RTS Personal Economy - Commander Abilities and Off Map Artillery

[stiff sail]

Echo may enjoy this one.

So the FPS players will get some sort of FPS economy in the far far future, probably after 1.0

But what about the Commanders? Well if they did get a personal economy and if they did get Commander abilities then I think their personal economy could fund these abilities.

Lore justification? Space based assets that provide the artillery fire. Why do the humans not destroy the other humans' orbiting artillery platforms? Suppose Sol and Centauri have a treaty limiting the scope of engagement with each other. Idk how else do we justify it? As long as we get space based artillery I think we are covered for a lot of commander abilities.

What kind of commander abilities should there be? Well I would group the abilities into 3 categories. Support, Intel, and Offensive.

Support provides support to players and AI on the ground. So suppose Alien commander could fund a sudden mist field to cover the advance of the alien army, for example. Human commander could provide enhanced enhanced battlefield info, so all units in an area get improved info on enemy locations, path of travel, and where they are aiming. AI could benefit by getting improved aim from this ability while the FPS get HUD temporary HUD augmentations that provide the previously listed info.

Intel would be a Commander trying to learn something about the enemy team. So pay a chunk of personal eco and maybe you could spy on an area of enemy map or you could learn the strength of the enemy economy like number of Harvesters/Foragers or the real time amount of money the enemy team has. Tells Commander what the enemy team tech level is. Each is temporary though.

Offensive would be damage dealing abilities. Think Helldivers red stratagems for example. Calling in artillery barrages, orbital precision strikes, orbital lasers, etc.

How do the commanders get money? I think it would be easy to borrow from my idea for the FPS economy. Every time a Harvester/Forager drops off a load of eco the Commander gets a personal paycheck to fund his own stuff.

https://discord.com/channels/824561906277810187/1316509234862751744

Costs of abilites and other limitations can be used to balance them out

[vast patrol]

Commander economy probably should just be the same economy instead of trying to balance around 3 different economies

[stiff sail]

that can work too I suppose

[sly pumice]

I like the idea,

it would be cool to integrate control points/territory into this as well,

A few examples are:

on map anti air
On map artillery
Alien nest/fortresses
radar station wich clears fog of war
resource generating structures
Etc.

I would think for a system like this having two separate economies would be better, and it shouldnt affect balance too much. It would probably be harder to balance around those additional bonuses with one economy than two

[stiff sail]

I prefer the separate economies but I can also see it as staying in 1 economy

[vast patrol]

Not sure why the commander shouldn't just have access to map artillery from the standard economy. We're building a war machine on the planet and we have to slowly gain income from a third party which isn't tied to the balt?

[zealous dragon]

Not a fan of Orbital bombardment, in order to make it engaging you have to add a lot of arbitrary limitations for why you can't just shoot at Map Coordinate 53x86 until it stops existing. even then a good suicide run is all you need to do that, and there goes the HQ/Queen because some yahoo in a hoverbike gave the enemy team vision for half a second. GG better luck next round.

I Think Humans would be better off with reinforcement powers, call down a drop pod Assault where enemies aren't expecting. Maybe even allow some HACs to be dropped in, or call in the Elite fighter which is remote piloted as a drone.

For intel powers Aliens could probably benefit from a Tiberium Balterium Radiation scan, which would give vision of all the Human Refineries Silos and Harvesters. They make the stuff detecting it's vibrations shouldn't be too difficult.

[sly pumice]

Map artillery would be its own thing tied to the base games economy, I was thinking more on the lines of an ultimate from something like Ow or marvel rivals, just a special ability or something (could be anything really) that gives the commander a slight, short lived advantage when used correctly

Not as powerful as an ultimate though obviously

[sly pumice]

Orbital artillery would have to be something weak and expensive, (based on this imaginary currency), best for hitting small armies or maybe one structure of importance, slight adavnrage.

Would be a nightmare to try and balance, especially if you wanted larger more devastating stuff

There’s also been talk about aliens getting a smog/gas/ sandstorm in the future, have that mess with the artilieries ability to function, either by making it incredibly inaccurate or not able to fire into those regions at all

There are a lot of things you could do to make on map off map and orbital artillery function add to the gameplay experience and not be completely broken, but that’s if it’s gonna be in the first place

[zealous dragon]

No third currency should only be the Commander's credits. Weak and expensive generally means bad and should not exist in the game.

[zealous dragon]

No amount of gas should prevent a Ballistic Projectile from entering an area, unless you are turning this Region into Venus it doesn't make sense.

[sly pumice]

Realistically no it wouldn’t, just an example,
All factions would need ways of countering artillery if added

[sly pumice]

There is a healthy balance inbetween nukes and pea shooters

[zealous dragon]

They don't and pretending otherwise isn't believable to me. You counter Artillery mostly by adding that Artillery as a Target to be destroyed.

Sandstorm cloud could at best prevent the strike from being precise not prevent it from being fired.

[zealous dragon]

Not really. Not with the factions we have, a weapon that is a pea shooter against Humans will be a nuke against Aliens. Imbalanced in both directions.

[sly pumice]

Only example I can give is helldivers, there are different stratagems wich are effective in different scenarios and against different enemies,
In would work the same the silica, where you had a variety of options (even 2-3 would be enough) that are useless against some enemies, and moderately effective on others.
This way you don’t have something that works well on something and is overpowered on something else, and instead of it being useless for another faction, you have another type of artillery to use

I might make a post later to consolidate the discussion away from this idea, and give more details into it

[zealous dragon]

Helldivers isn't an RTS or even a Hybrid, its also not designed with balance in mind as your not playing the socialist Robots or giant bugs. Damn i like that idea, Sony get on it!

[stiff sail]

this is essentially what I was thinking for the offensive abilities, except the Commander calls it in rather than random infantry players

[zealous dragon]

if you balance an artillery strike for fighting Aliens your going to have an Ability that just does a worse rocket truck, if you Balance an Artillery Strike for use against Humans say by removing the AOE (which is ridiculous in its own way), then you would still have enough damage to destroy a quantum cortex or a Nest.

an EMP might work, just disable buildings and Vehicles, which wouldn't affect Aliens, and a Thumper to use against aliens that stops them from building buildings, and unburrows burrowed units.

[stiff sail]

also worth considering how offensive commander abilties works with the ICBM/MOAB

[stiff sail]

depends on the strike.

Suppose we continue with Helldivers as an example. Orbital Airburst is a fine tool. Its a single projectile that explodes over enemy targets to rain shrapnel on them. Worthless against tanks. Good against numerous small enemies. Not good against structures. (my minimum safety distance from this stratagem is 30m, but its 4 bursts in intervals that all dont align perfectly with where you threw, so 40m is better. actual diameter of the burst is probably 20m to 25m)

Orbital Gatling Barrage is also pretty good and does the same thing essentially, just a little more anti-tank, but not great anti-tank. Fires a barrage of big bullets, idk 30mm bullets or something, that rain down in a tight area. (30m minimum safety distance)

The lack of Damage Over Time or Status Effects definitely limits options. Otherwise we could pull out napalm, toxic gas, EMP/Static Field (varies depending on the stratagem. With gas it is affected by the direction of the wind so I like to play it safe at 40m away when the spread is probably 20m at most)

Orbital Precision is single relatively precise shot that is good against tankier targets, but only a single one (20m safety radius, but better be lying down just in case)

Bigger barrages like the Orbital Laser Strike (very precise, very safe, but sets the ground on fire so stay out of area of affect), Orbital Napalm Barrage (60m safety distance), 380mm Barrage (45-50m safety radius), 120mm Barrage (40m safety distance), Walking Barrage (get out of the f-ing way) could pose big problems if not balanced properly.

Railcannon strike...... its a 1 shot 1 kill to any target (pretty much)

obviously dont copy every HD tool on a 1 to 1 basis but it can help provide a source of inspiration

and this is just for humans. I admit I have some creative block for imagining alien commander offensive abilities. Perhaps a small lightning storm conjured by their pyschic powers?

[sly pumice]

It’s a FPS and strategy game though so it’s 50% the same,

Obviously you don’t want every infantry to be a helldiver, but giving them the ability to ask the commander for small air strikes/supplies or some other things would not be

The stratagems listed above are great examples of what I mean, no 500kg bombs

[stiff sail]

I'll also add if an orbital laser is used in Silica its better to refer to the Helldivers 1 orbital laser rather than the Helldivers 2 version. Version from HD1 had the laser travel in random/regular circles/elipses in the target area. HD2 version tracks and follows the biggest target in the area.

unless we just wanna slow roast some poor dude that grabbed a goliath

[zealous dragon]

dont be dumb, you use it on the queen

[sly pumice]

If only the queen wasn’t impervious to orbital lazers 😔

[zealous dragon]

that is the dumbest idea

[sly pumice]

Only the orbital lazers though

Everything else twice as effective

[zealous dragon]

everything else 1 hit kills the queen inside the nest

even the scouts

[olive needle]

I have thoughts

[stiff sail]

Figured as much

[olive needle]

Yeah so first of all, this.

I also don't think orbital bombardment is a good idea for the above mentioned reasons, it could work with sufficient work in the writers room but again I am holding off on theory crafting around there until we have a bit more of a final product.

I am still very much pro 'commander abilities', but that is absolutely something that shouldn't even be considered until the game develops more. Jamming the hover bikes and new units into an already turbulent balance environment fucks with stuff enough as is, I'd imagine commander abilities being more disruptive than air units.

[worn bone]

We really should have commander abilities, they open up gameplay options a ton. Coh2 does it very well. They aren't free, have long cooldowns, and some "ranging flares" drop on the spot beforehand to let the enemy react. If the enemy doesn't react in time, his stuff gets hit. Some drop-pods of infantry/light vehicles, or "subterranean attacks" of a few dozen crabs emerging somewhere can really keep stuff dynamic too.

Forcing stuff to move out of the way of artillery or die is one of the easiest ways to prevent boring static stalemates, and it's just fun to have that "oh shit" moment.

Just don't let it be used within 1km of any nest/HQ. You need a "lore" reason? EW/ECM for humans preventing targeting, "psychic" voodoo thing the queen can do or something idk. The positives far outweigh the negatives as long as it is reasonably balanced.

[zealous dragon]

finally a good reason to spam nests RIP Human Commander abilities, meanwhile Aliens able to drop them anywhere and everywhere they want.

also EW+ECM would do jack all to aliens, Psychic Vodoo only works if you can reach to effect the enemy commander, which either means he moves further away to be unreachable, or im doing a lot more to my vodoo doll than keeping him from artillery striking my location.

and EW+ECM does Jack all to to dumb munitions fired at grid coordinates

[worn bone]

Ok, just limit nest total count, or limit the minimum distance between two nests. Simple.

I am not interested in theoretical realism of EW environments 300 years in the future. I am interested in fun gameplay.

Getting hyped up on realism in Silica is 110% braindead, because there is no reason for Sol to even be fighting a ground war instead of teleporting nuclear weapons directly into enemy command centers.

[zealous dragon]

So alien minimum distance of >2km? And your nerfing Queen’s ability to relocate while your at it. Trying to fix this problem causes more problems rather than chasing down the trail of problems ballooning development time to solve all the problems that may never be solved, remove the problem from the start.

In a non realistic environment, i still don't see how Electronic CounterMeasures (ECM) does anything to a Biological Army, i have to throw too much logic out the window to explain Hackers disabling a Bug.

Allowing Sol to teleport nukes is what raises that issue. And the problem is again, anything that would be balanced in HVH would be devastating in HVA.

The only point I disagree on is the damaging powers, reinforcement powers, supportive, debuffing enemies i endorce, but finding a way for damaging powers to be balanced and fun, much less the logical leaps you have to take in the attempt, it's too much troubble for the effort.

[stiff sail]

I think offensive commander abilities can be balanced and fun

Reinforcement abilities I have mixed feelings on

If commander got reinforcement powers/abilities it would be cool if these units were completely under the control of the commander and beyond the control of FPS players

[sly pumice]

Would the reinforcement abilities not just be with dropships and most systems we have now?

Like the players can already request reinforcements, and it will be a lot easier to give them that whenever we have drioships

I doubt you’d need a commander ability for that

Most issues that have been brought against offensive commander abilities are balance issues, wich can be solved in a large variety of ways.
They are genuine and fair concerns, but not exactly a reason to dismiss the idea

[stiff sail]

Yes

[zealous dragon]

so im mostly thinking of the powers from like Command and Conquer Zone trooper drop pods, sniper teams, bloodhounds gave light vehicles. all with bonus veterancy, so commander would be summoning units to a particular spot.

what your thinking of would be more a feature of FPS player economy.

[zealous dragon]

and none of you have actually come forward with a solution. any ability that would be balanced against humans would be necessarily Overpowered vs aliens. easy to look at abilities in a vaccum, but thats not how it will work once added.

[sly pumice]

We talked about how a game like helldivers handles balancing stratagems between two factions, one that is mostly a swarm and the other wich consists of alot more heavy armor and tanks.

Theres also many ways you could balance that. (Wouldn’t be my go to solution, but for example making certain types of abilities do less damage than others to specific factions units) (in addition see below for examples)

There would need to be gameplay elements added to counteract the new abilities, ensuring that commanders can’t endlessly bomb nests and HQs from the atmosphere. There may be better solutions but just for the sake of demonstration

Force fields: we’ve seen glimpses of human force fields that cover HQs and other structures in dev streams in the past,

Disruptive sandstorms: alien coins build a structure or unit that kicks up a sandstorm, and also has some cosmic mind powers as described before, allowing them to mess with the accuracy of human air strikes, and in some regions completely prevent them from being able to drop them at all.

I can think of a few examples for balanced offensive commander abilities, just for a general idea,

In this example you could use one of these commander abilities about every 5 or so minutes, so you would have to be very strategic about where you used them, and when.

1: a single high damage projectile, ideal for destroying one particularly dangerous unit on a battlefield.

2: a cluster bomb, that is ideal for killing lesser or weaker units in a medium sized area. (Very small relative to map size)

3: Gatling barrage: using helldivers as an example again, a small barrage of medium power projectiles that hits a small area for a short period of time, best at taking out medium sized units.

The same argument could have been made for air units, it’s not a feature that has been developed at all, so as of right now it would change gameplay drastically.

A similar situation to the air units when they where added, it’s taken a while and still ongoing but despite the balance concerns they have made good additions

You also can’t dismiss ideas for balance reasons in game design in general, because most of everything can be balanced if you try hard enough. If you feel it doesn’t fit well into the game or meta that’s a more valid take

That one dude who wanted to add nukes wich gave human a instant win condition wasn’t a bad idea because it was un balanced, it was a bad idea because it introduced a win condition that set the entire game on a countdown timer, wich doesn’t fit well with what silica is now

Air units where never bad because the idea wasn’t inherently balanced, the units needed tweaks and changes to better fit into the game, and inbetween all the other units

[zealous dragon]

again hellfivers is a truely terrible comparison, as it has 3 (now 4) factions but they arent meant to be balanced, the NPC factions are just there to fulfil the helldiver's power fantasy, given RTS need to be balanced thats truely an awful comparison, your basically saying Sol can have a space laser because you can use it on both Centauri and the Aliens, and they are Shit Outa Luck get wreckt

I played a crapload of warframe, i wouldnt begin to use anything from a game where your a one man genocide machine wiping out 100s in 2 minutes is an example of you can give Soldiers space magic and its balanced because it works different on different enemy types that all die in the meat grinder.

doing specifically less damage to a specific faction, doesnt make a lot of sense outside of poisons or Status effects.

spacemagic protecting the HQ is really dumb and breaks the suspension of disbelief that i need to make the game fun.

Force fields are fine for one of the Human factions, the other wont be getting it.

Sandstorms are a really doubble edged sword as they telegraph the location of an alien base, you may not specifically see the nest, but you know its somewhere in the middle, unless youve turned the sandstorm mapwide its not going to be effective at countering Air and artillery strikes, which are aimed at map coordinates.

1. this is trash either your one shotting a siege tank or your doing jack all, and again use it on the nest.

2. use on 30 shrimps on a biotic node, GG you won

3. still the shrimp issue but as its not raining bombs randomly also can be used for single target attacks.

[zealous dragon]

air units can be countered with AA weapons that wernt developed yet, countering support powers either means the support powers are destructible (you can realistically destroy the air strike aircraft) or youve got space magic, and yeah not a fan of space magic in Silica.

*bad space magic

[zealous dragon]

offensive damaging support powers are weaker versions of that very power, the cluster missile dram is planning to add will be overpowered against all enemies but will probably have downsides like in Command and Conquer, the launcher gets revealed allowing the opponents the opportunity to plan around it and take it out before it goes off, that's the penalty for building the very nearly I win button.

Support powers can be I win buttons, if you get enough damage on important targets you cant get a balanced game. Sup Com which has assassination win conditions doesn't do support powers, if you could hit a commander with an unavoidable strike or break up their AA defenses without risk, then you could send a fleet of bomber and instagib the Commander, Starcraft doesn't have support powers because if you could cast psychic Storm on the enemy worker line within the safety of your base you could kill their economy leading to win with no risk. Support Powers particularly damaging ones don't go in every RTS, and Silica is just one of those where that is too dangerous.

[olive needle]

Yes

[stiff sail]

I don't think it's too dangerous. Depends on implementation.

The thread is called RTS Personal Economy. Forcing the commander to rely on a separate eco pool for these abilities is a way to limit their usage. The cost also wouldn't affect the overall team. It allows commanders to use a variety of abilities without burning the entire team eco on random BS that leaves the FPS hanging.

Helldivers is also a valid example of the kinds of abilities a commander can use. No it isn't RTS. Obviously adapt it fit in the RTS context.

And that's not to say that damage dealing abilities for the commander can't work or are a bad thing. I recall LOTR Battle for Middle Earth had such things. You could cast an earthquake at an enemy base lol. IIRC that was pretty devastating to endure. But it wasn't game ending as damage numbers were adjusted to make it potent but also not game breaking.

Could also limit amount of shrimp per tar pit to reduce the amount of risk to any 1 group of them.

A force field and glowing 3D structures give away human location about as much as a protective sandstorm would give away aliens

Helldivers only covers ideas for human offensive abilities. Aliens would get an ability for every ability humans gain I'm sure

Also why does constructing a missile anywhere within reach of the enemy make sense? As far as I can see that would break immersion as an ICBM would be better housed in a space ship in orbit that can fire at any target on the planet. Building on world within less than 10km of the enemy army is a bad idea. It offers a game play counter but if it's immersion you want then this should break it.

It can be done. It is ultimately up to Dram as he sets the vision.

[sly pumice]

Obviously it needs to be balanced around silica. And done so in a way that benefits the gameplay. I’ve said before in this post that it’s not a good idea to turn it into helldivers.

Helldivers is being used as an example as it is the closest example to how this type of concept would work. Nobody is saying to add helldivers to silica.

It wouldn’t be a one man genocide mission as the commander would be involved as the only one calling in the offensive strikes, and then they would be costly and not used often. Again balance.

My suspension of disbelief is honestly broken from not having orbital artillery, it’s something I’ve always thought needed to be implemented in some form. we can 3D print advanced factories capable of produce high end military equipment in minutes. teleport ships and humans across vast distances instantly, and used that technology to become and interplanetary species, and are now fighting a highly evolved alien race that uses “space magic”over magical rocks that produce near infinite energy
Suspension of disbelief isn’t that something works as it logically should in the real world, it is that everything in a made up world works in accordance to its own set of logical rules.

I don’t think alien having some type of organic structure that can jam radar signals is too far fetched

[stiff sail]

I would also argue offensive/damage dealing commander abilities are the perfect addition to Silica.

Commander often has to beg and plead for his players to protect his shit from enemy FPS players.

That kinda sucks, ngl.

Giving the commander some damage dealing abilities would help a lot. Commander could have a quick solution for a growing problem.

[sly pumice]

Would need to be implemented in a way that encourages both to work together as well,

If it can kill one random unit sure, but for the most part should probably be a support based option

[zealous dragon]

there is no good reason for it to be a separate economy, that makes litterally no sense

[stiff sail]

Yeah sure.

Well using HD2 as tbe example we can use different kinds of offensive abilities.

An orbital railcannon strike would be great for say killing a lone Goliath. An orbital airburst or gatling barrage is a good counter to multiple small targets like a crab swarm. Orbital precision requires you to be precise with it and can do good work on a single target

But those should be emergency uses imo

Intel and support categories make sense as the more commons tools to use

[stiff sail]

Makes total sense. And I gave the reason already

[sly pumice]

Could be either or, doesn’t really matter

[stiff sail]

Sure. I can see it being 1 economy.

But I'm just annoyed at dealing with new coms that don't know what they are doing. Or coms that are just bad. Every penny they spend on some commander ability could have been spent on something for the team.

Forcing a team eco to produce team assets makes sense. Keeps COM from burning money on constant abilities of questionable value to the entire team.

Its not a deal breaker if that doesn't happen but it is my preferred option

[vast patrol]

New coms would still use it badly and shouldn't be a reason to not have it under the same economy

[zealous dragon]

the Alien nest has 50k Health, a Human Barracks has 80k, if humans loose a barracks, no big deal, they build a new one, if aliens lose their nest GG its over. if you have a power that cant even pop a barracks then its going to be garbage vs humans without using space magic to make humans more vulnerable

[sly pumice]

If it where me, and I was implementing this into my own game, I would 100% make it a separate economy, mostly because it would be easier to balance outside of the base game economy with little to no effect on either

[zealous dragon]

any reason that orbital railcannon wouldn't be able to smash a Goliath with a full escort? or a Queen in her nest? you have a vision for how this will work, im here to rain on that parade, it wont work like that

[sly pumice]

But I can see why it woild need to stay the same

[sly pumice]

Definitely wouldn’t want orbital strikes to be effective against structures

[zealous dragon]

then its garbage

[sly pumice]

If it’s primary purpose is to be used on units then no

[zealous dragon]

you are litterally asking to spend what 500 credits to hit a goliath with a railguin tank round, you could have just bought a railgun tank

fucking autoconnect why you picking on me today

[sly pumice]

Situational, I could spend $4000 on a railgun tank wich can shoot many rounds, or if my rail tank dies then I can spend a separate currency to give one last railtank shot from the atmosphere, I can see this being useful in a lot of situations

[zealous dragon]

so the Goliath beat the railtank, but you figure, nah and kill the goliath anyway? and the player in that goliath got unalived because of things he cant change?

if goliath can just roll out of the way, then ability becomes straight trash, use the same ability to hit a biocashe 3k HP isn't going to make it able to survive that railgun round

so were down to a single target damage ability with the damage of a railgun round, the aoe abilities will probably be in the neighborhood of the railgun tank's missile barrage, at what point do either of these abilities provide a meaningful impact?

[stiff sail]

Have you played HD2?

Rail cannon doesn't have to be strong enough to kill a nest.

Could also give the ability a cool down so it is used sparingly.

[zealous dragon]

an i win button with a 30 minute cooldown is still an I win button.

give me a damage number that is significant to the 80k HP of the barracks but not to the 50k HP of the Nest

[stiff sail]

Also everything discussed is a hypothetical. There is infinite potential to imagine and speculate. For every concern you may have there is a potential fix or alternative option. For every abuse you imagine, there is an equal chance it won't work like that.

Kinda feel like all you're doing here is just arguing for the sake of arguing.

[zealous dragon]

hypotethetical is fine when your staying that way, were are here to discuss how to bring it from hyopthetical to reality, and thats the problem, because if i can poke holes in the hyopthetical stage, when we dont have experience trying to break it 10 different ways, how do you think it will go when it hits live?

if i was arguing for its own sake, i would be on board for Orbital Bombardment powers, i am not.

[sly pumice]

40k

[stiff sail]

Yeah but when fixes are offered or suggested you tend to ignore them. Like limiting ability use to things like cost, cool downs, damage out put, use case, etc.

You're not poking holes. You just keep pointing at the same hole that has been addressed and act as though a solution wasn't offered.

[zealous dragon]

just add a fighter on a suicide mission to make up the difference

[stiff sail]

Meh. I'd do 15k. I'm looking for enough to kill Scorpions and most tanks

[sly pumice]

Yeah lol i wouldn’t want it to be effective against buildings

[zealous dragon]

cost + cooldown are part of the balancing equation, only solves for spamming the ability doesn't solve for it being balanced to use at normal frequency.
damage output as i explained, damage output means very different things to 2 different factions with wild disparity in how much health they get.

your solutions, to add cost and cooldown, were things that i didn't even consider wouldn't be a feature in the first place. its been in every other RTS where there are support powers, Silica wouldn't be different.

[stiff sail]

Depends on the ability and what it's job is supposed to be imo.

Going back to LOTR Battle for Middle Earth there are a lot of different abilities that can be used. It's been a while but some were quite good at destroying light buildings and sowing general chaos

Im not opposed to such things but a lot depends on how replacable/fixable buildings are in the future balance

[zealous dragon]

i would want it to be effective against buildings, thats the difference between gaining a tactical advantage and gaining a strategic advantage, and which one has more impact

thats why i fundamentally disagree with the idea they'll just be used on Goliaths and Scorpions, why hit one of them, when you can hit their eco and leave much deeper scars

[stiff sail]

The other RTS aren't RTS/FPS. Silica would definitely be different.

Also, I did mention cost as a limiting factor before. The post is called RTS Personal Economy, specifically using that Economy for commander abilities.

[zealous dragon]

yes im sure LOTR did have them i didnt play that one i played CnC which had plenty of diverse abilities airstrikes and artillery bombardments, they were always best used on base infrastructure, that ability to use it on base infrastructure is what makes it a bad fit for silica

[stiff sail]

LOTR:BFME also had commander abilities that would rapid repair structures or rapid heal units.

So while you could get hit with an earthquake you could also repair vital structures quickly

[sly pumice]

Something that would hit bases I feel would be better off as a structure that would be built, that way it is preventable, like golanx has mentioned before

[zealous dragon]

yes CnC did have that too

[stiff sail]

Also summoning the army of the dead was kinda broken, ngl

[zealous dragon]

BFME was made on the Sage engine, the CnC engine, might have been the same team im not sure

[stiff sail]

Honestly no clue about that. I was really young when I played BFME.

Was a lot of fun back then

[zealous dragon]

they definitely collaborated, and my copy of CnC3 had a trailer for BFME in it.

[stiff sail]

I bet my parents still have a copy of BFME 2 somewhere in the house come to think of it

[zealous dragon]

so yeah they are very similar in that reguard im sure, and thats why i can say with confidence those mechanics wont work well in silica, an earthquake would do too much damage to alien eco

and it wouldnt do anything to Human factions whatsoever

kill infantry whoopdedoo

[stiff sail]

Depends on the AOE of any ability

And an earthquake seems more fitting for alien abilities as they kinda master the natural environment or whatever

And it's still an artificial earthquake so we don't have to give it the same spread and reach of a real one

Also good luck killing hover tanks with an earthquake. But infantry get screwed. I mean... everything has a strength and a weakness

[vast patrol]

I'm sure if you do 50% less damage against structures and have most of the commander abilites to be small precise army clearing/utility it would be fine

with the addition of needing vision to use those abilites + relevant cooldown, it wouldn't be too broken or annoying. Of course it probably would be tweaked to fit within the current game

[vast patrol]

the difference you actually need to produce and move a unit which is 4000 balt compared to having an ability which can be used at the moment when it's needed.

what's broken is that it would only be 500 in your hypothetical case unless it had a high cd

imo I would want alien to create sand screen/smoke screens that could fit well with a factions with a lof of short ranged units

[stiff sail]

Yeah that can make sense.

Still depends on a lot. Abilities that damage structures I dont oppose. I see them as fair targets. However it does need a certain degree of balance. So a commander that wants to burn an attack on a building should be making a trade off. Such as not having the ability for a while, where it could be used in an emergency. Or a really good attack costs a certain amount of money.

But limiting structure damage to an ability to percentages makes sense. Clash of Clans does something similar with earthquake spells (no I don't play that, my brother does lol)

[vast patrol]

The requirement should ultimately be

• Have vision
• Have the funds
• Is off cooldown

Then you can balance around other stuff, like structures taking less damage overall from commander abilities compared to armies

[stiff sail]

Well what happens if somebody hover bikes into the enemy base and an artillery barrage gets called in, then the biker dies cause it was a suicide mission?

I think factors like greatly increased inaccuracy could be a valid way to limit the potency of a cheese tactic

[vast patrol]

Would argue that the hoverbikes are the issue tbh

[stiff sail]

But by the same token, supposing that aliens can generate artificial mini earthquakes, lightning storms, sandstorms, or summon great worms then each of these would need something to deny a cheese attempt at getting an ability in the enemy base

[stiff sail]

Fair. I still like the bikes though.

Tbh I think much of what makes hover bikes annoying could have been solved if normal motor cycles had been used instead

[sly pumice]

I mean if you have tanks busting down the doors of a SOL base and taking out core buildings left and right, I don’t oppose having orbital strikes that can damage buildings, but there needs to be a way to avoid sniping HQs techs and nests with them in any other scenario

It could even be like mentioned before, radar jamming towers/spires, sandstorms, force fields

The higher damage artillery, for damaging structures I could see as its own silo structure as well

First having to build it, then construct the artillery, then launch the artillery

[rain parcel]

Having NOT read the rest of the thread... Meteor showers.
https://youtu.be/Meu5k_2go4A

[silent sigil]

late to the party here, but (besides just making it a server setting to keep it to everyone's liking) the mentioned protective buildings sound quite reasonable and fits the genre.
If the aliens did somehow have some control over local weather and geology, then the first thing humans do is some kind of antiXYprototype, right? Kind of like shieldgenerators in EaW that need taking care of before you can call in the heavy bombardments right on HQ.
And vice versa: how come the aliens aren't just getting scouted vie satellite and glassed? at least their bigger structures are kind of un-stealthy - so maybe they also have some kind of protection against orbital attacks? (Or maybe I missed some part of the lore about the planet that explains this, haven't read everything yet, though then again: teleportation seems to be a thing, so why not teleport explosives until you hit?)
Or the necessary infrastructure to summon these abilities needs to be somewhat in the vicinity (at least for the aliens), like some big cyst that triggers earthquakes when finished - an immobile siege weapon, effectively, to break turtling. Kind of like digging tunnels to bring down the walls of a castle, actually

[zealous dragon]

Sol will get a big dome shield, we've seen it before it's just heavy WIP, alien Sandstorms hiding their bases are planned but may be scrapped or applied differently as the system can cause a large performance impact. Centauri got nothing right now.

Big bombs from orbit or teleport can detonate Balterium patches making big booms irradiating large areas and consuming resources the Humans want to mine. This is not hard lore though and Humans will get superweapons that may or may not trigger these effects. Sol is getting an Ion Cannon, Centauri a cluster missile/Nuke, and Aliens are getting a Titan, a giant crab the size of an Ultra heavy factory.

Lesser damaging powers I have issues with as you can see in the thread, it doesn't take a lot of firepower to put a big dent in the Alien economy. A scout can do that, if you get a scout's damage output from something that can be deployed anywhere and can't be stopped you can do some major damage to Aliens. Meanwhile against humans you need something with the damage output of a couple Goliath's to do the same thing, and that's where the balance issues get really prickly.

[zealous dragon]

The issue of balance is easier for Aliens Powers, if you summon Shai Hulud on the Human Harvester it really doesn't matter if it's a Sol or Centauri harvester.

[silent sigil]

ahh right, sitting on the money - the ultimate anit-human shield 😄