Simplistic Commander

[yosh56]

I know there's always talk about a commander mode and all that, but I feel as though the ideas for it get blown out of proportion to the point where it would become a daunting task for the devs to implement it. After a little thought, I think having a single 'commander' with just a few abilities could help the gameplay without becoming a monstrous undertaking.

The only REAL abilities that would need to be tied to a person of importance would be:

Blocking the Harvester so it will get out of the way and stop being whored to death.

Unblocking the Harvester.

Destroying the Harvester on the off chance that it is glitched. (This could be a timed detonation so it can't be used to kill the Harvester just to keep it from giving the enemy points).

As a non-Harvester ability, the ability to place beacons that show up to all friendly players would be nice. For instance, beacons that denote 'xxx rush, meet here' or what not. While a lot of players seem to miss team chat, an obvious marker may actually catch their attention.

Again, not something the game so much 'needs' as much as could benefit from without having to become freakishly overwhelming. Half of the time when I hear the idea pitched, it somehow becomes making tactical maps and overviews that would need Fog of war and things of that nature. Just keeping it simple.

[SFJake]

The idea kind of goes hand in hand with another idea that I wasn't the first to say, but basically just to have a full map of the levels you can open, and see everything (your friendlies, vehicles, and even who they're seeing/spotting, spotted beacons, everything).

The map then easily becomes a tool for even more things, like being able to suggest other people what to do. Having a tool like this instead of relying purely on chat just makes it easier for people to "care" and get involved in the teamwork.

On the other hand, choosing a commander for specific actions like controlling the harvester, well, the problem is always, how do you choose the commander? Should it be a commander exclusive to order the team? What if my commander is stupid and makes no plan, and someone else could have been leading but can't use the system?

As for the harvester, IMO, there should just be a check to see if its position hasn't changed in X minutes and if it did, it blows up.

[yosh56]

The idea kind of goes hand in hand with another idea that I wasn't the first to say, but basically just to have a full map of the levels you can open, and see everything (your friendlies, vehicles, and even who they're seeing/spotting, spotted beacons, everything).

The map then easily becomes a tool for even more things, like being able to suggest other people what to do. Having a tool like this instead of relying purely on chat just makes it easier for people to "care" and get involved in the teamwork.

On the other hand, choosing a commander for specific actions like controlling the harvester, well, the problem is always, how do you choose the commander? Should it be a commander exclusive to order the team? What if my commander is stupid and makes no plan, and someone else could have been leading but can't use the system?

As for the harvester, IMO, there should just be a check to see if its position hasn't changed in X minutes and if it did, it blows up.

Again, I was going with being relatively easy to code when I was referring to simplistic. From what I can tell they've already got functions to destroy vehicles at a certain point (The Airstrip for instance), though I'm not sure how difficult it would be to just tell the Harvester AI to stop and go.

A map overview is going a bit above and beyond, coding wise, and would involve more work for a 2D/3D artist.

As for choosing a commander, I believe it could just be a vote option. Again, we already have a voting system implemented in game.

[Soldieroffate]

If they want to keep things simple, they can always implement the commander mode from Battlefield 2. He could basically see the whole battlefield from a top-down perspective and point out enemy targets.

I can see it working for Renegade X but it might be a bit OP for Nod as they can spot Hotwires running in, but GDI's can't see SBHs. Of course, it eventually boils down to teamwork because warnings won't work if no one listens.

[yosh56]

Yet again, by 'simple' I'm referring to basically being able to implement it without needing to necessarily add much. Maps give way to needing to have fog-of-war, or only showing spotted targets, and that presents whole new balance issues on it's own.

Being able to just flag a character as a commander, then enable them a few functions like placing rally beacons, picking out targets, and keeping the harvester from being retarded can all be done from ground-level.