Just one thing. I remember it being mentioned in an NS2HD video about the idea of a sub commander. One able to log in via a tech point base and do some commander tasks to help take the pressure off the main commander. Is this something that was removed or is it something being worked on as honestly I think letting the Marines have a 2nd person at two tech points would help them a bit as it would mean one commander could focus on the battle while the sub worked on build orders and troupe movement for a second squad. this is as at present the Marine Commander is far more involved than the alien commander, with the Marine commander being required to do research, set build orders and movement orders and support the pushes. while the Alien commander can sit back, and do a bit of building and research without having to support the front lines as much.
As of build 235, playing commander and preforming the role is fine.
Things like: Managing you base(s), upgrading, directing people, and providing aid (Med packs/scans/etc.). All of that in my opinion is fine, there might be some minor balance changes that I don't know about, due to lack of experience.
However I am mostly concerned about the overall control of being a commander. Now note this is all mostly personal.
Camera Panning: Like in a majority of RTS' you can pan the camera by hitting the edge of the screen with your mouse. There could be 2 fixes here: <ol type='1'><li>Have a pan sensitivity to allow players to customize how fast they want the pan to scroll.</li><li>Have the middle mouse button preform a sort of "free-pan mode". Locks the cursor, and has a free X-Y movement of the camera. For me personally this is how i typically navigate top down styled games.</li></ol>
Commander Hotkeys: Currently there are no separate hotkey configurations in the options menu for commander specific functions. Giving players the ability to change how their hot-keys work as a commander, can vastly help new, and competitive players to tailor the game to their needs. For example: I would change the arrow keys to WASD, to help me move the camera around (minor movements, larger movements I would click the mini-map).
If I have anything else to add I'll end up editing this post.
<!--fonto:Arial Black--><span style="font-family:Arial Black"><!--/fonto--><b>Feedback:</b><!--fontc--></span><!--/fontc--> <!--fonto:Franklin Gothic Medium--><span style="font-family:Franklin Gothic Medium"><!--/fonto-->-As a commander on both teams I've notice something disturbing. As easy as it is to surrender by scraping all of Your buildings as a humans, it's not as easy with aliens, so i think that it would be good to add a feature in alien buildings to scrap them. -As a human commander, your expansions is solely decided by team awareness of your expectations. While the aliens can rampage all around the place, leaving the commander the only one responsible for the expansion. It would be nice if the alien commander could select a player and request him to aid in constructing buildings. And while doing so give giving the alien a visible path (perhaps a pheromone path with little cloud showing the correct way, just like a thin arrow) so they will not get lost on the creep. -Often as the alien commander, pointing out where my team should go i have to refer to the map and names of locations on it, but since everything is covered in creep, it's hard to find Yourself going the right way. It would be nice if alien species would visually witness a sort of seeing through walls feature, as a 1.5 second pulse when using the alien vision. It would reveal the part of the map where there is creep, as they travel on the map. -Many times as a commander, i am unsure what other buildings and upgrades are required to obtain another building, it would be nice if all of those were listed. Along with vivid description of all the bonuses a certain building would give me, especially on the alien side. -Robots made in human factory could use two abilities, one would be follow where we can attach the robot to any unit, and the second would be patrol, which will move the robot between about six points selected on the map. -Scouts made in alien hive, could use a command attack which isn't a single target but an area effect, where while selecting attack and pointing it on the ground, the closest enemy will be attack on the path of scouts, with prioritizing moving objects. -There should be a method to lead Your team on alien side with prioritizing places where commander would request assistance. Pheromone cloud colored Red could signalize attack or defend scenario, and Blue could signalize expanding and healing area. -As a commander on both sides there should be a tree of upgrades visible in one of the corners, where the commander will see all the time what traits and upgrades are done/in process/and not yet achieved, along with requirements to have them. So that the team would rage, against the commander, requesting things that the commander was not aware of losing or not building at all. -As a commander on human side i often found myself in a scenario where the team wouldn't listen, and instead of expanding, they would stand in one corridor and fight the aliens, trying to invade them, while the enemy alien commander was expanding with each second. It would be nice if the Commander could put a certain pressure on the team, to receive points for doing objectives, for example taking one point of resources for building each building, and shorten the time of receiving a single resource point by half, when repairing a damaged building. -When a human commander, it's pointless to use attack option when selecting a single soldier, since the enemies move very fast and i can hardly hover on any of the aliens to command it. It would be better to give the meaning of attack an AOE signature a circle where the enemy should be expected to be.<!--fontc--></span><!--/fontc-->
A few of the top annoyances of commanding: * Seeing building health is really hard. The little circle around them is very faint and it's hard to tell at a glance how much health that power node or phase has. * MACs and ARCs ** When building them, should be able to queue them up, along with upgrades ** Should be able to make a MAC follow an exo suit around even if the exo suit is at full health. Hate how they just give up and sit around when they get it to full once, and how you can't assign MACs to fresh exos. Preferably they follow him around and weld other stuff if the exo is full. ** Should be able to shift click to order a series of actions. Undeploy, shift right click to move then shift z to deploy at the new location. It's so annoying to move them around now. ** Had a problem where one ARC was stuck so all the other arcs refused to move
I hate it when i am a commander because i am a newbie and as soon as i am a commander, people say i am not doing anything and tell me to log out. by the way, dystopia is a cyberpunk mod for hl2 where you can do that.
<!--quoteo(post=2056707:date=Jan 5 2013, 06:43 PM:name=RandomEngy)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (RandomEngy @ Jan 5 2013, 06:43 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2056707"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->* Seeing building health is really hard. The little circle around them is very faint and it's hard to tell at a glance how much health that power node or phase has. * MACs and ARCs ** When building them, should be able to queue them up, along with upgrades ** Should be able to make a MAC follow an exo suit around even if the exo suit is at full health. Hate how they just give up and sit around when they get it to full once, and how you can't assign MACs to fresh exos. Preferably they follow him around and weld other stuff if the exo is full. ** Should be able to shift click to order a series of actions. Undeploy, shift right click to move then shift z to deploy at the new location. It's so annoying to move them around now.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
This.
And please, separate Deploy\UnDeploy, Root\Unroot buttons. So I can choose few units, press one button and be sure they do what I want.
1. One of the most annoying features is those shortcut icons for upgrades that are layered on top of structures, for example, with the alien upgrade structures you can click an upgrade without first clicking the structure. I imagine this was added to save the commander a second, but more often than not I find myself accidentally clicking an upgrade I don't want and then needing to cancel it. Please remove them and just require that we click on the structure first.
2. Structures that have upgrades should be distinguishable from those that don't. A simple noticable border around those structures would be sufficient.
3. Ability to zoom in and out (out enough to have the entire map fit the screen).
4. As a marine commander, when a marine requests something it isn't obvious where the request came from. It would be nice to have a beacon effect to indicate where the player is.
5. I don't see the need as a commander to see anything but the ground. Seeing the walls isn't helpful, requires more rendering, and looks messy.
6. The ability to cancel building a structure. Several times I have accidentally put a structure down as an alien commander that I didn't intend on putting, and had no choice but to have it built. Perhaps there could be a 10 second timer wherein you may cancel the build. The reason I suggest that there be a timer is to prevent the commander from placing a structure and then cancelling it because a marine is attacking. In StarCraft 2 you just lose res, which I suppose is also a solution.
7. When commanding as aliens, sometimes cysts don't get placed near the bottom of the screen regardless that I clicked on a valid location. I believe the problem has to do with the UI menus at the bottom which probably extend beyond what they appear to extend to. I am playing the game at 1024x768 resolution, and presume that the UI menu at the bottom probably has some fixed pixel height or something that actually takes up 1/3 of the screen. To witness this, play at a low resolution as an alien commander and try and place a cyst close to the commander menus.
<!--coloro:#FF8C00--><span style="color:#FF8C00"><!--/coloro--><b>(Btw, do the developers read this thread? I haven't seen any changes to the commander since the game's release.)</b><!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc-->
<!--quoteo(post=2061446:date=Jan 16 2013, 12:44 PM:name=nsguy)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (nsguy @ Jan 16 2013, 12:44 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2061446"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->1. One of the most annoying features is those shortcut icons for upgrades that are layered on top of structures, for example, with the alien upgrade structures you can click an upgrade without first clicking the structure. I imagine this was added to save the commander a second, but more often than not I find myself accidentally clicking an upgrade I don't want and then needing to cancel it. Please remove them and just require that we click on the structure first.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
You can turn this off in the menu, it's called 'Commander Help'. When I first commanded, I kept upgrading to a random hive type and could never figure out why.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->4. As a marine commander, when a marine requests something it isn't obvious where the request came from. It would be nice to have a beacon effect to indicate where the player is.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
You can hit spacebar to jump to that request when it is issued. Marines can also ping a map with the middle mouse button.
<!--quoteo(post=2061535:date=Jan 16 2013, 08:28 PM:name=Gorgenapper)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Gorgenapper @ Jan 16 2013, 08:28 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2061535"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->You can turn this off in the menu, it's called 'Commander Help'. When I first commanded, I kept upgrading to a random hive type and could never figure out why.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Cool! I wasn't aware of this. I'll definitely change it. It would probably be better if it were defaulted to "off" though, considering it can cause all kinds of confusion for new commanders.
<!--quoteo(post=2061535:date=Jan 16 2013, 08:28 PM:name=Gorgenapper)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Gorgenapper @ Jan 16 2013, 08:28 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2061535"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->You can hit spacebar to jump to that request when it is issued. Marines can also ping a map with the middle mouse button.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I'm aware, but nothing beats having a visual cue as well. Also, it doesn't work when you have multiple requests at the same time from different positions on the map.
Hopefully this is still monitored since it's a webbed topic, many if not all of these ideas have probably been suggested before, sorry I am not willing to read through 15 pages of previous posts. There have been some great improvements to the interface in recent builds, being able to see all your upgrades on the bottom of the screen now is great! I will try to avoid suggestions that I have seen lots of times before unless they are very worthy of repetition. Here's what I'd like to see next:
1) Make control groups double-clickable and key-tappable, i.e. when you double-click on one of your control groups (1-9) or you double-tap the number on your keyboard, you zoom to one of the units in that group (not sure how much it matters which one, maybe the nearest, maybe the marine with lowest health, maybe have a hierarchy for structures e.g. if the group contains an observatory that will be the unit that gets selected and zoomed to rather than an armory or extractor in the same group). I know this one has been suggested a lot, that's because we really want it! Build 244, woo!
2) Have a key that makes the mouse control the camera rather than cursor while you hold it down, default could be middle-mouse and have ping be something else by default. Being able to set the scroll speed would also be good.
3) When you select a unit or units you should be able to add them to group 5 by shift-clicking 5, like in Starcraft 2.
4) Players assigned to a control group should remain in that control group after they die and respawn. Added in b244!
5) Marines' icons on the minimap (as in the 'big' minimap that you press C to see, is there a better name than 'minimap' for this?) should be replaced by a medpack or ammo icon if they have made such a request in the last X seconds (10 would probably be good) and there should also be such an icon by their name when they're in your view, or just add an indicator so the comm can see how much ammo marines have for their primary weapon.
6) Give MACs a 'follow' command so you don't have to constantly micro them (I've seen this suggested dozens of times, so it seems to be a very popular idea). It would be great if you could select a MAC and then right click on the control group icons to have the MAC weld and/or follow the structures or players in that group. Done, thanks UWE!
7) The ability to zoom in and out and rotate your view would be nice (but isn't really a priority).
8) Have an option to bind a key to "select all marines" so you don't have to click that icon on the left of the screen (every millisecond counts!).
9) Make it possible to keep medpack or ammo selected by holding down the hotkey (S or A) so you don't have to press those buttons over and over, just hold them down and click click click.
10) This one has been mentioned a lot but is still not in - let us rebind the hotkey grid and preferably even individual hotkeys (e.g. a button that selects medpack without having to go to the appropriate tab first)
11) Let the commander cancel a beacon, accidental beacon can lose you the game, there is nothing more frustrating in this game imo. I've even done an accidental beacon and then accidentally recycled my obs trying to cancel it a few times. Even if didn't get the res back, to stop people using it all the time, being able to cancel it would be great.
If any of these are unclear I'd be happy to provide further details or examples. I can't imagine any of these are controversial since they're just adding things that don't have to be used if you don't want to, but if anyone thinks any of these are bad ideas I'd be interested to hear your reasoning.
New color coded pings such as attack, defend, secure, etc... also let multiple pings stay at once, like 2 defends and an attack ping at the same time.
More identifiable spots for harvesters/generators and centers/hives. I often look at the map to find where to put harvesters instead of being able to find it just by looking. Maybe something simple like the nightvision of aliens in command mode. Maybe restrict this to aliens so it's easier to fast expand for aliens.
Hopefully this is still monitored since it's a webbed topic, many if not all of these ideas have probably been suggested before, sorry I am not willing to read through 15 pages of previous posts. There have been some great improvements to the interface in recent builds, being able to see all your upgrades on the bottom of the screen now is great! I will try to avoid suggestions that I have seen lots of times before unless they are very worthy of repetition. Here's what I'd like to see next:
1) Make control groups double-clickable and key-tappable, i.e. when you double-click on one of your control groups (1-9) or you double-tap the number on your keyboard, you zoom to one of the units in that group (not sure how much it matters which one, maybe the nearest, maybe the marine with lowest health, maybe have a hierarchy for structures e.g. if the group contains an observatory that will be the unit that gets selected and zoomed to rather than an armory or extractor in the same group). I know this one has been suggested a lot, that's because we really want it!
2) Have a key that makes the mouse control the camera rather than cursor while you hold it down, default could be middle-mouse and have ping be something else by default. Being able to set the scroll speed would also be good.
3) When you select a unit or units you should be able to add them to group 5 by shift-clicking 5, like in Starcraft 2.
4) Players assigned to a control group should remain in that control group after they die and respawn.
5) Marines' icons on the minimap (as in the 'big' minimap that you press C to see, is there a better name than 'minimap' for this?) should be replaced by a medpack or ammo icon if they have made such a request in the last X seconds (10 would probably be good) and there should also be such an icon by their name when they're in your view, or just add an indicator so the comm can see how much ammo marines have for their primary weapon.
6) Give MACs a 'follow' command so you don't have to constantly micro them (I've seen this suggested dozens of times, so it seems to be a very popular idea). It would be great if you could select a MAC and then right click on the control group icons to have the MAC weld and/or follow the structures or players in that group. Done, thanks UWE!
7) The ability to zoom in and out and rotate your view would be nice (but isn't really a priority).
8) Have an option to bind a key to "select all marines" so you don't have to click that icon on the left of the screen (every millisecond counts!).
9) Make it possible to keep medpack or ammo selected by holding down the hotkey (S or A) so you don't have to press those buttons over and over, just hold them down and click click click.
10) This one has been mentioned a lot but is still not in - let us rebind the hotkey grid and preferably even individual hotkeys (e.g. a button that selects medpack without having to go to the appropriate tab first)
11) Let the commander cancel a beacon, accidental beacon can lose you the game, there is nothing more frustrating in this game imo. I've even done an accidental beacon and then accidentally recycled my obs trying to cancel it a few times. Even if you didn't get back the res, to stop people using it all the time, being able to cancel it would be great.
If any of these are unclear I'd be happy to provide further details or examples. I can't imagine any of these are controversial since they're just adding things that don't have to be used if you don't want to, but if anyone thinks any of these are bad ideas I'd be interested to hear your reasoning.
12) Move the chat text higher up in commander view, currently it gets obscured behind the control groups and minimap so you usually have to go into the console to see what people said.
Not sure if it's been mentioned, but there are legitimate complaints about complexity. The overlook system tries to be simple but in its attempt to simulate the map can be distracting. When I was a new commander, I was so terrified that I quite the game after ten minutes and one negative comment about my performance from a marine.
There are many complicated games that get over this difficulty. One of my favorite examples is Homeworld and Homeworld 2. Even taking place in a 3d RTS space, when you pressed spacebar you could zoom out and get a simple blip system that showed you where things were. This could be a very simple red dots vs. blue dots on a simplified map option for commanders from both sides. Just a thought.
Build 244 has implemented the long awaited ability to zoom to your control groups by double-clicking the icon or double-tapping the number on your keyboard, awesome!
There are still some issues with selecting units though, using shift to add stuff to your current selection is a real pain the ass. Sometimes you have to hold shift BEFORE you select ANYTHING, if you select something(s) and THEN hold shift and select something else, your initial selection gets deselected. This happens very often but not always, making it even more frustrating, I hope it can be fixed soon so that you can select something and then just use shift to add or remove things to that selection consistently. You can always click/drag on the ground or use an unassigned number key to clear your selection.
Also would love the ability to use shift+number to quickly add/remove things from a control group like in SC2, but I mentioned that in my big post up there already ^
Some more thoughts about the new (fantastic) ability to jump to control groups:
From the little testing I have done it seems like there is hierarchy for structures within a group, with the one that was built first being the one that gets selected when you select that group, presumably this also applies to players with either the first that joined the team or the one that has been alive longest, haven't tested this.
I was wondering if it would be possible to let us change the order of items within a group, so you can have multiple structures in a group but always have your observatory be the one that gets selected, for example, so that you can beacon easily but know if any building in that base is being attacked. I think you could do this a few different ways:
a) Have the first thing you add to the group be the "focus unit", then the second if that gets destroyed/removed, etc.
b) Have a hard-coded hierarchy with obs at the top, then power node, etc. (but I think people will disagree about the order).
c) Let users set their own order in the menus.
d) Let users drag the icons around in-game to reorder the units in control groups.
I'm just going to keep using this thread to right things down so I don't forget them
I noticed while watching someone who plays with commander help turned on (which I don't think many experienced players do, maybe I'm wrong), that marines have a little medpack or ammo icon hovering over their head when they make requests. I think it would be nice if this was also enabled with commander help off, though without being clickable. I would find this feature very useful but I don't want all the clickable icons above structures that you get with commander help turned on.
It would be cool if yo could drop Armor Repair Kits.
Please, NO! Medspam is already powerful enough, and I believe there was a distinct purpose behind the recent change that made armory unable to repair both health and armor, leaving armor repair dependant on teamplay and welders.
By the way, you can repair your marines' armor by building and depolying MACs already. It's quite powerful too, especially on defense.
A commander gives an order, a basic order, given in the first 10 - 30 seconds of the game like "go here". Marines ignore order completely and go about their business of expanding (fruitfully or not). The commander needs a carrot and a stick. One ability to punish a single or group of marines when they're uncooperative and one way to incentivize following orders. Some times success and team play is not enough of a carrot to keep players in check.
The same may be needed for aliens but marines are most at a disadvantage being required to build for the commander to take and hold ground. Potential marine structures are not enough draw the attention of marines and built up areas are not enough to hold marines attention span.
Well, since we're going to go ahead and rez this thread:
- Changeable key-binds (please!?)
- Mouse3 camera panning (i.e. like SC2--holding down Mouse3 and dragging the mouse allows you to pan the camera, without having to click around on the mini-map or use edge-scrolling).
- Camera hotkeys (again, using SC2 as the example, you can use ctrl+f5-f8 to set locations, where pressing that button again will bring the camera back to that location).
Well, since we're going to go ahead and rez this thread:
- Changeable key-binds (please!?)
- Mouse3 camera panning (i.e. like SC2--holding down Mouse3 and dragging the mouse allows you to pan the camera, without having to click around on the mini-map or use edge-scrolling).
- Camera hotkeys (again, using SC2 as the example, you can use ctrl+f5-f8 to set locations, where pressing that button again will bring the camera back to that location).
Also better "recall" of a control group. Need a double-tab. Not some sh*tty "let it press"; which has an unstable behaviour (go commander, "control-group" something, then select it, and press to control that group a 2nd time ; let that control-group-button down. You almost never hear the same amount of sounds (the tiny sound I can't really define) in a row (when trying that scenario more time).
One thing I would like to see, beyond changeable keybinds for comm, is variable view heights. This could be done with shift/ctrl or the mouse wheel by default, and would turn alpha layers on certain objects on or off, so you could progress through levels of the map, as well as possible altering the comm height. This would mostly require a few new keybinds to be added, as well as making certain objects' visibility relative to the current view level, and maybe for a bit of extra clarity, add some interface marker to indicate which level the comm is looking at. I suppose it would also need a function to set the view level to the current level of a player/structure whenever the comm goes to them, such as responding to a med request or returning to a control group.
This would clear up problems of trying to med around the few multilevel areas, and eventually may lead to more vertical map design.
I am trying to get into commanding more but its a pain because I am not fast enough. The reason for this is that I don't like the default hot keys and would like to customize / map them. The problem here is that I can't do that in options and certainly not separately from the player controls. If this were customizable I would be much faster and would command more. as it stands I rarely do it.
Hi guys. I'm working on the NS2 commander interface at the moment, so I've created this thread to hear your thoughts in general about the NS commander experience so we can improve it as much as possible for NS2.
Ask yourselves questions like:
What are some of your most memorable experiences (good or bad)? For example - what was it like the first time you stepped into the command chair?
What do you love and/or hate about commanding?
Maybe you avoid commanding and if so, why?
Why types of features would you like to see added or removed?
Anything goes. Let's hear your thoughts!
One of the most difficult aspects to playing the commander role on both aliens and marines is communicating to the players. Even if you do have a microphone, odds are that there will always be a subset of players that are too busy talking themselves to hear the commander, honestly can't hear the commander for various reasons, have the game volume turned down/muted, or simply just missed the few seconds the commander gave a verbal order.
Therefore, I would love to see a way for both team's commanders to be able to place visual objectives in the game world and map, that display for all players on the team (similar to the alien commander's Danger, Heal, and Expansion markers).
Some ideas for those objectives seem to already be in the game via way-points (weld/heal target, build target, defend location, attack location, etc.), however, unlike the way-point system, these would be global objectives that anyone can complete. The markers should persist indefinitely until: the commander removes the objective, a player completes the objective, or an enemy makes the objective obsolete.
The benefit that these markers provide is a constant reminder of what the team's current objectives are. The commander would no longer have to constantly remind players of the current objectives, since those objective will be constantly displayed to all players on the team, whether they have just joined, or simply needed a reminder. In addition, since the team objectives are displayed in the game world, the entire team has a visual indicator of where they need to be increasing team-play, and coordination*.
* One of the largest complaints I have received from new players joining games for the first time is that they don't know what they should be doing. Having visual cues displaying team objectives gives those new players a goal to work towards making them feel like they are doing something useful, instead of running around the map wishing for some direction. While this can be partially helped by giving way-points to the new player, the commander then needs to babysit the new player around the map providing things to do for just that player, as opposed to coordinating the entire team.
Comments
I remember it being mentioned in an NS2HD video about the idea of a sub commander. One able to log in via a tech point base and do some commander tasks to help take the pressure off the main commander. Is this something that was removed or is it something being worked on as honestly I think letting the Marines have a 2nd person at two tech points would help them a bit as it would mean one commander could focus on the battle while the sub worked on build orders and troupe movement for a second squad. this is as at present the Marine Commander is far more involved than the alien commander, with the Marine commander being required to do research, set build orders and movement orders and support the pushes. while the Alien commander can sit back, and do a bit of building and research without having to support the front lines as much.
Things like: Managing you base(s), upgrading, directing people, and providing aid (Med packs/scans/etc.). All of that in my opinion is fine, there might be some minor balance changes that I don't know about, due to lack of experience.
However I am mostly concerned about the overall control of being a commander. Now note this is all mostly personal.
Camera Panning: Like in a majority of RTS' you can pan the camera by hitting the edge of the screen with your mouse.
There could be 2 fixes here:
<ol type='1'><li>Have a pan sensitivity to allow players to customize how fast they want the pan to scroll.</li><li>Have the middle mouse button preform a sort of "free-pan mode". Locks the cursor, and has a free X-Y movement of the camera. For me personally this is how i typically navigate top down styled games.</li></ol>
Commander Hotkeys:
Currently there are no separate hotkey configurations in the options menu for commander specific functions. Giving players the ability to change how their hot-keys work as a commander, can vastly help new, and competitive players to tailor the game to their needs. For example: I would change the arrow keys to WASD, to help me move the camera around (minor movements, larger movements I would click the mini-map).
If I have anything else to add I'll end up editing this post.
<!--fonto:Franklin Gothic Medium--><span style="font-family:Franklin Gothic Medium"><!--/fonto-->-As a commander on both teams I've notice something disturbing. As easy as it is to surrender by scraping all of Your buildings as a humans, it's not as easy with aliens, so i think that it would be good to add a feature in alien buildings to scrap them.
-As a human commander, your expansions is solely decided by team awareness of your expectations. While the aliens can rampage all around the place, leaving the commander the only one responsible for the expansion. It would be nice if the alien commander could select a player and request him to aid in constructing buildings. And while doing so give giving the alien a visible path (perhaps a pheromone path with little cloud showing the correct way, just like a thin arrow) so they will not get lost on the creep.
-Often as the alien commander, pointing out where my team should go i have to refer to the map and names of locations on it, but since everything is covered in creep, it's hard to find Yourself going the right way. It would be nice if alien species would visually witness a sort of seeing through walls feature, as a 1.5 second pulse when using the alien vision. It would reveal the part of the map where there is creep, as they travel on the map.
-Many times as a commander, i am unsure what other buildings and upgrades are required to obtain another building, it would be nice if all of those were listed. Along with vivid description of all the bonuses a certain building would give me, especially on the alien side.
-Robots made in human factory could use two abilities, one would be follow where we can attach the robot to any unit, and the second would be patrol, which will move the robot between about six points selected on the map.
-Scouts made in alien hive, could use a command attack which isn't a single target but an area effect, where while selecting attack and pointing it on the ground, the closest enemy will be attack on the path of scouts, with prioritizing moving objects.
-There should be a method to lead Your team on alien side with prioritizing places where commander would request assistance. Pheromone cloud colored Red could signalize attack or defend scenario, and Blue could signalize expanding and healing area.
-As a commander on both sides there should be a tree of upgrades visible in one of the corners, where the commander will see all the time what traits and upgrades are done/in process/and not yet achieved, along with requirements to have them. So that the team would rage, against the commander, requesting things that the commander was not aware of losing or not building at all.
-As a commander on human side i often found myself in a scenario where the team wouldn't listen, and instead of expanding, they would stand in one corridor and fight the aliens, trying to invade them, while the enemy alien commander was expanding with each second. It would be nice if the Commander could put a certain pressure on the team, to receive points for doing objectives, for example taking one point of resources for building each building, and shorten the time of receiving a single resource point by half, when repairing a damaged building.
-When a human commander, it's pointless to use attack option when selecting a single soldier, since the enemies move very fast and i can hardly hover on any of the aliens to command it. It would be better to give the meaning of attack an AOE signature a circle where the enemy should be expected to be.<!--fontc--></span><!--/fontc-->
* Seeing building health is really hard. The little circle around them is very faint and it's hard to tell at a glance how much health that power node or phase has.
* MACs and ARCs
** When building them, should be able to queue them up, along with upgrades
** Should be able to make a MAC follow an exo suit around even if the exo suit is at full health. Hate how they just give up and sit around when they get it to full once, and how you can't assign MACs to fresh exos. Preferably they follow him around and weld other stuff if the exo is full.
** Should be able to shift click to order a series of actions. Undeploy, shift right click to move then shift z to deploy at the new location. It's so annoying to move them around now.
** Had a problem where one ARC was stuck so all the other arcs refused to move
* MACs and ARCs
** When building them, should be able to queue them up, along with upgrades
** Should be able to make a MAC follow an exo suit around even if the exo suit is at full health. Hate how they just give up and sit around when they get it to full once, and how you can't assign MACs to fresh exos. Preferably they follow him around and weld other stuff if the exo is full.
** Should be able to shift click to order a series of actions. Undeploy, shift right click to move then shift z to deploy at the new location. It's so annoying to move them around now.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
This.
And please, separate Deploy\UnDeploy, Root\Unroot buttons. So I can choose few units, press one button and be sure they do what I want.
2. Structures that have upgrades should be distinguishable from those that don't. A simple noticable border around those structures would be sufficient.
3. Ability to zoom in and out (out enough to have the entire map fit the screen).
4. As a marine commander, when a marine requests something it isn't obvious where the request came from. It would be nice to have a beacon effect to indicate where the player is.
5. I don't see the need as a commander to see anything but the ground. Seeing the walls isn't helpful, requires more rendering, and looks messy.
6. The ability to cancel building a structure. Several times I have accidentally put a structure down as an alien commander that I didn't intend on putting, and had no choice but to have it built. Perhaps there could be a 10 second timer wherein you may cancel the build. The reason I suggest that there be a timer is to prevent the commander from placing a structure and then cancelling it because a marine is attacking. In StarCraft 2 you just lose res, which I suppose is also a solution.
7. When commanding as aliens, sometimes cysts don't get placed near the bottom of the screen regardless that I clicked on a valid location. I believe the problem has to do with the UI menus at the bottom which probably extend beyond what they appear to extend to. I am playing the game at 1024x768 resolution, and presume that the UI menu at the bottom probably has some fixed pixel height or something that actually takes up 1/3 of the screen. To witness this, play at a low resolution as an alien commander and try and place a cyst close to the commander menus.
<!--coloro:#FF8C00--><span style="color:#FF8C00"><!--/coloro--><b>(Btw, do the developers read this thread? I haven't seen any changes to the commander since the game's release.)</b><!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc-->
You can turn this off in the menu, it's called 'Commander Help'. When I first commanded, I kept upgrading to a random hive type and could never figure out why.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->4. As a marine commander, when a marine requests something it isn't obvious where the request came from. It would be nice to have a beacon effect to indicate where the player is.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
You can hit spacebar to jump to that request when it is issued. Marines can also ping a map with the middle mouse button.
Cool! I wasn't aware of this. I'll definitely change it. It would probably be better if it were defaulted to "off" though, considering it can cause all kinds of confusion for new commanders.
<!--quoteo(post=2061535:date=Jan 16 2013, 08:28 PM:name=Gorgenapper)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Gorgenapper @ Jan 16 2013, 08:28 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2061535"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->You can hit spacebar to jump to that request when it is issued. Marines can also ping a map with the middle mouse button.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I'm aware, but nothing beats having a visual cue as well. Also, it doesn't work when you have multiple requests at the same time from different positions on the map.
1) Make control groups double-clickable and key-tappable, i.e. when you double-click on one of your control groups (1-9) or you double-tap the number on your keyboard, you zoom to one of the units in that group (not sure how much it matters which one, maybe the nearest, maybe the marine with lowest health, maybe have a hierarchy for structures e.g. if the group contains an observatory that will be the unit that gets selected and zoomed to rather than an armory or extractor in the same group). I know this one has been suggested a lot, that's because we really want it! Build 244, woo!
2) Have a key that makes the mouse control the camera rather than cursor while you hold it down, default could be middle-mouse and have ping be something else by default. Being able to set the scroll speed would also be good.
3) When you select a unit or units you should be able to add them to group 5 by shift-clicking 5, like in Starcraft 2.
4) Players assigned to a control group should remain in that control group after they die and respawn. Added in b244!
5) Marines' icons on the minimap (as in the 'big' minimap that you press C to see, is there a better name than 'minimap' for this?) should be replaced by a medpack or ammo icon if they have made such a request in the last X seconds (10 would probably be good) and there should also be such an icon by their name when they're in your view, or just add an indicator so the comm can see how much ammo marines have for their primary weapon.
6) Give MACs a 'follow' command so you don't have to constantly micro them (I've seen this suggested dozens of times, so it seems to be a very popular idea). It would be great if you could select a MAC and then right click on the control group icons to have the MAC weld and/or follow the structures or players in that group. Done, thanks UWE!
7) The ability to zoom in and out and rotate your view would be nice (but isn't really a priority).
8) Have an option to bind a key to "select all marines" so you don't have to click that icon on the left of the screen (every millisecond counts!).
9) Make it possible to keep medpack or ammo selected by holding down the hotkey (S or A) so you don't have to press those buttons over and over, just hold them down and click click click.
10) This one has been mentioned a lot but is still not in - let us rebind the hotkey grid and preferably even individual hotkeys (e.g. a button that selects medpack without having to go to the appropriate tab first)
11) Let the commander cancel a beacon, accidental beacon can lose you the game, there is nothing more frustrating in this game imo. I've even done an accidental beacon and then accidentally recycled my obs trying to cancel it a few times. Even if didn't get the res back, to stop people using it all the time, being able to cancel it would be great.
If any of these are unclear I'd be happy to provide further details or examples. I can't imagine any of these are controversial since they're just adding things that don't have to be used if you don't want to, but if anyone thinks any of these are bad ideas I'd be interested to hear your reasoning.
More identifiable spots for harvesters/generators and centers/hives. I often look at the map to find where to put harvesters instead of being able to find it just by looking. Maybe something simple like the nightvision of aliens in command mode. Maybe restrict this to aliens so it's easier to fast expand for aliens.
1) Make control groups double-clickable and key-tappable, i.e. when you double-click on one of your control groups (1-9) or you double-tap the number on your keyboard, you zoom to one of the units in that group (not sure how much it matters which one, maybe the nearest, maybe the marine with lowest health, maybe have a hierarchy for structures e.g. if the group contains an observatory that will be the unit that gets selected and zoomed to rather than an armory or extractor in the same group). I know this one has been suggested a lot, that's because we really want it!
2) Have a key that makes the mouse control the camera rather than cursor while you hold it down, default could be middle-mouse and have ping be something else by default. Being able to set the scroll speed would also be good.
3) When you select a unit or units you should be able to add them to group 5 by shift-clicking 5, like in Starcraft 2.
4) Players assigned to a control group should remain in that control group after they die and respawn.
5) Marines' icons on the minimap (as in the 'big' minimap that you press C to see, is there a better name than 'minimap' for this?) should be replaced by a medpack or ammo icon if they have made such a request in the last X seconds (10 would probably be good) and there should also be such an icon by their name when they're in your view, or just add an indicator so the comm can see how much ammo marines have for their primary weapon.
6) Give MACs a 'follow' command so you don't have to constantly micro them (I've seen this suggested dozens of times, so it seems to be a very popular idea). It would be great if you could select a MAC and then right click on the control group icons to have the MAC weld and/or follow the structures or players in that group. Done, thanks UWE!
7) The ability to zoom in and out and rotate your view would be nice (but isn't really a priority).
8) Have an option to bind a key to "select all marines" so you don't have to click that icon on the left of the screen (every millisecond counts!).
9) Make it possible to keep medpack or ammo selected by holding down the hotkey (S or A) so you don't have to press those buttons over and over, just hold them down and click click click.
10) This one has been mentioned a lot but is still not in - let us rebind the hotkey grid and preferably even individual hotkeys (e.g. a button that selects medpack without having to go to the appropriate tab first)
11) Let the commander cancel a beacon, accidental beacon can lose you the game, there is nothing more frustrating in this game imo. I've even done an accidental beacon and then accidentally recycled my obs trying to cancel it a few times. Even if you didn't get back the res, to stop people using it all the time, being able to cancel it would be great.
If any of these are unclear I'd be happy to provide further details or examples. I can't imagine any of these are controversial since they're just adding things that don't have to be used if you don't want to, but if anyone thinks any of these are bad ideas I'd be interested to hear your reasoning.
12) Move the chat text higher up in commander view, currently it gets obscured behind the control groups and minimap so you usually have to go into the console to see what people said.
There are many complicated games that get over this difficulty. One of my favorite examples is Homeworld and Homeworld 2. Even taking place in a 3d RTS space, when you pressed spacebar you could zoom out and get a simple blip system that showed you where things were. This could be a very simple red dots vs. blue dots on a simplified map option for commanders from both sides. Just a thought.
There are still some issues with selecting units though, using shift to add stuff to your current selection is a real pain the ass. Sometimes you have to hold shift BEFORE you select ANYTHING, if you select something(s) and THEN hold shift and select something else, your initial selection gets deselected. This happens very often but not always, making it even more frustrating, I hope it can be fixed soon so that you can select something and then just use shift to add or remove things to that selection consistently. You can always click/drag on the ground or use an unassigned number key to clear your selection.
Also would love the ability to use shift+number to quickly add/remove things from a control group like in SC2, but I mentioned that in my big post up there already ^
From the little testing I have done it seems like there is hierarchy for structures within a group, with the one that was built first being the one that gets selected when you select that group, presumably this also applies to players with either the first that joined the team or the one that has been alive longest, haven't tested this.
I was wondering if it would be possible to let us change the order of items within a group, so you can have multiple structures in a group but always have your observatory be the one that gets selected, for example, so that you can beacon easily but know if any building in that base is being attacked. I think you could do this a few different ways:
a) Have the first thing you add to the group be the "focus unit", then the second if that gets destroyed/removed, etc.
b) Have a hard-coded hierarchy with obs at the top, then power node, etc. (but I think people will disagree about the order).
c) Let users set their own order in the menus.
d) Let users drag the icons around in-game to reorder the units in control groups.
I noticed while watching someone who plays with commander help turned on (which I don't think many experienced players do, maybe I'm wrong), that marines have a little medpack or ammo icon hovering over their head when they make requests. I think it would be nice if this was also enabled with commander help off, though without being clickable. I would find this feature very useful but I don't want all the clickable icons above structures that you get with commander help turned on.
The Commander could voice chat with the squad leaders who could voice chat with their squads.
I think Battlefield 2 had something along that lines.
Aliens have the hive-mind thing but the marines have the whole chain-of-command thing.
Could be pretty cool if implemented correctly.
Please, NO! Medspam is already powerful enough, and I believe there was a distinct purpose behind the recent change that made armory unable to repair both health and armor, leaving armor repair dependant on teamplay and welders.
By the way, you can repair your marines' armor by building and depolying MACs already. It's quite powerful too, especially on defense.
The same may be needed for aliens but marines are most at a disadvantage being required to build for the commander to take and hold ground. Potential marine structures are not enough draw the attention of marines and built up areas are not enough to hold marines attention span.
- Changeable key-binds (please!?)
- Mouse3 camera panning (i.e. like SC2--holding down Mouse3 and dragging the mouse allows you to pan the camera, without having to click around on the mini-map or use edge-scrolling).
- Camera hotkeys (again, using SC2 as the example, you can use ctrl+f5-f8 to set locations, where pressing that button again will bring the camera back to that location).
Also better "recall" of a control group. Need a double-tab. Not some sh*tty "let it press"; which has an unstable behaviour (go commander, "control-group" something, then select it, and press to control that group a 2nd time ; let that control-group-button down. You almost never hear the same amount of sounds (the tiny sound I can't really define) in a row (when trying that scenario more time).
This would clear up problems of trying to med around the few multilevel areas, and eventually may lead to more vertical map design.
One of the most difficult aspects to playing the commander role on both aliens and marines is communicating to the players. Even if you do have a microphone, odds are that there will always be a subset of players that are too busy talking themselves to hear the commander, honestly can't hear the commander for various reasons, have the game volume turned down/muted, or simply just missed the few seconds the commander gave a verbal order.
Therefore, I would love to see a way for both team's commanders to be able to place visual objectives in the game world and map, that display for all players on the team (similar to the alien commander's Danger, Heal, and Expansion markers).
Some ideas for those objectives seem to already be in the game via way-points (weld/heal target, build target, defend location, attack location, etc.), however, unlike the way-point system, these would be global objectives that anyone can complete. The markers should persist indefinitely until: the commander removes the objective, a player completes the objective, or an enemy makes the objective obsolete.
The benefit that these markers provide is a constant reminder of what the team's current objectives are. The commander would no longer have to constantly remind players of the current objectives, since those objective will be constantly displayed to all players on the team, whether they have just joined, or simply needed a reminder. In addition, since the team objectives are displayed in the game world, the entire team has a visual indicator of where they need to be increasing team-play, and coordination*.
* One of the largest complaints I have received from new players joining games for the first time is that they don't know what they should be doing. Having visual cues displaying team objectives gives those new players a goal to work towards making them feel like they are doing something useful, instead of running around the map wishing for some direction. While this can be partially helped by giving way-points to the new player, the commander then needs to babysit the new player around the map providing things to do for just that player, as opposed to coordinating the entire team.