Super weaponized commanders?

I feel like the concept of time-rate-limited supercom builds hasn't gotten its fair share of attention. (Which may include ridicule.) Lots of people luv them comms. Imagine that instead of costs going up and practicality approaching zero, that after level 5 or so, costs go down and upgrade times go up. There would be the specific objective of allowing stupid-huge comms, but it takes time. It would still be a waste of money to build such a comm if you don't use it, or if you just get it killed for nothing, but long games would tend to generate a certain number of absurd comms without ruining the teamwork. That would be awesome.

IMO, the worst game end is a superweapon, and Detriments probably cause their own team to lose more often than not. Paladins just don't have the beef to get the job done once its well and truly entrenched, they are too balanced. What we need ... is SUPERCOMM. Freed from the constraints of game balance, SUPERCOMM is a mad mix of OP capabilities, here to end the game!

If you need some OP modules, I know how to make 'em. If thats all that stopping you. :D (Well, I wouldn't make good icon pictures or anything.) Potentially it could be time to dust off the old modules that increased damage by 40%, or this and that major one-off thing. Also FW has an unlimited supply of madness to draw upon.

I believe there was something in the code where level 5 was the highest level that was recognized as distinct. Might want to revise that a bit so that real OP has a meaningful minimum time requirement. If I'm free to just throw ideas all over... might also want to have a steady-rate boost applied per level, specific to class.

So yeah, no changes from the current state up to maybe level 5, then start down the time-throttled road to madness. Sounds great to me!

(I could even throw a PR or two your way, since I have been into this area before.)

OK, so I made a "minimal viable product" mod in which comms are intended to (slowly) upgrade to unhealthy levels. Some points:

1. there are no new modules, nor alterations to modules
1b. (that should be fixed)
2. the first 5 (6?) levels are intended to be identical to the current situation
3. costs do go down sort of, but are dominated by module cost anyway
4. starting at level 6 (7?) there are small free bonuses per level, dependent on commander type (crudely chosen)
5. commander models are changed every other level to stretch it out a bit (so you get the biggest model at lvl 10, not 5)
6. build power peaks at 15 (same as the regular game), but ramps down again to 5 (this is the time-limiting part)

I think the biggest issues are:
1. commanders don't get physically huge
2. commanders don't get scary enough with the current module selection
3. costs at higher levels may still lead to harming one's own team (ideal is to be neutral/positive beyond lvl5)

I wonder if perhaps in the current game, the health upgrades are applied one level delayed. For example for a guardian, health goes 4400 (lvl 1) -> 4400 (lvl 2) -> 5000 -> 5700 -> 6600 -> 7600 (lvl 6). I replicated this behavior. Moving the health bonuses forward would of course be a buff, but it seems odd that lvl 1 and 2 don't change the health.

The name of this mod is "Skugg Supercomm Mod" with version "v3", so perhaps "Skugg Supercomm Mod v3". I uploaded this as described in the wiki, and can host a game with it, although I do copy the sdz into games/ locally so that I can see it when hosting, in order to select it. Probably there is a better way to do this.

My intent is to see if this concept can be relevant for regular ZK (lookin at you GoogleFrog). I tried to avoid doing anything that seemed especially crazy or controversial. Basically the ability to dump painful amounts of metal into a comm is throttled, in trade for the comm getting some freebie upgrades. The idea is that ending the game is good after "X" minutes.

Thanks. I guess this is the content, which each game host would need to save a copy of, if I understood correctly:

{
"shortName": "skugg-s-c-mod",
"name" : "Skugg Supercomm Mod v5.2",
"description" : "A mod to explore time-limited but otherwise unbalanced commander upgrades.",
"roomType" : "Custom",
"game" : "Skugg Supercomm Mod v5.2",
"rapidTag" : "zk:stable"
}

I have borrowed some scaling code from the unit level ups mod (similar to existing code in ZK, maybe I should use that instead) and gotten hitpoints-based size scaling sketched in. (Still need to scale the movement of the legs, but it otherwise seems fine.) I added some high-level armor modules for lvl 12 & 15 comms, and removed some build power to extend how long things were taking.

I don't have a particularly fine-tuned sense of human-vs-human balance, but its good fun to use against AIs. Also theoretically it does act like existing comms up to the lvl 6->7 switch, so how bad can it be?

I need data on total elapsed time and metal investment. Also upgrading without modules is probably a bit of an exploit, since the base cost is very low at higher levels. I suspect the changes have not yet provided much justification for anyone to build a late-game mega-com.

Is it possible for a regular user to delete the uploaded sdz files? There are a few that I managed to goof up, so now they are just pollution.

Lets do that then: http://zero-k.info/Mods/Detail/31

In part you are suggesting higher caps on statistics. We already tried that for range and the results were degenerate. Weapons shouldn't be able to go too far beyond their range, as that gives us things like Rogue-range beam laser, which simply deletes skirmishers.

Also, commanders are not going to be as efficient as Scorcher. This is because units get less efficient along any single attribute as they become more expensive, compare the damage output of Paladin to some combination of Knight and Lance. It has to be this way because attributes make each other more valuable. Eg a bit of extra damage is more useful if the unit already has high range/health/speed. So modules are going to be poor value individually simply because they don't behave individually.

quote: In part you are suggesting higher caps on statics. We already tried that for range and the results were degenerate.

yeah, I was definitinly gambling when it came to range. Long range stuff have always been not great. prehaps the issue is the lack of skirm weapons on comm to begin with, or the fact that comms were never meant to be skirms. but yeah I admit keeping range modules and module cap where they are might be for the best of things

quote: It has to be this way because attributes make each other more valuable. Eg a bit of extra damage is more useful if the unit already has high range/health/speed. So modules are going to be poor value individually simply because they don't behave individually.

. I mean, isn't the whole idea of this thread to make comms be good when you spend a lot of metal into them? I don't see the issue with modules being good when you've got a lot of modules. if your 10k trollcom with maxed modules has scaled to the point of being able to fight palas, then mission accomplished. If comm modules start out a bit weaker than average in terms of investment but scale up to be not half bad. Currently. comms just don't scale. they just don't scale in line with striders of equal cost. which just sucks
Not to mention some modules are just plain bad, like the shield and area cloaker modules. which are just more expensive than their mobile equivilents

I don't get the fixation on the comparsion to scorcher. Yes. I was wrong to compared comm to scorcher, but that doesn't change the fact that comm modules suck. This feels like an Argument from fallacy to me

a unit that gains stats through upgrades which has an issue of those upgrades becoming unviable very early on seems like an obvious sign that those upgrades are bad. There's plenty of players in this thread who've commented about how commmorph at all is bad, which is even more proof that the upgrades comms are getting are bad. the the entire premise of this thread is that comms are bad when you spend a lot of metal of it. why are we even arguing about if commorph is bad?

How about making morphs up to level 4 cheaper?

It would be neat if those more specialised tools, like rez and such were available earlier/without the need of a strider hub
com morph for those dguns etc. are very close to being viable i think

quote: How about making morphs up to level 4 cheaper?

I hadn't thought that comms need to be better in the lower levels (but maybe). A fine balance needs to be struck. Also the influential people are all a bit comm-skeptic, I think. What is fun in the lobsterpot is different that what is fun in small high-skill matches.

IMO, the best reason to tweak comms further is that they are rather popular with the unwashed masses, the common player.