I agree, the commander needs more to do. Dropping jeep ammo boxes etc is quite cool, but if not, why not ammo crates like it was suggested. I don't know how to make the comm's job more entertaining, but it needs to be done. Also it is more FPS and RTS, though i can think of no way to fix that (apart from making it turn based, but that would suck :D )
I will kill anyone who says the commander needs more to do. You should always check your units, target for them. Move your commander, use it for more than commanding. Commanders don't need more to do since it is boring, that is a damn lie. I've commanded for almost two years, and the only time I get bored is when the team I am on is stacked skill wise and we are just using APCs or something silly like that.
I'm with Cyber-Kun here, if you're finding it boring, then chances are you're not marking targets OR you're not updating targets you marked ages ago. There's also the rambo element to drop stuff for, people attacking your base...ninja's...there's always something to do (worry about).
Maybee we just need something that the comm is closer to the squads. More than one "camera" isnt possible? Special Squad views in small windows for the comm centered on the leader?
its only cause i used to play stratgey games alot when i was younger, and im used to have to constantly build units and build bases
I am about thease two guys: If You don't agree with them, skip to "----------". Lets assume that the Empires community need X of players that are able and are willing to command. Say the X=10% of the community, so on every 40 slot server there are four commanders currently willing to command, so we actually have a choice who to vote for. Lets also assume that the commanders must rotate, so they don't command every single game they play. Let's say that makes X=15% (so on a 40slot server we have 6 willing comms in average). Lets get a margin of security, because some players play in diffrent times than others and we need to be sure that in every game there are some commanders to choose from. Lets say that it makes X=20%. Now that we said that, we can also say that we don't currently have enough commanders in the community, so our current X<20%, lets say it's currently 8%. Cyber-Kun and Ikalx are ones of the comm's that find commanding fun at the moment. Not all current commanders think that, let's say half of current commanders think that they must command because someone has to command, to enable playing the game at all... It appears, that 4% of players (like Cyber-Kun and Ikalx) are a minority of the commanders we are targeting in this topic. I don't find commanding fun. Every day I play I have a bigger feeling like I need to rename myself to "Reef^dont_vote_for_me" and repeat "HOW DO I GET AMMO?" every time I connect to the server, so I can ride a tank or something. I am not saying Cyber-Kun and Ikalx are bad players or something... It's just that we dramaticly need to drasticly increase amount of players that can and will to command their team. The mod suffers hard from this X factor being too low. I know that even if there was no wh-like-targeting and no VF manipulation, some players could still find commanding usefull. But the X factor would be lower than it is now and it would be a pain. ---------- 1. Moose suggested plasma turrets in another thread... Turrets could be constructible like vehicles, so You have a box, power source, ammunition type and targeting system that You must choose to construct a turret. Standard equipment could be upgraded with researching, so mechanics branch would give You bigger boxes (more gun slots), electric would give You better targeting systems, bioML/biomg/plasmamg/dumg/.50/HEmg/uML weapon systems could be researched like (or possibly bundled with) normal guns. That would make constructing turrets more fun for the commander, wouldn't it. Turrets efficiency and heat managment could vary on power source ("engine"). The mechanizms are already at place (researching and diffrent guns are already implemented, construction gui will be used to construct vehicles and aircrafts, it could be used to construct turrets as well). That would entertain the commander, wouldn't it. The problem is to code it and to balance it (but researching every branch to have a superb turret is as hard as researching every branch to have a superb tank). 2. Also I thought that commander could lay mines close to the buildings (when the closest enemy is more than f.e. 1000gameunits away, to prevent instakilling enemy tanks near buildings). A mine could cost a few res. That would also keep the commander busy, doing good job for the glory of the team. 3. Another task for a commander could be adjusting refinery settings. Refineries sit on a steam source, that can randomly change it's pressure over (long) time. Refinery could be manually adjustable, to get maximum efficiency. This is hard to learn and could be SO unbalancing, but still I post it, maby someone will read it and say "this sucks, but I have another, similar, brilliant idea". Or maby it's easy to balance it, who knows. 4. Commander could have a sattelite laser energy beam that would be able to pass an impulse of say 30 engineer energy points to a given unbuilt (/damaged?) target building (/tank) every minute. This is something similar to the BF2 things like dropping arty/jeep/ammo_and_health_crate. Noone enjoys running as engy to the very other side of the map to repair a damaged/sabotaged turret/ref. It would take commander 3 minutes to repair such a thing from a distance (this is fun for a commander, instantly codable, doesn't unbalance anything). Comments please.
If you want the commander to be more fun, add Tetris. Sure they would suck as commanding but they would have fun! Real suggestion time. Having fun is not exactly something you can do with commanders. Make-your-own-turrets : Mega-massive unbalanced. It would also take a lot of time to make turrets but that issue could be solved with pre-sets. Commander-Place-Mines : Rush team, place mines. Even if it took research to get, what is the point? Grens would do a better job. Check-All-You-Refs-Every-Minute : That doesn't even sound fun in any way, shape, of form. Even you should agree on this one. Lets-Repair-Things-From-Far-Away : This repair thing should be silly, but it would be nice if buildings did slowly repair themselves if they are over 90% health. Random tank shells do piss me off. Full repairing, no. *Edit* I do agree we need more commanders though...
Maby we should. As I said, we are desperate. Mod is not dying, but it's growth could be faster. Solution of this problem is wroth an effort of thinking. Should I really use "want-ership-to-be-a-commander" (WETBAC) instead of "fun"? After all this turrets system modification it would have to be rebalanced. Probably the standard turret would be weakened and upgrades would be free with upgrading stuff for tanks, so when You get medium chassis, You get lvl2 turret chassis as well. When You get improoved tracking research (preHoming and preGuided), You turrets starts to track better and/or they increase range - etc. (the tracking system improovment is an exception of the rule that You need to build a new turret to use new features. Turret's firmware can be upgraded via satellite ). This can be balanced, I didn't say that turrets should be superweapons, I only said that it could be customizable. Will airplanes be overpowered only because they will be customisable? When commander is bored, he can spend a few minutes on protecting his structures by mining them. You don't have to use it if You don't like it, but some bored comms can use it and not get annoyed, so they will want to be elected on next map. I can comm 2-3 maps, then I am so bored I don't want to do it anymore. You are right, Check-All-You-Refs-Every-Minute idea fails. Thanks for pointing that out. Have read all of it? It would charge for 60s, and the amount of energy that could be transfered (through the atmosphere) would be 30 (unupgraded) engineer points. We could add a few seconds of delay between the order and the beam fire for targetting the sattelite, to discourage repairing something that is currently under fire. It would take 4 or 5 minutes to repair heavily damaged refinery! The thing could charge like a stamina bar (like in BF2) or like invisibility/speed/armour squad skill clock (like paratroopers in old C&C's). Adding 30 healthpoints to a building is probably a one-liner. Beam from far above the center of the map to the given point is very easy as well.
Yes. Think about what the commander is doing. Telling everyone what to do and making sure they can do it. The commander doesn't get to 'fight' and he sits there watching the game. You will not have as much fun as you would in a NF light, but people need to command. As suggestion 3 has been shot down, and suggestion 2 is deemed unimportant I will try to work on suggestion 1 and 4. This idea can be balanced. The issue is of how much work the turrets would be and stronger. If you do the right research, the turrets would be more imposable to kill than they already are. Plasma turrets? Spam a few of them and you can't fire and not overheat. Upgraded turret range? Unless you nerf the lvl 1 range, any increase in lvl 2-3 turrets would be huge. I do agree a new turret, like a bio turret (6 damage for 10 seconds, if the damage kills one armor side, the hull takes 20 damage) could be added. Even the bio turret, cool, but the time needed. It would not deal well to make turrets an other thing to try to figure out as commander as that could easy make commanding harder. Well this could be added. I don't have much to say why it is bad, as well it does what it does. I can't see it breaking the game in any way, it just seems like a single engine would be better in almost every way and would be a waste to code.
I personaly belive that The difficulties with commanding can be fixed with a more intuitive and streamlined interface.
http://forums.empiresmod.com/showthread.php?t=5017 http://forums.empiresmod.com/showthread.php?t=5059 http://forums.empiresmod.com/showthread.php?t=4215 I've been working to solve this problem one piece at a time.
I don't mean competently alter one thing, just do some needed fixings. The ability to pick all the units from one squad. See what class units are in the mini-box when you have multiple units selected. Things like that.
I think that Squad select Icons could be above the map in the upper left, like the "Select hero" icons in warcraft 3.
Letter as in alpha? thats a good idea. But mankind learns visualy. Advanced coms, could use quik keys but Icons are learner friendly.
With this attitude, we wont increase the average "want-ership-to-be-a-commander" (WETBAC) of the Empires players. You seem to ignore this fact. I think after my last post it's clear that we need like 5 times as much commanders as we have now. How do we actually make people want to command? Not to "command, because someone has to do it so the server doesn't get empty". I mean someone that WANTS to command and says "choose me! choose me!" for more than 3 maps in a row. How do we do that without creating things that commander can do? Tell me, maby Your ideas will solve the problem. Shooting down ideas without posting ones Yourself is rude. If we don't change anything, only few players like You will want to command and this is just not enough. So we have to add some things. We have energy beam, commander mines, custom turrets, drawing on map, +some minor gui improovments and bugfixes. We still need more ideas. After You know how to construct vehicles, and You see similar menu for creating aircrafts, You will easily learn how to use the similar menu for creating turrets. It looks the same and has the same technologies, so what's the problem? What engine are You talking about?
