As discussed before. Being a commander is not really rewarding. Commanding as of now is a deskjob. 1. Placing buildings 2. Giving targets 3. Researching Those are the 3 jobs you do and thats it. Whats rewarding about commanding is fieldcommanding, general strategy. But thats something commanders dont always do or have to do. Theres no way to differentiate a good commander with a great commander in the sense thats impossible for a comm to give their team an edge over the other team based solely on his merits as a great commander. If we could find a way to add a job to the commander in which a phenomenal commander can differentiate themselves from good commanders that'd be great. When people compliment a commander and go, good commanding comm its either 1) He actually did great strategy or 2) He didnt die and placed buildings and researched. 1) gives the commanding player actually satisfaction 2) just means he didnt suck dick ballz. We need to add something to make commanding attractive and rewarding. Like how a single rifleman can turn an entire part of the map around. A good commander should be able to really help their team win more than a moderate commander can. There should be more impact due to excellency instead of non failure. tldr: we need ideas lets brainstorm
tl;dr effective communication is often overlooked. Tbh, since the removal of the mass target system, there hasn't been much to distinguish good commanders from great commanders. Great commanders were the ones that could provide targets at all crucial moments of the game, providing it through a habit developed from many rounds of Empires. You are right in your analysis, there isn't much for a commander to do, and that isn't necessarily a bad thing. From what I recall, having to provide mass targets was a major hindrance on the other actions commanders can take, such as dropping armories and turrets. I'll briefly go over what a commander can do to distinguish himself from this supposed set of 'good commanders'. To begin, good commanders know how to communicate with mediocre success, such as "take this objective, after that do Z". Whether the team follows those commands is another thing. Great commanders, when they issue out commands, have the majority of their team following through, no matter how dumb they are (e.g. a tank rush strat that is disorganized). At such a point in Empires, a hierarchy of communication between the commander and his peons is needed in order to win in a convincing fashion. The driving force between good commanders and great commanders is attention to detail, to point out close to everything that they can see. I don't see good commanders doing this, they simply give individual targets, forgetting to point out how many enemies there are and updating that number periodically. The quieter you are, the worse it can be for your team (there are some cases in that the more you talk, the more detrimental you are to your team's effectiveness). I'll touch on game sense as well, as it ties into communication. Game sense is another factor that separates good commanders from great commanders. After many many many rounds of Empires, it becomes first nature. Or at least the playing part, not so much the commanding part. The real veteran experience will come into effect, to know what to do at close to every moment of the game. To make the stupid shot calls such as "we should organize a rush on the enemy commander" or "everyone target the same tank with your HEMG and kill him near instantaneously" (I recall BSID doing this in a scrim against EPIC on emp_cyclopean, one of the greatest displays of teamwork ever to have graced the game). While good commanders can tell their team the next objective, sometimes they go quiet when they don't know what to do. That's when we see the players with the most veteran experience stepping up, e.g. you or FN198 or that one guy who is the best player on the team. I'm not trying to imply you are worse than a great commander because you can't call the shots at every moment in the game. On the contrary, this can be easily substituted in one's commanding style, effective communication serving to bring out the best in one's players (e.g. your player needs direction, you micro-manage him). The example I provided in parenthesis is a little weak given that squad leaders should be in charge of micro-management, but maybe this can press to my next point on hierarchy in communication. To enforce a communication hierarchy in Empires is something only a madman can hope to accomplish. Given the current squad system, an example hierarchy that I see being strived for is Commander > Squad Leaders > Squadmates, we're not including the exception of floater squads because they have no place in this structure. This hierarchy doesn't always work out, one squad leader isn't as strong as the other. Squads that are grouped up tend to stick near one another, or given the situation of the map (e.g. duststorm), you're going to want to spread out as much as possible. Squadmates tend to split from the pack when it comes to building individual refineries, failing to catch up and at some point losing direction in the game (game sense playing a key role in their actions). I guess I'm trying to get at a point of natural leaders versus designated leaders, the natural leaders show from game-by-game and are different every game. Empires is a game in that sticking together isn't a bad thing, but you'll need to split down the road or else you have you miss the enemy slipping through the cracks. As the hierarchy is, commanders communicate to squad leaders that communicate to squadmates, or commanders to all peons, it just doesn't work. Someone knows something that the commander doesn't, the commander chair only provides so much but the players have a different sense of the game. I'd like to recall a certain game situation, in that my teammates believed they were losing the game, when in actuality from commander view, it looked like a stalemate. The atmosphere in the team is bad, the designated leaders have no clue what to do or just have the worst luck. The natural leaders step up, leading their team towards the obvious objectives in an effective manner. This also speaks to the comfortability and familiarity with teammates, I personally feel that you need to be comfortable and admire the players you are playing with in order to bring out the best in yourself. If I was being led by some random vet, (e.g. Rehnquist, sorry for the call out, it just seemed like the best example at the time given my experience), I'm not going to look at him to make the tough calls. I had no clue who he actually was when it came to an emp_slaughtered scrim, BSID vs JPL, and that entire squad that was sent to s-bend was completely shitted on, a lost cause from the start. Not to discredit Rehnquist, but he seemed to appear out of nowhere, showing up after months of inactivity or at least having played in a different timezone than the majority of the players in the squad. We lost that game, and I think a big reason for that was inexperience and lack of leadership. So I guess I'll have to wrap this up, this text is becoming quite long. In conclusion, effective communication is what makes good commanders great commanders, by bringing out the best in your team, enforcing a hierarchy when necessary, micro-managing players, stepping up as a natural leader or being a role model to players, having attention to detail + relaying that with ease, and lastly having a strong game sense to make calls. Do I think commander should be changed? I think to an extent you are right in your suggestions superficially, but there is much more going on behind the scenes than we credit.
while you are right lawliet - what distinquishes good from great comms are mainly social factors - you cannot base a game mechanic on the hope for enough "natural leaders". or you can, but its not so smart of a move. especially because barely anyone really wants to take the boomtank.
Empires late game is actually pretty complicated, I have to say. Empires summer league game 1 is a nice example. When we are 40 mins into the game, hardly anyone knows what should people should be doing. A great comm should be able to look at minimap for 5 secs and instantly know where to strike.
Again, thats not intrinsicly the commanders job. Thats the leaders job, this could be the guy in the CV, this also could be the trickster that is 0-10 as a scout in his team
Maybe empires should have 2 "roles"? The leader and commander. Of course these could be occupied by the same person. But maybe having a leader (general/tactician?) person to assist the commander with tactics. Normally a commander needs an engineer to stay back at base and build stuff, so perhaps this person could also have this "leader" role and help? I know this normally happens in PUGs, but perhaps trying to introduce it to normal medium/high pop games? Or as a more radical idea, the radar doesn't get much use... So what about giving it a screen or something that puts a player into a semi-commander mode. Where they can give squad targets and move around the battlefield like the commander. Or maybe a third seat in the comm vehicle, or a different "command centre" building (limited to 1)?
Im not saying those 2 arent 2 roles, Im saying they could be 2 roles, and the role isnt specifically tied to the commander. Introducing this in pub games is not a good idea. You barely have enoughc ommanders, needed 4 people would be even worse
If you want commanders to be more in a commander role instead of builder role you need to give him better tools to guide people into what they need to do. Commanders need: A way to instantly select a whole squad, there's the unit menu but it's unheard of and not very convenient. Something like alt-1 for alpha, alt-2 for bravo, whatever would be great. A way to do multiple waypoints. Ctrl right click to set multiple waypoints for a group or a squad, so they can move here, guard this, attack this, then move out to here. A task list might be nice. Similar to above except you see the list when you see the spawn map, so players can see a general sense of what they should be doing. Might even be nice to add a task and type in what you want, if a simple guard order doesn't really cover what you want. Also helps if you have less linear thoughts on what a squad needs to be doing, like you want someone to go around getting refs and supporting one of the frontlines. When you right click your comm vehicle to place a guard order, players get a special message like "YOUR COMMANDER IS DYING, HELP HIM" to show they really really should do something about it. When trying to drop buildings players can see a ghost or blueprint of it, so they know if they are in the way or where to go to start building. If you notice from the above the 2 main things is it helps commanders to command without excessive use of the mic, and gives better tools to guide squads. We do have comms that use text chat but honestly no one reads it, but a big friendly pointer saying "GO HERE" is hard to miss. I don't feel like the main deciding factor between a good comm and an average one is the use of a mic, that's honestly kinda lame. We also have a good way of dealing with groups, squads. We just don't have good ways of giving them orders that will stick around and remind them what to do. If a commander doesn't have to keep telling a squad what to do it helps them do more for other members and helps the squad lead not get so annoyed they end up not doing it(I've seen this happen before, it's not fun) At the end of the day squad leads should be leading squads and basically the team, with the commander giving an overview of what's happening so squad leads know what they should be doing which helps the rest of the team to stop running around clueless.
@Lazybum Thats not what I was trying to bring up or achieve. I dont need commanders to be more tactical cause like I said thats another role, a comander could take but isnt intrinsically the commanders job. I want ways for great commanders to differentiate them from ok commanders. I dont want tools to make commanders be able to lead better, cause leading isnt perse his job. To give a very bad idea, to make this all clear what I think is the problem, commanders should play tic tac toe against each other every 2 minutes for free 500 res. So the better commander gives their team a slight edge.
a 3d cursor (a beam?) would also be neat to tell people what you mean with "over there", "here" and whatnot. this actually is interesting, i wonder about the actual implementation though, sounds not so trivial to archieve (or i might have a wrong idea of what you meant) this actually should have been in the game since forever. also cut the amount of squads, who needs 26 squads in a game where you can only have 31 players max on a team (i didnt count comm bc he cant be in a squad anyway, at least not permanently). if its really about people cant live without being hotel or whiskey, let the squadleader rename their squad (but keep the corresponding number). i think 10 squads are more then enough, i wonder if i ever seen more than 5 in a (serious) game.
Ah, I guess I can see that, but I kinda disagree? From my perspective, commanding falls under 2 categories which also kinda fall under 2 map styles, chokepoints or open maps. Chokepoints are where I see what you want coming in to play, after all there ain't much to do on quite a few chokepoint maps as comm. The only want to help your team at that point is playing some sort of minigame, or build more turrets at your base incase something does happen which doesn't quite help the rest of the team at that moment. For this yeah I'd like something else to help the team, because I tend to do donuts in the cv while staring at the minimap. Sounds bad but quite a few chokepoint maps are just that boring to command. For open maps though, I think there's no shortage of things to do. From deciding that you need to move out of base to help fortify forward lines; to setting up bases just right to help minimize enemies rushing them; to making sure your moving frontlines are well supplied with armories, walls, turrets, repair pads; doing all that while building your own buildings, handing out targets and making sure you ain't dying to random ninjas these open maps are have quite enough going on for commanders. This is where I want my list of extra tools, because quite honestly I'm not a big talker so I really need passive ways of telling the team they need to do things or else we lose. So in short, I feel like in open maps the difference between good and great comms is quite apparent, in choke points there isn't too much difference which is where I see why you want something extra. I don't see much really happening here to be honest, these maps I don't think should really be played at higher pops. At low pops there's more to do because then comm has to start boom tanking or at least get refs or build forward bases while peons go out and attack. At high pops it's boring shit. Open maps don't have any of these problems, for comms at least.
yeah there should be comm powers that let commanders directly influence the battle. no superpower like kill everyone, but something subtile that gives an edge. ofc it needs cooldowns so you cant keep them up at all fronts at the same time and makes it more of a strategic choice (and ofc fx and shit) the closest there is to this atm is offensive wall/building placement, but it often fails due to "enemy too close" (which is understandable)
Ok lets talk about open maps then. So your intrinsic commander job is to basicly build build research build build, dont get rushed/ninjad. Thats not very rewarding, or technically difficult. Who would want that job like honestly. IDEA: When you are in the CV and you build a vehicle from CV menu, you get to controle it. When vehicle dies you just "spawn" in CV again. That way commanders can play APC or tanks or what ever in their downtime. Another idea: The objective is to kill enemy CV, the commander can drive the CV. But also the commander can do researchplace buildings as an infantry. Commander MUST be engineer though. Engineer commanders when pressing f2 in calculator mode get to do commander stuff, but litterally afk on the field at that point
Aight way too many text walls above, not reading them. I'm going to try and be as brief as I can about my thoughts: Commander's problem currently is his inability to actually direct his team. It's actually no easier for someone to actually lead their team from the command vehicle than it is from the ground. Right now, the best commanders can only really stick out by making little micro-interventions around the map, such as saying "Hey Paradox, I've just marked a guy coming round the corner to get you" or whatever, helping his team win little engagements that hopefully might add up. This is micro-management, and it's not the part of an RTS that should be in an RTS/FPS game for the commander. Everything else is mind numbingly easy. What the commander needs is the ability to direct both squads and players much more clearly, using almost single-player game style objectives. He shouldn't be about micromanaging at all, it should be entirely macro. That is, I should have an easy way of giving Alpha a set of responsibilities. I tell them the area I want them to take, as well as which refineries are their responsibility. It needs to be so that even a brand new player is basically told what he needs to go and do. A layer below that can be the squad leader insinuating how to go about it, such as using vehicles or whatever, but that's less important because for the sake of 5 people, voice comms will suffice. Secondly, the commander needs way more control over resources and vehicles. That is, he needs to be able to set how many vehicles of each type he wants, or even weaponry for that matter. He needs to be able to set these specific limits in order to shape the vehicle make-up of his team and allow them to attack in the way he wants. Wages also cause problems with this. In my opinion, wages go against the entire purpose of an RTS/FPS game, and have absolutely no place within the game. That's really it in my opinion. Give the commander more ability to actually influence, direct and lead his team, and it will be possible for commanding to actually be about commanding your team, rather than just facilitating other people's play. EDIT: With regard to micromanagement, or "micro-interventions" as I like to think of them (as mentioned above), you could of course add more of these. Comm powers etc, but I think they're just extra content that would be nice, rather than actually addressing the core issue with being the commander having nothing to do with actually commanding your team currently. That's what needs to be changed first, anything else is just superficial.
Cv as a spawn point sounds like a bad idea to me. A nearly indestructible apc? This just encourages the boomtanking, which is exactly what hobbes needs now that I think about it. Like it might work out, but all I see is the one team with people who know what killspawn means winning every match within 5 minutes. Spawning something from menu and having direct control does sound neat, but all I can see is bad comms losing the cv because they tanking and not taking care of the cv. This kinda reminds me, whatever it is you propose I don't think should either make it harder for new comms or make it easier for them to lose. Honestly the best difference between competent comms and squad leads is how often they read that minimap and understand it at a glance, virtually every new comm is bad at that. Flasche's comm powers is probably the way to go about it if you want more direct access, but as previously said it's a tricky situation to deal with. The best I can think of is this area of effect for something like squad powers. Like all inf here get 20% more damage, or 2hp regen. Tanks have increased armor, 10% less damage. I dunno, but whether it's on a timer or just costs res it's going to be a strange addition. I also don't like the thought of being constantly yelled at by players to give them buffs, them constantly asking for targets every 5 seconds is bad enough. I dunno if comming open maps is unfun, there's a lot of satisfaction on a well placed base. Simple enjoyment doing everything else too. And if it's too easy or that part is boring there's always the leading part people can do. While people don't listen they do inherently listen more the commander then some random guy from team generally.
@Trickster i dont think commanders should dictate the game for everyone, it only makes the impact a not so good comm has worse. aside of that, i dont think this game will become any more appealing if you take away freedom from players. yes, empires is a genre blend, but for almost everyone on a team the reality is FPS. if you want full controll over your pawns you better play a real RTS. i rather think there should be more features that integrate the commander role into FPS rather than the quite detatched building-drop/reserach-monkey role it has atm. the closest there is to that is boomtanking, but since the CV also is the game target and its stupid to have to put it on stake, its not so good of a mechanic.
I fully agree with 1), 3), and 5), my one gripe with 2) is the key for queuing orders is largely accepted to be SHIFT (StarCraft, Total War) instead of CTRL. As for 4) I'd rather have a visual form of alert that the commander is under attack popping up somewhere on the screen, while keeping the guard order on the CV as-is to retain uniformity of what the guard order actually does. Macro mechanics should be expanded upon as you are suggesting (I'd LOVE a task list), but pure macro isn't enough for an RTS, there needs to be a layer of micromanagement to commanding too - I believe it's covered to a decent extent already, but could be increased in some manners like, for example, commander powers.
also @Lazybum you get "yelled at" (do you really get yelled at, i only get pestered) anyways. and targets (unit targets, not ground targets), because you said it, could be redesigned as comm power aswell (as AoE abilty, with decent cooldown)
I'm fine with targets as is, just because it helps tell me where the problem in dropping a building is, how many enemies are there, and all that info. Even if you can only give 1 target to your team the function of seeing exactly where the enemy is is what makes targets useful, the intel gathered from a simple command is just too handy to make a power. If you mean just adding on the ability to give multiple targets as a squad power on top of the singular attack targets then that would be cool yea. And yeah I have been yelled at, people are meanies . I do think being able to restrict the team from things is a good idea even if it goes against the fps part. If we had that we'd actually see more arty and shit on the field, the problem with these things is the fact anyone can and will get them, such specialized components need to be handed out by the commander and not just up for grabs by anyone.
