Discussion: Early Game Commander Rushes

Our you could just make Commanders mutually destroy each other... like TA did 15 years ago.

Enforcing the " no rush " timer with some arbitrary Egg barrier is just an awful idea.

hmmm....... really with multiple comms someone is always going to attempt this tactic. just the sheer benefit of rush in your comm\s and hitting delete can throw your opponent into the slump they never recover from. perhaps simply when your comm dies you can no longer physically input for your team....... seems like plenty enough discouragement for me

The concerns about a Commander detonation killing Commanders, is now the only valid strategy is to send one Commander straight into the opponent's base and now you get 3 Commander kills, plus a base destroyed.

It's also doable without the Egg Timer. Simply put a very powerful slow firing gun on top of The Egg. Kills all units with one shot, but with major overkill, and since it fires so slow, it's nigh useless against units. That's a very simple Commander rush deterrent. No boundaries, no timer, just a gun.

So the D-Gun?
Which TA had... 15 years ago.

It's also funny, but ComBombing really didn't work in TA. Something about you being immediately booted from the game and all your units exploding meant that it really wasn't a wise plan, team game or not.

The D-gun in its current form doesn't do enough. And since each Commander has a D-gun, that means you don't have the defensive advantage. So even if the D-gun got a boost, the advantage would still be to whoever rushes and has more Commanders.

I'd love it if we didn't have to kick players for losing a Commander in the Army game type. Allows more people to play for longer. Since it's a game, why wouldn't we want to allow players to play for longer?

So did you not play TA or did you somehow miss the D-Gun being a 1 shot kill against anything?

TA Commander: 3,000 health.
Commander D-Gun: 30,000 damage per hit. Hits multiple times in a line.

"The D-gun in its current form doesn't do enough."

The D-Gun doesn't exist in PA.

There is a D-gun in PA. It's just not exactly like the D-gun in TA.

It isn't limited by your energy economy in any appreciable way
It's not bound to a hotkey.
It's not able to be fired as fast as your energy economy can support it.
It's not a source of unmatched damage potential.
It's not a useful weapon against rushes or against other Commanders.

The "Uber Cannon" is not a D-Gun. It fulfils none of the parameters that the original D-Gun set down.
Therefore I conclude that the D-Gun, nor anything that even resembles it, does not exist in PA.

Com bombing is a major problem currently in TA, the weakest player just needs to off screen com in atlas and fly atlas over the strongest player on the opposing team. Even after the 15 minute no rush rule it still happens in everyday team gameplay. It is the most controversial part of TA and won't work in PA with automatic ladders and teams beginning in same spawns. Why send 4 coms to kill 3 when 1 will suffice.

If they throw away their commanders early on it is their fault for losing, punishing the rush you so dislike.
I think the issue with nanolathe suggestion though is that it can create sort of like a gamble, at least in 1v1 I can think of the following:

close spawn > commander rush > lets hope we somehow outmicro the enemy commander and d-gun a bit of his base to win the game.

That would bring down the whole game to a stupid "who hits better" with the d-gun. It also needs to be ensured that it is not too easy to force a draw like this, so a super powerful deathnuke is also out of the question.

I think FA has this all solved with it's weaker overcharge and weak deathnuke.

The fact that 3 commanders in a rush are pretty powerful vs 1 is just like it is. 3 vs 1 is better for 3. So hopefully it will be possible to prevent spawns where the 3 are directly next to the 1.

Oh nanolathe. I'd hug you if you weren't covered in grisly spines and an insatiable appetite for human flesh.

Yes, the Uber cannon is awful. It does not solve any game issues nor is it impressive in any way. I don't know why the devs would want a TA successor yet fail to incorporate one of the defining weapons that made TA so awesome.

This is a terrible idea. Anti-rush zones have always been awful, as was proven in Supcom 1 and 2.

The simplest solution to anti rushing, is to make players not want to leave their spawn zone. Having a slow Commander with a super strong lathe is a start. Making the Commander dependent on his economy for defense is a good next step. Not letting the Commander carry all his resources is a good third option.

The third option can be accomplished with the egg. In this case, it is no more complex than a pile of wreckage from the Commander's orbital lander. This wreckage can not fit in your storage, so you can not rush with it. If you hold still to build a base with it, you are not rushing. If you leave it behind, the enemy is free to come take it for his own, further punishing your rush.

In multiplayer games, Comm bombing can be further punished by leaving delicious Comm wreckage behind. You rushed with it, therefore it is closer to the enemy base, thus they have a better claim to it. That wreckage can be used to rebuild the damage that the Comm nuke made.

Hahaha, yeah. Kidnapping commanders was hilarious. Mostly, that strategy depends on having a Comm blast larger than a missile turret's range. Otherwise it's easily stopped with a few missile defenses.

In PA, the Commander may very well be too large to be carried by a T1 transport. It's a simple solution to a simple, but still funny problem.

Rushes aren't the only way to lose their Commander.

My point is, if someone gets sniped 20 minutes into a 4 hour match, then that sucks. They just missed out on a lot of gameplay. It'd be awesome if we didn't have people lose out on gameplay (since it is a game, the point is to play) because they were the unlucky target of a snipe.

Also, losing a player on top of a Commander rush, now they lose a player, which is a whole new set of eyes. In it's current state, it's very possible to lose most of your Commanders in an Army match and still win the game. That hope goes out the window if you lose a player per Commander and your opponent still has all their players.

So, just start a new game?

Don't let your Commander die. Lesson learned.

Mollycoddling the player feels insulting.

It's quite a simple suggestion, but I actually quite like the idea of only having one commander per army.

Who gets to be the Commander, and who's stuck as the starting fabbers?

Many friendships will die as a result of this idea.

You ignore the second part of my comment.

"In it's current state, it's very possible to lose most of your Commanders in an Army match and still win the game. That hope goes out the window if you lose a player per Commander and your opponent still has all their players."

It'd pretty much turn into, "lose one Commander, lose a player, which is a huge huge disadvantage. So whoever loses a Commander first generally loses the entire match."

Is not the idea of a team sport to measure the competence of the entire team? A chain is only as strong as its weakest link and all that.

Losing a Commander (and therefore player) should be a detriment to the organisation of a shared army... not just a throw-away minion with a big bomb that no one cares about.