Make the Commander's Uber Cannon Instant-Kill

I disagree with doubling commander HP, but giving the commander a more powerful uber cannon sounds interesting for me. Might make the commander more of a glass cannon instead of just a pure liability mid-game.

Yeah, um. I've played TA for several years now. Started back when I mained Red Alert, and Tiberian Sun, Firestorm wasn't even a thing.
Note: My memories from when I was a kid are far from perfect. I remember TA before Firestorm, not sure I played TA before TS itself, but it was definitely after RA.
I know all about the combomb tactics. The transport one's commander over enemy base for a draw idea, the pick up enemy commander with 50 transports because he can't kill them all then self destruct.. autowin gg.. thing. Even the stereotypical commander march onto enemy base with energy plants and storage supporting the Dgun spam. I've been there done that. All of that. From both sides.

I think the problem you have from defending combombing is because you don't know how to defend against it. Coms in TA were low on health and unless your entire strategy was combomb, you wouldn't have any support against enemy units.

Also, the entire idea is countered by the problem that you lose if your commander is destroyed. On top of having low health pool, you have to watch when he's being attacked. it's a bit of a problem. A group of 4 or 5 peewees will kill a Commander if the Com isn't manually controlled because the incoming damage is being done too fast for the AI to pinpoint a single target. This usually isn't a problem if someone dedicated their gameplay to combombing, though, since once they leave their base, the commander is their only worry.

Scouting the enemy and keeping radar online watching for fast incoming signatures is part of the game. Having bombers and quick, cheap, rading units is good idea. So is having a transport to get your Commander out of dodge if it comes down to it. Commander building radars, and transports being a basic Air unit helped this. If you don't take precautions, it's completely your fault you lost. To top that, it wasn't even a technical 'loss' either. It was a draw based on the enemy's lack of confidence in their ability to beat you in the typical game.

Honestly, I don't see any problem with combombing in TA, nor do I see any issue with the commander's Dgun eiher. They're both relatively balanced out with other gameplay elements. The one thing I do see being a problem is the Combombing in PA with shared armies because you can sacrifice a com here without losing. Losing a Commander's base income and storage isn't that big of a deal mid to late game, even early to mid game if you're quick with your storage structures. Maybe it should be. I don't really have a solution for this gameplay-wise other than scouting and suppression. That should be enough, but does the current gameplay support that? I'm not too sure.

I think you're misunderstanding something here. Some methods, like I said, are legit enough and it's my job as part of the game to defend against them. And then there's a few pure cheese tactics which based on circumstances (typically the smallest/tightest maps) might be near impossible to realistically defend against (especially with a bit of lag). Suggesting the problem is I don't know how to defend against it is a little bit presumptuous of you.

In any case, these were mostly exclusive to TA, so they won't be an issue in PA anyway. Just bringing them up for historical reasons.

D-gun is a potential issue, but it's just a question of whether Uber wants these tactical options in the game. Not everyone would like the potential implications. Yeah, it's generally easy enough to defend against a rushing commander provided you haven't planted your own right there on the front lines and now you can't escape. Your mistake, then.

The commander is real close to perfect as is. Commanders can't Yolo like in previous patches and snipes are as hard as ever to pull off. You need to really catch a commander off guard to kill him.

Rules were needed to keep the op commander in TA from rushing others base. Current pa balance does this as it is so don't see any problems.

I don't mean to be presumptuous. The way I see it is this. If one knows how to defend against something, it ceases to be a problem at all. That problem being as 'undefendable' or 'unfair', or 'cheap', whatever have you. I think if someone knows how to counter it, it's not a problem about defending. It becomes a problem about balance, which is a totally different subject altogether.

..Kind of like if your microwave randomly stops working. If you knew it was simply unplugged, it would cease to be a problem of 'not working', and that problem would be solved. It would then become the problem of 'plugging it in'. This, in itself, isn't a difficult issue to solve, but nonetheless is a different problem within a similar situation I think. (The way I read your posts, it sounded like you were combining the two, so I tried to separate them, but I guess I wasn't clear. If this has made any sense at all, hooray. )


I don't personally see a large problem with TA's Commander balance as-is, but I won't deny that combombing is a cheap tactic that wouldn't actually put someone forward unless they were on a team and wouldn't be able to contribute more over the course of the entire game than the destruction caused. And even taking out an enemy com simply makes it even, not a positive. I guess when it comes down to spawns and area denial, you could say that combombing would be as a higher strategic importance, but to guarantee the loss of a teammate for the chance of taking out an enemy member.. that's not worth. Not even close to worth.

Com bombing in TA is a bit of a skill to do it right but on most maps after the 15 min rule it's quite possible. The most played team game is 3v3 on gods of war 44. Here at 15 minutes you have about a 90% success rate because of off screening a cloaked water walking.

What usually happens is the person with the less stuff on the losing team com bombs the person with the most stuff on the winning team. Say the team losing have a 5% chance of winning, this com bomb now gives them at least a 50/50.

After 15 mins in pa it's impossible but then we would need the rule.

Regardless of what defense can be cooked up in theory, I'd like to see you defend in practice against a determined com bomber on The Pass or LHG or any other map with a high off-screening potential.

But we're nitpicking on a largely irrelevant issue for PA, and I think we agree on the core point when it comes down to it. And I'm talking 1v1 here, to be clear. In team games, as Clopse explains it, I wouldn't see it as quite a big no-no in terms of fair play (because it doesn't end the match outright), but not too far off either. Again speaking to the most cheesy of com bombing tactics.

I guess people have different thresholds for tolerating cheesy play as part of the sport of RTS.

Well, since thread derailed to commander in general, not just uber cannon, I have another suggestion:
What if commander wouldn't instadie if pelican or astreus it was in was destroyed? Say, if pelican is destroyed, commander falls out like nothing happened, but if astreus is destroyed in the orbit, commander falls out and loses substantial portion of HP upon impact with planet.

This solves one problem: commander has tons of HP but dies to 1-2 anti-air (even a few dox) or anti-orbit units if it's in transport. Which is not really fair. Gibing the fact commander survives initial landing.
This adds another combomb option: you commander won't be instagibbed upon approaching enemy base, giving you a chance to do one last hit and slightly help your teammates (or be a **** in FFA). This might be considered fun or annoying, depending on which end you are.

I was thinking along the lines of if the transport that's carrying the commander explodes, and the commander dies with it, then the explosion shouldn't insta-kill everything on the ground the same way if the commander were on the ground. Like, maybe the area below it, but otherwise, damage scaling off quickly because of it's hight. That should stop any ideas of combombing with a self-destruct on a transport. You'd have to actually land the commander before doing anything.

The idea of transport being shot down and the commander falling and taking damage is a cool idea, but then it wouldn't be any different from self-destructing the transport. The com lands in enemy base, dies, boom goes everything. The main delimma everyone has remains strong. I'm trying to think of a way to combine the two ideas, so no matter how you go about it, landing the commander is more viable than flying above the base and vaporizing whatever object you're currently above.

No matter what the solution, I think this is one of the key factors that made Uber reluctant to bring back the legendary Dgun. With it, the commander is a powerful defense versus early and late game, but it also gives the Commander the best close-range weapon in the game. The current-gen Uber cannon doesn't have the immense length that the Dgun did, nor does it have the range, so even if it were to have instant-gib, the Com's health could be dropped to TA standards (assuming balance doesn't need an even lower standard) and the rate of fire could be completely unlocked, making it a definite glass cannon.

How about this? Upon destruction, the death explosion does immense damage to buildings while not destroying bulkier structures outright as well as wiping out all units in the same area because of their lack of health. It wouldn't completely cripple the enemy, but it would leave them extremely exposed if not taken advantage of. You would naturally spread your energy and metal, keep your factories at high health, try not to cluster everything, and try to use long ranged units to hit an attacking commander before it causes too much trouble. I want to believe that combombing in PA won't have the same issues as TA where you waltz into a supercompact base and the enemy commander is always there to be insta-dead when you die.

I firmly believe the commander's Ubercannon (and by similar effect, the Overcharge from SupCom) not being a oneshot kill on everything directly relates to how it was abused in TA for combombing. The early and lategame raiding and base attacking were dealt with just the same by the commander, so it's very good in this aspect. Not so much for the abuse aspect. I think if every idea revolving around the commander becomes more balanced, irrelevant whether my ideas are used or not, We should be able to keep the powerful TA-classification Dgun, stop the abuse from combombing and all the while keeping the commander attack as a viable sacrificial strategy (perhaps as a last resort).

Woo, that took a while to put together.

well if they can insta kill something the game would be a Western shooter, if you shoot and hit before the enemy can do the same to your com you win...

I just wish the Uber Cannon fired on it's own when toggled on, and didn't when toggled off.

In addition, I wish it:
1) Fired faster in light of the fact it is as weak as it is now, it should fire about 1/3 as fast as the primary.
2) Fired slower but with truely heavy damage, enough to 2 hit kill a vanguard, hit a structure for a kill (wouldn't need armor system anymore, it just doesn't fire often enough to sweep up a whole base)
3) Fired as slow as it does now and same damage, but 50% more splash radius at least. Maybe even slower with even more radius.

The ideas above, are just to make it's use useful. Right now, it keeps it alive against a small rush. It doesn't actually defeat with good "attrition" a rush. A small rush takes many shots, and it doesn't even beat a large rush. It should kill so many unitst, it takes no damage from a small rush and stays alive during a large rush. Then, it would either:

1) Fire too fast and drain down against too large a rush, the cost would drain too much economy.
2) Fire the first shot but not fire the next one to defend too large.
3) Fire the first shot but not completely clear tankier enemies (infernos)

Commander needs a shield or it's hp needs to regen. Or both.