"Second In Command" Alternative to Assassination

[Badsearcher]

So consider this, SCU's are piloted by a human or seraphim even though, except for a couple features that engineers don't have access to, they behave like any other unit. In other words, it's completely arbitrary to the player whether or not there is a sentient being inside of the SCU.

Now what if you had a mode that was like assassination EXCEPT if your ACU gets killed then you would still be able to control your units as if it hadn't died because the in-game explanation would be that the pilot of the SCU has taken over command. Finally, there's an actual point to bringing actual humans and Seraphim into the battlefield.

SCU's at this point are definitely a late T3 option and so you wouldn't have people being reckless with their ACU's in T1 and T2 and once they get to T3 it would serve as insurance against strat bomber and other forms of snipes.

You would need to balance this of course. Maybe make the ACU death explosion do more damage to the player's own units/buildings, limit the command transfer to the first SCU you build (so that if you lose that one, no more second-in-command), or other balances to lessen the numbers of SCU's. Without balancing, the code would be simple, it would be just like supremacy except it wouldn't include engineers.

What do you guys think? The one problem I see is that without the risk of game ender, I'm sure you would see a lot of reckless ACU teleport usage, but maybe that's not such a bad thing, maybe cybran acu laser shouldn't be for decoration. What do you guys think?

[snuffles]

+1

10/10 will not ignore SCU again.

[rootbeer23]

the possibilities are unlimited. if you can write code.
to the code writers:
how about a game mode that works as such:

if you die, regardless of what you have built so far, your stuff blows up like in a share until death setting. but - an SCU appears on the battlefield, which is your only unit then. when it dies the game is over.
dieing is very costly (everything blows up), but you dont have to quit the game prematurely because of that.
i am thinking of team games primarily.

[Wakke]

+1, was thinking of this myself.

[zolikk]

This does not sound bad, but it needs to have limitations in some way. Like, for instance, you have to designate beforehand which SCU will be the next "leader", and can't do it too often. And maybe the designated SCU should be visually distinguishable from a normal SCU.

Otherwise you'd just see people spread out SCUs in the late game and it would pretty much make late-game snipes impossible. Which means late game turns into an eco war, every time, with no exceptions.

[Badsearcher]

The second in command's icon could be different, just like the ACU has a bipedal icon.

The simplest solution I can see is to allow the first SCU you build to be your only second in command and if you build any more then it doesn't matter because you only get one second in command, if you lose that guy to sniping as well as your acu then you're finished.

[Patton]

Why don't you give the SCU an upgrade option for "Command Uplink" that allows it to become the second in command? Put it on the same location as RAS so it is less tempting to spam Uplink SCUs.

[Badsearcher]

Why don't you give the SCU an upgrade option for "Command Uplink" that allows it to become the second in command? Put it on the same location as RAS so it is less tempting to spam Uplink SCUs.

!!

Genius.

[johnie102]

+1 for Patton's suggestion. I would code it if I could...

[Astrofoo]

There is already a mod that does this. I saw it on filefront once. It's called chain of command or something.