New Officer Abilities

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    • New Officer Abilities

      Officers are unique units. They can be very helpful when used correctly. However, people do not utilize officers very often. The only officers I see in use are Naval officers and, on occasion, infantry/fighter officer. I have never seen an Airborne officer or Sub officer before. Seeing as how there can be only 1 of each at a time, I think we can give these units some more power

      Introducing: Officer abilities!
      Officer abilities can be used by officer units in some situations. Different officers have different abilities, and they have different effects

      Infantry Officer ability: Skirmish
      Officer and their stack will rush towards a location at high speed. This is similar to normal rushing except the stack will not lose HP from rushing, they cannot be commanded, and they will ignore fortification bonuses when attacking. Skirmish can be ordered within a range of 100. Skirmish ends when the location is reached, a battle occurs, or the stack has traveled 200 range (chasing enemy). Cool down 48 hours.

      Airborne Officer ability: Insurrection
      When in an enemy province, Airborne officer can spawn a friendly insurgency (can be controlled like a regular unit). The HP of the insurgents depends on the HP of the officer, and they will gradually lose HP over the course of 7 days until they are destroyed. Cool down 72 hours

      Tank Commander ability: Smoke Screen
      For 12 hours the Officer and its stack will not be identifiable. They can be observed as a unidentified unit but exact army composition will be hidden. Cool down 24 hours

      Rotary Wing Officer ability: High Resolution Imaging
      For 4 hours, Officer gains “Scout” ability and Sight Range of 75, allowing them to search for targets more efficiently. Cool down 24 hours

      Fixed Wing Officer ability: Electronic Counter Measures
      When activated, the next attack from an enemy will have its damage reduced by 50%. If no attack occurs within 4 hours, the ability is disabled. Cool down 48 hours

      Naval Officer ability: Sonobuoy
      Creates a sonobuoy at the officers location. Sonobuoys are units that are immobile. They have an HP of 1, a sonar signature, no radar signature, and have Sonar ability within a range of 200. They will automatically be destroyed after 48 hours. Cool down 48 hours. Naval Officer can recover a Sonobuoy, reducing the cooldown by the recovered Sonobuoy’s remaining time

      Submarine Commander ability: Red alert
      Can be toggled off or on. When active, officer and submarines stacked with them will dive deeper, losing their ability to move, sight range, attack range, and sonar signature. Enemy units passing over the stack will not trigger combat, and only units with Reveal Stealth can actually engage the subs. While the subs may be nearly undetectable, they can still fire their ballistic missiles. Note that for units like Destroyers with Reveal Stealth, they will see the subs in sight range but will not engage unless explicitly ordered to do so

      Counters/disadvantages
      -Cooldown of an Officer ability blocks all abilities, so the cooldown from one ability will block other abilities in the same stack
      -Red Alert will not work well with Ships, and will make the subs defenseless against attacking ships. Missile paths can be followed right to the dormant subs, forcing them to move
      -NPA will easily find and destroy Sonobuoys
      -Insurrection can be countered with easily deployable anti-soft units like Gunships
      -Since Skirmish prevents Command from commanding that stack, Skirmishing a specific unit can have unintended consequences. The enemy unit can run away and lead the stack into a location or terrain where they are vulnerable

      Thoughts/ ability ideas?
      Yee Haw

      The post was edited 3 times, last by Colonel Waffles ().

    • Skirmish: Sounds nice, but can most likely be to easily dodged outside of a typical public scenario. If no fight took place, the cooldown should be significantly lowered.

      Insurrection: If your rank is not high enough to get him invisible, probably hardly of any use. But if he is invisible it could be a bit broken to lose core cities because of that ability.

      Smoke Screen: A good player most likely already knows which units are in that stack, so hardly of any real worth.

      High Res Imaging: Nice to have, but if he does not also get stealh, hardly that much of interest.

      ECM: Problem the strongest and most useful ability in general.

      Sobobuoy: A little distraction beacon? But why give it the navy guy who is not a sub himself?

      Red Alert: So you shoot BM, show everybody where you are and then can't move away?



      If I used the ability of my fixed wing officer and he joins a stack with my rotary officer, my rotary will be on CD now too?
    • Kalrakh wrote:

      Skirmish: Sounds nice, but can most likely be to easily dodged outside of a typical public scenario. If no fight took place, the cooldown should be significantly lowered.

      It would have its perks. If it could not be dodged it could potentially be overpowered


      Insurrection: If your rank is not high enough to get him invisible, probably hardly of any use. But if he is invisible it could be a bit broken to lose core cities because of that ability.

      Well there’s a few things. First, the city would have to be cleared out first, so they would have to fight and non-spec Ops units would have captured them anyway. Insurgents also can’t really be spammed due to cooldown and health drain


      Smoke Screen: A good player most likely already knows which units are in that stack, so hardly of any real worth.

      It is meant for element of surprise. If they haven’t seen the stack before there’s no knowing what it could be. It could be an MRL stack, or a powerful melee stack. I couldn’t think of anything better for this one really.


      High Res Imaging: Nice to have, but if he does not also get stealh, hardly that much of interest.

      Helicopters are powerful in current state, so mediocre ability like this fits it I think


      ECM: Problem the strongest and most useful ability in general.

      Yes. I feel that with fixed wing currently being not good something like this would be of great benefit


      Sobobuoy: A little distraction beacon? But why give it the navy guy who is not a sub himself?

      It’s not meant as a distraction beacon. It’s like a stationary sonar on the surface. Think of it like a Mobile Radar in the ocean, except it can’t move.


      Red Alert: So you shoot BM, show everybody where you are and then can't move away?

      The ability can be togged off and on at will. I can shoot BM while on Red Alert, surface so my subs can run away, and then turn Red Alert back on.

      If I used the ability of my fixed wing officer and he joins a stack with my rotary officer, my rotary will be on CD now too?
      Cooldown affects all the officers in the stack, but is not necessarily applied to the officers. Let’s say my FWO is on cooldown now. I pair them with my RWO. Because the FWO is on cooldown I can’t use my RWO ability. If I separate my RWO afterwards they are not on cooldown but the FWO still is.
      Yee Haw
    • I personally don't think officers need such a massive overhaul. I've used all of them, except the submarine one - only because I haven't really got into submarines yet. I think they're all pretty good as they are, and I've recruited them in most of the games I've started so far. I find them really effective.

      I usually put the infantry officer in charge of a stack of artillery, because it gives a few nifty boosts - makes them move faster, allows the stack to capture territory, as well as the attack buff which can sometimes amount to an extra unit or two's worth of damage. The thing is, when your artillery gets to level 4, you can start using them in air assaults - this is great, but the infantry officer can't go with them. I've tried using the airborne officer to accompany them instead, but the problem with that is he can't capture territory and his ground movement is practically zilch. So if you want to move the artillery a little bit after they've landed, this means you have to separate them from the officer and move him to the artillery's new location with another airlift - which is a bit fiddly and weird.

      So I'd like to see some adjustments with that.

      To be honest, I think "Special abilities" with cooldowns are a bit gimmicky. Sorry. If they're going to give officers extra abilities, I'd rather it was done as a permanent rank-by-rank upgrade.

      The post was edited 1 time, last by WalterChang ().

    • I use officers pretty much all the time, fixed wing officer is super strong and probably the most versatile of all officers, except for Airborne and Sub because I play both rarely.

      I do not believe they need these abilities, most people do not use officers, because you need to work for them to get them.
      You need to plan und save resources, if you spam units all the time, you will not get them. :D
    • Kalrakh wrote:

      I use officers pretty much all the time, fixed wing officer is super strong and probably the most versatile of all officers, except for Airborne and Sub because I play both rarely.

      I do not believe they need these abilities, most people do not use officers, because you need to work for them to get them.
      You need to plan und save resources, if you spam units all the time, you will not get them. :D
      Jokes about his/her sexuality aside, you find the FWO more useful than the NO???
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    • Dealer of Death wrote:

      Kalrakh wrote:

      I use officers pretty much all the time, fixed wing officer is super strong and probably the most versatile of all officers, except for Airborne and Sub because I play both rarely.

      I do not believe they need these abilities, most people do not use officers, because you need to work for them to get them.
      You need to plan und save resources, if you spam units all the time, you will not get them. :D
      Jokes about his/her sexuality aside, you find the FWO more useful than the NO???
      I do not always need a navy, but I will always have an airforce. A mixed stack ASF with FWO can take pretty much everything down, that has no dedicated AA.