Commander Update

[hushed yarrow]

Flats is same thing.
But people are richer so you need scouts, there will be aa there before you arrive.

Generally most lane maps won't get away with air player tho.
Because someone needs to 1v2 on frontline as you build up

[dawn umbra]

I would say that in an 8v8, having someone go air is a huge advantage always. You can either force an opponent air or force all to make aa

[timid whale]

most lane maps have one lane that is partially shielded. and the air player should be transitioning to ground soon as well

[hushed yarrow]

It's advantage for some to blow up their comms to tech/eco fast too.
Is it sort of forced gameplay ppl like?
According to this update no.

It's better to use the spot to tech & spend on aa then have it wasted by air player, let's be honest.

And there's no big air screen at drop timings.

And even still, I had on many occasions dropped under fire just fine.

[timid whale]

I don't agree at all, having transports for a team is a really big deal, add to that that you can do a lot with 1-3 bombers. you will make cost just from the AA that you force, not to mention the damage you actually do. Techer also has no early impact, while air player has a big early impact, and transitions into t1 ground anyways. But we are derailing the thread...

[formal junco]

What I don't understand is why don't talk more about how the old d-gun mechanic was simply awesome. I mean maybe it goes to the immunity dynamic. But in the situations inside d-gun range of your structures, you are trying to block now.
In old com, it was simple and like I dunno, but it comes down to game design and John Nash type shit I think. I mean I want my commander to have the d-gun. That power dynamic doesn't exist in the same way. I know it's rare you would see defensive ( or rarer offensive ) d-guns. But these situations arise where previously a commander could stop.
It's how the feel is to me with this one, it doesn't feel right to have blocks. It doesn't feel right to have that special shield.
I've heard so much support for the d-gun nerf more than anything else, and it makes zero sense, even on it's own.
In old com, I was never really afraid of defensive dgun, because I knew that I was going to be in comb bomb radius. In new com I can their buildings in my d-gun range and fire away, while still being immune to enemy dgun and really comb bomb since the radius is lesser.
Who likes this more? I mean I feel I fired my dgun way less before. It was more powerful too, because I could stop a Raghna, or anything. It was the fucking d-gun. WAS.
Now I gotta stand and dance in front of my llt. It was simple, it was pure, before. You had to respect the zone.
To everyone in support, was it really so scary? Are you like happy now with your new risk/reward curve? Please, I want to understand. How does it help gameplay?
Imagine in the finals of a 1v1 tourney, a lone commander + thug push. The decisive moment, a split second decision, a d-gun shot misses the enemy commander, and hits the lab. Do you recognize this scenario? What if the d-gun was late and hit the commander? Aborb? or loss?

[tender flicker]

d-gun change feels sort of packaged with the explosion damage change, like maybe initially they wanted to nerf comm explosion so you didn't just flat out delete everything in its radius, but then that changed dgun trades to being favorable for the d-gunner until the hidden last-commander mechanic happens, where it would then suddenly backfire completely and the dgunning commander would inexplicably explode

so in order to nerf the comm explosion radius, they felt the need to also add this interaction to make the interaction with dgunning a commander completely consistent by just making them immune

obviously i'm not on the dev team so i have no clue if this was the real order of operations, but it's something i thought about while thinking how this update would go if we took out commander d-gun immunity but kept nerfed comm explosions

[formal junco]

I don't know the genesis, but I saw it in the commander design doc. So it has been thought about at least a year? I've been paying attention, and until the update, I had never heard of it

[rigid latch]

IIRC the dgun immunity was a way of removing the weird arbitrary rule of dgun in 1v1 being a loss for the dgunner, and situations where that spilled into team games... Somehow. I had that explained multiple times to me and I still don't quite get how it worked before.

Admittedly this is replacing a complex arbitrary rule with a simpler (all commanders always immune) arbitrary rule.

[hushed yarrow]

Should just be first to Dgun wins. Dont see reason it cant be like that. Just dont be agressive.

[formal junco]

I get that, but why do people prefer this from a gameplay standpoint? It's always advocated from a rules simplicity standpoint, but no one ever talks about it from a gameplay standpoint that much, except it changes the dynamic a bunch.
I'm asking because I've read more in support for this, or at least I feel like sometimes I'm alone in wanting this reverted.
Do you really have an issue knowing the rule? It's hard for someone to argue something being complex just because they don't understand it. Right, I mean you'd have to define what you mean by "complex" first of all.

[tender flicker]

i do think i lean toward no dgun immunity, but i really feel like dgun immunity is packaged with the new comm explosion. trying to think of a solution to let old d-gun exist with new comm explosion is already twisting my brain noodles in a knot, and i like the new comm explosion more than the old, so it's like a necessary evil or somethin' > <

[hushed yarrow]

When you get Dgunned its easy:

[formal junco]

I mean, it wasn't a skill issue. you were asking for it. You walked into dgun range and you could be dgunned. Old coms had to be pretty AFK, yeah there could be some sneaky scoops, but your com had to be sitting there. And they other guy had to have it prepped with rezz bots. That's the offensive dgun, which is really the same as a comb bomb, and it was at explosion radius.
Defensive d-gun is other situation, where you need to stop the enemy commander. So you had to be doing something like a com push to be defensively dguned to effect, and AFK sleeping to be offensively dguned (just put your com behind 2 LLT and pay attention while teching).
I mean does it make a difference? Yeah I know it does, I play totally differently with my commander at the front, standing in front of my LLT. I would be dguned before with all the stupid shit I pull.
My commander used to be regening dgun ninja. He'd have to be sneaky to pull off a comb bomb, but it was possible. Better not risk him sleeping though....

[summer torrent]

From an 8v8 perspective, I think the issue of comdrops being a problem really just boils down to:

1. Is it an uninteractive, unfun game mechanic?
2. Is it a broken strategy that wins more games than it loses?

I feel like over time the second question will determine its prevalence more than anything else, outside of people with weird preferences, but that just results in predictability.

1. I think it's unfair to compare comdrops to nukes because there is a lot of counterplay and damage mitigation involved in surviving/defending against a comdrop more than just "make antinuke".

Losing eco to comdrop feels bad, but so does losing all your t1 eco to ticks because you didn't make an llt in base and got your units out microed (things that regularly happen when high ts lobbies open up to newer players). Honestly if you keep some constructors alive, the only result of a comdrop taking out your base would be you being forced to rebuild and be behind in eco, which is annoying but in practice is practically the same as a "normal" game against a better lane opponent who has 2x your eco.

2. We can debate all we want about the theoretical risk-reward calculus of comdropping but at the end of the day I feel like it's only a problem if it's a strategy that disproportionately results in wins.

Idk about noob lobbies but it shouldn't be that hard to gauge the strength of comdrops from a win rate pov in high skill lobbies since it's the same people most nights.

It's probably difficult to get pure statistics, but anecdotally it seems like we've gotten to the point where com dropping is far from an insta-win strategy. So far, it's something that stresses people out for 4 mins, gives one team a slight lead, and then the game is determined by which team has more afk players, or which team has more underrated players. (Sorry a little bit off topic but yk what I mean)

[foggy vapor]

The original reason is that we cannot have a game that says, "Kill the enemy Commander to win, here's a gun that does infinite damage," then make the player lose when they do the obvious thing.

[vital sedge]

instead you just make the gun that does infinite damage suddenly not do any damage

[plain lily]

There's got to be a special rule somewhere when it comes to a weapon that does infinite damage. The new dgun rule is arugably more intuitive and less complicated to understand, and therefore preferential. It creates other balance issues, yes.

[hushed yarrow]

It's most special rule of all special rules.
Can 1 shot a behemoth.
Can't kill 4k hp unit.

[sinful garnet]

Why can't screamer missiles shoot at juggernauts?

At least the "commander is immune to Dgun" rule is replacing the quantum spooky at a distance knowledge 1v1 rule

[velvet sage]

Same reason 90% of other aa can't hit land units either

[wanton oak]

Old commander was also immune to dgun.

But then it wasn't immune under special circumstances.

[formal junco]

Would it be fair to summarize the old d-gun rule as "d-gunning an enemy commander in 1v1 (or FFA) is a loss"? Why do people keep saying it is rocket science?

[tawny sapphire]

Since that killed you both, that was fine. The problem started when we decided draws shouldn't be a thing. Of course, people did grief good players in FFAs, so it's reasonable that steps were taken.

[hushed yarrow]

If you play in a way your comm gets dgunned, you deserve a draw.
Just keep it safe.
It rewards clever play from you & aggression from lower ranked person.
A good way to learn well.

[wanton oak]

Because that's not how the rule worked as there's situations where it could happen in a teamgame and situations where it could not happen in an ffa.

[proper rain]

If I had to choose between a good game with a special rule and a less good game without a special rule, I would pick the better game

[velvet sage]

anybody got replays of 8v8 comdrops where somebody starts air first for the fastest drop timing? Does this even happen rn? Mostly what I've seen is 5+ min airlabs after a bot/veh start.

[cosmic wyvern]

https://bar-rts.com/replays/b84789645d286ef96abda36049b3c5d8

This is not "fastest drop timing" but I'd love to hear everybody handwave the mistakes.

[velvet sage]

that game's great ngl

[summer torrent]

Are you trying to say that comdrops are this is an example of how comdrops are broken?

Both teams had fighters for the intial comdrops and spam pinged them, it's just that people were slow to respond.

Even after that the game was somewhat even in eco, and top was broken not because of the 2nd comdrop (which admittedly woud be hard to counter because of the emp spiders), but because one of our backliners transitions into a hard t1 push while one of your backliners goes air.

Ultimately, it doesn't really seem like this game was decided by comdrops since even if pink got his base wiped, you guys lost bot 3v4, and clyret managed to hold the front against 2 without having a base

[timid whale]

This game was an early resign

[regal zinc]

https://www.beyondallreason.info/replays?gameId=bfbd5e642eeef9b64aaf5b5db909f07f

[river crest]

wtf does this even mean

[sharp cosmos]

why not just let dgun kill commanders like any other units

[hushed yarrow]

Noobs can't keep comm safe

[sharp cosmos]

noobs will die from anything anyway, and right now you can push them with your comm anyway

[vivid carbon]

Gimme ZK engi comm for eco go brrrrr

[wanton oak]

People complain that dgun immunity is this weird special rule, but commanders already were immune to dgun depending on certain circumstances and then not immune under other circumstances.

[river crest]

in what circumstances?

[wanton oak]

When the commander being dgunned is the last commander on that team

[sturdy fjord]

It's weird either way, and I'm not sure which is weirder

[cold bluff]

Magic powers is kinda a new direction for the game before maybe it happened like 0.001% of the games not it's every second

[molten raven]

wasn't it when both commanders involved were the last commanders on their respective teams?

[proper rain]

Can't remember the last time I saw a big team game actually being ended by killing last commander. BAR resign meta kicks in way earlier

[hushed yarrow]

Yesterday.
A titan sneaked up on the poor lob lol

[robust schooner]

Nikuksis one was pretty fast and doubled up (2 comdrops) https://www.beyondallreason.info/replays?gameId=8fd16f648c4870c658ac7724556874f8

[velvet sage]

yeah thats a nice study case.

both sides could have played better, both the droppers and the defenders - which is to be expected since it's still a novel scenario for everyone.

The drop wasn't quite game deciding though it gave east some advantage, even when ZLO got his winds raided, which was allowed by the smaller unit count he had due to dropping.

My takeaway from this would be, it's a bit too strong/easy, but probably not in a way that requires huge adjustments - small changes should be enough to bring it to a reasonable level where it's something you can do, but just isn't as likely to pay off.

Also this map is so big that somebody making trans for people just to move comms faster to the front would make a lot of sense. This also always gives you the option to commdrop, so forces the other team to look out for that

[hushed yarrow]

I had 8 min game on ascendancy today.
Fun.

[molten raven]

i had an 80 minute game on ascendancy today...

[tender flicker]

early comm drops feel like cheese for sure, but some of the drops i've seen happen later and feel more like an opportunistic thing like something that was done after creating or having an advantage already

[cold bluff]

It's best to do the drop at 8-9 mins so there much more stuff to destroy, no commander to defend and army at the front, we're supposed to defend with only ground AA since llt have been removed from the game to stop commander. Good luck blocking air drop from every angles on the 8v8 lane maps. Even when you get to kill the new terminator commander it only give back half the metal.

[hushed yarrow]

If you do it in first few minutes, you can put 3-4 ppl back like 4 min at least
Thats more impactful then killing 1 as rebuilding from no resources and 2 metal income is.... Pain.

[bleak steppe]

@vivid carboncom should be upgradable. starts weak with weak dgun then gets upgraded. this resolves the issue and many others while also making com much eaiser to balance in the future.
then there is also no need for any special rules.
there are no disadvanatges to this change.
can still kill early game stuff easily.
can shoot dguns at each other.
can be lower hp at start cause its ugpradable.
no base com drop problem since it can be killed quickly with several dguns while it itself needs more dguns to kill bases...

upgraded coms can have modified build sets.
can have different stats...

literally no disadvantage.

[vivid carbon]

did you mean to ping raghna?

[bleak steppe]

i meant to reply to a message of yours about com in zero k, sorry

[sturdy fjord]

Isn't com being upgradeable still a special rule?

[bleak steppe]

what makes a special rule a rule in the negative sense is that it is hard to guess and does not have a visual component.
a commander being upgradable would be visually represented by a con's build option and obviously upgrading effects as its getting upgraded.
on top of that there are other things that get upgraded in a similar way like mexes and geos for example.
i dont think its important to dwell on special rules.
commander being upgradable is simply a more flexible and managable design that at the same time solves many different issues at once.

[proper rain]

speaking about hard to guess: I think the new gradual explosion damage is really hard to play with and hard to estimate. In the past it basically was a binary decisions: everyhing inside the circles dies, everyhing outside the circle lives. So you usually knew what would happen when a com dies. Now it is totally a guessing game and also when speccing it's always surprising to see if enemy commander also dies or not. Also which other units.
So, in the past, commander gameplay was much better controlable in my opinion. Feels now more "unprecise" and more like a game of fate. That's not an improvement in my opinion. Also not in line with "wysiwyg" which is cited often lately

[wanton oak]

@modern oyster has been working hard on this awesome widget, shows the range at which comblast would kill you at your current hp

[proper rain]

Yes, I thought about this myself already. Maybe it helps the situation a bit but the fact alone that an additional widget is needed to help making it controllable, says something. Explosion behavior would still be much more intransparent compared to the "binary" explosions before

[wanton oak]

But the old one also needed a widget...

[proper rain]

No, we lived very long (years?) without com explosion radius widget. Sure, it helped when it was invented (actually by me iirc :P). But now it is a different story with the gradually explosions as it is much more complex...

[velvet sage]

the more you play with it, the better youre able to judge it. Now there's definitely another modifier added to what happens in comduels, making it more complicated. But both in the old system too, just knowing the explosion radius wasn't all that you needed in practical situations - you needed to know more to judge whether you're in danger of, or capable of, doing a good combomb in this or that situation.

The new explosion is just as WYSIWYG as any other explosion in the game, though it isn't as easy to evaluate as the old one - arguably this allows for more skill expression, or is more annoying/luck based, depending on perspective.

[proper rain]

The new explosion is just as WYSIWYG as any other explosion in the game
Yes, it is exactly the same not wysiwyg now anymore as any other explosion. Old com explosion was much more wysiwyg. Anyway, commander explosions totally not comparable to 98% of other explosions in terms of relevance to the gameplay.
Personally I don't know if this wysiswyg really should be the primary design goal here. I am just trying to follow your argumentation.

[velvet sage]

explosion working intuitively isn't the same as the exact outcome being easy to know intuitively

Either way, it's not the most important metric to judge things by, how simple it is from this or that perspective

[primal holly]

explosion just dropping from 100% to 0 at the edge are very dumb and unintuitive at first i thought it just does shit load of damage until i saw on discord that it just has no fall off

[hushed yarrow]

Madka is a total lob.
Maybe Raghna should teach him how to counter com drop

[cold bluff]

Com drop expert deleting players

[hushed yarrow]

I'll be complaining until something is done about immortal comms :P

[cold bluff]

Keep on doing it, only way something happens

[oak temple]

missile truck type weapon could be a reasonable concept for zoning out com- instead of using a static LLT with a bonus dmg vs commander you could kite a com forever and it also works vs the transport for shutting down drop.

Missile bot being able to attack land units in similar fashion to the missile truck? Both of them having some more DPS?

[wanton oak]

Missile truck used to have reduced damage against commanders. As part of the update the reduced damage was removed so it is actually increased compared to before.

[hoary kernel]

Thats how pta wrecked me so fast with those haha, good to know

[sinful garnet]

https://github.com/beyond-all-reason/Beyond-All-Reason/commit/e451279b454e9d088bca6d437425d0f61aa109e5
This commit introduced the missile truck commander special damage 10 year ago, during what looks like a pretty severe nerf

[wanton oak]

That's when missile truck spam was the go-to strategy. HLT's were also built every game on the front to counter this. Artillery received a significant buff and since then missile trucks fell out of favour and so this special damage didn't make sense anymore.

[oak brook]

Missilw trucks need a minor dps buff

[late oar]

Please make comm weaker to low level buildables

[bleak steppe]

@oak brookwrong.
this kind of absent mindedness when it comes to balance changes is what creates more issues trying to solve existing ones.
you are forgetting they can shoot air. the issue is that t1 sustained air units suck balls.
what needs to be done is to buff gunship hp overall and reduce emp damage of emp drones so they are neither buffed nor nerfed(arm gunships will be buffed).
this will make gunships usable and missile trucks more useful as a consequence.

[oak brook]

You're a bit of a dick to come insulting me like that

[bleak steppe]

true

[oak brook]

This update is pretty bad nlg

[cosmic wyvern]

I am once again comming to this thread to say that I like the update.

[upper tusk]

Make this default when it's finished please

[wise bison]

Some parts of the update are good, some arent. Especially removing special llt damages. If you were going for removing special damages, why didnt your remove for example Starlight special vs comm dmg?

[cold bluff]

All special damages are going away, too confusing for new players, who cares about balance anyways. Whistler spam is so much fun to have every games.

[wanton oak]

Why are you complaining about whistler spam here? What does that have to do with commanders?
Whistlers' collision spheres were changed so they could shoot over each other which is why they became more meta. Not because they do a little more damage to commanders.
Moreover, I thought the complaint was that commanders were unstoppable, are you now complaining that whistlers do too much damage against commanders?

@wise bison I think removing Starlight special damage vs comm is probably a good idea, it is a contentious topic though, since there's been this rule about nothing one-shotting commanders since oTA which I didn't think I should override. Alternatives were considered but without consensus. Ideas welcome.

@median ibex please re-read. Whistler damage against commanders did not cause whistler spam. Whistler collision sphere change did.

[median ibex]

Whistler damage was increased against commanders in this update, and it has caused whistler spam to be fairly common.

[cold bluff]

Im saying llt doing no damage to commander is bad gameplay compared to before and a big huge ball of Whistlers moving around being op before t2 shows up is also very bad for the gameplay. Most of the commander update is better than before but a very few things are making the game losing some of the potential.

[median ibex]

This is not true, the change to whistlers happened long before the com update, and it only applied to arm. Core missile trucks have been able to fire over each other for as long as I have been playing BAR and they were basically never built until their dmg vs coms was buffed.

These special damages against commanders were seriously considered and battle tested, they can't just be removed without huge knock-on effects to gameplay and the meta.

[timid girder]

@cold bluff regarding the collisions of armsam
yes i am the person going through all of the things regarding collision boxes
whistler change predates the whole commander update

the core missile truck was completely able to fire over itself while the arm missile truck could not do so
as hitboxes are a hold over from BA units
i decided to remove the asymetry of the units in one of 2 ways

the first was to add readjust the hitboxes for the hull and add a box for the turrets
the second was to just make the hull be the hitbox

the second was picked over performance reasons
which is why now both missile trucks are able to fire over each other

the whole hitbox change predates any of the commander updates in its beta and official state

[cold bluff]

My observation on the change is that Core don't have the janus to protect the big ball of missile trucks making it almost unkillable before t2 in a situation where the big ball of trucks/janus can roam around and are not forced to attack well defended position. Core veh sucks and arm players are now abusing the change imo.

[wanton oak]

please take the discussion about missile trucks and cortex and armada difference somewhere else than commander update thank you

[cold bluff]

You ask question, i answer but that's a good way to end argument op

[bleak steppe]

if missile trucks are too common and too useful as a result of com update and hitboxes changes they should be nerfed, not special damages reverted.
since nerfing them is the simplest and easiest solution(if there is actually a problem) why would you suggest reverting special damages instead.
all things being equal, special damages are bad.

[median ibex]

Missile truck damages were changed as part of this update, discussing their use is extremely relevant here. From 44 damage to 64 damage vs coms, almost a 50% increase, that's a huge change and it's no surprise that it's having big implications on the meta once players figured it out (it was not listed as a change in any of the publicity about the update)

[cold bluff]

“Hear my prayer, O Lord, and give ear to my cry;"

[late imp]

my opinion is that missle trucks became more op since com update because, make a armsam ball, keep com close in the ball repairing. when anything comes in close to try and kill the samsungs com just walks out to dgun it all because com is now a lot stronger it is easier to do this. and that is why samsung is relevant here, comupdate made them more viable along with the other changes to them.

[wise bison]

Yea, removing dmg reduction of Starlight vs comm is actually a good idea. It is insane how low it's damage vs comm is atm, doesnt feel right at all. Special dmg of llt should return tho; it is near impossible to stop commanders walking into shit atm.

[proper rain]

Would be nice if it would be possible to show OS values here in Discord next to usernames so people would instantly see to what extent a comment is backed by expertise

[plain lily]

most of the recent commenters are OS 35+, or at least 30+ with more than a couple months of experience.

[velvet sage]

Yeah they wouldn't 1-shot a commander anyway, if doing full dmg

[sharp cosmos]

interesting how would it be possible to do that, maybe roles and colors based on rank?

[hushed yarrow]

Role would be enough
With 1-10, 10-20, 20-30, 30-40 & 40+ refreshed once a day?

[rigid latch]

We already have plenty of colorful ones so that'd conflict with it. Anyway, that's a separate suggestion and let's not derail the thread, okay? 🙂

I see you typin' Platys

[sharp cosmos]

#1123134840166952970 message

[bleak steppe]

i say again...have starting com dgun deal 700 dmg. have com have 3000 hp.
then con t1 can upgrade it to deal like 2k dmg per shot of dgun generate more resources and increase speed.
then t2 con can upgrade to full dgun one sho and even more resource generation/laser upgrade.

then remove dgun immunity from com. then little incentive to self d com or drop him and much easier time to stop early game com drop since u can dgun it a few times and its dead.
at the same time can preserve com not dying from com blast, can preserve no special damages.
can preserve small wreckage.
also dgunning stops com so second com can get hit by dgun but also gain distance and run away...

it is simply a much better setup.

[hushed yarrow]

Sounds silly.
Just return llt dmg

[bleak steppe]

sounds pefectly fitting u mean.
providing the best of all worlds.
not too op com for early game and 1v1s.
no need for special damages.
allows much more flexibility with balance in the future.
resolves com being usless in mid game.
etc.

[sinful garnet]

How soon will this UI widget come out?
Would help a ton in figuring out when to stop body blocking an LLT so the enemy commander explosion/self-d does not kill me

[proper rain]

look in widget channel

[cold bluff]

Not sure if Devs have noticed but game is slowly turning to crap, give back special dmg, com regen with less HP and it should be fine again hopefully

[steel valley]

I am preparing a tweak for the comupdate in line with that feedback, it's hopefully going to have the best of both worlds. Please stay tuned. Also pls note that vilifying devs won't speed things up.

Let me assure the feedback was being collected thought that time, it wasn't ignored like you imply. There has been many internal discussions about it as well. We wanted to give it a chance for some time for players to develop a new meta and be able to reach better consensus about the quality of the changes. Consider it only has been one month.

[opaque jackal]

ok samsungs era is over ptaqu saved the meta. trust in the bird.

[oak brook]

Give commanders 100k health but can be one shot killed by an LLT.

[rough lynx]

LLT is transportable

[cosmic wyvern]

If llt is transportable why did it never happen before com update?

[median ibex]

because beamers are also transportable and there's not any reason to transport LLT's instead of beamers

[hushed yarrow]

That
Both need heavy trans

[molten raven]

i've seen LLTs/beamers/twin guards being transported offensively since before the com update (mostly beamers though)

[thin zinc]

I like current comm better than previous; I don't think it needs any change, except for maybe removing option to be transported by t1; if you wanna nerf it now you could just increase dgun reload time to +30-100% and nothing else

[dawn umbra]

Currently no reload time afaik so percent increase doesn't work

[velvet sage]

dgun has 0,9s reloadtime

[dawn umbra]

You sure? I feel like I have dgunned faster than that before

[sinful garnet]

https://github.com/beyond-all-reason/Beyond-All-Reason/blob/master/units/armcom.lua#L289
XP might allow you to Dgun faster?

[steel valley]

It feels faster even without the exp hmmm

[primal holly]

just did test firing repeat Dgun (0.9s) and rover (0.93s) they fire synced

[velvet sage]

0.9s just is p fast already

[bleak steppe]

the best solution is allowing com upgrades.
1 com with dgun that deals 700.
then upgraded by t1 con to deal say 2500 per shot.
then t2 upgrade full dgun.
this allows for way more flexibilty when it comes to balancing com for all game stages.
removes the need for special damages, removes the need for dgun immunity...
can have different wreckage values...
commander doesnt have to shit in mid game.
no need to curb early game air transport strategies.
increases incentive to keep it as oppose to use it as a bomb...
it is the best of all worlds and each stage can be balanced and controlled independently as oppose to having to balance a unit both for when its the only unit on the battlefield and when you have literally thousands of other units.

if we want maximum strategic depth and to maximize player choice while resolving all standing issues this is the best solution.

[cold bluff]

that would be like making another mod/game entirely

[bleak steppe]

in practice, it will not play very differently.
think about it.
700 dmg kills all early units and llt unless its exped.
2500 kills all t1 units.
then in t2 full dgun.
so there will be some difference of course but it will not be drastically different.
ultimately the different things will be the things that make balancing commander a pain in the ass now.

[proper rain]

you are brining this idea up every couple of days, right?
it would break with 2 big principles at once: 1. Dgun kills stuff, 2. no unit upgrades
Also with 2.) it would basically bring a big special rule to the table. As far as I have learned, devs are super allergic to special rules

[bleak steppe]

there is nothing special about such an upgrade. it would behave exactly like a geo or mex upgrade.
con some an initiate construction.
dgun kills stuff? yeah it will still kill stuff in almost the same way.

[sturdy notch]

I like the comm changes for the most part, overall an improvement.

If i could make some changes I would make a reversal of the LLT modifier damage to the comm to bring it back to what is was before the patch and maybe a speed reduction on Transports while carrying a comm/ change to class heavy transport (t2) would fix a lot of the cheese.

[sturdy fjord]

Geo and mex upgrades are a special rule and visually unpleasant and I really wish they would be removed

[golden beacon]

Sure, but then we also disallow building T2 next to T1 the old way.

Because that makes people way more confused than current solution, and it also looks weird.

[halcyon oasis]

This removes the limited amount of micro potential/special agency that comms provide and nerfs them as a special resource in team games to just an objective

It also lowers the depth to the game rather than increases it, com d-gun is healthy because of its current limitations and counters and i only see anyone think its bad when those limitations are subverted like with a early t1 transport to backline but thats a different issue with its own solutions provided that it even really is an issue

[stable lake]

I like the idea of comm upgrades but not the way it's described here
we had comm upgrade structure in TAesc, it was T3 thing that makes all comms and decoys strongerand basically a small T3 units. it was even a strategy - decoy push with upgraded decoys

[hushed yarrow]

Theres only one optimal meta in this new update.
Try to dispute Clyret Comdropping with last comm in 2v2

[sturdy fjord]

mm, but if we could have a tutorial or better communication or some other solution to the problem, I'd love that so much. I think even if we forced reclaiming the old extractor before building the new one, that would be more desirable, (but that might cause problems with metal maps,)

[wanton oak]

didn't green have idle lab for most of this game? red had 1 llt protecting his base, if your strat is countered by 3 pawns, is it still OP?

[dapper saddle]

Com dropping is a bad strategy. Inflates TS too much and makes games really hard.

[hushed yarrow]

That means its a good strategy. You want to win after all.

[oak brook]

But if it's the only viable strategy, them it isn't a good one.

[jolly nacelle]

It's not though, if you get shot down, or your base gets taken in the mean time by a single scout that got through, then the gamble didn't pay off.

In best case scenario you trade your commander for 1 early game base, I doubt players will let you escape, so you got to do at least 1250 metal worth of damage to not make it a gain for the enemy team.

I still thinking making the commander a heavy unit and therefor requiring T2 transport is all that needs to be done, no further changes needed.

[halcyon oasis]

d-gunning a factory is already 600+ metal + whatever it was working on, the backline base tends to have 3 mexes in the immediate area which are guaranteed to go down which is like 6 mex per second they are down, energy buildings id say youd easily have 500+ metal invested into energy around this point near your starting factory

i could also include the 210-420 for a construction turret or two but thats inconsistent due to timing it might come up later or earlier so i wont.

and then its ontop of alot of other things that are almost priceless, forcing everyone to pull back and deal with you (esp if you manage to get an llt down so nobody can just clean you with grunts/pawns)

you are also completly annihilating someone`s energy which gives anyone on your team who has a pack of grunts/pawns built up a short window where they can just finish off the player since theyll have limited d-guns/shots from llts unless their teammates react and share energy.

[thin zinc]

this choice to disable t1 transport pick com was made in TA:ESC and noone fought that hard to not make this change 😄

[cosmic wyvern]

There's a discussion to be had about the types of strategies this game wants to promote, and this deals with units, maps, commanders. What stock is there in considering this a game of map control? Map control gives mexes and economy, but late game economies are backline energy and metal converters. Commander +transport subverts the idea of map control, of "gaining ground" as an effective strategy where a highly mobile strike force can re position into your central production and annihilate it near instantly. Thinking game progression is map control > tech > late game eco with various different combat options at the different levels, the commander wrenches that, players can use the ultimate game objective (com) to destroy anything.

[opal prairie]

Can we make the jethro shoot land ?? Like a weaker Samsung ? I think that could make bots viable early to try to fight the Samsung balls , we can have them have 550 range maybe and a bit lower damage than the whistler ? But It’s cheaper amphibious and better mobility ? (Maybe remove the amphibious capability ?)

[timid girder]

Wrong thread

[halcyon oasis]

I believe this was also because t1 transport could pick up enemy coms so it would be a funny way to just immediately wipe out 2 players on the enemy team if you just find the newbie and pick em.

[upper tusk]

@wanton oak https://clips.twitch.tv/ManlyOnerousYakinikuThisIsSparta-Hc_K7yFmIxM1qLAR
Prime example how unpredictable the comexplosions are atm 😦

[primal holly]

not sure what unpredictable in here

[robust schooner]

saw it live, good play by corn

[wanton oak]

I agree, that's really difficult to gauge.
@modern oyster made an amazing tool to show exactly how far enemy commanders can explode for you to surviveon your current HP:
https://discord.com/channels/549281623154229250/1122250631013466113

[ornate aurora]

the widget needs to merged on main and tied to comupdate being enabled, considering the amount of issues folks have around comlasering duels

[wanton oak]

I highly recommend the widget in any case for sure
the widget was not approved for default enabling though for being too visually clunky, similar to the reclaimable metal widget

[ornate aurora]

if there are concerns on visual clunkiness for the current widget, what are they and how can they be addressed so that the widget gets incorporated in main? Considering the importance of complosions I think it's very important an indicator is made available via default widgets, if only so that tournaments can have it

[foggy vapor]

The issue with enabling these meta-focused widgets by default is that you only know what they mean if you already know what they mean. To new players, it's just a mysterious, meaningless, changing red circle.

[velvet sage]

it's not gonna be fully accurate either when you're constantly taking damage. It might be just something that you need to learn when you might die or not. Like before too, you didn't have special tools that could tell you whether your combomb or 1v1 laser duel will be succesful

[ornate aurora]

the big red circle denoting d-gun range / complosion range was working well for me lmao

[ornate aurora]

If the circle only shows up when another commander is close to your own, it becomes obvious this is is an interaction between commanders. Then we could have the whole area filled in red when enemy com is in the radius, and if you successfully retreat it goes back to uncolored. This makes it obvious it's about when the enemy commander is in that radius, something bad can happen. And then after 2-3 complosions deaths or survival, you implicitly understand what this is about

[proper rain]

I still think this hard to predict com explosion is quite a disadvantage of the comupdate, sorry

[wanton oak]

have you tried the widget? it makes a huge difference imho

[proper rain]

I might give it a try. But when I said disadvantage I mostly meant in general for the average player, not for me personally. Having to manually download and install a widget from Discord which is too visually clunky to be included by default is surely not a good thing

[upbeat zephyr]

~~Not specifically related to the balance discussion but the way this has been implemented in the code prevents any tweakunits or tweakdef's from modifying damage for units which had their commander damage adjusted - #💬｜modding-discussion message

Which is preventing lobby's testing Whistler damage changes here https://discord.com/channels/549281623154229250/1125788827970183238~~

This has been fixed by https://github.com/beyond-all-reason/Beyond-All-Reason/compare/aeb64bd97ddd...9c44a2f4f404#diff-aefab0488b38c690eb79fa33ce89aa2e0981a27ae1ffe37e37e177487edd9b5f

[sturdy sable]

just wanted to say, after playing many 2v2-6v6 games as a front player, I really like the changes 🙂

[stable lake]

some changes are good but mostly it make bullying with comm necessary and it makes games in front shit, because every game theres combombs which cant be countered with porc and vehs (if not missile trucks). That make this stupid missile truck meta . Even flash is now playing vehs for missile trucks spam

[cold bluff]

front line com bomb were very good before com update, now the issue is more that the com can get ez dgun on turrets but the com bomb itself is weaker, you usually can save your commander and army a lot easier with comupdate

[hoary kernel]

before it was bomb and lose com, now its walk in and dgun and then walk back out xD

[rancid lantern]

Keep Dgun immunity + blast radius changes. It weakens combomb significantly.

Revert LLT change, samsung change, HP change, regen change, metal change.

[faint hinge]

You forgot whistler damage change

[rancid lantern]

Ty fixed

[timid girder]

I would like to give pointers to the real cause of the missile truck meta that has been occurring for the past month
in the review of pro replays that i have watched
I have found that the t1 stages last significantly longer than prior
on dsdr getting t2 units out and about at the 8 min mark is reasonable
now its the 14 min mark where this tends to start occurring

missile trucks are a nibbling unit that takes forever to assert its map control
in fact you need a lot of missile trucks to assert map control
with the lengthening of the t1 stage
this has given missile trucks far more time to assert their map control
and leads to how the spam of missile trucks actually came to be

the commander damage removal did not help and is a relative minor change ultimately
missile trucks doing their default damage to commanders is there but not that major

in the replays I have observed i have found that the whistler change to its hitbox rarely factors
do keep in mind I have intentionally avoided the non pro lobby matches as the pro players should know how to handle the missile trucks in general

missile trucks fall apart when they are getting shot at anything that has their range or greater
as all those units have better stats than the missile truck

[golden beacon]

That is almost what is going to happen

i think

i'm not sure still waiting for the announcement for the plan

PtaQ is getting late with it

.-.

[cold bluff]

I can't wait to play BA again and not some weird mod with op balance issues

[dawn umbra]

Yup, BA is in 1 week

[pliant marten]

An easy way to change up the missile meta is have missiles have a lower ground clearance making walls effective

[steel valley]

That is tricky cuz you would have to change every unit aimpoint and it will influence all other weapons at the same time

[stable lake]

do core arm comms have the same stats?
i feel like core comm is thougherbut slower a bit, is it only my feel or they are a bit different?

[cold bluff]

Armada has op dgun range

[stable lake]

yeah i know that
hate to lost my med tank to it

[wanton oak]

they have exact same stats
only difference is the models being slightly different, so laser damage dropoff is a tiny bit less for example

[stable lake]

why no fix to dguns?

what you think about assymetric comms?

[faint hinge]

We had that in TA. It helped make arm vastly superior.

[stable lake]

isn't arm vastly superior in BAR?
all cool stuff in arm faction, and most symmetric things are just better for arm including eco
and core "large" things are nerfed a lot by flanking and emp mechanics

[sinful garnet]

https://github.com/beyond-all-reason/spring/pull/900
Dgun needs an engine-level fix.
And after that, then might need a game-side fix to compress armada Dgun range just a tiny bit to compensate for model

[stable lake]

imo it would be nice to have a real choice keep your comm at front or in the base. Current meta assume your comm to be in front like in 100% cases.
i think unba comm tried to do something like that, like resource-making comm and battle comm
the implementation was pretty rough tho.
it was just thoughts...

current comm is ok, but i think LLT levelups on comm were good. Currently comm walking into porc and killing it is too op imo

[halcyon oasis]

it feels horrible as a frontliner when backliners send their comm forward and you have to somehow defend against 3 coms taking turns d-gunning your stuff

[plain lily]

Feels bad to be a frontliner when your backline is noobs but that's like 2/3 games, right?

[hushed yarrow]

Lowest TS always goes into backline
Its like a rule by now.

[rancid lantern]

Definitely after comupdate

[thin zinc]

Just make it like OTA and or TA ESC: com death=you and your stuff die + dgun reload= 3-5secs. Then comm walk is balanced with comm hold. Of course it won't happen cause BAR is ,,noob friendly game,,. But 1 BAR variation to this would be insanely nice: game doesn't end for you when your com dies BUT when it dies+your wreck is reclaimed!!! This way game is always about keeping comm alive but reviving comm is always top priority. It's just like in PUBG when you are heavily injured/in coma you are either revived by team mates or you die permanently 🙂

[stable lake]

in taesc T1 shit is way more slow and not that spammable
too easy to snipe comm in BAR
even without Dgun reload

[thin zinc]

And crucially ESC like the name suggests ,, Escalation,, is made so that t1 becomes useless at later t2 and t3 stages, cause basically all stats in per m cost are much better at t2 than t1, and better at t3 than t2. This guarantees than t1 spam at big economy stage is useless

[tawny sapphire]

I suggested earlier in this thread to make losing your commander take you out of the game so you can't issue orders, and resurrecting it would put you back in. But the commander corpse would be indestructible-you couldn't dgun it, and sucking the metal out of it wouldn't delete it. If this were true, you'd only want to commdrop if it was a sure thing because otherwise they'd get your metal and you'd be out for the game. And assassinating a comm would almost always be worth it because taking a player out for a couple minutes is huge.

This would be a lot more newbie-friendly than having wreck deletion resign you, because there's always the possibility of rescue.

[thin zinc]

Thing is i want possibility to comm hunt to kill enemy. If you can never die till everyone dies it's less interesting for me

[wanton oak]

there already is a modoption to enable com death = autoresign

[tawny sapphire]

You could always rez it and walk it home. 😛

Forlog can correct me if I’m wrong, but he wants everyone to be playing the same game, so optional settings won’t cut it for him. I think there’s a lot of merit in that mindset.

[thin zinc]

Yes i know but it's not default and it's all about defaults to easily find games. My proposition, the battle royale mode is middle ground between current default and comm death=end

[thin zinc]

Not to force everyone to play the same, options are great but just look how many people complain about comm update but almost never there is a room with comm update set to off . That's why it's all about defaults

[rancid lantern]

Comupdate2 when? 🙂

[golden beacon]

Soon

Theres some internal playtesting going on before the actual changes will be announced

But expect something between old and new

[rigid latch]

Please refer to it under the official name, Commupdate 2: The Commupdating, thank you

[golden beacon]

Comupdate 2: Electric Tick Spam

[stable lake]

that will be a symbol of commupdate

[golden beacon]

[ornate aurora]

Electric Tickaloo meta gg

[primal holly]

yeah before commupdate they would been further apart

[cold bluff]

i hope we will still be able to have commanders kiss each others

[rough lynx]

It always was the case

[hushed yarrow]

Nah, before, one just said no gay and poked other with the Dgun

[rough lynx]

Did you play 1v1 or ffa?

[small root]

I have the feeling FFA games last a lot longer with comupdate with some Games even lasting over 90 minutes which i have not seen before.
The reasons may be that the lower metal amount of the wrecks makes teching slower or people tend to not attack in T1 stage cause com is harder to kill and the 1250 Metal are not worth even fighting for.
If coms die they are more likely to be rezzed and coms can now dgun even more t3 in the lategame.
@faint warren is it possible for you to see a Change in ingame time with and without comupdate?

[twilit ledge]

I don't think we'd see a significant change in FFA average time per game. But it would be fascinating to see the average game length in 8v8s for the month before comupdate, and the month after.

[hushed yarrow]

Pro games ending in 9 min after comm duels end up with 1 comm alive, then walks in & dguns 2 ppl

[steel valley]

A decent amount of time has passed since we introduced the commanders update, giving the player base and devs lots of valuable experience with the new meta to develop proper opinions about it.

There has been a bunch of threads in different places referring to the comupdate with feedback. Some of the opinions have evolved over time, some solidified and there is a ton of info to follow and take into account. Therefore we would like to ask you to simply leave your final opinion on that matter in this survey 🙂

We would like to collect your feedback in a systematic way to use as supplementary data for the Game Design Team's discussion and ultimately decision on if and what tweaks should be applied. Thank you in advance for your time!

https://forms.gle/DFc86YGSqdEARS8z5