Instant Death

Power word: Kill. Doom. Level drain. There are many ways of saying it, but Instant Death is when a unit dies with no regard to health or defense. Destroying planets is a pretty big deal, and sometimes a unit simply has no chance.

So, what qualifies as instant death in the PA world? What units will have access to it? What units need protection against it? Here are a few ideas to get things started.

~~~~~Instant Death~~~~~~
Capture: A feature in TotalA, Supcom, Supcom2, and Zero-K. A unit is turned to your side permanently. Commonly employed by engineers or the Commander.

D-Gun: TotalA only. A weapon unique to the Commander that killed any vanilla unit instantly. Modded units had more than 30K health, so they could survive. This weapon has been dialed back in other titles, dealing less damage and generally sucking more.

Lava: A known feature of Lava worlds (I hope!), and a potential kind of planetary damage from super weapons. It is unknown how this will work in PA, but some combination of damage dealing and path blocking will likely exist. It's not a true OHKO, but getting lava under a structure will kill it pretty good.

Dead void: A logical outcome of planets that don't exist any more. Units without terrain are pretty screwed. They may shut down, become space scrap, or be completely vaporized by the destruction of the planet.

~~~~~Defenses~~~~~~~~
Capture: It is established in the same games that the Commander is immune to capture. Something about super awesome defense nanites.

D-gun: There was no defense in TotalA. If one Comm died, the other one died from the resulting nuke. Supcom gave Commanders special defense against Overcharge, reducing damage to a standard shot. Structures had yet another special defense, taking moderate damage. In any case, D-Gun vs. Commander will have to be addressed in PA.

Lava: Units that avoid lava won't be hurt. Potentially fast vehicles may get away in time. Comms will likely need help in this area, perhaps having a viable defense or quick way out.

Dead void: A Comm could potentially build himself a rocket and fly to another world. As for everyone else... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5R_pS0h5Qk

I for one hope capture does not exist in PA, or if it does, it does so in an extremely gimped, not-at-all practical capacity. Capture, if it is practical, just produces incredibly weird combat.

Dgun is a good idea because it gives the commander a weapon that doesn't care about how powerful a single enemy is, it still gibs it.

Lava is not a bad idea for a map feature. I don't know about instant death in lava- I imagine it would get very frustrating very fast to have a unit step into a lava puddle and immediately explode. Damage over time, perhaps, instead of instant death. But with such great distances that the unit would never reach the other end of the lava sea alive. After all, we are talking about giant machines made from uber-futuristic metals.

Purpose damage and invulnerability modifiers are annoying as sh!t; they are a lazy, hack way to balance a game. The people who actually want this stuff are like those posters in the anti-Commander sniping thread who do not want to practice situation awareness.

Accomplishing a Commander capture would be pretty awesome, and I fail to see why it would be overpowered. Capturing in all the "x" Annihilation games I played and Supreme Commander 1 was slow and vulnerable; the Commanders could shoot anything that came near it. You would have to be extremely exposed and careless to lose your Commander to a capture.

You would think if your Commander got caught on a world that is about to be obliterated, that should be the call for game over.

Wow. Two replies out the gate, and already the community is divided!

It's important to point out that there are two clear classes of units in the game: Units that are the Commander, and units that aren't. The effect of instant death on either class is clearly a world apart- one is a tragedy, and the other is a game over. As such, it is very dangerous to treat both class types the same way.

There is some merit to allowing stupid/easy strategies in the game (heretofore referred to as "cheese"). Cheesy play allows for quick, brutal ways to destroy players that aren't paying attention. But there is also a difference between "cheese that is possible" and "a game about cheese". Starcraft is a great example of just how fragile this type of balance can be. SC allows a great array of cheesy one-liner strategies. At the same time, it is possible to deflect them all with good awareness and scouting. It does credit to the game just how close to the wire these strategies can be; some of them even work against grand master players.

Penny Arcade had a good bit on this. Cheese is basically the "E. Honda button mashing" level of gameplay. It offers a low level way to win, and helps get players hooked into the game. At the same time it needs to cap out fairly early, as a reminder that there's more game under the hood.

It's true that the Commander can prevent most of these disasters with good situational awareness. That alone should be sufficient protection against some hilarious game overs. The only strat he can potentially not defend is the D-gun rush. In this case, an extra tool may be necessary to defend it. After all, it's not as though PA is a space themed Joust.

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Instant death is the great equalizer. It reminds units that, no matter how big and scary they are, they're always one shot away from death. Supcom had a big problem with large Experimental units dominating the scene. Perhaps an ID weapon would have helped prevent that?

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I forgot to mention unit abduction. In TotalA, having your Commander snatched up is an instant game over as he dies with the transport. The transports were brutally fragile, so running to a missile tower could defend it. This feature was removed from Supcom, partially because a surprise transport was more difficult to defend.

I like the D-Gun, and I liked capture & hijack antics (including capturing a poorly microed transport that carried your ACU or your LABs). Nuff said.

I think Supcom's overcharge was both UP and OP at the same time. It's pretty decent in FA. SupCom2's Overcharge was good, especially with the burst damage nature it had (i.e. you enable it for a limited time and then it's on a cooldown)

There is no such thing as cheese; only tactics that win you the game--and the people who whine about them.

There is only one objective outlined to the "x"-Annihilation line of games -the one that should be on everyones' mind- and that is to neutralise the enemy commander; whilst protecting yours at all costs. Everything in the game is built to serve this one purpose. If everyone understood this, there would not be any complaining. You do not get any brownie points for steamrolling the enemy's army and base, the fate of everything else does not matter, all that matters is the enemy commander is DEAD. There are also no 'cowardly' tactics, and commanders do not need special invulnerabilities just because they are critical units, if you do not want your commander to be abruptly swept away, do not allow it to be positioned where it can be. OR...if you do not want to worry about commanders at all, you can turn assassination mode off then everyone can enjoy steamrolling each other. Really, how hard is it to comprehend this concept?

Also Penny Arcade are pretentious. I do not value the opinions that come from them and I tire of the Extra Credits porn people here like to throw around like that counts for anything.

If the game is designed to allow a tactic that is inherently difficult enough to stop that it will cause the receiving player to lose the game unless they specifically plan for the eventuality of the exact tactic you are using, then the game is designed wrong.

Situational awareness is of course one way to lose, and is more then fair.

But losing to a strategy that is effectively impossible to beat, weather the tactic is successful, or recovering from it put you in a unrecoverable position, is just bad game design.

Rushing tactics often apply to this, leaving a player with little time to respond to a attack that is very difficult to defend against unless they preemptively prepare for it's arrival.

SupCom 1 and 2 often had games where rushing aircraft was very difficult to defend against within the first few minutes of the game, often making such a tactic unbalanced unless the player predicts the rush and builds AA before their scouts have even detected them.

Yeah...the majority of the time when people talk of tactics being unbeatable, it isn't even true.

Thus proving you didn't really read what I said.

Instant death is tricky I find
Cause instantly dying is usually followed by a lashback reaction of it being unfair

Lava should definitely not be insta-death for example.

But planets imploding... thats something hard to not notice coming so yeah it goes

IGN, I'm not sure you read what ayceeem had to say. He is correct in this instance. Usually it isn't a case of difficult to defend against certain tactics, it's that the scrubs don't want to have to deal with it.

Defending against a t1 rush in FA was multiplayer 101, the game was inherently rushy. You countered a rush by getting enough of your own units into the battle to prevent them fighting in your base. Air first was a risking move that was easily countered, unless the attacker did enough economic damage to offset building the air in the first place they'd set themselves back on the land front.

Then I guess it's the inherent rush nature of the game that was the problem.

For a game about massive army's battling over continents, to be ended in a 10 min rush seems kinda counter productive to the games point.

Someone make a thread about cheese vs standard play. Doesn't really belong here, and deserves its own discussion at length. It's going to eat this thread.

Considering that the topic of instant death is a part of cheese vs standard play debate, I don't see the problem.

Yeah I'll just address one last point and then let this thread get back on topic. Games would only end in 10 minutes if one player was sufficiently better than the other, and this was only ever a relevant tactic for the small 5x5 and 10x10 maps.

Back on topic, instant death given the right circumstances is fine. If you let yourself get into a situation where it is possible you deserve to pay the penalty.

As long at is harder to maneauver yourself into a position where instant death of the enemy is possible than it is for the enemy to maneauver himself out of such a situation, it's fine.

Big payoff should could with big risk or big skill (or both).

This is a GAME first and foremost, not a Darwin simulator. Instant death makes it very easy to create unplayable situations, especially during a fragile early game as scouting and strategic options are slim. It is a delicate balancing point. You can't just say "screw it, anything that dies deserves to die".

The D-gun rush is exactly one of those situations where gameplay can end up worse for the wear. Not only can the attacker 1-shot the defending Comm (who cares if it's a draw, lel), but he can 1-shot the turrets and base that's supposed to be the defender's advantage.

Plus, that war analogy goes both ways. Not dying to circumstance based heavily on luck is just as important as winning battles.


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Here's another one:

- Unflying a unit that normally flies. It's not exactly a transport abduction. Rather, a satellite could be pulled down from orbit or a jump jet tank could suddenly not have jump jets.

All I can do is reference you to Ballanced Annihilation. Energy production is scarce; going commando with the D-gun is the quickest way to deplete your energy supply, leaving you totally exposed. Attempting such a Commander D-gun rush is actually considered suicide. Also most weapons in the game outrange the D-gun, including the lowly Light Laser Tower, a couple of which together are enough to stop a Commander dead in its tracks.

Ah yes, I almost forgot just how pitifully short ranged the D-gun is. I'm more used to the Supcom style of play, where the ACU had a competitive range with many more units.

BalancedA was certainly not kind to the d-gun rush. Cutting comm health by a third, making D-gun more expensive, giving LLTs 25% more damage, and then giving bonus double damage vs. Comms. Add it all up and the Comm is roughly a quarter as good at breaking LLTs. It's no wonder the rush doesn't stand a chance.

Still, the game had to use a damage modifier to make it work, and that's cheating.

Commander is a smartest unit of all. It may capture engi trying to capture it using engi link, not other way around. Capture is a hack, so assuming that ACU could be captured/hacked is just weird.

Better not to have capture at all than to have it non-practical. In FA people sometimes still trying to capture something. It's better to make engi destroy/disable any enemy building by "overloading it's nanites" (same as capturing, but instead just kills building) - "silent kill" (without damage notifier) tactics. May work on ACU then.

Yeah. Otherwise this case (double-death) could lead to team-ruining strategies when noob from one team tries to D-Rush most experienced player on opponent team.

Yet you sounds just like an gamedesign expert Maybe you should give us a lesson or two?

P.S. BTW, what do you think about ACU-rush from SupCom2 early days? Is it cheesy tactic or just people were whining around?