Commander Design Direction

Given that commanders are under a bit of flex right now, I think its probably fair to talk about them.

First of all, I think I should establish what I think commanders are good for.

1: They provide mobile defense against early raids.
2: They provide an alternate target to attack.

With morphing, I think that expands to

3: They provide some ability to cover up your starting factory's weaknesses.
4: They provide the ability to inject a bit of additional personality and flare into the game.

I think all of these things are valuable.

I do not believe current comm upgrades are currently implemented with much direction. They tend to fall into a few viable choices fairly easily, they have moderate RPS-style problems. Likewise, they are often fairly swingy with trollcomms often being wildly successful or failing utterly.



If I were to propose an alternative system, it would be as follows:

3 Tiers of upgrades
Weapons are added at no specific tier, but when you have purchased them. They are in general weaker at base than current commander weapons, though damage increases are cheaper. The first upgrade improve the commanders basic weapon, and the second adds an additional weapon.
After Level 1, units do not get additional base stats.

Tier 0:
Basic capabilities. All tier 0s are balanced to be about the same with trade-offs existing, but being more average than the current state. Health pools around level 3 commander.

Tier 1: Maximum Metal (200 additional possible metal)
Defining traits for the chasis begin to come in. This Tier costs 400 base and has some minor customization potential. Only weak or fairly straight-forward weapons can be afforded.

These upgrades are fairly consistent so the chasis can be more easily balanced.

Example bonuses:
Recon: Jump cooldown substantially reduced and distance significantly increased.
Battle: Significant health increase.

Tier 2: Maximum Metal 600.
Customization begins being common. Advanced weapon options begin unlocking.

Tier 3: Maximum Metal 800.
Significant major choices or additions possible.


The core here are the following principles:
Stabilize level 0 to be more survivable but less effective as an assault.
Stabilize level 1 to be sufficiently consistent that blind RPS does not occur strongly at the early-game.
Set customization to exist at level 2+ to allow personalization to come in when it is least damaging to gameplay. Likewise, by reducing morph speed and capping metal investment more cleanly, it is easier to get more efficient and better tuned commanders without snowballing power scales.


That is the idea at least. What do you guys imagine for commander direction?

I agree, but think what I described achieves those goals. I suspect the problem comes from me not doing a full right up of all involved numbers.

I agree where the issues are.

my 2 cents:
the problem is for all intents and purposes the commander starts off more as an assault class (albeit weakly) ie: low damage, but moderate health compared to other units

I think the best way of fixing that would simply be to switch it's weapon to a more riot based weapon, or skirmisher based weapon.

but I do agree though... the primary benefit of having a commander to start off in almost every game that does so, is to make an early rush on the players main base harder... but when you can kill there com with just 4 units... it doesn't really work.

on the flip side to that, however, one could argue it -does- work as you have to build up at least the 3 or 4 units first, giving the opponent time to build some units of there own (counters or defenses if scouted properly)

so idk...

Agree with Saktoth - making comms start near-identical (if not fully identical) and then diverge as they level up seems like the best approach.

Still, imho the Recon is the biggest "one of these things is not like the others" at L0.

Should be a chassis unique level 1 module imo.