Giving more for commanders to do
innociv
Join Date: 2009-11-05 Member: 69280Members
Join Date: 2009-11-05 Member: 69280Members
As a disclaimer, I didn't play a whole lot of commander in Natural Selection2, I'd always give the spot up if there was someone better at it. I didn't start NS until 2.0, so lots had more experience than me. I was, however, the top 2 of commanders in Savage2, which in my opinion did commander TERRIBLY(to the devs own admission, but I guess they figured no ones playing the commanders so there is no reason to fix them..). But, I still played as commander in Savage2 because I enjoyed the praise from my teamates and I liked playing the leader.
This post stems from how commanders no longer drop equipment, which don't get me wrong I think was an ideal mechanic. But, there are Pros and cons of it.
The con's being:
-Players couldn't get what they wanted.
-The "right" player didn't always get the item, in the same sense people often wasted resources.
-It was simply silly, really. Players getting their own from a building just makes more sense.
But, it still had pro's.
-Players couldn't get what they wanted.
-It required attention from the commander to keep people supplied. Just spamming drops on the floor for anyone to grab meant not-so-smart players wasting them.
Players not getting what they wanted is both a pro and a con here, because taking Starcraft for example a good RTS at its core has a strong scout-and-counter mechanic. You see what the enemy is doing, whether its spending money on teching or equipment, and what they are teching to so you know what to except. Then you build or tech what counters their building, and they do the same. The commander giving people what he wanted them to have to counter what the enemy was doing better made it somewhat of a good thing.
So, the question for that is, how will the commander help enforce his countering when it's just by tech?
-You wouldn't want to be able to just lock out items so people can't buy what they want. In the end, they should be able to get what they want, because that's fun.
-You aren't always playing with buddies or clanmates where they'll listen to what you tell them to get on mic.
-People might not see your chat messages.
So what about something like the commander being able to select the equipment building and offer a "co-pay" on certain items, or even pay for it all so people get them free? If a commander is offering 50% on say flamethrowers, then when someone buys one they pay half what they usually do and the other dedubts from the commanders pool of resources. So, you are sacrificing teching in order to "build more units"(in the traditional RTS sense equiping the teams marines is like building more units, you are getting a more powerful "army")-This adds depth, the choice between teching and building an army.
My gripe with Savage2, and I'm not saying NS2 will go there, is that commander can't do much. The commander's intelligence and skill mostly only matters when the teams are even. Having one really go player on one team and not another makes a drastically larger difference. All the commander did in Savage2 was had a top-down view to place buildings, and had some abilities that cost energy and had long timers, which were very weak, and 3 builder units that had a decent attack. In Savage2, commander is mainly better eyes, they can ping the target, but often matches had NO commander, because another person on foot fighting was better than all but the top commander players.
In contrast, StarCraft2 has you constantly scouting, expanding, looking around, building, teching, and microing units.
Which brings me to the whole point of having brought up the dropping weapons gone is that it requires "babying" from the commander for the team to do well. While dropping weapons for people isn't the ideal form of baby'ing, another form of baby'ing needs to be added in it's place.
There is mention of 2 or 3 commanders at once, so they need lots to do that requires attention besides scouting and pinging the map, right? Things that require doing things at the right time, and clicking buttons.
An example of this has already been talked about, in the form of Nymph's exploding to make a flashbang. That's exactly what I'm going on about here. Savage2 had some commander abilities, which were could be used from anywhere like the hand of god, but where pretty weak like the hand of a baby. There was also no tech-tree for the commanders ability in Savage2.
It stands to reason, that if you put "commander abilities" on the droids and nymphs, you can have much stronger ones given that these can be destroyed, and there is tech progression. The commander's have to keep moving these with their troops(of course a follow option would be nice, but then they'd be more easily destroyed when stray attacks can hit them and they're easier to see.).
It gives something else for the commander to baby, to steal their attention and make them forget about teching, or not realize they're spending too many resources on instead of just the right amount to be effective.
Further, to differentiate the sides, the Kharaa nymphs should always sacrifice themselves on using abilities, and droids not. An example being what was already said with the Nymph exploding flashbang. Some ideas for more of those abilities would be:
-Presumably offensive/defencive chambers will only be buildable on the dynamic infestation. How about sacrifcing a nymph to make it splatter infestation around the nearby area? So if you need an offensive up front, you need to follow your gorge with one and use it on a good spot.
-Some bubbleshield maybe around the droid that protects marines in it from long range attacks.
-Repairing armor on one droid with another(But not self), and repairing teamates armor with a droid.
The abilities don't really matter, rather the having baby'ing that the commander can do that requires attention instead of him just placing buildings.
This post stems from how commanders no longer drop equipment, which don't get me wrong I think was an ideal mechanic. But, there are Pros and cons of it.
The con's being:
-Players couldn't get what they wanted.
-The "right" player didn't always get the item, in the same sense people often wasted resources.
-It was simply silly, really. Players getting their own from a building just makes more sense.
But, it still had pro's.
-Players couldn't get what they wanted.
-It required attention from the commander to keep people supplied. Just spamming drops on the floor for anyone to grab meant not-so-smart players wasting them.
Players not getting what they wanted is both a pro and a con here, because taking Starcraft for example a good RTS at its core has a strong scout-and-counter mechanic. You see what the enemy is doing, whether its spending money on teching or equipment, and what they are teching to so you know what to except. Then you build or tech what counters their building, and they do the same. The commander giving people what he wanted them to have to counter what the enemy was doing better made it somewhat of a good thing.
So, the question for that is, how will the commander help enforce his countering when it's just by tech?
-You wouldn't want to be able to just lock out items so people can't buy what they want. In the end, they should be able to get what they want, because that's fun.
-You aren't always playing with buddies or clanmates where they'll listen to what you tell them to get on mic.
-People might not see your chat messages.
So what about something like the commander being able to select the equipment building and offer a "co-pay" on certain items, or even pay for it all so people get them free? If a commander is offering 50% on say flamethrowers, then when someone buys one they pay half what they usually do and the other dedubts from the commanders pool of resources. So, you are sacrificing teching in order to "build more units"(in the traditional RTS sense equiping the teams marines is like building more units, you are getting a more powerful "army")-This adds depth, the choice between teching and building an army.
My gripe with Savage2, and I'm not saying NS2 will go there, is that commander can't do much. The commander's intelligence and skill mostly only matters when the teams are even. Having one really go player on one team and not another makes a drastically larger difference. All the commander did in Savage2 was had a top-down view to place buildings, and had some abilities that cost energy and had long timers, which were very weak, and 3 builder units that had a decent attack. In Savage2, commander is mainly better eyes, they can ping the target, but often matches had NO commander, because another person on foot fighting was better than all but the top commander players.
In contrast, StarCraft2 has you constantly scouting, expanding, looking around, building, teching, and microing units.
Which brings me to the whole point of having brought up the dropping weapons gone is that it requires "babying" from the commander for the team to do well. While dropping weapons for people isn't the ideal form of baby'ing, another form of baby'ing needs to be added in it's place.
There is mention of 2 or 3 commanders at once, so they need lots to do that requires attention besides scouting and pinging the map, right? Things that require doing things at the right time, and clicking buttons.
An example of this has already been talked about, in the form of Nymph's exploding to make a flashbang. That's exactly what I'm going on about here. Savage2 had some commander abilities, which were could be used from anywhere like the hand of god, but where pretty weak like the hand of a baby. There was also no tech-tree for the commanders ability in Savage2.
It stands to reason, that if you put "commander abilities" on the droids and nymphs, you can have much stronger ones given that these can be destroyed, and there is tech progression. The commander's have to keep moving these with their troops(of course a follow option would be nice, but then they'd be more easily destroyed when stray attacks can hit them and they're easier to see.).
It gives something else for the commander to baby, to steal their attention and make them forget about teching, or not realize they're spending too many resources on instead of just the right amount to be effective.
Further, to differentiate the sides, the Kharaa nymphs should always sacrifice themselves on using abilities, and droids not. An example being what was already said with the Nymph exploding flashbang. Some ideas for more of those abilities would be:
-Presumably offensive/defencive chambers will only be buildable on the dynamic infestation. How about sacrifcing a nymph to make it splatter infestation around the nearby area? So if you need an offensive up front, you need to follow your gorge with one and use it on a good spot.
-Some bubbleshield maybe around the droid that protects marines in it from long range attacks.
-Repairing armor on one droid with another(But not self), and repairing teamates armor with a droid.
The abilities don't really matter, rather the having baby'ing that the commander can do that requires attention instead of him just placing buildings.
Comments
Kinda like it. Still allows the comm to remain independent (something NS2 has placed as a goal) and gives the comms more power over the game instead of pure spam drops. The question though is what is the economy for these comm techs? The same res pool that everyone is fighting over or perhaps generated some other way?
But one notable thing is that if the commander does have an ability to co-pay for equipment, then 12 people perteam instead of 6 means your commander resource pool is being zapped by more people possibly buying what you offer a co-pay on.
And with balancing droids and nymphs; Are they decimated with 12 people per team and overpowered with just 4?
From a theorycrafting point of view something like increased commander resource gain per player would make sense, but then that means more money for teching as well. You could also increase building cost per player there so in comparison the droids/nymph abilities or what have you and copay'ing is cheaper in comparison, but then what about the player count not being stable?
I'm not sure how that the whole balance with varying playercounts would work out with those two things, but I'm sure something can make it work. Something to give the commander power for countering what the other team is doing and giving him stuff to baby and pay attention is needed in my opinion.
It's fun when you can have your whole team retreating before they're dying, and around a corner you give them some defense or a heal real quick that suddenly has them able to turn it around, slaughter the enemy, and you get a resource captured or have theirs clear to take down. It's those type of sudden things that usually a really good player suddenly popping in to help, or a commander's ability could do in a short time scale.
I liked the co-pay thing haha :D
So should I of named the thread "COMMANDER SUCKS"? :[ I'm glad the responses are positive, but not many have read or responded.
I like the fact that commanders no longer have explicit control over my marine game, but I wondered how commanders could still, well, COMMAND, when they had no direct influence over their marines.
I think the commander should be able to give his marines subtle prods into doing what he wants, such as if a metric ----ton of fades start pouring out of the walls, he can do something to encourage shotgun purchases aside from yelling frantically over the voice comms.
I think I'd prefer a moveable "Focus" marker, that could be moved between, say various buildings, weapons, or tech trees. For instance, when you put focus on the shotgun, maybe it goes from costing 10 resources to 8 resources. Or whatever. If the marines are doing fine, you could put your focus on advancing tech tree paths (slightly faster time, or slightly cheaper). Say a hive goes up unexpectedly and you need to get your siege engines made ASAP to prevent losses, move the "Focus" to siege engine construction.
There would need to be some sort of CoolDown on moving it, something like it can't be moved for 2 minutes after being applied to something.
I think something like this would allow the commander to continue his role of "scout and counter" as mentioned earlier, and keep him from being a pointless NPC resource herder.
This is the kind of thinking that made commanding in NS1 so boring. The commander does not make the team's strategy, the entire team makes their own, and it's best to address that upfront rather so that you can give the comm something else to do.
I think the OP is saying the NPC's should have abilities that the commander can micro. I agree with this to some extent. I'll add to it by saying that I've recently come to think that the only way a FPS/RTS can be fun for both sides is if the RTS players have NPCs they control and that can engage in combat and if each side can counter each other. For example, and not necessarily in NS, imagine if the FPS players on the opposing team had a lot of snipers and were killing our FPS players. As a commander, I would make an armored anti-troop vehicle to take out the snipers. Now their snipers have the choice of going a rocket troops to kill my armored vehicle or maybe their commander pumps out a tank to kill it. In this scenario a team's commander could be useless but the FPS players could set up and get the win or vise versa.
So far we know about the siege tank and weld bots for the marine's commander so, in my opinion, that's a start in the right direction.
continuous fire for track slow moving targets
or burst fire, for doing maxium damage to fast moving targets before they leap/blink out of firing range
That sounds like a more general pub problem. The games are best organized through the commander's interface, and it sounds like you want to cut out the commander "commanding" players entirely.
That may be how things work in NS in general, but it might not be what Flayra&co really want commanders to do.
That may be how things work in NS in general, but it might not be what Flayra&co really want commanders to do.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
It's how things work in every team game that requires communication. I guess if you define "commanding" as "creating a strategy then pleading with your teammates to follow through with it'" then yes, I'd like to cut out "commanding."
Strategies are created by the team as a whole and often progress throughout the match on the fly in reaction to the other team's strategy. This isn't an RTS and because the commander cannot directly control the marine's its <i>absolutely</i> silly to make creating the team's strategy a major duty of a commander. Forcing this role upon the commander leads to frustration, boredom, or both which was common in NS1. I highly doubt UWE will make the same mistake with NS2 as they did with NS1.
Interface is king on communication things.
Yeah I read about the siege tank too. I think escorting it is going to be really fun. But when I read about nymphs, weld bots, and how devs where considering making it so commanders can explode nymphs like a flashbang I couldn't help but think this could be taken much further.
Commanders need units(and possibly buildings) to micro. I think these should be able healing/repairing/buffing/debuffing and not damaging the enemy though(except in the case of siege tank for destroying buildings I presume.) It is not fun for players to get attacked by AI controlled units(But turrets aren't so bad), and kills stolen from people by them.