R.I.P. uber cannon (for now)

Is the removal of the Uber cannon a good thing or a bad thing?

Discuss.

Considering the plans Uber has for Commanders I don't see how it really means anything given how this an Alpha and all.

It is still there, nothing changed about it.
viewtopic.php?p=754789#p754789

oh ok

If the Commander needs a normal gun, then his uber gun clearly isn't strong enough!

It's more that the Uber cannon has a range too short and a fire rate too low to fight single tanks.

In TA, the commander had a light laser in addition to the d gun.

The uber Cannon is most likely gonna be like the Overcharge cannon the ACUs have in Supreme Commander.

Then you increase the range and fire rate. And perhaps give it the linear AoE that made it so useful in the first place.

Herp derp.

That weapon comprised less than 10% of the Commander's realized firepower. Nearly everything came from the d-gun, which isn't a bad thing! The whole point of the d-gun was to be the Commander's primary weapon.

if you'd increase the power of the uber gun even more it would be imba vs bigger targets. It already is quite powerful vs large armies and in case of a short distance to the enemy it one hits factories. It just is weak vs smaller single targets. I don't think it is a good idea to make it an allround super weapon.

Yeah. So what? If your Commander is fighting bigger targets, he's getting HURT. That's very bad.

Anything with longer range than the ubergun or more speed than the Commander is going to deal a lot of damage. Anything with both traits is capable of outright winning. You can hardly call such a weapon overpowered when it has such an obvious weakness of losing the game.

Those are not the only weaknesses either. The Ubergun vaporizes wreckage, eliminating any reward from battle. It demands energy (lots if you spam it), causing the weapon to fail with a weak economy. Bigger units tend to have death explosions, dealing guaranteed damage if they get too close.

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The only problem right now is with the AoE. A circular AoE allows the ubergun to deal maximum damage at maximum range. That makes it very easy to wipe out enemy targets before they can shoot, especially since flowfield pathing likes to blob them up. A linear AoE causes the ubergun's damage to shrink with range. Units at range get the smallest piece of AoE, and fill more of the line as they pile up on the Commander. Linear AoE is less effective against a blob, and is more vulnerable to flanking/swarming tactics. Those are good weaknesses to allow on the Comm.

You'd get base trades in every single game with people just rushing their commander to the other base to kill all the buildings. Since the commander has a lot of health it is hard to kill it in the early game, unless you use your own commander. But that can quickly turn into a gamble and results in pretty short games.

You're describing a problem solved 15+ years ago by laser towers. Using a stationary weapon to address rushing issues is nothing new.

You mean the same towers that don't do jack vs commanders in PA?

We are talking about PA. Not TA. Also laser turrets are "big" targets that die horribly vs a big gun like the uber gun.

Yeah, PA's Commander is balanced significantly differently than TA Commanders and SupCom ACUs.

PA's Comm is much more vulnerable to high-tech units than the TA Commanders, similarly to SupCom's ACUs. However, PA's Comm also has much higher survivability than SupCom's ACU, to the point where it can ignore just about any damage source other than Naval due to its ability to close the distance and deal heavy damage.

I doubt we'll see any balance changes to the Comm any time soon, but he is far too offensively balanced to be considered a "Glorified Engineer," which if I remember correctly, was the original balance outlook on PA Commanders. Maybe of the Comm was more of a defensive weapon, he would work out better.

Notice how you keep pointing out problems that have nothing do with the Commander? If the laser turret isn't doing its job, then the problem is with the LASER TURRET.

A bit more range and altered cost (less metal, more energy use) oughta take care of things. Alternatively, making a lighter package (less cost, less everything) will also make turrets easier to spam and more difficult to single out. Also, LoS weapons will always have more range and the ability to focus fire a tall unit like the Commander. Even in TA with the smaller Comm, AA defenses were superb Comm killers.

Once again, I'm going to point out that splash AoE is a big deal, because it lets the uber gun deal full damage at max range. That was not true in TA, and it made all the difference in the world.

Maybe it is just not the laser turrets job to defend against a commander.

The reason why the commander needs a normal pew pew weapon is because the uber gun simply sucks vs single targets. The TA style dgun does, too. Without a little pew pew weapon for single smaller targets it is very weak in early game. In fact it was possible to kite the commander to death with a few t1 tanks.

Changing the Uber gun to be able to deal with single small targets is kind of not the point of an uber dimensioned super weapon.

Wait... what? The TA style d-gun sucks in the first 2 minutes of the game because there isn't enough energy to spam it. The TA Commander produced less than a solar panels' of energy. The PA commander is half a dozen generators.

The TA dgun vaporizes single targets just as easily as anything else. Sure, it demands a lot of energy, but that's not a big issue in PA anymore.

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The problem with single targets is that the TA d-gun wasn't automatic. A single unit could literally kill you off screen. Because of that, it had a light laser implemented to deal with trivial threats. That is no longer true here, because:
A) Smart AI can handle an ubergun no problem.
B) Light lethal firepower already exists in the form of the Commander's lathe, both as a direct reclaiming weapon AND as a turret building tool.

There is no need for the Commander to have a laser in this game. EVER.

What about instead of a nuclear explosion (when the commander dies) that destroys everything:

Make it a feedback type explosion that feeds back through the command interface/link that destroys or stuns any friendly units that are near by? It would definitely solve the issue of commander bombing.