Transports picking up enemy units

In TA aerial transports could pick up enemy units, leading to hilarious commander-kidnappings.

In SupCom, air transports cannot pick up enemy units under any circumstances.

Personally I would like to be able to pick up enemy units with my transports, there's no logical reason why not and it would add interesting tactics. If transports are able to carry multiple units as in SupCom transports could be very powerful.

But perhaps this would make them too powerful, or perhaps they should be able to pick up tanks but not commanders?

Should I make a poll?

There would be no point if you couldent pick up enemy commanders.

If you could pick up enemy commanders it needs to be very limited (Needs to stay over the commander for a while to pick it up or something), so that it wont be a easy thing to do.

The reason why i would find it awsome is simple, lets say your playing a 4 player free for all assasinate game, you can basicly kidnap a enemy commander and say something along the line "Attack this player and destroy him or il destroy your commander". Leading to the hilarius and awsome situation were he has to do as you say while hes planning to somehow free hes captured commander :lol: .

Offcourse i wouldent mind if it wasent added, but it would be funny (Like skyrims "bucket over shop keepers head" trick).

Wouldn't you just capture an enemy's commander and fly them into a volcano?

This would kinda destroy assassination type games.

Thats why i suggested it be limited. (as in, it takes ~10 seconds to lift a enemy commander). That way theres no way to just ninja kidnap someone without planning.

Why would any enemy unit consent to be picked up by your transport? Why shouldn't they get free shots at the descending transport and then duck out of the way? Even if you do catch them, what if they just keep shooting into your transport from the inside?

I'm sorry, but this idea sounds like nostalgia for a bug to me.

I have fond memories of a TA deathmatch where a friend of mine built a ton of air transports, and was able to get one on my commander because of sheer volume. He then flew my commander into another friend's AA field, killing both of our commanders.

That was awesome, and if the commander can build cheap AA from the get-go, I see no reason why this mechanic shouldn't be in PA.

It was a cute trick at the time, but what it amounts to is simple cheese that comes to be annoying as the novelty wears off. Sure it's funny the first time, but then the novelty wears off and you have to deal with new players who think they've discovered something clever.

As for strategically using this tool, any situation where you'd be able to pick up the enemy commander without losing the transport is a situation where you could have just killed them outright.

Again, I see no reason why you should be able to force-pickup units that are unwilling unless you have a serious desire to see your transports shot down by the units they are carrying. Or in the case of commanders, capturing the transport. I mean, if you want to sacrifice a transport to maybe kill a commander (though I don't think they would necessarily be dead after upsetting from ten thousand feet after shooting down a transport, they are robots after all.) then by all means obsessively lobby for this tactic. I would never use it myself, and I see no appeal to it.

I would be one of those silly funny things.

If were talking about a reason, the transports in for example supcom seems to drag the units into place (magnetism maybe?) so they wouldent have to agree to anything, and sure they could fire on in when they are being carried, but that would result in a crash the units would most likely not survive (They are robots yes, but i assume there programming would prevent them from destroying themselves needlessly?).

As for the commander or a engineer capturing the unit, maybe the transports use some kind of localised emp effect on enemy units its carrying, or whatever they use to drag and lock units into place may prevent it from capturing? etc.

I mean we can make it believable if we want to so thats not realy a problem.

If we want it ingame (as a funny/silly thing) is what should be debated. (Offcourse, the devs would have to see the thread and agree to the suggestion for it to ever make it ingame xD).

This is one of those features that is really only there for trolling. And if it is done wrong, it could generate a huge amount of outrage. To leave the feature out entirely on the other hand, is unlikely to even be noticed by most player.

Is something like this really worth the risk?

A valid point.

They would have to gimp it severly to make sure it couldent be used as trolling and yes the amount of players that would notice it would be a minor part of the player base.

But i have to say, finding such "hidden gems" in games, makes the games seem special, atleast thats my opinion.

If it would be worth it or not, i honestly cant say. It would be one of those things a developer may add if he have free time (atleast thats, once again, my opinion).

I'm sure that this could be said of many of tactical options available in TA, but I think that most of them added to the flavour of the game without breaking balance. A single AA tower was enough to ward off one transport, and any enemy player who desires to be annoying is bound to find a way no matter how many options you take off the table.

I'm curious to know how you define "obsessive", given my one post on the topic. In any case, the air transport in vanilla TA that was capable of kidnapping did not carry units inside it, but rather suspended from an anchor point on its belly. If you require that a target be fully immobilized to satisfy your desire for realism, then you might be interested in the Dragonfly, which was an air transport unit in a TA mod which was equipped with a paralysis beam.

I love kidnapping enemy commanders. It is fun, I will do it in TA until I die, but we have evidence that allows us to compare the effects of yes and no in gameplay. In SupCom they took the gamble and disabled it. The effects and game play are as follows.

Can grab the commander; He becomes a piece of treasurer who you guard heavily in your most fortified location. He is a defensive tool that builds for you. This is favorable for large games fought over large distances. But I would argue that assassination is not the best game type for this gameplay, because your keeping track of so much.

Can not grab the commander; He becomes one of the most powerful units on the battlefield he leads your army from the front. He builds on mass points, constructs point defenses to actively fight an ongoing battle. He constructs forward bases to help put additional pressure on the other team faster. In short he pushes the line. This favors 1 vs 1 or 2 vs 2 where the line of battle is obvious.

In my experience it was worth losing the ability to grab the commander to make him more useful over all, and gameplay of the later was much more exciting and riveting, because he is right at the front and can potentially die if you do not pay attention. Greater risk but great reward. This made the gameplay better over all even though I love kidnapping my opponents, and no it does not get old.

Commander kidnapping was great. The instant death aspect? Not so much.

Is there a middle ground? The concept of a "get over here!" weapon is still an awesome thing to have in the game.

Have to agree with this. Being able to pick up enemy units just doesn't make any damn sense in any kind of context other than a bug. Unless you have some kind of unit that can capture them with ranged force manipulation or something, but just picking them up in a cargo hold is asking to get shot from the inside.

I answer to that very question a couple of posts below the one you quoted.

I'm tired of players complaining about highly rewarding yet easily counterable tactics, because they don't want to lift a finger to counter them.

Hah, this sounds hilarious and actualy quite innovative, if it can be balanced I can easily see it working.

Because the idea is ridiculous, so why include it at all?

Its in no way more ridiculous then giant death stars or teleportation.