Commander Strategies?

Go under Replays, search by person and look up raaar, prime comander inovator. Common builds are rush disruptor bomb, double beamlazer max range, and I think there's another one he uses in 1v1s.

what are you expecting me to tell him/her?

quote: Are there any strategies for coms besides being a glorified builder hiding in the base in 1v1s? Seems no matter the setup they are more of a liability than an asset.

with the current balance, the short answer is, unfortunately, "no".

People like to consider me a high level "commander" player but the elo i've gained recently is from 1v1 matchmaking and one of the key changes in my gameplay is not investing on the commander.


There are no reasonable commander builds that can take on even half their cost on raider spam + thunderbirds or racketeers, or even medium sized groups of fast assaults or blitz tanks. Enemy got a large squad of ravens? dead. Bumped close to a dante? dead unless you've got like 8x speed. Got stunned by a scorpion? dead.

Early in the game, a spider player can stun and kill a lone commander with a widow and fleas for about 500 metal.

A key escape strategy when your commander is cornered, especially if you got build power modules, is to bury it into the ground using terraforming. Get used to the hotkeys involved.

Another thing to note is that carrying your commander on an air transport will "stun" it so it won't provide the 4M/s and 6E/s. This mechanic has been kept as is because of reasons.


That said, on 1v1 and smaller team games, replace "being a glorified builder hiding in the base" with "being a glorified builder expanding and spreading defenses near the front line" while your army tries to out-fight or raid the opponent. It's risky, but the extra metal you get from expanding with it allows you to get a bigger army, and them being a liability has the effect of baiting your opponent into doing stupid moves, especially if it's the low hp recon commander which can jump away.



here's some potentially useful builds

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--- relatively cheap (army support)

GENERIC
- recon, engineer or strike form, mg or beam laser + disruption bomb, get only a buildpower module at level1 or none at all
(this one can be especially effective because the disruption bomb is OP at the moment, especially since it doesn't affect your own units)



ASSASSINS
- strike form with no modules other than the basic weapon, cloak and disintegrator gun
- guardian form with no modules other than heat ray, cloak and disintegrator gun

(these can be decent in team games to instakill other more expensive commanders, key defenses or heavies near the front line, it may be tempting to add other modules like build power but if they see your commander building stuff near the front line you'll lose the element of surprise or worse, the commander itself. They're also one of the reasons why the more expensive front line builds are crap)



--- somewhat more expensive (army support)

- start with one of the previous cheap builds, but get radar jammer + area cloaker (strike and engineer) or small shield + big shield (engineer and guardian)

the area jammer/cloaker is good value for money and not only helps your commander survive but sinergizes very well with high cooldown skirmishers like lances or firewalkers, which makes them harder to bomb, but can also be used to cover an assault

you can also morph up to level 6 to get all the bonuses inherent to the chassis (at this point strike form has over 6k hp and guardian over 7k, which is...decent, the others are more fragile)


--- expensive (a level 6 commander with 2 weapons and 11 modules costs about 3k metal, after that the base cost grows by 100 for each level: 400, 500, 600, etc.), so be prepared to spend like 6k+ to get to level 10 or so.

ASSASSIN
- guardian or strike form with heat ray, mg, disintegrator, cloak and a mix of speed (priority), hp and build power and regeneration. Some people level it until they get all the 8x buildpower, 8x hp, 8x speed, 8x regeneration
(like its cheaper cousin, this one hard counters most of the other front line commander builds so hard it's not even funny)


ASSAULT
- guardian form with dual rockets, napalm warheads upgrade and with 1x build power, 6x hp and a 2x speed, small shield and 1 regen module


SKIRMISHER
- guardian form with dual rockets, napalm warheads, 8x range modules and 1-2 hp and regeneration modules
- strike form with with dual beam lasers (or beam laser + disruption bomb), small shield, 8x range modules 1-2 hp and regeneration modules and/or small shield
(after investing about 1500 on these ranged ones, about level4, you'll get a unit which can both counter small and medium groups of raiders and enemy cheap skirmishers and riots frustratingly well if you can survive dancing around the front line with it, it will outrange cheap defenses and it's tough enough to overpower stinger towers one at a time and regenerate from the damage taken)

note that the commander itself only has 500 sight range, so you'll need support from an owl radar aircraft or a few skirmishers or AA units to provide the LOS (the AA bots from the shield factory are a cheap way to get good sight range).

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Firstly, you ALWAYS push your boi in 1v1. Don't leave him in your base. You should almost always expand with them and push to the front line making extractors and defenses, they're one of your strongest assets early on and much safer than expanding with a constructor. Also, if they just assist your factory, you will stall very quickly and you won't even be using all the comms build power: At this point you'll basically be forced to expand with your comm anyway. So they aren't a glorified builder hiding in your base in 1v1 at all.

Secondly, the first morph level is often cheap and pretty worth it once your eco stabilizes from expansion, with a weapon and say a radar module it is relatively cheap and very useful. In fact on very small maps (8x8) there are comm morph strategies (often using the rocket launcher and armour, damage, or regen module) that just push down the middle of the map with some units which can win the game outright using starting resources. But you should generally wait until your metal is in the positive before the first morph.

Thirdly, for any further commander morphing, remember that the commander morph builds -without- needing constructors, it builds where you need it with no re-enforce time and builds a very large unit incrementally (rather than needing 100% completion before it does anything). These are very strong perks. Particularly if you mess up your eco and excess or have a bunch of wrecks you want to reclaim fast to deny it to the enemy: Say, you just defended against a push, just took some territory from them, or just killed their commander. Particularly if you did any of that WITH your commander and it is now sitting in the wreckfield: Reclaim that metal and turn it into a stronger comm.

So morphing your commander is a great way to turn metal excess or reclaim into an advantage very quickly, particularly for new players who aren't very good at balancing their eco and can just hammer the morph button whenever they find themselves excessing.

Is it competitive in 1v1 though as a primary investment? No, not really, outside rare rush strats. The game has a huge roster of diverse units, we want you to fight with them, it's an RTS not a MOBA. The fact you mostly morph your commander in response to a windfall you can't spend fast enough has a nice mechanic to it I think.

disruptor bomb (no friendly fire slow bomb) on recon (jumping) com, multistunner (jumping scorpion) or heavy particle beam on engineer all the way.

Radar (I always take it), cloak and radar jammer optional.

8x speed is nice but faaar to expensive.

other chassis or modules not really worth it

@Godde Fair enough, but do you not at least take some nearby mexes before looping back to the base with your commander on red comet? Googlefrog used to be known for making Picket nests in the middle of Red Comet with his comm, but perhaps that's less viable now.

Saktoth, I usually skimp on defenses and try to make as many cons as possible on Red Comet meaning that it is a liability if my Commander is away from the factory and 3 Scorchers drive up to it unexpectedly before my commander can get back to it.
Also, if you have a fast expansion rate on Red Comet, your commander will basically be building solars non-stop so that you actually use all its' buildpower.
Defense creeping is pretty viable but I generally try to go for a more mobile strategy where I break through the defenses on the flank and raid their mexes in the back on Red Comet.

Riot cannon or beam laser/light paricle beam for range

Later disruptor bomb, no friendly fire, good to use with scythes

Is it possible to have a useful double-missile (not rocket) Strike comm? or is it an useless weapon?

Some types of dual-wielding coms are quite worthwhile as an ersatz strider in 1v1 against factories with no effective antiheavy units, as the cost of getting on that level is actually less than the cost of facswitch and counter for the opponent and grants you a strategic advantage otherwise until.

Upgrading the strike comm to have lots of attack-drones can be cool, and you don't have to get him too close to the enemy just get him close enough so the drones will go after an enemy unit. Or keep him behind the frontline so the drones will go after anything which approaches.

Downside is upgrading him to this level will cost a lot of metal, and if the enemy considers your comm enough of a threat then he will be targeted by an ult or a bombing raid or stunned and attacked by raiders or something. It doesn't take too much to take down a comm and if the enemy want him dead enough he will be killed. Losing a commander level 10 or above in the blink of an eye will suck.

A compromise IMO might be to upgrade him a couple of times if you find that helpful, that way you won't lose out too much if you lose him and he won't be too much of a target.