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

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

Just the "Uber cannon". There is no trace of the D-gun we know and love. RIP D-gun :cry:

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

I really like the idea that in late game your strategy should be to get the commander off world, to a less advanced theater of war, thus allowing him to become more useful again without the need for upgrades, instead of hiding him, or combomb.

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

A page from Dawn of War may be in order. Have we considered "bunkers" to hide commanders from air raids and nuclear blasts... low cost, high resist, static underground facilities built solely to protect high value targets.

The idea that a commander survives a planet cracker and walks out on the rubble to escape... is pretty epic.

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

com snipes are a valid strategy and if uve build a big base you should of put effort into protecting it and your com, my only suggestion would to be add sheilds to the game but i dont think that this will happen

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

I'm not a fan of any kind of shielding being used to protect the commander, either it scales well and ends up being too good or it doesn't and it's just a race to build more bombers than can be protected against.

Having thought about it I think a commander beacon might be a better solution and provide numerous other benefits and strategies. The way it could work is that you build a commander beacon which is a structure that can teleport your commander from anywhere on the map to to the beacon in just a few seconds (at a rather substantial energy cost). That way if you spot a snipe coming you can teleport away, but only to one of the beacons, and because the teleport wouldn't be instant if you don't notice it in time the enemy might still be able to get the snipe, and they might also be able to get the snipe if you don't have the required energy to power it in time. It might also be good to have a cool down on using any beacons for 1-5 min after using one to prevent abuse of it, an effect on the commander to show that it can't be teleported might be good too, so if an enemy spots it they'll know it's a good opportunity for a snipe since the commander can't get away (sniping should be a valid tactic after all).

Some of the benefits of this would be that the beacon would give you a nice quick way to get your commander to a certain base which could help with managing multiple bases on multiple planets so it's beneficial even when you aren't trying to protect against a commander snipe. It could also lead to using your commander in risky endeavors even in the late game since there is a way to quickly save your commander from death, so it'll be less common for players to need to play hide and seek with the enemy commander in the late game, which allows for more strategies and more chances to catch your enemies commander off guard. Also if a player going for a snipe sees that the commander is about to teleport away they could turn back the bombers before taking too many casualties so they can be used again, perhaps for something else, that way it's less devastating for the player trying to snipe and defending player will still have to do something about the remaining bombers. Since it would require power to use it further pushes the tactical advantage of hitting your enemy's economy and such a hit to your economy would act as a good warning to be ready for a potential snipe. It would also encourage players to expand rather than turtle because you can send your most powerful unit our to build mass extractors and enter small skirmishes but still have a way to quickly bring it back to base if you suddenly need it there again, I imagine it would be a big disadvantage leaving your commander tucked away in your base for the entire game.

The only down side I can think of is that it might be a bit micro intensive, but it would be easy enough to give a beacon a control group to select it and be able to active it quickly enough to use in an emergency like an incoming snipe, assuming the interface for using it would be similar to that of building units.

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

This was called Recall in SupCom lore, and it was often glitchy and didn't work (lore-wise). It would actually make for a really good mechanic, take out an enemy's power and blow their comm to smithereens.

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

Recall only existed in Supcom cinematics (and barely even then), but the theory is sound. If things get bad, RUN!

Supcom shields worked as an anti snipe tool because they were an anti everything tool. It is about as precise a game design tool as making a parking garage with a nuke.

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

Yeah, SupCom shields were basically the best anti-bomber defense if they were not spotted and intercepted by fighters already. Of course, a large enough force could overpower one shield with a volley, enough for maybe a second set of bombers to finish the job before it recharges, but such a thing is hard to pull off with multiple shields.

Regardless, the best defense against bombers is probably just to have AA units guarding your commander. Your commander is just as likely to get demolished by land units as it is by air units if it strays from the proper defensive structures/units. And besides, if your enemy has time enough to build enough bombers to survive waves of AA and make it to your commander, then obviously that's time, metal, and energy that wasn't spent on something else, be it metal extractors, defensive structures, or air units, which probably means that your enemy is more vulnerable to attack than they would have been otherwise. I think the solution to this problem has more to do with gathering intel and playing strategically more than it does have to do with changing gameplay elements.

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

T2 anti-air that chews through bombers like butter, but can't attack sea/ground units?

Having it so that bombers don't clip together and form a giant, invincible mass would help too.

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

Well, we already have the egg. Maybe you can add shield generators to it as well, at a very high energy cost? (To the point of having your empire be nuked will drain you of literally all power, and losing those expensive and not totally worth it anymore generators)

Oh, and while we're talking about energy, what about energy tracers? It would be fairly endgame and requires lots of energy, but can track certain factions' energy signatures. For example, you would see the gigantic energy usage of shield generators. Maybe it would be buildable as a one-time thing, and would require scanning of an area, instead of being universal.

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

There will be more gamemodes than just this one. But for the moment, we play "assassination". The main goal is not to crush the enemies base, or to crush his armies. The main goal is to kill the commander. If you can't keep your commander safe, you don't deserve to win.

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

Aren't you supposed to snipe a commander end game if that's the victory condition?

Isn't that the point?


But anyway you guys really need to use more AA inside and outside of your bases, I even build them in groups of 3 just to make each AA post as deadly as possible.

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

No. The victory condition is to destroy the enemy commander. Sniping it with bombers is simply one way to do so. So is steamrolling their base with units, raining hell and fire using long range bombardment weaponry, and tickling him to death using scout planes (yes, I saw that video.)

Sniping a commander with bombers is a very cheap way to do so as the proportion of AA needed to take out advanced bombers is way out of whack. You need much more AA than the opponent needs to build in bombers in order to take out an equal-slated force. Not only that, but sending in a couple dozen air scouts before a squadron of advanced bombers easily takes the AA's attention, and in doing so leaves the commander vulnerable.

I agree with this, though. Unfortunately, AA needs to be.. improved. Not "buffed" per se, but at least have priorities of bombers being clearly more important than scouts in terms of base defense. That won't make AA overpowered, as it doesn't change the damage, but it will make spreading them out a better strategy, and it should be better overall.

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

One thing to consider if the cloak route is implemented is:
- As mentioned in TA it did not hide vs radar
- TA had no strategic icons
- TA had a decloak radius (get close enough and you can see the unit)

I find being able to see the strategic icon means that you can just cover and enemy base with scouts and look for the rather large strategic icon of you opponents commander.


A much better in my opinion way to deal with commander sniping is to use the interplanetary mechanic, assuming it plays out like the video.
- Have you commander sit on the interplanetary rocket, first sign of bombers have him shoot off into space.
- Have the commander sit at the entrance to a unit cannon (assuming it takes units of his/her size), bombers show up, fire.
- If we speculatively have interplanetary transports that move between worlds then have the commander sit in one of these (although please no bugs where a commander can get stuck in an invulnerable spot between planets).