Commanders: Original Vision, Crippled Default, Future ?

[aubergine]

IMHO commanders need sensors anyway. Maybe have it so that 2 turret bodies are available earlier in the game, but specifically for use as commanders, in other words, have a set of such bodies where one of the turrets is predefined as a command turret, the other turret being free to add whatever you want (weapon/sensor).

For me sensors and commanders are really doing the same sort of thing. Sure, commanders have the experience thing and there are some other differences, but in practice I get no benefit from using a commander over a sensor droid. In fact, I'd say that sensor droids are way more effective as they can coordinate indirect fire from base defences as well as attached indirect fire droids. As the game progresses, sending a sensor in to the field to observe an enemy unit or structure and then have arty and missiles rain down on it is a very effective strategy. It's actually very effective in early game too, eg. with assigned mortar droids, as illustrated by NoQ's NullBot AI.

The extra experience of commanders is of little use when it's followers are being pummelled by arty and missiles!

[Emdek]

I don't like idea of exceptions.
I would simply allow for sensors to behave like commanders after researching that technology (and both could require existing CRC to have additional features).

[aubergine]

Or maybe just have a new turret that's a sensor+command turret? Sort of a mix between wide-spectrum and command.

[Emdek]

Personally I would leave commanders as specialized for "close combat" units and sensors as specialized equivalent for artillery.

[Shadow Wolf TJC]

Personally I would leave commanders as specialized for "close combat" units and sensors as specialized equivalent for artillery.

Same here. That's the kind of impression I had with commanders, due to their shorter range, higher HP, and exclusive ability to have direct-fire units assigned to them in addition to indirect-fire units.

[Rman Virgil]

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Like Iluvalar's proposals, this also strikes me as one of those candidates for implementation in the shorter-term for MP viabilty testing.

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The following thoughts I think are short term solutions, that could be implemented sooner, rather than later.

The unit cap should be removed. In the past I've suggested increasing the starting value to 10+ with a bigger increase bonus per rank. After revisiting commanders in-game, I'm now thinking that's not enough.

REMOVING UNIT CAP:

• benefits early-game on low oil maps
  • These are the first few minutes of the game when it's not a benefit to make commanders, in favor of micro'ing small groups to claim/steal oil, & before we have a decent body researched to build the command turret on. These [soon to be] obsolete units can be assigned to the Commander after one is made with out sacrificing units just so you can make better units
    • Recycling units 1 by 1 is excessive micro, and the alternative of recycling all units at once makes you vulnerable
• benefits maps with a lot of oil
  • this one is simple: more oil = more units sooner.
    • this almost always means your factories will stop producing units for a commander long before he gains rank -> unit cap goes up
• generally beneficial
  • this provides a solution for the frustration of loosing a commander so easily in MP.
    • Rank can still provide accuraccy and damage bonus, but you won't need to worry about what to do with 12/18 units when your commander is ganked.

My other "big idea" is one I've seen in the links above: the commander beam should operate as indirect fire.

INDIRECT FIRE COMMANDER BEAM

• Keeps the commander safe[r]
  • commanders could hide behind hardpoints and still tell indirect fire units to shoot, and send direct fire units to attack
    • this is a new issue, created in 3.1 targetting
  • commanders could hide behind terrain and tell units to fire/attack

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[Rman Virgil]

Rman, your sincere attempt to apply real velocity to this congregation is commendable. I shall assist where possible by not derailing, but rather supplying thrust with directing ideas.

Thank you - such keen insight of the total context of these goings-on is rare and that offer too, deeply appreciated.

Also..... bringing in Keith Laumer's "Bolo" creation is perfect. I hadn't thought about 'em for years. I read his first Bolo story decades ago (back in the 1970's I think). Recently I reread some of his Retief stories. I need to do likewise with his Bolo work. Thanks for that as well.

Let me ask you this. From your post quoted below, what specific changes from the present state can you identify (in list form) as being on the shorter term development continuum to take us to what you are describing?

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Regarding the CRC, one of the big concepts with Bolos is that they were always, *always, without fail*, attached to a human commander, or operator, if you prefer. Sometimes, the commander would prefer to ride into battle inside the unit, but could also stay back at Brigade HQ or a similar facility and direct the Unit just as well from there. The consoles at the CRC could be exact replicas of the command deck of a Bolo, therefore we could assume that all human commanders commune with their Bolos from the CRC.

Here's another thing, something that I should have mentioned earlier. What really makes Bolos seem like the ideal Commanders in WZ is this: in the story "Desert Fox", (which can be read here for free; I love Baen books!), Unit RML-1138 displayed a prowess for directly controlling light mechs which his operator had personally rewired to listen on one of RML's command frequencies. In other stories, Bolos have, in the event that they cannot raise HQ on comms, assumed that HQ had been compromised, and began coordinating with living, friendly troops in the field to throw the enemy's assault into disarray and try to turn the tides. Which they typically succeed at, being of comparable mass and ordnance to a battleship.

I'm not saying WZ needs true rolling fortresses, but we could handwave miniaturizing the psychotronic brains (or whatever you wish to call the tech that makes this all possible) and still get the job done. However, I would think that they really should be one of the most powerful, most heavily armored units on the field, given that we will have a limited number of them in theater.

As a point of reference for what I would identify as being on the longer term continuum of development there is this:

@Mirefrost00: That bit about oil derricks sounds very much like what I want my EggPlant AI to do - in that some troops would be sent to destroy enemy derrick, then protect the trucks it sends while building takes place to build and fortify and new derrick.

I too feel that commanders (and the CRC) should be able to run mini-AI scripts. Furthermore, I think that upgrade should expose more of the JS API over time, so that you can write a script that checks what's available in the API and does the best it can with what it has at the time. When more of the API gets exposed, it switches to using different functions (very easy to do with JS) that give it more competent abilities.

Unlike Bolos, I wouldn't want commanders to get to the point where they could take over entire planets on their own - that would make the game boring (despite at first seeming really awesome feature).

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[Rman Virgil]

Personally I would leave commanders as specialized for "close combat" units and sensors as specialized equivalent for artillery.

Same here. That's the kind of impression I had with commanders, due to their shorter range, higher HP, and exclusive ability to have direct-fire units assigned to them in addition to indirect-fire units.

+1

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[Rman Virgil]

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The following is an example of good points made that mixes short & long term viabilty. Identifying and segregating each is pivotal to procceeding practically and thus the order of business at hand.

Perhaps with the last few posts you can infer the pattern, the criteria for making those judgements. Or maybe it's worth pausing briefly to spell it out? Anyone wanna take a shot at it?

I like the commander

Some things that must be fixed, because they are bugs, and not just bad features (These are mentioned before):

* Artillery get suddenly unassigned, or not responsive or not going to repair when needed

* Trucks that go to repair and get stuck with trucks that return from repair, although they have PLENTY of room to avoid each other. (This happened to me not only with commanders)

* Assigned repair droids that don't know what to repair, and just rush forward to the enemy line (The commander first, then the others)

Things that I like are surprisingly things that others didn't like

* commander have a big limit on the number of units to start with, but then get power and can have more units. While the artillery assigned has no limits.

* commanders are much stronger and give bonuses to other units

* Commanders loose their experience when die

Features that will make me smile:

* The ability to recycle and upgrade a commander exclusively, meaning that even if other droids are being manufactured, his experience will be preserved to the next commander, and not go to a one lucky lancer cyborg bastard

* The ability when retreating that the artillery that is far behind the commander will not wait until the commander pass it, but start retreating immediately

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[aubergine]

* The ability to recycle and upgrade a commander exclusively, meaning that even if other droids are being manufactured, his experience will be preserved to the next commander, and not go to a one lucky lancer cyborg bastard

This should be trivial to implement in droid.cpp:

https://github.com/Warzone2100/warzone2 ... id.cpp#L93

https://github.com/Warzone2100/warzone2 ... d.cpp#L138

https://github.com/Warzone2100/warzone2 ... d.cpp#L351

https://github.com/Warzone2100/warzone2 ... .cpp#L1873

[Mirefrost00]

Let me ask you this. From your post quoted below, what specific changes from the present state can you identify (in list form) as being on the shorter term development continuum to take us to what you are describing?

To get the ball rolling on the Commander issue, it may help to start right now changing how the community looks at the Commander unit. Bringing them to the forefront of theater roles, doing what we can to make them more useful to all, in campaign and multiplayer alike, is what I view as the best way to do so.

Forgive me if my ideas are a bit too radical, but I'm not used to considering the desires and opinions of an entire community. What modding I've done in the past has been frankensteining pieces of other ideas together to make fun toys for myself in such games as Cortex Command and Dwarf Fortress. I will leave it to those of you more experienced in such consideration to determine at what rate we might accelerate along any paths chosen.

# - Removing or greatly increasing the unit cap is an excellent idea. It could be based on a much longer scale than the
standard experience ranks, so that you could still have a fresh Commander be limited in its command capacity, but
after some time in the field, grow to command 50+ units at once, which would find more use in the longer-term, I believe.

# - If not taking them to the full, stupendous scale of a Mk. XXX Bolo, the Commanders should still be the toughest things on
the battlefield. Consider that they will eventually be following generalized battle orders and choosing harrassment or strike
targets independent of the player's attention, meaning all at the same time. That, plus the large numbers of land and air
units they will be coordinating will make them popular targets. They should be able to singlehandedly best three or four
MBTs, and survive a few strikes from the heaviest artillery and still limp away to a Repair Facility. This will be balanced
as follows.

# - In their central role, as I envision it, they must also be more exclusive. No army should be able to field more than
three or four of these beasts in a given engagement. The logistical chain would strain to the breaking point, not only
repairing them and feeding their cannons, but the staff required at HQ and the CRC to maintain strategic momentum
for such massive battalions. Once we reach the long-term phase, the CRC should either be larger, and/or more expensive.
The Command Bolos should be more than worth the added trouble by that time.

tl;dr - For the short term:
- Increase the unit cap, and ramp up the gains per level.
- Make the Command Turret tougher, and take the idea someone mentioned regarding twin turret hulls for these guys, or beef
up the weapon.
- Limit each team to a small handful of Commanders, to balance their tremendous capabilities, and entice players to use them
to coordinate large battlegroups in theater.

Hope this is what you were asking for. I look forward to responses to this, as I need to gauge what you are all looking for.

P.S. - The CRC could be where Commander experience is stored, if that becomes an accepted idea. It really should be tied into every aspect of these guys' survival.

[Emdek]

Mirefrost00, I like these ideas, or at least I'm not negative for them.
So CRC from going to be module of HQ could have modules on its own.
Also about commander actions, I always wanted "preferred targets" or behaviors, like attack structures first, only engage a bit and return etc. (extending it looks like good task for mutators, when they would be allowed to inject menu entries or use terminal to entry SQL queries like orders).

[aubergine]

Should commanders/bolos be able to attack stuff? I'd argue that they shouldn't have a weapon. Due to their strength, if they had a weapon they could just march in to an enemy base and whist taking considerable damage in the process knock out key buildings like factories. A few VTOL strikes to take out remaining droids and it would be game over for the opponent.

While I'd certainly like to see a compelling reason for using commanders, I don't want to be forced to use them every game.

So, there should be a balance between a player who chooses to use commanders and a player who instead chooses to just have loads more units (because they've saved the time/cost associated with making bolos = they can build more normal units as a result) and manual micromanagement of them.

[Emdek]

Current designator beam is nice compromise for me and shouldn't be changed probably.

[Shadow Wolf TJC]

I agree with aubergine. I'm worried about commanders with actually damaging weapons, combined with their already high HP, being OP. I also don't like the idea of limiting how many can be deployed on the field either, given how many units players can have at a time. (Current unit cap is 150 for multiplayer/skirmish games I believe.) However, like I said before, I do support allowing commanders to have more units assigned to them.