Invade Planets?

Why not an orbital boom-bot? Send in a bunch of them to detonate and clear out an area on the orbital layer, and have your fleet/ships/units show up right behind them. They'd have just enough time to land before the rest of the enemy orbital armada shows up.

Things I would like to see:

- Building a death star, no not the collision of planets but an actual death star.

- Shield bubbles.

- Quake generator the drop dead solution.

- Crazy missiles that shoot anything and everything.

- Kamikaze bots.

- Upgradeable infantry, with each upgrade they get bigger and meaner.

- A giant sling shot faster than being air lifted or maybe as weapon.

- Tiny disc drones that launch from defense towers but have limited range within which they can operate, they could act as a disposable defense system. Say if you lost a chunk of discs just spawn more from your tower.

- The famous Necrobot.

- Carriers that can carry infantry between points and allow them to shoot as their being carried. As an added bonus an upgraded carrier could also move your base chunk by chunk or brick by brick.

- Tanks that launch fire and acid bombs within a medium range dealing splash damage.

- A weird bot called the Zombie, shooting it only makes it loose body parts. It uses some kind of disease effect rotting metal and recycling the falling foes parts as blunt weapons.

- Mega bots, slow moving massive armor armed with beams, crazy missiles and an explosive that causes the bot to explode into micro fragments of mini me. That go all out and explode on everything on contact causing minor to critical damage.

- Frigates and destroyers that are hybrids between air and sea units.

- Moving fortress with a peashooter, can only assemble units while grounded.

- Suicide bombers, let me explain. Planes that explode on contact or die trying while causing minor wounds.

- Walking flash cannons that can be upgraded with more cannons but at the cost of slower speed. A third tier of cannons would thus ground them unless you downgrade.

- Those Warhammer stylish marines with jets on their back.

- Factories that can build super fast at the cost of using their own parts in the process.

- An octopus sub that clamps onto naval ships and drags them to the bottom.

- Face hugger, just kidding!

- A snow blower that plows through small units and throws them out the rear end and inflicts damage on all unit types.

- Pool of death, sacrifice your own units to gain energy/metal back a literal freak'n pool.

- Satellite scramblers that can make an area go dark. The enemy would thus have to use a flash light to navigate.

- A giant steamroller armed with nothing except massive armor, slow movement and a crush radius. It can double up as a troop carrier allowing troops to shoot.

- Giant bunkers, sniping outposts, traps etc..

- Capitol ships armed with long range lances dual cannons and destructible batteries and double up as limited air support carriers.

- GODZILLA no seriously we want bigger bigger bigger.

- Some kind of brute unit that can take out squads and defenses.

- Transformers oh come on you know you wanna.

- A super defensive weapon a microwave beam gun that take up a chunk of area space and lots of resources.

- Hovercrafts armed with batteries.

- Here is a new idea implement probes and relics, the idea being you must use your probe in order to discover hidden relics scattered on the planets. Uncovering a relic could give you a potential benefit. To make things more interesting it could be like a card game you never know what you pick up.

- Cloud generating bot/tank any enemy within a parsec of the cloud is less effective in its offensive abilities.

- Smasher bot a giant robot armed with even bigger fists that walk around smashing whatever gets in its way.

- Bugs and a bug squatter.


That's all I could come up with for now!

Shadowcaster, I like many of your ideas - I think by far the best one is Shield Bubbles. Say a mobile unit that generates a shield that can encompass a small area... but only when it is stationary. Maybe units on the inside could shoot out, but units on the outside can't shoot in, like in Star Wars Ep 1? Units can pass through the shield of course.

How about a mobile cloaking unit. Generate a small area cloak when stationary, like the Cloaking Tank from Red Alert.

you just commited a cardinal sin in this forum *whispers: don't mention shields.... (or cloaking, xp-units, or jammers......................)

it's utter and absolute clunckyness.

GUI talks we've had with @Culverin were very clear on this matter. there are tons of solutions out there and currently the solution employed is weak at best.

at the very least we need a ferry command.

While I agree on the ferry command, the controls for them are clunky? I don't understand.

ok really x'D?
here goes:

• you can right click a transport to a unit when selected but not vice-versa
• you can't assit a astreus with another to copy order

• you can't assist an astreus in space to have it follow it's destination
• obviously multi-unit comes to mind but since we all know it's causing technicalities i'll lend you that one.

I get putting units into the transports, but the rest of that stuff......can....can you do that in FAF? Because if so, I have never done it or knew it existed.

you keep surprising me. Yes. yes you can do that. Only FA falls short compared to PA in the domain of area commands. (you can only issue area commands through a 3-part hotkey and by clicking each of the desired targets).

Huh....Ive never been much of a hotkey user and the like, so advanced commands like this are things I have missed.

like I said area commands in FA are sh it anyways, nothing compared to PA's intuitive design.

You should have sniped all their anti nukes, and planet nuked them.

This is a pic frome the intro video of Supreme Commander, one of the predecessors of this game, I think that this ship would be the perfect concept of an interplanetary assault transport ship!

The thing with something of that size is, why didn't we just put guns on it?

As a air transport, sure I can totes see that.

But as a 1960's looking transport? Ehhhh I dunno, but there a lot of wiggle room.

http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/realdesigns.php

It don't have guns on it for balance it, cause its role is to break into the orbital defenses and deploy its troops. The heavy mass justifies the fact that can resist most of the anti-orbital fire and that can carry many units, cause in my idea it should be able to carry some air units and land/sea units.
I'd like to see it in the game also because it would add more variety to the game, especially in lategame, and would give a reason, once you have conquered a planet to fortify it with anti ground and anti air defenses, not only with umbrellas.

Also another idea should be a space battleship, designed to attack the surface. Armed with few light anti-orbital turrets and ventral cannons it has extra armor on the ventral section so it is more vulnerable to the orbitla fighters fire than to the umbrellas.

Im not talking about balance, but fundamentally something that huge can easily be equipped with weapon that render a ground force useless.

And a space battleship is exactly what I am talking about.

You know what happened when anchors used to move?

People massed them up and drove them around as the only orbital unit, and now they shoot at ground targets.


A space battleship would render ground forces pointless, no matter how you try to balance it with all kinds of weird exclusions and additions.

True however PA isn't exactly your normal run of the mill rts genre the fact we are in space and can swap planets and even crash moons, doesn't exactly feel complete without some kind of battleship. They could make it like Star Wars, ground and space don't necessarily have to clash. Battleships and fleets could take on a whole other layer of gaming without effecting the existing layer. Lets be honest space without spaceships?!

This review only makes you want to see something like that happen and badly:

http://ca.ign.com/videos/2014/09/17/planetary-annihilation-review-commentary

Bwahahaha.

Naval battleships can make ground units pointless as well in certain situations. Regardless this is all a question of balance. An orbital battleship CAN be balanced. (As long as they fix the orbital layer, instantaneous transitions and unit stacking, until they do that orbital is impossible to balance.)