Idea For A New Game Feature (The Commander)

[Effervescent]

I would like to put forward an interesting idea for a new simple game feature: The Commander

 

The idea is to add a non-player mastermind that can help the team to coordinate, come up with strategies, and supervise the team performance during all stages of a game.

 

This "Commander" will act as an additional player in team games, who has no control of troops itself, but can share ally vision, ally map flare, and ally chat. And of course, doesn't have spectator view privileges.

 

Only one Commander per team would be allowed, and it would be an optional figure. Leaving it to the discretion of the team to make use of the feature or not.

 

This would make it possible to involve up to 10 players in a normal 4v4 TG, while adding almost zero extra overhead in terms of unit counts and overall lag to the game as a consequence.

 

Also it would allow players that currently don't want to actively play, but would be willing to act as coordinators and strategists to be part of the game instead of spectating.

 

It could also open new possibilities for balancing games. For example, by giving a "noobie" team a very experienced player as Commander, their combined strength could skyrocket, as most of the time new-ish players can boom well and mass good armies but lack the experience to make op team decisions. Being guided by an experienced Commander should also help players get better at playing in general.

 

We would encourage the dev team to implement this simple feature first, in order to make it straightforward to include soon in a new alpha. Then, in case this feature becomes popular, other more refined ideas can be implemented later, such as:

 

- A scouting or hero unit that the Commander can control. This unit could be used by the general to gather information about the map and the enemies in order to help him strategize. It could also be a kind of hero that could possess an aura to benefit his players in some way. If this unit is a hero it would possibly make sense to not give him fighting capabilities as that would break early game balance (hero being too strong in early game).

- The players could send the general floating or excess resources for him to redistribute as needed.

- In general the consensus among the players brainstorming this idea was to give The General only power of vision, scouting, strategizing, and maybe logistics, but no direct control in wars.

- An interesting feature proposed by one player is that if the commander gets a hero to control he could use it to dance in front of armies during wars to break 0AD fighting mechanics more efficiently (joking! XD).

 

Credit to players contributing to this idea:

Stockfish

Kakutstha

guerringuerin

effervescent

Mucholag

[alre]

I believe the easiest way to do it would be to make a custom map (can be included in a mod) that gives commander role and powers to two of the eight players.

in general, I think it's fun to have different maps that propose different kinds of player collaboration: for instance you could have a map where one player for team (and only one) is given the means to always be raiding the opponent team eco, while the other players are given other roles, like defense, eco, expansion, and leading the big armies.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

I like the idea of at least giving the commander player a hero unit. Perhaps when this unit dies it can be retrained at one of the team's CCs. Furthermore, this unit can only be retrained X number of times and costs more resources for each revival.