoid having an equal match up.

I would argue that the defender hasn't the initial advantage but maybe middle advantage and maybe late advantage. But as mentioned above intel effects this. So many scenarios here that it's pretty impossible to discuss.

The attacker is preparing for this scenario from when he begins to walk, queues up energy with his fabbers, knows where he will attack. More than likely the defender will be building energy with his commanders, so when the attacker attacks he will no longer be producing energy in the panic and rush the commanders to try intercept or ward off the commanders. If the attackers attack energy first which is the best strategy, the defender will not be able to repair or build as good as the prepared attacker.

The scenario they are discussing is say a 4v4 game. Team A split into 2 teams of 2 and Team B stay together. Then Team B send 3 of their commanders to attack one of Team A bases.

tl;dr Pelters would have stopped this easily. Scouting, better strategy and teamwork would have enabled them to counter it.

I don't understand how this has never been a major issue before but after I comm rush you yesterday it's suddenly a massive OP thing that must be addressed. T2 bombers and pelters are way more OP at this stage of the game.

I wasn't going to bother posting this mediocre video but I guess I might do to see what my viewers think. Do you have the recording or was it corrupted? Would be pretty interesting to analyse from both sides.

5v5. They spawned in 2 locations, we spawned in 3. Their spawns weren't great and ours were quite fine so they were already at a disadvantage. Their 2 commanders were kinda surrounded on 3 sides and I went for a decisive 4(!!) commander rush. If they scouted our bases they should have known these isolated players were in big trouble from the start. They didn't scout the commanders coming (Brian will claim they did). They countered in the worst possible way imaginable, they chased off a single unsupported commander with two commanders, some engineers and all their units(!!). This left their base completely exposed as 3 commanders walked in and destroyed it with zero resistance.

• If they had scouted the bases they should have known a unit or comm rush was inevitable on the isolated players.
  
• If they scouted the commanders they would have known precisely what was coming and how far away it was.
  
• If they had built 2-3 or more pelters it would have made a comm assault much more difficult.
  
• If they had sent 1 support commander or units from their other base it would have made it very difficult.
• If they had comm rushed with their other 3 commanders they could have easily taken out one of our bases.
  
• Using comms like this sacrifices efficient build power and leaves you very exposed to raiding.

Just copy pasting this as i think this may fit into the thread too
Some of it may have been discussed already

Don't agree with this one. I would prefer my commander attacking building and defending than 2.5 energy plants.

What About:
Make the units not able to change the target until the same Die/Be out of Range
Commanders Harder to Repair, but w/ passive Regen
?

I prefer it too, but I'm saying it's a disadvantage. It's 2.5 power gens per commander you're using, which makes a difference in the early game. You now need more engineers tied up building power, your power usage is increased and a lot of the time your commander is investing time in walking. After 7 or so minutes then it's not so much of an issue but then commander rushing isn't as effective then.

I agree with Zaphod, and i totally disagree with Brian. Brian its not even that hard to beat 2 incoming commanders with only 1 especialy when you even scouted them before they arrived. Besides, if you want to do a good (not a risky) commrush, you are usually not fast with advanced tech and you wont be able to get nukes/orbital first. If its a multiplanet game against good opponents, the one who lands first gets the whole planet usually, thats way more unbalanced.

Mayby Commanders should not be allowd to regain health so setting fabbers on him would not effective anymore poeple have to be more carefull with commander instead using him as mainforce to rush someone

Absolutly disagree

why commander could heal them self up say they not attack for 5 min they health regain

Because then 2 commanders will ALWAYS beat 1, instead of some of the times.

Dont believe Brian, he just doesn't know how to handle enemy commanders.

This idea would effect the whole game, not just commander rushes. Also its an arbitary rule that will annoy people.

This change helps the side with more commanders. It doesn't add much of a reason to not attack with your commander.

Dont go with "My viewers".. all viewers have different viewpoints
And while i watch a couple of a videos of i am not "your" viewer but just "A" viewer among viewers a spectator .. saying it like that is like "hey lets see what obvious supporters say"

No offense and again guys remember ... community ... we are not here to rip each others hairs out ... especialy when the big guys have their days off ...
so please have this somewhat civilised ....

As a matter of respect im not gonna do any name calling as you guys should aswell

Seriously? It's my channel. If you watch my videos then you are one of my viewers/subscribers (of my channel). It doesn't mean I own you, it means you watch my videos on my channel. I'm not that arrogant and have never been derogatory enough to ever call my viewers 'fans' or petnames which many other Youtubers do.

Does it matter to the diskussion? Does it matter that the video you provided belongs to You Or most viewers watch your stuff? Does that all matter to the discussion overall?
so why even mention it like what for? things are already sensitive here we shouldnt make stuff needlesly more sensitve and i am not implying anything to your characteristics as i dont actualy know you it is not my intent at all

I'd guess the problem will be solved with multi-planet spawning areas. Team army games on a planet small enough to comm rush should then automatically decrease to a point where it'll only affect few games.

Mostly because the death blast wouldn't do a lot of damage to the enemy's commander or Structures. Also the fact that if you lost your ACU unless you were quick enough to transfer all your units(or did it pre-emptively) to another player they also self destructed. An ACU was much better in overall combat in teh T1 stage of the game as well so you were less willing to throw it away early.

Things are a bit different in PA Team Games because all the units are shared to begin with.

But you can't Ignore the Death Blast either, it's an inevitable outcome of commander related Combat really. Also consider that as it is now you don't even need to kill the enemy commander if you are going suicidal with your own, all you need to do is cripple his factories/power generation, which can have long term effects on your enemy even if you didn't kill his commander.

What makes the commander useful for it's death blast is not how many things it can kill on the way in, but how tough it is. if you make the commander weaker all you're doing is making it more vulnerable to OTHER things and create a whole bunch of other issues.

The Problem is that in team games, there is no reason to keep commanders alive, heck, because of the death blast it's actually more of a liability to keep multiple commanders within your bases. Thus it's better to send them off at the enemy base(keeping one safe of course) where they'll either explode outside the enemy base and do very little damage to yourself OR they'll get within an enemy base and do a fair amount of damage to it, resulting ina net gain for the Comm Rusher.

Changing the way the Deathblast works I think is a key part to solving the issue of abject recklessness with Commanders, right now a great use for commanders(when you have extras to spare like in a Team game) is to use them for thier very powerful Deathblast. Another part is simply to make other aspects of the commander more appealing, for example we know it is already the most efficient builder(In terms of Metal Drain:Energy Drain Ratios) but as far as raw build power goes it's tied with Advanced Land Fabbers and actually behind Advanced Naval Fabbers. What if we just doubled the Commander's Build rate, he'd be even more efficient, Energy Upkeep on his lathe will probably need to be tweaked as well but I don't think we could double it as well unless the commanders Energy Generation was also increased(which could be a good thing to do as well) and clearly be the most powerful builder in the game, which will not only help in deter Commander rushes(because it is much more of a loss to lose that powerful builder, especially if you can't kill an enemy commander with it) but also help keep the commander relevant throughout the game because it will always be your single best fabber.

Mike