Cruiser Command

So let me start this by saying 1. I love cruiser command and its mechanics quite a bit, and would rather it stays the same rather than a change make it worse / less fun / less balanced, and 2. I am a computer programmer and understand how the 'users' opinions don't always fit the mold for what I (or the company I work for) would like the product to be. Given that, I completely understand that this feature may not make sense for the Crusier Command experience.

But here is my idea and the thought process behind it: So, my explanation: Cruiser command (especially in non pro games, the 'bronze league') comes down to the following events:

- Both teams power down their battlecruiser, apply minimal shielding, and charge capacitors
- At some point team 1 decides the game is on, and powers up their battlecruiser, and sets course for team 2
- Hopefully team 2 doesn't have time to react (which is probable, because it mostly consists of new players in small ships fighting other small ships and avoiding the position of the enemy battlecruiser because it will murder them just for getting near it)
- Battlecruiser 1 starts attacking team 2. Battlecruiser 1 defeats BC 2 because team 2 wasn't prepared for BC1 to get there.

By the time team 2 knows something is wrong, their battlecruiser's shields are already down, because the person in the captain seat (intelligently) put the shields on the bare minimum to defend against astroids and small ship fire, but that was only enough to withstand a few seconds of enemy battlecruiser fire. Once the shields are down, while being attacked, team 1 now has to do these three things before they are even ready to mount resistance:

- get from the field to their battlecruiser (and coordinate the orders to do so)
- get someone on power and nav
- start repairing the ship (debris is in the way of vital systems by now)

Assuming that works, now what can they even do? The emergency shield energizers can't do much against sustained fire from the enemy battlecruiser. The only hope here is that team 2's battlecruiser had more time for upgrades, because team 1 spent less time mining.

So, lets say team 2 holds out long enough to get their stations manned. What now? Do they run? Power up the engines. But BC 1 can just match speed and pursue. Do they fight? They have no shields. Do they launch small ships? The small ships would be annihilated within only a few minutes against BC 1's laser cannons, and then they no longer have those small ships (which are vital to hunt miners).

At this point, I feel that the captain running power on BC 2 has no choice but to order stand and fight. Then, it becomes mostly a numbers game, where BC 1 already has the better numbers. Sometimes the person running BC 2 is more experienced than the person running power on BC 1, and BC 2 can win just by manipulating the power, but often especially either experienced vs experienced or unexperienced vs unexperienced players, BC 1 ultimately always wins that scenario.

On a side note, this may be a good argument for the BC laser being overpowered, or small ships not having enough hp/dps, but that that isn't the thought process I am going down here.

So, in summary, in a game like this, often by the time team A knows that it needs to defend itself from team B, and how it should go about doing that, team B already has the advantage because it has time to prepare the attack, and team A hasn't.

So, with that said, I look at other strategy games for how they have overcame this problem. I see two ideas out there:

1. RTS's and chess have a defenders advantage: Your base starts well defended, and you can expand those defenses as time goes on.

For example, in Warcraft III we have guard towers, which can't stop an attack straight up due to their poor HP, but add additional damage for the defending army while the defending army works as a meat shield. And, even before that point in the game, when the enemy hero could pounce on the defending team's base before the defending hero could be made, there is a 'call to arms' like feature for each race that uses the defending team's workers as army units. In command and conquer, the defenses are substantially more strong then the opposing team's units, but not as mobile. In Unreal Tournament 2004, the defending team's base has turrets, spawns stronger vehicles than the opposing team may be using, and is the spawn point for defending players and not offensive players. LoL/DotA clones have lane towers which gradually get less effective as the game goes on. And chess, obviously the other side of the board is more of the enemy's 'territory' and it is harder to hold positions there.

In all of these games, the 'king' piece of the game that needs to be captured to win is well defended from early opportunistic attacks that cause any harm other than minor inconvenience. However, this isn't how cruiser command is played - the attacking team brings its whole base with it to attack the defending team's base, and therefore there is really no concept of defense only units or advantage. It would be cool to have some kind of defense only and not offenseive small ship, but I have no idea what that ship would do (immobile spacedock?). Which brings me to idea two:

2. Nexus wars type games give you a second life / chance

In nexus wars, eventually the tide starts turning against you and you realize the game is really on, and you're about to get screwed, and there is nothing you can do about it. At this point, each player is given a 1 time nuke that substantially disrupts the enemy onslaught, and starts pushing the enemy the other way.

But this is a kind of silly mechanic. Even if such a mechanic could be worked out in a way which applied to cruiser command would be silly - at its heart, cruiser command tries to be more mature than those kinds of mechanics. So, what does that leave us with?

Well, what happens in Battlestar Galactica when all the Cylons suddenly show up when the colonists thought this should have been safe downtime? Well, EMERGENCY JUMP! The captain orders the jump, the XO puts his key in and so does the guy on science or engineering or whatever, a 30 second countdown starts, and bam the whole fleet goes 'somewhere'.

Now that they have crapped their collective pants, they know what they are up against, and they have a little time to defend themselves, before the inevitable and probably very soon epic fleet battle occurs.

And, in cruiser command, the same sort of thing will hopefully happen - the defending team will have time to energize their shields and get all hands at battle positions before they turn around and go in to kick team 1's ass.



With that all being said, I think that this game outcome needs some options for adding defenders advantage, and emergency jump is the best idea I can come up with.

The thought has occurred to me for a while that there's a significant issue with battlecruiser movement. It's often more favorable to simply 'bunker' than 'escape' when dealing with an attack due to the following issues:

• It is difficult to (quickly) power up two aspects (Engines/Shield) at the same time.
• Even provided you can raise your engines to begin an escape, the enemy can as well.

Because of this, a heavy priority is put on shields when first being attacked rather than engines for escape. In short, it's difficult to see running as a beneficial tactic when you can attempt to simply turtle the incoming attacks. Creating distant is indeed too difficult.

Something like the Emergency Jump you are suggesting has been put forth as an idea before. However...

My most immediate though would be that it's a bit too perfect against the rush tactic if you think about it.

A rush requires the opposing team to wrap across the opposing corner in order to make the initial attack. This means that the moment its caught onto, the escaping team can activate it to force themselves to a random location that is guaranteed to be away from the top right corner -- probably somewhere closer to the bottom left, where they originally came from.

Now, here's the 'fun trick.'

This effectively puts you in 'opposite positions' for the upcoming Kerm spawn -- rushes almost always occur before the Kermiculite spawn. If they don't, the enemy BC will already be prepped for movement to get to that position to begin with, and so wrapping across the corner would be pointless.

However, in the case that you wrap around the corner to rush and they Emergency Jump away, it's effectively a 'position reset' where you've done nothing more than swap positions -- not perfectly, but still to a large effect. All that the attacking team has managed is to waste energy. And Kerm will spawn as it normally would have, ensuring that the rushing team will have no possible chance of attempting to secure it due to the battlecruiser energy limitation.

It effectively makes the point of rushing mostly useless. It will push the meta in a way that before kerm, two people will sit on the battlecruiser and move to Kerm -- beforehand only one person would do it, but it's far easier with two. In addition, suddenly it also acts as a guaranteed anti-rush mechanic.

Here's the main reason I don't believe this kind of 'one shot' mechanic works with Cruiser Command:

The core of the games that utilize these 'One Shot' mechanics are primarily about avoiding 'disposable aspects'. Nexus Wars, as the example you put forth, doesn't destroy any of the enemy unit productions -- it simply kills a bunch of units that will readily be replaced in time. There is no actual 'punishment' upon the enemy team other than losing their build up which, if it was correctly designed to begin with, should eventually push back.

Having an Emergency Jump is a mechanic that is more punishing the earlier on in the game it's used as a counter. As the game progresses, it's effectively a fairly pointless mechanic as the chase can simply continue another time. It's only good against 'surprise attacks.'

This means it is only good against rushes. It is not a 'second chance,' it is an 'anti-rush mechanic.'

Maybe that's what you want -- however, to me that just feels like it's rather limiting in general. Perhaps this is bias, but I think rushes should be a perfectly legitimate tactic. I do agree that the weight of 'standing and fighting' over 'fleeing' is an issue -- without doubt. However, what you are putting forth is something that feels like it simply has 'nothing to lose.' Certainly it has restrictions, but nothing is lost for the escaping team. It does nothing but put them at an advantage due to the disadvantage of the attacker. So why bother attacking in the first place?

What I believe is required is a solution for Battlecruiser Movement -- wrapping is the only effective way of dealing with another enemy battlecruiser by movement at the moment. Rather than a 'one shot escape' mechanic, what is required is something that will more readily allow the battlecruisers to utilize the field beneficially in my opinion. Right now, it is simply dozens of times more efficient to simply raise shields than engines is all -- a moving battlecruiser is simply too easy to hit, and movement only becomes beneficial if you manage to actually make distance -- which is unlikely. To me, that is the real issue.

"At this point, I feel that the captain running power on BC 2 has no choice but to order stand and fight. Then, it becomes mostly a numbers game, where BC 1 already has the better numbers."

I don't agree. if team 2 can get their shields stable, they actually have an energy advantage. the remaining downside is debris on deck. but if you are lucky enough, they only block one side and nothing important (power/nav/weapon)

Now to the idea: What would stop a team from emergency jumping the enemy team for a surprise attack? How would you finish a game where the enemy BC can jump warp away anytime you get close?

Now if you make it a one time thing, it just delay the inevitable. you jump away, the enemy jumps to follow you. you saved about 5 seconds. and now your Smallships with your teammates trying to come back to help are on the other side of the map.

I was working on the idea of an invisibility cloak for BC as anti-rush and turns out... it either doesn't help at all, make the game impossible to end or make rushing even easier.

At least I never found the groundbreaking mechanic to balance the idea. not saying it's impossible, just unknown at the moment.

Caladbolg wrote:Now to the idea: What would stop a team from emergency jumping the enemy team for a surprise attack? How would you finish a game where the enemy BC can jump warp away anytime you get close?

He suggested it to be random.

Caladbolg wrote:Now if you make it a one time thing, it just delay the inevitable. you jump away, the enemy jumps to follow you. you saved about 5 seconds. and now your Smallships with your teammates trying to come back to help are on the other side of the map.

Don't entirely disagree with that. Early on it's an issue -- later on it's not. That's pretty much how to summarize it. Again, 'anti-rush mechanic.'

WhyteDragon wrote:

Caladbolg wrote:Now to the idea: What would stop a team from emergency jumping the enemy team for a surprise attack? How would you finish a game where the enemy BC can jump warp away anytime you get close?

He suggested it to be random.

well that's what I get for being lazy.

WhyteDragon wrote:

Caladbolg wrote:Now if you make it a one time thing, it just delay the inevitable. you jump away, the enemy jumps to follow you. you saved about 5 seconds. and now your Smallships with your teammates trying to come back to help are on the other side of the map.

Don't entirely disagree with that. Early on it's an issue -- later on it's not. That's pretty much how to summarize it. Again, 'anti-rush mechanic.'

you don't want an anti-rush mechanic to become anti-endgame

Am I the only one that thinks rushes are kinda so underused that it's a non-problem at the moment? Most captains I see do not even ping regularly anymore. Maybe a few successful rushes would teach them to start looking at pings again.

Caladbolg wrote:

WhyteDragon wrote:

Caladbolg wrote:Now to the idea: What would stop a team from emergency jumping the enemy team for a surprise attack? How would you finish a game where the enemy BC can jump warp away anytime you get close?

He suggested it to be random.

well that's what I get for being lazy.

WhyteDragon wrote:

Caladbolg wrote:Now if you make it a one time thing, it just delay the inevitable. you jump away, the enemy jumps to follow you. you saved about 5 seconds. and now your Smallships with your teammates trying to come back to help are on the other side of the map.

Don't entirely disagree with that. Early on it's an issue -- later on it's not. That's pretty much how to summarize it. Again, 'anti-rush mechanic.'

you don't want an anti-rush mechanic to become anti-endgame

Am I the only one that thinks rushes are kinda so underused that it's a non-problem at the moment? Most captains I see do not even ping regularly anymore. Maybe a few successful rushes would teach them to start looking at pings again.

As an avid lover of rushing...

... I can't honestly say. It's not necessarily my 'go to' tactic, but... hm.

All good points. Perhaps emergency jump isn't such a great idea.

I feel that there are two issues then that could still use some kind of mechanic:

- Implementing defenders advantage
- Making a BC escape that makes sense

But, I don't know what should be the solution to these problems, if any.

Defender has energy advantage

Faster BC acceleration could be fix, on the condition you give a diminishing return to engine power.

I know a lot of people have pointed out that perhaps the BC should spend energy in engines based upon throttle. Part of me believes that Siretu avoided this due to issues with, say, putting 1k into engines and then sitting throttle to 10%, and never having to worry about engines again -- at the same time, I wish there was some way to work around that issue. It's a frustrating idea. Part of me almost wants to say try implementing a 20% drain on unused engines. (I.E. 0% throttle with 400 engines drains 80 GW/s, 50% throttle with 400 engines drains 200GW/s +40GW/s)

As to what Caladbold said -- he's right. Defenders already do have the advantage.

WhyteDragon wrote:I know a lot of people have pointed out that perhaps the BC should spend energy in engines based upon throttle. Part of me believes that Siretu avoided this due to issues with, say, putting 1k into engines and then sitting throttle to 10%, and never having to worry about engines again -- at the same time, I wish there was some way to work around that issue. It's a frustrating idea. Part of me almost wants to say try implementing a 20% drain on unused engines. (I.E. 0% throttle with 400 engines drains 80 GW/s, 50% throttle with 400 engines drains 200GW/s +40GW/s)

As to what Caladbold said -- he's right. Defenders already do have the advantage.

Now unused engines only draining 20% of energy is an interesting idea, because usually unlike small ships, navigation is on/off and anything in-between pisses off your power guy. This solution could better work with more manuverability, the nav guy can park the BB for chompers easily then move off again quickly or be used to flight rule if an enemy bc is nearby. This option can have engines on standby and not take to much of a power drain or taking time to raise and lower engines. (Although personally I would argue a 35% energy drain for unused engines)

This is probably a more permanent solution then a one time 'warp' ability and is more flexible.