Spring RTS Engine

I think most games today are played without "Com death = end" because the commander's health is really way too low and the strong units kill it way too easily.

How about giving the comm more health while taking away his D-Gun or maybe forcibely limit it to a certain point of the map (kinda like it can be done now already) and/or only make it useable in the first 30 (10?) minutes or so of the game?

No.

An important part of gameplay is using your commander agressively near the beginning when his D-gun can protect him, and then retreating to factory-duty once our opponent has powerful units.

But the commander is supposed to be your "representation" on the battle field, the game should end when he dies. Unfortunately this happens way too easily

Agreed, he is your advantage, and he is your weakness at the same time.

Thats how it is, and its how we like it.

Start making changes to the basics of the game and you might as well just make your own mod.

so then, what about making the commander "two-faced"? Like, the d-gun has a time limit because of "technological difficulties with weapon that powerful" (Insert technobabble here), so the D-Gun is disabled a certain time in the game and the commander's health grows because "the energy used for the D-Gun is now converted to health" or something like this?

You could make a mod where that might work, but making that change to any current mods would completely ruin gameplay. The commander is not supposed to be a super unit. It is meant to be an early game builder and rushing deterrent, and a late game factory supporter.

And if you are worried about it being killed, you can just cloak it.

Well the commander will be a super unit in SupCom

this isn't SupCom. I like the commander as it is as well. Maybe he could benefit from a small boost in hitpoints or weapon strength ("maybe," I'm not making a judgement), but all in all the Commander is fine as it is.

Hm, I wonder how feasible a SupCom mod for Spring would be..

Seeing as we dont know anything about the units except what a few of them look like, not very feadible right now. But when SupCom comes out, it will become very feasible

The comm is fine as is.

The comm isn't the super duper unit and he shouldn't be a super unit either, he Moves Slow plus he has bad range on his D-gun and laser when compared to other units.

Early Game Comm : Area Securer/ Terrority Stealer / Aggressive Attacker.
Med. Game Comm : Support / Factory-Duty / Bomb.
Late Game Comm : Krogoth / Orcone Slayer / Factory-Duty.

In supcom the maps are large enough that comm-rushing would be nonexistant. However, in the meantime, Spring maps are generally less than 20x20... so the commander needs to be defeatable on the battlefield if you abuse his power and use him as your only defense.

How much fun is it even with current comm stats when your opponent uses his commander as the main line of defense for the first 15 minutes? A single d-gun shot can wipe out as many as 5 units, easily. In the early game, that's your ENTIRE ARMY!

I am very happy with how commanders are balanced now. He's got a one-shot-kill for any unit. If your opponent is relying on one or two heavy units for an attack and you can get your comm in the right place at the right time, you take the wind right out of his sails. At the same time, his laser provides good defense against rushing, his d-gun provides insurance against your opponent getting stronger units into the inside of your base (where there's probably very little, if any, ground defense), and finally his explosion can wipe out anything besides a krogoth (where his d-gun would be the weapon of choice). Because of the way the game computes experience, a commander gets sizeable HP boosts for every unit he kills.

...And finally, in AA, he leaves a wreck worth 10k metal.

I'd like to see the commander explosion reduced by quite a bit in XTA/AA. To me, having your comm's explosion force be on a scale normally reserved for nuclear weapons encourages the comm-bombing tactic that myself and many others find to be a corruption of gameplay. If I can kill 75% of my opponent's stuff early on and keep all of mine except for my comm, simple logic would say that, if killing 75% of my opponent's stuff outweighs losing my commander, I should use my commander as a Super-Duper Ultra Advanced Walking Bomb rather than the combat engineer which it seems that he is intended to be.

Of the two solutions - making your commander worth more to you, or making the damage from the comm explosion less - I heartily espouse reducing the commander death explosion.

If you are going to tell me something along the lines of "stfu nub play comm ends", there's no need to. I already do. I like comm ends - except for the unintended consequence of making it a game of who can slip an air transport in and grab his opponent's comm without being killed - which changes TA from a game of "strategy and tactics" to a game of "i can watch my commander better than you can watch your commander".

Making commanders not transportable by enemy air transporters would fix this very nicely, and would make comm ends the prefereable play mode, in my opinion.

Or just make the comms unable to be transported at all. Will fix all comm bombing issues, for comm-ends and comm-continues.

Maelstrom wrote:Or just make the comms unable to be transported at all. Will fix all comm bombing issues, for comm-ends and comm-continues.

it wont stop one to keep a his comm walking right to your base in the early game..

What he needs is an energy shield, that is quite crappy in efficiency but virtually unlimited in power. So +200 energy doesn't benefit him much, but +3000 perhaps triples his life or something.

The com is fine. People that early com bobm early are basicly loser with no sense of fun. No-ones actully com bombed me in ages now anyway. And later in teh game its not such a big thing anyway.

The D-gun is perfect, great for taking out gollies and such that core people rush build.

XTA won't chage that drasticly so why bother trying to make it. It wouldnt be TA if you chaged the com!

aGorm

Cyberwal wrote:... Like, the d-gun has a ...

There is already a way to control d-gun, using the option "Limit d-gun". That will make the commander only be able to use it's d-gun within a radius of it's starting position. Makes your starting position not be easily penetrable in the early game, while leaving the rest of the map "comander free".

I wonder if that option has been used often, since i haven't been playing much.
(Tried some yesterday .. freaking hell, went to bed 2,5 hours later than i should)

Doomweaver wrote:What he needs is an energy shield, that is quite crappy in efficiency but virtually unlimited in power. So +200 energy doesn't benefit him much, but +3000 perhaps triples his life or something.

That probably can be arranged.
Making the commander have a on-off button. When "on", the comander has a damage modifier (if 0.5, actually doubles it's life), and starts spending alot of energy, like when we cloack him.

PauloMorfeo wrote:

Cyberwal wrote:... Like, the d-gun has a ...

There is already a way to control d-gun, using the option "Limit d-gun". That will make the commander only be able to use it's d-gun within a radius of it's starting position. Makes your starting position not be easily penetrable in the early game, while leaving the rest of the map "comander free".

I wonder if that option has been used often, since i haven't been playing much.
(Tried some yesterday .. freaking hell, went to bed 2,5 hours later than i should)

Yeah I saw that "limit D-Gun" option and mentioned it My main concern was that games with comm death = end often would result in games of "hunt for the enemy commander"

And actually that energy shield option sounds rather good