[Suggestion] How to prevent commander sniping for end game.

Hello Everyone,

I have an idea I'd like to share, but feel free to crush my dreams. I was in a match last night that was quite large and both my opponent and I spent a considerable amount of time building up our bases and slowly chipping away at each other. At one point my opponent decided to try and snipe my commander for a quick end, but luckily I noticed it and prevented it from happening.

This got me thinking though. If my opponent was successful, that would have been quite frustrating to spend all that time building up the base just to have a massive amount of bombers take out my commander.

So, to prevent this in long games what if there was some sort of force shield around your commander which is controlled by lets say 3-4 "Master" power buildings. When the force shield is powered on your commander would be unable to attack and the only way to take out the commander is to take out those 3-4 buildings. This way it takes the focus off the commander and you can spread these buildings out across multiple planets to insure redundancy. It should also require A LOT of resources and time to construct these buildings though and it should be meant for large / long battles.

TLR - There should be a force shield generated to protect the commander for long games. This force shield would be created after building 4 master buildings.

Re: [Suggestion] How to prevent commander sniping for end ga

I agree, building up a massive base only to be insta-killed like that is annoying. While your idea sounds like fun, there is a simpler solution which will likely be implemented soon. In TA the way they got around this was just to have a setting toggle for whether or not loss of your commander meant game over. I'm almost certain that this will eventually be added to PA, they just haven't got round to it yet. This way while losing your commander still sucks because you lose his awesome build abilities, D-gun (love that thing), and likely a good chunk of your base in the ensuing explosion, it's not game over.

Before your dreams feel too crushed though, I'd like to say that the more I think about your idea, the more interesting I find it. It gives a new level of depth to the game if you first have to locate the defence buildings located across the cosmos and bring them down before you can go after your opponent's commander. Certainly worth a thought =)

Re: [Suggestion] How to prevent commander sniping for end ga

It is an interesting idea, two other thoughts...
1) the commanders gun would have to be disabled, otherwise you have an insta win..
2) it's going to be hard to balance the structure if they can be built anywhere... Hunting across ever asteroid is not going to be fun while the enemy commander sits in the middle of your army
Maybe having a required relay nearby? That might fix both problems..

However I think escaping to different planets / asteroids may make this more required, as people try to snipe the one base the commander is in...

Re: [Suggestion] How to prevent commander sniping for end ga

Building a "Massive Base" and yet somehow letting your Commander get sniped is your own fault.

Re: [Suggestion] How to prevent commander sniping for end ga

No need to be so harsh Nano, yes at the point you should be aware of what's going on but after saying that it has nearly happened to me a few times due the spherical nature of the map...
So it would be a pain to balance, but something to force an enemy to engage/accept the existence of some part of your base first would be nice...

Re: [Suggestion] How to prevent commander sniping for end ga

Arbitrary numbers are bad. You can simplify the ability by using existing infrastructure (generators).

Also: Simpsons did it.

Eh. If a Commander can be targeted, then NO level of defenses can protect it against a dedicated snipe. This does encourage snipe wars where some level of luck is involved, but usually the better player will win.

I think the community is still a bit immature when it comes to understanding how important it is to protect their Comm. Give it time.

Re: [Suggestion] How to prevent commander sniping for end ga

Nothing matters except the Commander. Nothing.

Re: [Suggestion] How to prevent commander sniping for end ga

I'd like to point out that my commander "almost" got sniped

Re: [Suggestion] How to prevent commander sniping for end ga

Definitely - I think he did mention that somewhere. It would basically be a statis field - commander cannot move, attack or be attacked while it is active. That's a point though - would anyone want to do that? The commander's build abilities are second to none, and I feel you'd be putting yourself at a big disadvantage by effectively quarantining him.

That's true - this will probably be the main method by which you evade being sniped. It becomes a game of cat and mouse on an interplanetary scale...


Actually another thought has just struck me: if they're planning on bringing back the commander cloak from TA this solves the problem once and for all. Cloak hid you from both radar and sight (as long as the enemy didn't get too close), but cost a vast amount of energy, and far more if you tried to move while cloaked. It was very much a late-game anti-sniping mechanic. That way the enemy would have to focus on taking out your energy generating structures (of which some of the advanced ones could themselves cloak) before they could discover the location of your commander. Yeah, that's what I want - the return of the cloaking from TA =D

Re: [Suggestion] How to prevent commander sniping for end ga

It'll be back, but not on all Commanders.

Re: [Suggestion] How to prevent commander sniping for end ga

Interesting...I like it.

Re: [Suggestion] How to prevent commander sniping for end ga

That sounds like a great solution, going to have to play TA now... ( got it today )
In effect it sounds like a weaker version of the opening post, a way to avoid commander snipes in early to mid game...

Re: [Suggestion] How to prevent commander sniping for end ga

The cloaking is definitely more mid-late game. The amount of energy is not easily achievable without the T2 fusion generators, and even then they come with a price: if your enemy knocks one of those out the explosion is the same as your commander being killed.

Re: [Suggestion] How to prevent commander sniping for end ga

Meh as long as countering snipes is cheaper than pulling them off then it's a non-issue.

Re: [Suggestion] How to prevent commander sniping for end ga

How to prevent Comm Snipes: Build two-four factories on either side of him, and stick him in between the crack, with fighters and missile towers surrounding the complex. The factories stop the initial run from the bombers 99.99% of the time, and even if you don't notice te sniper, your fighters will crush the bombers after that first run. Just rebuild the factory after it blows up.

Re: [Suggestion] How to prevent commander sniping for end ga

Commander Cloak or Commander Teleport!

Re: [Suggestion] How to prevent commander sniping for end ga

as we wont see neither shields (personal or bubble) nor commander upgrades (extra health or stealth or cloak) nor commander abilities (like hunker in supcom 2) it will be very limited what you can actually do to prevent bomber snipes (or most other snipe attempts).

Probably it will result in the following: your opponent just must not know where your Commander is in the late game. Keep it moving, send it to far away asteroids or planets, and just dont expost it to any army or weapon.

Re: [Suggestion] How to prevent commander sniping for end ga

Just want to add my 2 cents on this topic. At the moment Com snipes are an issue because of "insert a million already said reasons here" but I believe a lot of these problems will be solved when we have Planetary game play implemented.

I don't know about some of you guys but I also thought the idea was that once you have your base up and running with plenty of fabbers to keep it going then send your commander to another planet, most likely where there won't be the threat of T2 air.

Re: [Suggestion] How to prevent commander sniping for end ga

I was just writing this exact post xD

Re: [Suggestion] How to prevent commander sniping for end ga

I'm not sure where people have got the idea that there won't be any commander abilities- they've already implemented the D-Gun *cough* 'Uber Cannon'- as far as I understood it they weren't going to implement unique abilities between different commander types, however something like Cloak would be common across all commanders?

The commander cloak from TA is a fantastic feature in capable hands, and has the added bonus of keeping the commander relevant late game (as your economy increases things like cloak can be used more), and as someone mentioned earlier in the thread its a good counter to snipes (although I would point out that cloak did NOT protect the commander from radar- you need a radar jamming structure as well for that).

Another thing I've noted with the game thus far- the range of the Uber Cannon is too short to use if your opponent micros even a little bit- having the ability to cloak and get in close to a clump of units would be awesome, and as with TA building energy storage early game allows the use of it for a few seconds making the commander a much more formidable front line unit (again from what I've seen so far the commander is far too easy to defeat with t1 units and has no chance against t2 or air).

Neutrino, any chance you could clarify if cloak is going to be implemented for the commander (or any units for that matter)?

Cheers!