Keeping the commander relevant through out the game

Has there been any discussion on how to keep the commander relevent through out the course of a game?

We describe the commander as a combo king/queen chess piece, but from my experience most people hide him out in their base after 10 mins and only use it for construction.

I always thought it would be cool to have him lead troops into battle, thus promoting a more agressive play style for your commander. Maybe gives a bonus to troops around him, or an area shield, or something along those lines.

Anyone have some thoughts on how this could be accomplished (or should be accomplished at all)? Upgrades (i.e SupCom/ Black Ops)? A battle suit that you can load the commander into?

This would be really really hard since your opponent is going to send everything it has against your commander on sight.

Zero K has a system for upgrading commanders, with a total of 5 upgrades possible in a game. The upgrades tend to be quite expensive. It works quite well in my opinion and it's reasonably well balanced at this stage (it wasn't when first introduced). I've heard SC also has an upgrade system.


I'd like to see something similar in PA.

Frankly, I don't think it will be as much of an issue as you fear it will be.

So far signs are pointing towards TA style commanders and Tier balancing,this leads to a few things;

- No upgrades(or at least SupCom/BlackOps style ones) for the Commander.

Combined with;

- 2 Tiers and a balance model where T2 doesn't make Tier 1 Obsolete.

Leads to a general balance where the Commander doesn't end up so completely outclassed by Tier 2 units(or at least not to the point it happened in SupCom) and with a bit of work on making sure the commander can fight to some degree sans Dgun and it should pan out pretty well. I think the enhanced combat ability sans Dgun is important because it looks like we'll be using the Commander to build new bases on moons(or at least have the option too) so making sure it can't be rushed by a small number of units seems fairly basic.

Mike

As you mentioned, the SupCom solution was upgrades to make the commander more survivable and/or more powerful. The D-gun also helps, but it seems to me that it's mostly a last-ditch way to save your skin from something that you didn't see coming.

I remember a Monkeylord that surprised me once in SupCom when it appeared on the beach next to a base where my commander was. (I should have had something with sonar monitoring the water, oops). As it tore through my base taking heavy damage, I managed to finish it off with an Overcharge from my commander. Another two seconds and it would have ended me with its massive laser. It was glorious. But I'd never *want* to be in that position. Gambits that involve exposing the only piece whose loss is utterly fatal are inherently risky.

Also, this isn't Warcraft III or a MOBA. We're trying to move *away* from hero-unit gameplay, here, if that's what kind of thing you had in mind.

Commander upgrades can make the commander useful later into the game. A gunupgraded commander in FA was pretty devastating in most small 1v1 matches if you had the time to upgrade it.
Although if commanders gets really good you might see a strong tendency towards com duels where the defending player is forced to use their com aswell as they will lose too much territory/units if they don't.

I'd rather see a commander more useful in utility than in combat.

The goal is less so about making the commander useful in combat as much as not leaving him defenseless in combat.

Mike

I guess my point was that I'd rather not see the commander in combat, therefore his abilities should be based around base support. Basically, he should be in the base making me a sandwich...or at least a nuke

Just my opinion of course.

So long as there are no upgrades like in SupCom, I'll be happy regardless of how they keep him relevant (if they even bother), but with only 2 tiers, I don't think they will need to do much of anything at all to keep him relevant.

Ideally, the Commander should be able to do both good support and good combat. So players who don't want to risk it can still use it effectively, and players who prefer to play it aggressively, or who simply see a good opportunity to fight with it, would be able to do so.
Commander upgrades or battle-suits are simply the most obvious way to do it. Battle-suits sound more interesting, though.

But anyway, the Commander should be more than just the 'kill to win' unit past the first minutes of game. All units are meant to still be useful in later game, this should include the Commander.
If not, the only winning strategy with the Commander is to hide or bury it somewhere far away. We should have more choice than that with it.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't the Commander in TA the most powerful builder? That will go a long ways in making it useful later on. Also for those who don't know, the Dgun from TA was WAWAAAYYYY more powerful than overcharge in SupCom/FA. It could hit through terrain, one shot anything it touched, created a line of destruction with slight aoe as well. It was still relatively short ranged though.

What problem do you all have with upgrades for the commander?? I think upgrades for the com (and no other units) are great. That way you make the com a more versatile unit, and as it the com is an important element of the game, you grant the game to have more different strategies. For example, fights between coms that cant be anything but indifferent appear rather boring to me...

Commanders should be like TA's, dangerous to mess with but not OP. SupCom did a good job at keeping upgrades expensive and late-game, mostly useless for good players, FA broke it and SupCom2 was terrible.

Im against using the Commander as an engie with a gun. Powerful but not useful in battle.

You just stated my problem with it. You should NEVER have a game where the commanders are directly fighting each other. TA dealt with this by making it so that if the commander dies, everyone near him dies too. So 2 commanders fighting each other was basically both the of the involved teams surrendering because they where both going to die. Plus, upgrades (even on one unit) just add more micro. There is no point to it in a macro game like this. Also, it turns off new players (believe me, I know; I quit SupCom before I ever got the chance to enjoy it because all my friends, who aren't hardcore gamers, got sick of all the research/upgrades).

@ drtomb:

This argument does not appear solid to me... you are arguing against upgrades on coms in general by stating that supcom did a bad job with it. Whilst I don't think so, GPG's alleged incapability of doing com-upgrades right, does not quite support your point in general terms.


Edit:

So, in principle your point why coms fighting each other is bad, is because in a com fight one com might die but not so the other one?? I don't see the point. If this should not be your pint then you didn’t give a reason for why you think com fights are bad, you the simply stated how TA managed to make com fights unalluring to the contestants.

Well, the com is the focus of the whole game after all, so a little micro around it might not be that bad actually.

There was close to no research in supcom... 2 tech level upgrades and com upgrades, that's it.

The commander should be the most vulnerable asset you possess by about midgame, and especially lategame. The commander absolutely should NOT be a viable combat unit, even in the middle of a normal game.

The commander will always be relevant because if yours dies, so do you. And if you kill theirs, you win. We want it to be strategically relevant, not viable as a combat unit.

The only reason the commander even has a weapon is so early attacks won't end the game. I would not be entirely against the idea of having the commander be unarmed, but it would go against tradition.

You're doing it again. I think you meant to say I. Lots of people have posted various opinions, there is no consensus.

Fair enough.

There may be some people who want the commander to be a "hero unit." Respectfully, those people are wrong, and they should go play League of Legends. In my opinion, the commander in these types of games is more closely analogous to the King in a chess game.

Well I think you're wrong. I found the early commander battles in FA to be some of the most tense awesome gameplay ever, in no way was it like LoL.

Now I'm not saying PA has to be like this, I'm merely acknowledging that if its fun there could be a place for it. What I'm not saying is that this is everyone's opinion.