I think something similar has been a conversation previously if not well here is one.
Alien comm and being the 6th player. Naturally over time the alien comm has somewhat devolved into just being a temporary role for any player on the team. Many times numerous players on the team will hop in and do what is needed at that second. Only later in the game is it needed to really have someone present more consistently.
Would one added benefit to the comm be possibly the ability to say control a whip's attack, or at the least perhaps tell a whip, once matured, to bile bomb a specific area, for say a structure or power node. that is just one idea that really i thought of the other day. Also, with the changes to mucus and enzyme, i think this has also affected the role, when it was cheaper, the comm would be using it more often in the early game. Or is it possible that a strong marine team in the early game iss so powerful that needing a 6th alien, for whatever its worth, is needed.
What other ideas have come up that could possibly utilize the position of the alien comm into a more effective role.

Please do not reply if it is simply a 'just get rid of the alien comm'

Just get rid of the alien comm

- add an alien tech that lets the commander 'enter the hive' anywhere around the map, leaving him as an egg(?) on the map
- remove cysting
- remove individual ability upgrades, and unlock ability upgrades on biomass tiers automatically
- rebalance values
- ?
- profit

Cr4zy says

Just get rid of the alien comm

The amount of times I see this comment annoys me... especially considering 95% of the people that say it aren't even commanders.

I fucking suck on the field, as a player I enjoy NS2 because of the CC/Hive. Alien commanding doesn't need to be removed... if anything, I believe that removing alien comm will be detrimental to the game... alien commanding just needs tweaking.

Altering abilities like rupture to be worth the res (my idea is to get rid of the visual effect on marines and make it function a slightly weaker version of bilebomb), adding more things for the comm to do and adding more/changing drifter abilities etc is a good way to make the alien commander feel more vital to the team, ... but I think one of the big issues with most alien comms is that they don't utilize whats already there... they just go crag hive and jump out to "help" on the field.

I don't know about the rest of the comms out there, but I feel like the second fades pop the commander is way better off being in the chair... you should at that point either have a second hive or be looking to get one and the fades will have metabolize... so, with ruptures, bonewalls, drifter aid, crag healing waves and the need to recyst as quickly as possible to save those RTs and hold what map you have... the comm should just stay in the hive.... its way more effective than losing all of that support just so you can have an extra skulk.

But it seems like a lot of people disagree with me... 95% of those people are people that don't command... but hey... they majority much be right... right? :P

Bicsum says

- add an alien tech that lets the commander 'enter the hive' anywhere around the map, leaving him as an egg(?) on the map
- remove cysting
- remove individual ability upgrades, and unlock ability upgrades on biomass tiers automatically
- rebalance values
- ?
- profit

How does the game know which person is the commander so that it can give him/her exclusive access to enter the hive? Can you imagine a situation where you might want to pass on the commander role to someone else? How would that be done?

Imagine a comm gorge who can make a drifter follow him around, and nearly instantaneously be able to spam mucous, enzyme, or hallucinations.

One way might be to give the alien commander a higher resflow. As it stands right now, the commander can cyst out, get harvesters, and 2-3 PVE structures, and use drifter micro very sparingly, as he gets shells/spurs, and bio 1 and 2 to make sure metabolise is researched before fades pop up. As metabolise is such a core ability for the fades, it has never really been a question wether or not to get metabolise. If the comm cysts out and loses harvesters, before the harvester has been up for more than a minute, metabolise gets further delayed.

Where would the additional res go to? Thats the fun part - suddenly there are different builds. More drifter micro? Shifting more stuff around? More agressive expanding?

Would it need to be a big change? If current income is multiplied by 1.1 then at the 6 minute mark on veil with cargo and nano (4 RTs) with +1 additional Tres a minute per harvester, then it would be something like 16 tres, granted you can get the ressoursed up in 2 minutes. Thats 1 more crag, or 8 more uses of echo, drifter micro or activated abilities. No, it wouldn't need to be a big change.

The marine commander can only medpack because some of his resflow is supposed to go to that. After the patch where harvesters would not build itself and drifters therefore were forced into the meta game, I dont believe I saw any notice of the resflow being regulated. I do not recall the original reasoning for the change, but in retrospect, it appears as if it was a nerf.