Neutral Units and Alternative to all units dying when their commander dies

So something I was thinking would be an interesting way to handle a teams annihilation would be if those units, by losing their commander, went neutral or rogue. Then they could wander the map as raiding parties or wait for a new commander to assume control.

This would allow units to be already on a planet as neutral which players could try to take control of with their commander making the game faster paced. These neutral units could also defend locations based off how valuable they are for map control. It would also give a bit of a buffer from players directly attacking each other early game.

And late game there would be a strategic advantage to taking control of another players army after tactically taking them out.

That'd be a kinda fun game type. When the Commander dies they go bezerk and start attacking anything and everything. Just an insta rush.

Would mean there's a downside to sniping on multiple player/team matches.

Would absolutely love to see this in the main game.

I think having them go idle would make more sense than go rogue, since they lost their commanding AI and will this just finish the last command they had and await further orders, that will never come.

But self destructing like they do now also makes sense (you don't want your enemy to hack them use them against you) so I see no particular reason to change this.

By allowing the winner to take control of the remaining enemy units, attacking in FFAs might be a more lucrative proposition. This would potentially change FFAs quite a bit. Currently in FFAs it is in your best interest to not attack anyone if you can avoid it, because it will only weaken you (until you finally gain map control if you win). Although I quite enjoy the current tightrope act of trying to stay out of conflicts in FFAs too. Makes a more defensive play actually viable, which is fun too.

But overall I think that destroying and not capturing stuff is somehow the spirit of the game.. it is after all Planetary Annihilation. We are not here to enslave you.. we are here to DESTROY you!

I really like the idea, although I think it should be optional. It's like in Starcraft 2: when Kerrigan was transformed into more human form (that means she lost her leadership skills), some of the zergs, which were under her command, became feral and started to attack each other

Not bad idea at all. How units will behave after having lost their commander may affect the gameplay quite a bit, so it may also be possible to setup one way or another when starting a game. Or it could be left to the commander to chose what last command give to its own units in case of its premature departure.

In the context of an endless war, a dying commander would probably give a "search & destroy, with self-destruct timer" command to try and wipe out the enemy, allowing the potential for future re-population.

+1 I'd like to have these as configurable options on game start.

Also the option for uncontrolled units to exist could be epic for GW games...

The units don't have any intelligence thought, they are literally just extensions of the Commander itself. Think of you as a commander, you use a shovel the same way as a commander uses a unit. The shovel can't dig a hole on it's own, just like the unit can't do anything on it's own.

Mike

Well, precise commands are impossible, but "pull the pin and put brick on the pedal" order for everything would be logical.
Not for the core game, but as a fun server rule, why not? Alongside "no <something>" rules and different victory conditions.

How does this deal with the problem of a person who knows they are going to lose just self destructing their units anyway?

Well even a cockroach can remain alive for a few days without a head (as creepy as it sounds). I would assume that a machine would continue performing its last orders.

Plus its still a game so you don't necessarily have to justify such a game mode. If it won't be in the core game a mod like that will pop up.

Although I personally think that a zombie mod (every unit destroyed returns as a zombie after some time) will be here before the rogue units.

I don't think I was clear enough. The commander doesn't tell a unit to do something, the Commander does it himself with the unit being nothing more that an extension of his own body.

Mike

This is a pretty big hole in the boat, actually. Removing self-destruct as an option is the blunt solution, but hardly a smart one.

For that reason, I'd say a good compromise would be a 50/50 chance of groups of "rescued" units being either complacent/joining you or going into kill mode. But then we'd need something to recognize what constitutes a "group" based on proximity, and that's an extra layer of complication.

perhaps the units not destroyed in the commander explosion will go into one of several modes.( it would be randomized, like on a spinner.)

Rampage: basically a planet wide attack order. will wander and attack anyone it sees.

Defend: will stay in place and attack only units in range.

Patrol: will go into al small circle and it will be the same as a patrol path.

follow: will go the the nearest unit, and do what it is doing.

wander: will not fire, but will instead wander in a random patrol route across the planet

turrets will basically be in defend mode.

tell me what you think.

i would be a cool thing,

Mike, I'd be very grateful if you could give me a link to the lore that states this- as this is Supreme Commander lore (a commander with an army of autonomous drones). I've understood that PA is the spiritual successor to Total Annihilation in which case the lore is quite different:

In TA- the endless war started over the 'transfer of conciousness from man to machine' and that 'the core duplicated their best warriors countless times, the Arm countered with a mass cloning programme'... so as far as lore goes in TA each unit is alive and sentient.

Well you can consider them to be non-sentient but more expert systems. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expert_system

There is nothing specific/official yet, but there aren't any major wholes in my theory either. If AIs were capable of being created by nanolathing you would have to come up with some arbitrary reason why you don't just build hundreds of Commanders and send them flying off all over the place. The Idea that the Commander's Body is of such quality and precision that Nanolathe just isn't good enough for that design works to a point, but you still need to put some limiting factors on the AI as well, otherwise you could just make mass produced versions of the Commanders and just flood your enemy with them again.

Working on the principle that it's not the body of a commander that provides the main roadblock to creating new commanders, but the AI itself solves all the problems that I could think of.

Also worth noting that just because PA is a Spiritual Successor doesn't mean it has to follow the same lore, SupCom was also a Spiritual Successor and it's lore was quite different in many areas/respects.

Mike