Absolutely loving this game, been playing it on and off for months now, but one thing that I think would improve it further is an overall commander of each side.

I'm not saying it should be turned into a strategy game, but I do think it's a little frustrating when your whole team is doing a mad rush at the strategically worst place, with half your forces spread out between your existing bases.

I propose an officer, maybe one or two ranks higher than the highest at the moment, and you have to reach this rank to become the commander. I think he should be escorted constantly by another officer, and an NCO. However, once killed, he loses the rank and you have to build back up from the rank before; this also allows other online players a shot at being the commander. One commander at a time per side for online obviously.

Methods for giving commands: I think everything is already in place gameplay wise; orders can only be given from the Armoured Truck (maybe stick a disc on top, to make it look Comms capable), and would be done via the map, with a simple defend and attack (with compass direction as before) for each unit (platoon, Company, battalion, whatever). The only thing I think that would have to be done extra, is splitting the men into said units, five or six depending on the number of men would be ample.

Sorry for being an ideas guy, but just my two cents.

An Idea similar to this was posted on the forum a while back here: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=524

The command structure they suggested goes something like this:
1. commander ordering one or two companies to attack a command point,
2. company leader ordering the squads to the location,
3. squad leaders leading different fireteams around precisely and
4. fireteam leaders directing individual soldiers within the squad even more precisely (eg. behind cover, order to launch rocket, etc.)
making the commander a flesh and blood person sounds interesting, as eliminating him would cause chaos and confusion in his army for a while.

its certainly a great idea that I think should be implemented.

P.S: I don't remember where I saw it, but i think pasik said that he wanted the game to be transparent and not too complicated in terms of command and RTS stuff.

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C4Bot
"Peace through superior firepower."

If anyone remembers the time when team fortress 2 was being developed, they had a similar idea of having a "commander" that would generally guide the game's progress. This idea was scrapped due to implementation issues and the general difficulty of making such a position fun whether or not a good or bad commander was in command. I think the same applies here. It will be very difficult to balance and create a command position that doesn't amount to just sitting there waiting for battles to happen in the furthest reaches of the maps.

That being said, if it were to happen, I think a simple design as the op suggests would be the most beneficial as it does not comletely remove the commander from the actual game. However, for the commander to have to be 2+ ranks over the highest would be ridiculous. To simply get to rank 4 or 5 from rank 0 is nearly impossible in a normal game unless it is a completely balanced stalemate. Simple attack/defend orders should pretty much be the meat of the command system because as pasik has indeed said before, he wishes the game to be simple and fun. I do imagine a lot of bored commanders just charging into battle when it gets boring though

ComJak

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ComJak's house... stay out of it

I definitely think the commander should still be in the thick of the fighting. If more artillery and fire support were added, then these could be under his control, and therefore he would be needed to get in the "thick of it".

As for the rank, I don't know of any alternative, because it just seems a little silly having an NCO in charge of so many men. Maybe just randomly promoting a human player to this rank? With the option to turn this off in single player.

RDR

maybe a random selection, and then and ability to vote for commander after/kick commander.

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C4Bot
"Peace through superior firepower."

I also like the commander role. Although it may not have worked with TF2, it has worked with countless other games (BF2, Natural Selection 1 + 2, Savage series).

Maybe make it optional? Thats how those games work. Have the AI attack the nearest base, have no special abilities for that team if no commander is elected.

I know its not in Pasik's design, but I think its a good idea nonetheless. Just my two cents.

Not trying to be a jerk, he's earned my 8.50 so far!

Also heres a better idea.

No commander, until someone wants to be one. Then he can be voted for.

Would work better with ingame voip.. *Cough*

Or if you punks would just go on teamspeak.

The metagame interface is opening up a bit in 0.85, so it's possible to make queries for some data from the game/server externally. It's possible to access most of the data the commander AI currently uses to make decisions where to send the troops.

It would be possible to use this interface to create a commander view into the game as an external addon. For online games, the server hosting the match would be able to e.g. display the view in the web and take input from the player-commander there.

What would be the way to select who gets to be the commander would be up to the script creator. The server website could provide e.g. a poll for that. The server could announce the chosen commander in game then.

The missing parts in the metagame interface for actually gaining control for the commander are 1) switch off the commander AI 2) allow sending order + position to individual soldiers 3) allow selecting attack start and target blocks, so all in all, not very much.

Thats great news!

Awesome work Pasik. I love how flexible the game engine (and perhaps yourself ) is.

Would the data be accessible from ingame eventually? I know the web idea is a good and easy way, just wondering.

For debugging purposes maybe, but not sure about why and how and which parts of the data would be visualized otherwise. The "data" contains the enemy decisions as well so the data must go through some purpose logic before revealed to the player(s).

Also, in an online setting only the server has access to the data, the clients aren't kept up to date of everything on the server to save bandwidth. What to keep in sync and show to players in-game would be a question of why first and foremost, and trying to get that done in cooperation with an external component could be tricky as the engine hasn't been designed for that.

This is to say I don't see the commander mechanic becoming an "engine-level" feature.

There's a chance some parts of the game engine will be published through C++ API's in order to allow plugin development, but that's all pretty vague at this point.