Come up with upgrades for your worst mutations

So one of the worst things about B+1+ difficulty is how absolutely destroyed some commanders (usually the B and C tier) by particular mutators.

One possible solution rather than nerfing mutators or general commander buffs would be to provide a specific optional upgrade or two to some commanders to help them overcome those maps that can sometimes be unplayable otherwise. However, the upgrade would be designed that a downside would make it detrimental to use in general play.

Some examples might be:
“Life Insurance Denial”

  • Advantage: if a unit kills itself the Salvage chance/amount is greatly increased
  • Disadvantage: all unit costs increased
  • helps deal with Double Edge and Black Death
  • available for H&H et al

“Asset Protection”

  • advantage: if a unit with energy kills itself it instead dewarps and automatically rewarps at the closest psifield however casting is disabled for 2 minutes
  • Disadvantage: spell damage is reduced by 25%
  • double edge protection
  • available for Alarak et all

“Inertial Barriers”

  • advantage: massive units cannot be moved by external forces
  • Disadvantage: stuns, slows and holds last twice as long
  • Fatal Attraction protection
  • any commander with massive units
  • adjust Viper AI accordingly

“Voluntary Infestation”

  • activate this ability to infest all of your workers causing them to spawn 2 broodlings when they die
  • Infested workers move at 33% slower
  • Kill Bots
  • all

Please add more ideas!

I think the problem with this is it boils down to mutation → counter for that specific mutation, which limits how the game is played. They may make for interesting unit upgrades though.
And the best upgrade for “Fatal Attraction” would be to remove it from the game, or at the very least, not have it stun-lock units indefinitely.

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Currently the situation is:

  • mutation
  • play correct commander or suffer

Fatal Attraction is totally playable as many commanders but totally sucks as others while it is sometimes playable by others again (sieging and suiciding units are great but these abilities usually suffer when playing against air and/or environmental mutators as well).

Upgrades that are available to all (or most) commanders that have a mutation specific benefit balanced by a negative to make it totally unlikely you’d get the upgrade in a regular game (and only allow the upgrades in games with mutations active) would just be one possible solution. Alternatively, buffing commanders or nerving certain mutators would be fine too.

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many mutation interactions should be blocked in order to have a linear difficulty, currently there is much variation within the same tiers (a harder tier could enable certain interactions if they match the desired difficulty level)

eg. an avenger unit should not be affected by other power boosts, like idk transmutation (and a transmutating unit should not be boosted by other power boosts), a mutation spawned unit should not be affected by other mutations, etc

although thats basically balancing which I dont feel mutations got

Vertigo:

In addition to the disorienting views, normal light will be cancelled and the mutation will now be played constantly played with stroboscopic light on mist opportunities (so it can’t be rushed) and with double the comments of Stettman :smiling_imp:.

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yeah this. how the hell do we handle avenger and die twice? in literally the easiest map possible for this combo with the weakest possible enemy comp and strongest commander combo, it still sounds grueling hard