EvilGoodGuy

Excellent work, Yosh! I'm excited to see where this goes. I've always thought that renegade had so much more potential to add on to what was already a excellent gem in the command and conquer series. On that note, I figure I might as well throw out some of my ideas, even if they are a bit far fetched: Basically, I feel like the commander mode could operate excellently as a toned-down imitation of the commander mode as seen in the game Natural Selection 2 The commander position could be accessed via a special terminal in the HON/Barracks. I figure there could be an extra room added that cannot be accessed by enemy players or by anyone if there is a commander occupying it. Obviously the commander could be voted out of the position for various reasons (trolling, afk, poor tactical performance, etc.. ) and not able to return to the commander position for the rest of the match. While in commander mode the players view would resemble that of your typical RTS top-down and special HUD elements would appear. Illustration: The Icons in the upper left corner are to exit commander mode, write a message to the entire team, and a tab to view and select objectives for the team. The 4 icons in the bottom right are Repair (functions just like in RTS), Sell (same as RTS but only works with structures the player builds), Defenses Tab, and Research Tab. From here, the commander could do a number of activities: 1.Select players/units and give them attack or movement commands exactly as you would in a traditional RTS. -This could be extremely useful for bots, but players obviously would not have to obey the commands. -Controlling the harvester would especially be useful. -Selecting a player on the battlefield and then clicking to attack a enemy player could for example highlight that enemy for 15 seconds or so with a special marker (to clearly recognize its a commander attack request), even if the enemy is outside that particular players field of view. -There would probably need to be some sort of fog of war or vision range for the commander based on your units on the battlefield so he is no too over powered. Illustration: 2.Purchase and construct base defenses (pre-defined by the map). It would get pretty crazy if you could just place structures wherever you wanted, so I figure to keep things in some form of balance you should only be able to place them in pre-designated locations. -For instance, in my mind those metal infantry barriers that (seemingly) no one uses would be excellent candidates for locations to place defenses down without interrupting much of the actual terrain. -A limit to building additional base defenses could be made by restricting available power and/or increasing the cost for every additional purchase of active defenses. -It might even be really cool to require engineers to "construct" the structure into existence rather than it just appearing out of nowhere in a plume of dust. Illustration: 3. Purchase and Research upgrades for infantry, vehicles, and power. This could be a real game changer if done right. The idea is to be able to select a structure, such as the HON, then click on the Research tab and have a couple upgrades available to purchase. -The upgrades would most likely be expensive and give the team an incentive to donate credits to the commander and/or protect the harvester more. -They would also take a decent amount of time to actually research and take affect after purchased (purchase timer illustrated below). -If the building is destroyed you still keep the upgrades that have been purchased, but cannot purchase any more. -I figure the upgrades should be tailored to NOD and GDI respectively to suit their styles. NOD for example could get laser gun upgrades from HON and flame upgrade from Airstrip, while GDI could get infantry explosives projectile upgrade from barracks and Tank Shell upgrades from warfactory. -The power plant could be upgraded to allow more power for more base defenses. Illustration: To balance the commander out a bit, it might be wise to make his credit gain only 1 credit per second, and mostly rely on harvester loads, and make repairing a building cost credits. A cap on the amount of credits you could accumulate might also be wise. I think that's probably as much detail as you need about my ideas. This post is already much larger than I wanted it to be hahaha. I know they are big ideas, but I hope they are something to consider in the future at least.