Let's Talk about Unit Health Again

download the mod and change that one thing. Should be really easy.

Ok, there are a lot of things that MAD (mutually assured destruction) adds to the tactical and strategic considerations during a game, but by far the most important is that it reduces the chance for degenerate win conditions; situations where the game is effectively "over" but your opponent just isn't dead yet.

In such a condition within the vanilla game (and other balance mods) I find it all-to-easy to fall into a position where I have no power to influence the outcome of the game from a certain point. I can't win... I can just choose to lose more or less slowly. Not so with MAD; even in the worst situation I have options.

Commander vs Commander duels, as you describe them, generally are a lot less of a perilous, high-risk strategy than you make them out to be, especially if you have Intel on your opponent and the forces he or she has at their immediate disposal at the area of conflict. But when a Commander is a walking bomb... a weapon even in death, you have to very carefully judge the strength of not only an opponent's defence, but also their willingness to fight... or even die. MAD introduces one more thing for you to judge as a Commander; your opponent's psychology. Are they going to back away in fear during your Commander-lead assault for fear of losing their own Commander in a draw, rather than the win they felt so confident of achieving before? What about the other perspective? Do they have the nerve, presence of mind and tactical mastery to pull a draw out of an otherwise lost scenario?

With MAD, even as the "winning" player you can't let your guard down and a game can become progressively more and more tense as it draws to a close, since every game has to end with a bang, rather than a whimper as is more-often the case with other implementations. As the losing player you almost always have a way to fight back against your opponent, taking everything out with you, rather than dying alone in ignominy.

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Besides, the game still registers the first Commander to die as the "loser", and even though everyone dies there is still a victor; there are no "draws" in PA. Statistically it makes no difference... but emotionally and intellectually there's a massive difference.

I can not express how much more FUN I have when there is always a threat of failure.
Losing in a "draw" is so much sweeter, knowing that I've successfully outsmarted my opponent and robbed him of a squeaky-clean victory.

It's all a matter of perspective. If you don't share my thoughts on the subject, that's fine. But I feel that my explanation here more than justifies RCBMs decision to retain Mutually Assured Destruction.

Usually when you're at the point of winning and it just hasn't happened yet, then you don't have to risk your commander at all, and their commander wouldn't manage to make it to your commander unless your commander was for some reason really close to the front, which mine sure wouldn't be with that feature.

I just can't see me using my commander in any combat because I know that if theirs gets anywhere near to mine, then I basically "lose", and I see commander combat being used to turn the tide into a win more exciting than using it to makes sure that nobody wins just by getting near the other guy and dying

Just my opinion

edit: just read the other comments, apparently you can change it

You may; but we won't.
(for the reasons I talked about above.)

I can tell that you haven't actually tried RCBM yet, because your Commander is often not sitting at the centre of your base. Due to the high build-power of your commander it is unwise to let him sit idle (or assisting alone) and it is often the case that he will be helping you to expand swiftly and efficiently.

If you play overly conservatively you will not be in a winning position against someone who takes even marginal risks.

You subscribe to the "Battle-Commander" philosophy which, unfortunately I just cannot comprehend (and never liked ever since SupCom popularised it). Your Commander is not, in my opinion, supposed to be the be-all-end-all unit that does everything.

I'm sorry that such a difference in opinion will keep you from playing RCBM in the form for which it was intended. I promise that you will find RCBM to be a lesser game with the changes you suggest.

The only thing MAD seems to affect (since whomever's comm dies first loses) is ffa's and team games, because
in 1v1's the WINNING player (esp as far as elo and the ladder are concerned) are the only thing that matters.

And in these two cases, the gameplay that ensues are as follows IMO.

A 2v2 game, where a commander can do incredible damage to a base, the strategy would greatly benefit the team to (comm bomb). ESPECIALLY if they get both commanders at once. This would introduce a cheese factor, AND some sort of strategy that is not macro, micro, expansion... raiding. EVEN MORE SO if it is shared armies, you could just run a commander RIGHT into a base at the start to guarantee victory.

In FFA's, a player who is "too weak to affect the game" WOULD in fact gain some sort of satisfaction (for people who enjoy this) of crippling a stronger player OUT OF SPITE as he dies..

Am i missing something? This is how i envision MAD. (but only because the first commander who dies loses*) You speak of draws (which i'm not against whatsoever btw) but that can't happen in the way the game "ending" is registered. Can RCBM modify that?

Not for or against it; hopefully vanilla will be balanced enough where your wonderful mod can expand on other things besides doing what needed to be done in the first place (balance). But just an observation.

My experience comes from TA when com bombing was the worst ( i know it was different).
But you have those players who (to spite you) run there commander in and say "if i can't win neither will you". I don't like to give people that power, they WILL abuse it. Different game i know but *memories*

edit: For the record this is a response to MAD, not RCBM. I like RCBM!

I really... really hope so. I haven't looked into the code yet though and I don't know if it's handled on the scripting layer. If it is, we can change it... if it's hard-coded... things will be more difficult.

And since FFAs are just the worst thing to ever blight PA, I'm not losing much sleep upon being told that people abuse the mechanics in a functionally broken gamemode. Sorry.

FFAs are for cheap laughs. They are non-competitive, so I don't feel bad for not catering towards them on a, relatively speaking, competitively focused re-balance. I must stress however that my definition of "competitive" is that the game is an entertaining competition for both players at all times... not about who wins and who loses. This may differ from your definition. If that is the case I appologise. You may not find RCBM fun if all you care about is winning.

Team games are the only time (that I care about,) that things degenerate, but we have tried to take measures to mitigate things:

• The Commander is slow and very vulnerable if transported to mitigate this.
• The Commander needs obscene amounts of energy to utilise his strongest weapon, leaving both himself and his ally in a rough spot, economically speaking, if spammed.
• The Commander is a consummate builder and any time it's not building is time that your opponent IS building.
• Commanders can't overtake other Commanders. They can always walk away / transport away. You lose a lot of health trying to fight your way to their Commander, while they get away without a scratch, leaving you in a worse situation in the long run.

Hopefully these things are enough to dissuade "cheese" plays. If they are not we will resort to other methods of nerfing the practice.

Danke.