Should it be removed? It's only a noob trap to lure them into wasting metal.
+3 / -8
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Not possible to gather sufficient social backing. [Spoiler]- noobs who wanted to play an RPG will baw (and they are usually listened to).
- there is a cult of features which makes it hard to remove anything. This is partially due to above.
- morphing further than level 1 is neither problematic nor often seen at high level play. Thus, good players don't usually dislike comms enough to support removal of morph.
- modules are the only remaining form of unlocks and some argue that unlocks are crucial for people to feel progression. It's not really possible to make them universally viable because of game design though (this is an RTS, units should always be the focus, not the commander). That said, they can already be good (better than units!) in various niches. The feature should instead be improved from a technical standpoint where possible (eg. make them customisable from ingame) so that we're at least stuck with something reasonably polished.
+4 / -0
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I wouldn't call it a waste of metal in its current form. Commanders can be extremely powerful, more cost efficient than units at specific jobs and on to of that create combinations of abilities that can not be be found on other units (examples, just to name a few: cloaked jumping tank, jumping radar/jammer, high speed dgunner, high speed builder, riot+artillery). quote:
Should it be removed? |
Depends on who you ask. People who dislike commanders are in the minority (probably somewhere around 10% if messed-up polls are to be trusted). If this is the argument then please remove    ElTorero and pylons first, ElTorero being the biggest offender I can think of.
+3 / -0
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quote:
storage being the biggest offender I can think of. |
I feel offended by this comment
+9 / -0
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Sorry, I updated my previous post.
+1 / -0
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I would very much like to see more polish in implementation, but definitely don't want to see them removed. They're a great point of interest, add a lot of variability to games, and give some serious moves to higher tier play when you're getting the most out of your commander. To me they seem balanced pretty well, being of consequence but never removing the emphasis from units. Well... not in 1v1 anyway. I do find cloaked artie com particularly obnoxious in teams -> probably just haven't learned to deal with it properly though :/
+1 / -0
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I don't think com-morph is solely a noob-trap, though some of the upgrades might be. (You can take slow-beam on strike com, but not upgrade it to an actually worthwhile disruptor beam? why.) Some particular niches I am aware of which commander morph fills are: - Effective resurrect (though one could make an argument rez is an unnecessary feature) - Rocket com deals with defenders effectively - Disruptor bomb is a unique weapon and situationally even cost-effective (a rarity as high-level morphs go) I don't include artillery coms since I feel like that role is mostly filled by other units, even if not in quite the same way. I don't remember the last time I upgraded my commander past level 3, and it doesn't get beyond level 1 all that often, but it is occasionally useful to me that it exists. Athenas to rez your com, on the other hand, are a noobtrap. Does anyone actually build Athenas for anything else? (I experimented once with using them to spam fleas as tankfac.)
+1 / -0
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The unit line up in the Athena is pretty useful. It's even cheaper than a factory. Flea, Infiltrator, Scythe, Bandit, Ultimatum are all units that can supplement holes in other factories line-ups pretty well. Sniper, Gremlin, Panther and even Impaler can forfill some pretty useful niches aswell. The only thing that the Athena lacks to make a full unit line-up is a riot. But yeah, making an Athena just to resurrect a commander takes a lot of time to pay off and is pretty risky as the commander is likely to be in contested territory. Athena resurrecting is pretty viable lategame when excess energy is available though.
+6 / -0
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I feel like commanders and their morphing should stay but also should not be a uber great machines that dominate the entire battlefield. There should be a decisive anti heavy counters that would just deal with them same as other heavies have. On way I suppose that their weaponary would be limited a bit (for example remove all riot guns modules so that they would be more vounerable to light units. Commanders are units too btw but its just that the game should not be focused solely on them. This isn't a MOBA. Also about that Athena thing. 100 metal is not that big of a diffrence and dealing with athenas building certain units is kind of a pain :\ it is not one click like in a case with factory.
+0 / -0
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Commander morph will always remain somewhat useful as long as they can forfill some unique niches that no other unit forfill. Now the cost to morph limits the use of the commander in a specific role. Most useful commander morphs that have been found have been nerfed so that their potential role have become really small as the relative cost in counters becomes more effective(Infiltrators, Skuttles, Ravens, Ultimatum). Personally, I am against strong commander morphs as they are likely to add RPS to the metagame and prevents new players to compete on a level field until they are able to construct a diverse set of commanders on their own.
+0 / -0
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RPS is another thing altogether. If commanders morphs are going to stay it would be very nice for somebody to make dynamic commanders happen and I know in fact that there has been already some people talking about making it a reality. I eagerly look onto that idea.
+0 / -0
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I should add that it currently is blind RPS. You select the commander from the start and then you can't change it. If the enemy commanders counters your commander, you are immediately at a disadvantage. quote:
If commanders morphs are going to stay it would be very nice for somebody to make dynamic commanders happen and I know in fact that there has been already some people talking about making it a reality. I eagerly look onto that idea. |
Yeah. That would make it not be a blind RPS. However it seems really complex from a player perspective if you have to choose between all the different commander modules ingame.
+0 / -0
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Getting rid of pregame RPS would also require removing chassis-differences. Or moving them into modules that are picked at a higher level. I suggested removing chassis-differences and making Jump replace the lvl 3 weapon in the past, similar things could be done for other exotic/radical bonuses like +buildrange, in-combat-autorepair, etc. Basically players would have to decide between a very nice special ability or a second weapon/dgun. Iirc someone was modeling a modular commander that would get model-parts based on what modules are picked. Duh, so many similar words..
+3 / -0
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There isn't really a pregame RPS with chassis. Now arguably chassis and weapon is a bit of RPS but on the whole, not really. Like rocket com arguably beats most other coms in a duel but a rocket weapon makes the com worse vs raiders.
+0 / -0
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I think we need to make commanders more fun. If you want to get stronger commander you need to micro it harder, thus making you useless with other units. What can we do and is it ok to make commander morphing a more wanted feature in this game ?
+2 / -0
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No single-unit micro sinks. No increase in commander focus. This is an RTS, not a dota clone.
+0 / -0
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   [Er0]Godde: Don't get me wrong, I like the unit spread in Athenas, at least in theory... I just very rarely, if ever, see a good opportunity to use them (and where I can afford it over airswitching or something), or see anybody else find one. In other words, having thought about Athenas before I would like to like them, but most of the units they provide are early-game units. By the time I would switch to Athena I'd much prefer to be switching Reaper, Grizzly or Crabe or something than Panther, Bandit, etc. There's an argument to be made for switching for Sniper, Ultimatum and maybe Djinn or Halberd lategame, but I feel unless you need more than one of those it might just be better to facswitch, since you'll get the ability to build Glaives, Striders, Grizzly or Penetrator (respectively) into the bargain. EDIT: This is getting offtopic :/ I guess I don't have anything more to say about coms.
+1 / -0
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Athena is amazing, I think people are struggling to make it meet its full potential as it's not that user friendly. It has so many conditionally excellent units. Fleas, bandits, halbards, scythes, sharpshooter, impaler, infiltrator, gremlin -> all good units that some facs are lacking a good replacement to. You've even got combos with infiltrator setting up scythes, fleas, and impaler. It's hard on a tight economy, but later in teams especially I feel as if not having one is a mistake, or a limitation of player's ability. It's far from just a rez bot.
+2 / -0
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If any change were to happen to coms, it should be giving Jumpycom a new special. Its jump does not really compensate for the its tiny HP compared to the battlecom. The Support is super good at supporting, the Battlecom is super tanky, Bombardcom has that missle thing, Defaultcom has D-gun. Jumpy needs some love.
+0 / -0
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The only RPS comm I can think of that *MIGHT* be a balance concern is the RokOP Battle Comm. All the other starter combos function pretty much the same way.
+0 / -0
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