Planet Native Civilizations

The planet in the concept video seems to be able to support life. It would be fun to find cities and civilizations in new planets.. Just to be able to destroy it or even capture more resources, make them slaves.. the possibilities are huge.
What do you think?

Seriously? No. Just No.

Frankly I don't think working on Civilians like seen in FA is worthwhile. not when we have the kind of bare bones budget PA has.

Mike

the most i would want to see is.. well, call em critters.
on the scale of TA/SupCom people are itsy bitsy, any ammount of resources/slave labour you would get out of them would be nothing..

now.. if i could walk through a native grass hut village with my robots on the way to attack the enemy, and see them scatter.. THAT would be awsome!

It doenst need to be big.. Just non playing buildings you can smash.. It is not that hard to code random generated cities.

That is the point =D

lol
"I am able to build huge combat robots that shot lasers, but instead of building those I will use the workforce of those primitive creatures over there."

Er ... no. Those civilians would have to be super humans to be any helpful.
Reclaimable wrecks or buildings are good, though.

This is one of those ideas that seems interesting, but would distract from the basic game.

you do have some kind of point though...

maybe something like animals (think tiberian sun)
That would be a lot cheaper to make, than an entire new civilian faction.

just an idea though, dunno where it would fit in with the actual gameplay...
maybe guarding some natural resources?

Again.. it doesnt have to have "live" units.. but buildings that you can destroy, use as fortification (like in C&C 2), gather resources..

I disagree... It is something that will add depth to the game in general, imo.. It was awesome in C&C 2 when you found abandoned cities, you could place your units inside the old buildings to have a bit of advantage..
It doesnt have to be like this in PA... but it is something that would be nice to have..

garrisonable buildings does seem interesting, 'cept for the part where PA does not really feature infantry. Unless K-bots would actually fit in buildings.

capturable "tech buildings" like in the C&C series might work, as it without any incentive to fight for these cities, there is not really a point.

edit: this would also complicate world generation(balance) and would force either none or all planets to have cities.

Agree. This would make balancing world generation more complicated. Well.. throw away the capturable buildings and leave the buildings there just to be destroyed. Easy and cheap to do.. awesome feeling!! picture an entire city being destroyed while a huge battle takes place near the city!!!

I have to admit I immediately thought of sand-worms when I saw this post.

Desert planet with enormous indigenous life forms that eat your robots? YES!

Oh, also, it should be fairly simple to make a 'desirable' planetary location with buildings just by making the buildings have a reclaimable resource value.

Yes, I can't understand why no RTS has ever featured sandworms before, what a new concept for the genre. *cough* ;-)

But seriously though, herds of animals would be an amusing diversion and comparatively cheap to add.

Have villages with people, splat people with your robots or commander, obtain resources from villager buildings.

Actually, this is something I can get behind. Not native people, but civilian cities that are procedurally generated (even simply grids). I loved fighting on the Urban maps in TA (although lamented their lack of resources in the cities themselves).

If performance permits, planets-wide cities would be pretty awesome to fight in.

i dont think you understand the scale of this game...

any building wouldnt reach 1/4 the size of a bot, the building would have the equivelent of 1hp, have a look at the commander, who is, by any deffation, a "medium" sized unit!http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=nrFpWzjuCTY#t=59

hell, the traditional TA Commander wep, the "d-gun" can fire through MOUNTAINS!, you fire schools of nukes, and in TA, some of the maps are old destroyed war machines from days gone by!

at best you shuld be able to walk through "cities" that are barley bigger than your units.. and by walk THOUGH them i mean THROUGH!! them without slowing your units.. a T2 tank would cause the earth to shudder, an experimental walker would destroy buildings kms away with its very footsteps!

This is a new game, the scale can be whatever they want.

I would like to see critters (including primitives that scatter upon your arrival), but that's more of a cool factor than anything... and probably not worth programming in.

That said, I think reclaimable ruins would be cool -- I recall TA maps had those on occasion.

It WOULD be cool to build walls/emplacements where kbots or equivalent COULD garrison inside of, gaining a defense/armor bonus in exchange for being immobile while garrisoned.

I'm going to have to vote no on this one as well. Full blown civilizations to crush under your heel just seems too far out of the scope for the kind of funding these guys are working with. That time could be much better spent.

On the other hand, I would like something in this direction a bit. Some ruined structures of some long forgotten civilization. The occasional bit of wildlife, or possibly even tribal natives.

In other words, scenery, and critters.

And keep that reasonable. It doesn't really take much to add a bit of color with this kind of stuff. Blizzard made it into a cliche really with the sheep and click death jokes. But remember, there was really only maybe 4 models for the entire game devoted to critters even in a full blown $60 polished blizzard product. It doesn't take many critters to create that atmosphere. The same is pretty much true of scenery as well.

Looks at example video... looks at supcom/TA scale... nope, pretty sure they arnt making the robots 6' tall!

Yes, however according to the video the mechs and tanks (not to mention trees) are many kilometers tall judging by the curvature of the planet. Buidlings as tall as tree's aren't unheard of either by the way.

The robots in the video are the same size as the trees.. so the scale is not the problem...