3. Commander: Aura

Commander: Aura


  • I think general consensus is Commander is weakest class in design doc.
    Could of specific examples:
    1. Unlike others has no way to boost your econ
    2. Disable vs Punch. 😛

    It would suit the class to have the abilities be constant auras for creeps in range, with the range increasing with levels.
    Like exhaust (my favorite) and encourage would affect creeps with 2/3/4/5/6 range.

    This way he still gets to be "boring" just constantly buffing those around him but can give it a boost.


  • Another idea is that the Commander can somehow project the mineral effects (based on his carry contents) to his comrades

  • CoPS

    I think that Berserk and Summon alone make Commander good enough as is.

     

    Tying it to auras just reinforces the current strategy of small death squads for everything.


  • Yeah I think those are good.

    I think that Berserk is valuable for putting it on enemy creeps to give them 2x damage.

    I guess a part of me assumed that this was going to get nerfed before you pointed it out.


  • I do think that berserk has interesting properties, assuming that it will affect enemy as well as friendly creeps, however commander by far has possibly the largest number of abilities whose level scales the cooldown rather than the effects, which means that it often is just using one ability on one creep repeatedly (encourage much?) at lower levels.  And while summon sounds nice, why would you ever get more than one or two levels of it?  perhaps if you had your commander sitting next to your storage, but even then, how much does this actually help your economy unless you spawn creeps knowing the commander will always be there? I honestly think that summon should effect enemy creeps.  This would allow the command to (potentially) exhaust multiple enemy creeps at range and summon some of them individually to be disabled and murdered by multiple of your attacking creeps, allowing you to harry and whittle down enemy forces at range.

     

  • Culture

    I think the aura idea is interesting, but I have to disagree on the commander being the weakest. Here's some ways I plan on using mine:

    * RENEW, and bring a healer along with the power creeps. Paired with an executor with HARVEST_ENERGY, the healer can tag along indefinitely, and avoid the need to return home to heal power creeps.

    * SUMMON isn't as obviously useful for harvesting as Executors, but it essentially lets you replace the CPU cost of moving a hauler creep 48 steps across a room with a single action. This would be a huge CPU savings Seems like it could also be useful in combat situations.

    * Being chased down by a sniper / killbot Executor? Put SIGHT on your own Executor and kite / instakill them.

    * Being chased by a group of boosted creeps? Keep hitting their healer(s) with EXHAUST and force the attackers to stay back or risk getting shot down.

    * BERSERK + cloud of snipe executors.