Support Commanders and Quantum Gates for interplan transport

Goodmornig /Goodday/Goodevening
if been on this forum for two days now and i felt like posting something i liked haven't pleged yet ( got no Creditcard and no money for paypall yet <just over 11 days then i willl have my money, but until then no go> you should raelly consider other payment metohds i raelly would want a copy of PA for a twenty if you could let people pay per steam then i and others from my country some 6-7 million people could contribute on steam i use the IDEAL payment method ( not al of those 6-7 million people are gamers but rts has been popular among friends of mine ill even start a campaign on dutch forums for newly interested people in PLANETARY ANNNIHILATION


EXUSE my rambling but im a bit frustated


Now for my idea
having support commanders availeble for later in the mission/battle
THese Support Commanders are brought in like the main commander by spaceship/dropship or by a qauntum gateway like in supcom and when ordering a Support commander you can chose between variants of subcommanders on commander has longer more flexible legs for faster movement another can build faster others can carry more weapons or/and armor or a combination from these examples a fast striker support commander for example.

for the quantum gateway it could be build on a moon or a asteroid with a few factories wich produces the units that it sends thruw the gateway and their could be a factory for the support commanders.

I'm thinking when battles go on a larger scale with more solid planets in a system and more players/enemies are around then the commander should have a bodygaurd of two wich could be flown in by a transport from a factory or something or be jumped in by Quantum Gate

Re: Support Commanders and Quantum Gates for interplan trans

Although I like the idea of Support Commanders, they really aren't needed and don't add much real usefulness to the game sadly. However, TA's Decoy Commanders where something else entirely. Rarely, if ever used they actually had a solid purpose that couldn't be replicated by any other unit. I would like to see some form of Decoy Commander make a come back. They could double as a sort of Support Commander as well.

Re: Support Commanders and Quantum Gates for interplan trans

Decoy commanders were awesome. If nothing else, they would limit commander sniping.

Re: Support Commanders and Quantum Gates for interplan trans

Ha Decoys,

just had a game of TA yesterday and the decoy totally worked. Good idea. decoy units are sweet.

About the gateway, would love a teleportation system like that, so you have maybe 2 gates build and you can connect them to send units through, but this would need lots and lots of energy... then of course you would also have the regular transports....but slow.... could be fun...

Re: Support Commanders and Quantum Gates for interplan trans

I would like to see support commanders, but maybe only after you have made the right factory on your home world and they could be really slow in GW game turns. may even more than one commander?

Re: Support Commanders and Quantum Gates for interplan trans

Gateways would be a good way to start a base on another planet- eg you land your first wave of troops with an engineer that hurries to build the gate, hoping that you'll be able to finish it before your opponent overwhelms you.

That could be fun and exciting

(they shouldn't replace the normal method of transport- maybe a limit per minute or something? Or a massive cost? I dunno :lol:
but they could be a way to 'crack' the protection of another planet without using a KEW)

Re: Support Commanders and Quantum Gates for interplan trans

It seems like this is two quite distinct ideas.

Firstly, you want support commanders. A powerful constructor unit that is also a moderate fighter, with a suitable price tag. I see no problems. Might be better to merge this with the decoy commander idea (as in, other players cannot tell which one is your actual commander) or else just rely on normal constructors.

Your other idea seems to apply to the galactic war metagame, where the player's galactic campaign might have a finite number of commanders, which are valuable and difficult to create. Makes sense. Smaller assets are sort of meaningless on the galactic scale, so only keeping track of capital ships and commanders seems reasonable.

If this is how the galactic war metagame pans out, then commanders should be HIGHLY valuable. Losing one should hurt. Something needs to be available in the galactic war metagame to allow you to bail from a map with your commander, conceding that map, but keeping your commander alive. Meaning, as long as the commander is alive, you are still in the game, even if everything else has gone to hell. You can still try and escape.

The game might also require each commander have its own player to be simultaneously active. So if you want to attack a well-developed enemy planet with 20 commanders, you better find 19 buddies to help you. Or, you can try alone, and build just as much stuff. In which case if you fail, you can try it again 19 more times.

Re: Support Commanders and Quantum Gates for interplan trans

The possibility of fleeing, that's an interesting idea.
The teleportation device could be beefed and used for a Commander to flee the battle. It would be a defeat, but less harsh than the Commander blowing up. Though balancing it may be a little bit tricky. You want it to be expensive (both the device and the energy cost for a jump), so people will think twice before trying to build one, and not do it 'just in case', but it would also need to be accessible enough so a losing player or team could try and build one.
Now, would there be a way to incite people to do so in skirmishes, in addition to GW?

Re: Support Commanders and Quantum Gates for interplan trans

Considering you concede when you activate it, it only makes sense in the context of a metagame where losing a battle is not necessarily losing the war. In a skirmish, conceding is the end.

Now that I think about it, it would be good to implement some strategic considerations on the metagame level to impact these systems. I am thinking of three possible escape systems, in order of difficulty:

1) Fleet Escape- you have a capital ship in the system which your commander can board by any method and jump away.

2) Emergency Recall- Elsewhere on the galaxy map, you control a commander recall teleporter system of whatever description. If the star system you are trying to escape from is within range of this recall system, this lets you initiate an emergency recall. There is no cost to do this on your end, but it takes a few minutes before you actually are recalled. So you basically have to stay alive for, say, five minutes after requesting emergency recall.

3) Teleport Out- you must construct a quantum gateway megaconstruction of the kind you would use on a safely controlled world, to send a commander somewhere else. You must then use it to teleport your commander to some other system you control. If there is no such system within range, then you are screwed. Well, not necessarily. You can still jump to one of the systems within range, and try your luck in that system.