New Unit Suggestions

The main idea behind this thread is to suggest new units to round out the PA experience. Adding new units is something Uber said they'd do once they've finished doing the major features on the engine & gameplay, but I thought it'd be useful to discuss what units/structures might be lacking at this point for balanced combat, as well as suggestions for potential niche/support roles.

The biggest imbalance I see right now is with navy: yes, it has a bunch of powerful units, but it also has a number of weaknesses that can be especially apparent for navy-heavy strategy which will be important on water planets. Right now it really only works if you already have a strong land base. To start with, there's far fewer defense options, especially with AA. Your only AA unit is the frigate, which dies quite easily to T1 bombers. If you don't have enough land to build air factories, this can be a major problem.

One possible idea for better AA could be some type of aircraft carrier, but I'm not sure how that'd really work. Maybe its a mobile factory that only makes fighters but I'd only see it being useful on water planets.

In general, there's 4 T1 and 5 T2 land defense, but 4 T1 and 2 T2 sea defenses. There's a nuke equivalent in the form of barracudas, but no anti-nuke equivalent. That's a pretty big disadvantage IMO.

Lastly, even T1 boats take a long time to build, so you're at high risk while trying to build a navy. My solution would be a cheap, spammable patrol boat just to buy time for your naval base, something like a DV-15 Interceptor, just to go 1v1 against enemies. You don't need destroyers for that, which crush enemy land units easily enough and are really meant for other ships. Just something equivalent to an Ant. The sunfish I think is too underpowered for that, and is supposed to be a scout anyway. Could possibly double as a fast response ship since all the other ships are pretty sluggish.

I think Uber will probably get naval to be working better once they focus on water planets (even though they should be technically possible now) as they have to address gameplay without any land resources, but that's just my two cents.

In short, my suggested units:

• Naval Air defense tower
• Naval Anti-Nuke Launcher
• More naval defenses in general
• Cheap Patrol Boat
• Optional: Aircraft carrier/factory

For land & air, I think they're generally better balanced, but I can come up with niche & support roles for them in the future. I'll also let other people come up with ideas for orbital since I don't want to speculate on it just yet.

My suggested unit list:

The names of the units are just placeholders.
Jetpack bot

This bot is a tier 2 bot that is slightly cheaper and has a slightly lower attack rate than the Slammer, but it has a jetpack with which it can fly quite fast during times of movement. This allows them to effectively fly over ground based defenses, but makes the bot vulnerable to air fire. While the unit is in air it can not attack, so the bots effectively have to be standing still to attack becoming vulnerable to ground based fire.

The application for this bot is to really pressure expansions that are insufficiently defended. It can easily jump into the gaps of a base to do massive damage to the buildings. But due to their style of movement, they are easily taken out.

Blazer

This tank is a tier 1 tank that does less damage than an ant but has a very fast turning turret. With slightly more health than a normal ant. It is designed to take out scampers and stingers, but is especially poor versus anything with a higher damage to health ratio.

I reckon the best way to come up with new units is to come up with something interesting about them - eg, an interesting weapon, an interesting shape, or an interesting animation. From there, you can decide its role. I feel like in FA that units were designed in the opposite way to this. Wherein they decided upon a role for the unit, then built that unit to fit the role. I feel that the former way is a better way to design more interesting units. In addition, considering balance is far from set at this stage, I don't think there's much point in designing unit roles yet.

That said, here's a unit.

Sentinel Bot

This unit, when built, is in mode 1. In mode 1, it's essentially just a scout bot with a large vision radius and high speed and maneuverability. However, once deployed into mode 2, it withdraws itself into a smaller volume, becoming immobile, but gaining an immense amount of HP, comparable, perhaps, to a wall. It keeps its large vision radius.

Missile Sub

This is a T2 naval unit that is submersible, it's primary combat role is to deploy subsurface to air missiles to take out enemy bombers and fighters from the relative safety under the sea. It's secondary combat role is to deploy subsurface to surface missiles for shore bombardment. (primary = more missile batteries on the ship for this task)

I think something like this could help make navy a little stronger against air spam.

---
@ above poster

Please no click to transform unit stuff, play red alert 3, then you'll want to kill yourself for suggesting it.

I would wish to have a
Sniper Bot
+ Long Range/Vision
+ High Damage
+ Radar Stealth when not moving
- Low HP
- Low RoF
a unit that i can place on the battlefield to monitor specific zones and pinpoint single units.

Then i would want to have a
Mobile Radar
as a ground unit (as far as i know there will be a Radar Satellite for Orbitals)

Also i would love to see some kind of
Defense Tank
that gets more HP, Range and Damage when standing still, like a deployed Artillery Unit, just for Ground Defense

That complaint's only applicable to your main battle units. A scout bot is pretty niche. It's no more micro than we get with transports or TMLs in FA.

No reason to increase the amount of micro needed for the game, there will always be some. Suggest a unit that doesn't require micro, for example your sentinel bot could automatically turn into mode 2 whilst stationary and assume mode 1 again when ordered to move. No micro needed, no mode button needed.

A-10 Warthog-like ground attack plane (strafes with a minigun for those unfamiliar).

AC-130 gunship-like unit would be cool too, or some kind of plane that behaves similarly.

Naval transports that have short-med range unit cannons. (so that unloading isn't clunky).

Orbital transport that para-drops units to the surface (vulnerable to AA while falling).

Napalm bomber and/or napalm artillery or a flamethrower unit that lights the ground on fire for x amount of time after attacking to damage units that linger in it.

Crotch Bot: The Crotch Bot is a massive super-unit possessing incredibly powerful technology and requires immense amounts of resources to be built. Its key features is that all of its weapons are located in its heavily armored crotch, giving it +10 to will power and E-peen.

A-10 strafes with a gatling gun and i would like it if A-10 could be armed with some air-to-ground missiles.

AC-130: which variant? It would be awesome if it's the AC-130U Spooky II with a 5 barreled gatling cannon and a goddamn artillery piece on the side.

Some air unit armaments from an older thread:

Not the most original ideas I know but they also don't add much more micro management.

Kamikaze Bot

Superfast, super-explody

Edit - THIS HAPPENED, Where's my commission.

X'D

Really nice ideas, maybe a huge gunship?
~evolve

I've always thought that having tons of air units sitting on the ground felt rather awkward (not to mention gets in the way of land units), and keeping a large number of them patrolling above your base can make it difficult to select ground units and see whats going on.

It would be cool if there was some kind of building that could store air units so they are not laying about when not in use. Imagine some kind of large bunker (the size of an adv factory) that can hold x amount of aircraft. It would slowly repair/re-arm any planes stored inside and automatically launch AA fighters when threatened (like the UEF experimental carrier).

It would be even cooler if this structure, when told to "assist" a radar, would automatically send an air scout whenever a radar blip appeared. Then after determining whether the blip is air/ground, the appropriate attack aircraft (bombers or fighters) would be sent to attack it (provided the bunker has some stored). Then the craft would return after completing their objective, all without any micro apart from filling up the bunker and assisting some radars.

An aircraft carrier, if ever added, should function similarly, imo.

I really like the idea of gunships of some kind, even though it was said in the stream that they didn't exactly like the idea. I hope they can use the ammo system (when its implemented) to help balance them, along with making them slow and vulnerable to AA. Making it impossible to stack air units would also be a good start.

Gotta have pyro/zeus analogues.

Don't forget the can/sumo. Super-slow, high hp assault bots.

I've also been toying with some ideas for defenses. The game already has sea mines (though I haven't seen anybody use them). Landmines would be cool as well. Instead of building 1 at a time though, it should lay down a small field of them so you don't have to click as much to place a lot. They should be time delayed so fast units (like bots) could run over them and escape before they detonate, but slower units (like tanks) would still be caught in the blast. Also, aoe from artillery should set them off (because of the shockwaves, not just direct dmg). Now you have to choose, use artillery for defense, or land mines?

A laser fence would be interesting too. They would use up power when turned on and either damage units that pass thru or just block them entirely. That way you don't have to place walls so close together, and damaging a players energy disables their walls. Also makes it easier to place longer walls quickly since you can space out the "fence posts" more.

How do you protect boats from bombers? It's really absurdly easy. Just go underwater. Bam, 90% of your navy issues are solved.

I almost forgot a unit:

Scout Scavenger
A lightweight, fast land unit equipped with a light reclamation tool. Its main use is to rapidly access and grab wreckage. Its secondary use is scout/raider, able to quickly find enemy locations and devour undefended structures for your resource bank.

Love these ideas. The aircraft sat around your base/swarming in the skies problem was something that always annoyed me! I hope a dev reads this and thinks its a good idea!

I think the devs said they weren't crazy about how gunships are normally implemented, but were open to the idea for later. When I hear "gunship", I usually think of 2 different vehicles; an Attack Helicopter, and a AC-130. I think it might be useful to find a way to distinguish between the two.

The AC-130 type I could see working as T2 airborne artillery; being in the air gives it a range and angle of fire advantage (direct, so it doesn't have a long ballistic travel time like mortars), but because its air, it has lower health and is easy to spot. Probably also sluggish too.

The helicopter type is a bit trickier; I'd say it could be a T1 unit bridging the gap between fighter and bomber. It can do both air and ground but excels at neither, lacking the fighter's speed and the bomber's power. Its meant mostly to increase an army's flexibility.