What are commanders actually for?

Commanders are for:

- initial deployment of eco
- a free riot in the early phase so you don't get murdered in 40 seconds
- versatility

The latter is what allows them to do all the things you listed, like being a walking fusion with a necromancer's staff or a very expensive slow-reloading ultimatum on drugs, etc. This is why they are also not very cost-effective at being dante or being fusion, because they are still versatile even after becoming all that.

See, commanders can do a lot of things which dante can't. Like trapping a dante with terraforming (that lost me a tourney, yknow).

They're hated because some people morph their com every single time regardless of anything, while versatility means using them according to the situation.
Morphing is useful as a way not to excess, since this is free buildpower, and the various modules allow you to spend this buildpower on things that do what you want (ie. produce E or shoot stuff), not necessarily efficiently.

you can customize them. this means fun.

also, a generalized com is useless. you have to maximize the effect.
e.g.
-a dual sniper com with all range modules
-a bombard com with all range, plasma artillers, maybe napalm
-a support com with only nanos, has about BP of 60+, with rezz module

these might pay off in the long run.


however, for the lulz, you can design frontline coms, which are very exposed and might not payoff because they are magnets for all kind of explosives.
e.g.
-dgun troll com (which surprisingly often pays off, watch @Saabir in action, 150+ comkiller trophies speak for themselves )
-battlecom with ultra health modules which can barely move
-battlecom with all repair modules which needs a very high alpha to kill

coms are (besides supcom and other games) a very unique feature which bring to this game parts of rpg gameplay. this might be a very popular issue here.

HOWEVER, its always a consideration, if its the right time to use the morph and NOT a waste of team resources. which it is in the hands of an unskilled player or under bad circumstances like "i meet the first skuttle"...

I have a sniper com and a artillery com but i have found that they are not as useful as eg. my "dual riot cannon cloaking strike com of doom". This is not one of them, but some frontline commanders are REALLY hard to kill. It takes a load of fleas and a dante (or two) to kill them, by which time they have done a lot of damage. I would not call that "for the lulz".

I have a few questions. Do buildpower modules increase the power of a rez module? How is a dgun troll com supposed to be used? Are napalm warheads better than standard explosives? How are commanders any more vulnerable to skuttles/spies/stilettos than standard heavy units?

no ana you are wrong...

quote: How are commanders any more vulnerable to skuttles/spies/stilettos than standard heavy units?

because unlike other heavy units they get less then 1hp/metal (normal is 2.5-8), are slower, and overall have significantly less hp in total.

ie they are really low health units(proportinately a catapult has 30% more hp then a com, they have about the same healt/metal ratio as suicide units)

tl:dr cause comms are actualy giant super expencive roaches

quote: How are commanders any more vulnerable to skuttles/spies/stilettos than standard heavy units?

It is because skuttling/emping expensive comms gives more satisfaction than doing this to some random unit that can be produced in numbers.
Comm is kinda like player's avatar, so killing the unit your enemy put most of his attention into is always an achievement.

Commanders are great. The problem seems to be that it is sooo tempting to micro one super unit instead of 20 small ones, so players can often divert a lot of resources to morphing. Of course comm then kills a lot of things and almost saves your base from the onslaught so it was a good strategy, right? Just needs a bigger gun, more HP and shields and repair and cloak and it will work next time.

What about banning morph for e.g. first 5 minutes?

quote: What about banning morph for e.g. first 5 minutes?

Nowai. I need my e-cell to pwn nabs in 1x1.

Comms frozen during morph just like other units are is how it worked initially. It was changed later to make comm morphs more viable.

And the problem is not about comms being too good, so you don't have a point mojjj.
In other words noobs gonna noob (and morph) and will continue to get yelled at.

Comms are not versatile. The whole versatility is gone by selecting them before the game starts. Instead of morphing comm you can select from 80 differrent units to build, way more versatility.
You can go for the massive range sniper comm, but if there never gets a proper porc-frontline set up the comm is useless. You have to actually predict if the commander is still usefull 10-15 mins later in the game when it is leveled up. Way too hard for new players.
The only safe build is e-cell support comm.