First, I want to clarify that this is not "I want this to be in the game now" kind of idea. More like "I think it's interesting and I'm interested, what you think". I didn't try to solve any problems with this idea, it just got into my mind for no reason and refuses to leave until I explain it to someone. Currently in the game (and traditionally in this sub-genre) commander provides your first basic income of resources and also uses them to start things up. He is the first piece of your economy. What if we separate him from the economy? Here's how it should work: Commander provides no income, and maybe even no storage (through, a little bit of filled storage may be useful for faster start). But he also does not use any resources while working. The upside is that stalling will become far less of a problem, especially early game. Since commander doesn't use resources, his build speed stays unaffected and you can use him to quickly build more pgens and/or mexes. The downside, for storage-less version is that first mex and first pgen have to be built by commander, but this is pretty much what happens already, and also can be solved by having enough storage at the start. There are probably many other effects, which I, being casual player, can't figure out. Can you? What do you think of this idea in general?
I don't think I'd mind this so much but I can't really pretend to know enough about how this would affect the game otherwise.
My question is, why? If he provides no storage, then you'll need to build storage. That takes time and adds to the stuff you gotta build at the beginning, delaying expansion. This also is a setback to your economy, since the commander produces more metal/energy than he consumes.
I think the idea would be to provide enough starting storage(filled, obviously) to be able to get out the 'standard' build of 3 mex, 2 en, and a factory with some left over for expansion. The buildings cost mass, but he doesn't actually 'consume' anything extra to build them other than their actual cost of building, so it would remain relatively the same.
I couldn't get behind this, mostly because I don't like the idea of exclusions or special rules on this kind of scale. I don't see the point of this is there wasn't a particular issue you were trying to solve to begin with. Mike
The commander takes 10 seconds to produce a metal extractor, with a net metal income of -20 (+10 - 30) Then there's a break when he has to switch to the next metal extractor where he'll produce a little bit of metal/energy. If you get him to walk anywhere, he produces metal/energy, and if he isn't fabbing, he produces metal/energy. Unless you can keep him fabbing the entire game on useful projects, over the long term he'll produce more than he ever consumed.
To start with I dislike this kind of special rule. There are more problems though; this would be too much of a incentive for players to have their commander constructing at all times. There is already a bit of an incentive in its increased energy efficiency but this can be mitigated later with energy income. If the commander makes free resources that only it can use any time spent not constructing is a waste of metal.
