Planet boosters?

Mushroomars' Flash spam makes me want to reach through my screen and strangle him. But last night was hilarious.

GAAT lasers and a massive energy farm is the only way to stop it really. You need the commander on the frontline (being healed) and D-Gunning each wave while you get your defences online. I just cannot find another viable option... and I've tried a lot.

Scout. Identify a 'Rusher'. Cry salty robot tears as you try to survive the first 15 minutes.

The only time I enjoy nukes is when the AI can use them, and when Assassination mode is turned off. I quite like chasing down the final pockets of resistance.

You know what I'd enjoy more than Nukes?

V2-like rocket-missiles. Lots of damage, but over a smaller area. Pinpoint strikes, rather than blanket destruction.

(never thought I'd say that I'd like V2's...)

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Basically take the Diplomat (mobile rocket launching platform) from TA, and apply a PA filter.
Uses decent quantities of Energy and Metal while it generates rockets, and launches them over long distances (longer than most static defences). Causes extreme, but localised damage. Does not 'track' targets.

Borrow the 'set up' mechanic from SupCom's T3 artillery so that the unit cannot run away effectively, and only allow it to build a rocket while it's stationary. Make that build time around 30 seconds.

Nukes are inherently overpowered because they force your opponent to build Antinukes and keep his most valuable assets (PGens, Commander) in the Antinuke bubbles. There should never be a unit that forces your enemy to take a single, specific action. There should always be alternative. There is such a thing as forcing an enemy's hand, but your enemy should always have a choice of how he is going to have his hand forced.

I played a 1v1v1 game of TA yesterday, and my enemy rushed Navy and attempted to flatten my main base. I had three obvious options; build Torpedo Bombers, build Submarines, or build Artillery. I instead said "screw your navy," built 6 Hovertank factories, circumvented his entire fleet and destroyed about 4/5th of his economy. He was forced on the defensive for the rest of the game while I spread across the entire map, and ended it with a combined Air and Hovertank strike.

Doesn't that sound more interesting than boring old naval tug-of-wars?

Hopefully catapults can be evolved into something like this.

See. I agree with the core fascist here.

So let the strategies and choices roam wild and free! I want to watch in glee as my opponent dodges an incoming asteroid, only to realise with dismay that the asteroid was a feint. The real attack came from the 5 unit cannons mounted on the asteroid. I want to see a game where players are hopping from one asteroid to another, in the shattered remains of a star-system. I want to see players using nukes to blow an asteroid off course if they have sufficient warning. I want to see deception, counter deception and counter^n deception. Is that asteroid going to smash me? Is it just a launch platform? What the hell is happening on the moon, and should I be worried about it? Are stealth asteroids a thing? I don't just want there to be one counter to a given strategy. I don't just want there to be a few. I want there to be all the counters. The more the configuration space of the game broadens, the less likely we are to see build-orders and enforced optimal strategies.

To me, the most satisfactory moment in an RTS is not the endless drudgery of tank-spam, but that one spark when you are able to genuinely feel like you outsmarted your opponent. Whether that's some insane transport drop, or a nuke that nobody ever anticipated. The only limit is your imagination!

Oh. Wait. I mean that the only limitation is the devs' time and budget. Well, it's a start at least.

Eh... I never feel like 'the nuke no one ever anticipated' is particularly satisfactory. Nukes, by their very nature of taking several tens of minutes to produce are only ever a surprise if your opponent is totally incapable of scouting.

Or if you are particularly good at hiding .

Or if your opponent is incompetent at scouting.

Getting back on topic, I've always felt that being able to move planets and moons with engines was something that should be in the game. Aside from the whole "it's awesome" argument, there are a few good reasons for this.

For instance, consider the scenario. A moon orbits a gas giant. You control the moon, the enemy is reaping the benefits that a gas giant brings. You don't like that. The logical solution would be to asteroid the crap out it, but an asteroid isn't enough to destroy an entire gas giant.

That's where your brilliant, crazy idea comes in. You attach many booster jets to the moon. Not enough to avoid the gas giant's gravity well, but juuuust enough to disrupt its orbit. As you cackle maniacally, the moon slowly falls into the gas giant. Depending on the effects asteroids/planets have when colliding with a gas giant, it could do anything from destroying a large portion of the mining operation, to completely destroying the gas giant. It was a stupid, crazy idea, but somehow, it worked. The enemy is probably laughing his butt off -- did you really just do what he thinks you did?

This is the vision I have for the game. The scenarios where this would be useful aren't that common, but every once in a while you might just have that insane idea that would turn the tides of battle in your favor. Moving a metal planet into position to fire its death star laser, pushing small planets and moons slightly out of orbit, sneaking onto the enemy's planet and sending it slightly out of orbit, eventually sending it crashing into the sun.

It doesn't matter if there are BETTER choices than it Sure, you could assualt the planet with, you know, normal armies. But it's a choice. It's a crazy, risky, economy-screwing pot-shot choice. Which makes the reason to implement such a mechanic all the more imperative. If PA is about the crazy maneuvers: hurtling asteroids into enemies, giant cannons that fire robots from the moon to the surface, ANNIHILATING PLANETS...

...then I think that allowing for something rare, yet useful, high-risk, high-reward should be something encouraged rather than rejected from this game.

Thank you.

Chances are this would only ever be doable in custom/modded gameplay. Reason being is it will be balanced for normal gameplay (i.e. x rockets needed to move a planet/body of y mass). It will be balanced so that you should never be able to realistically move anything larger than a smallish planetoid. Well, that's my guess anyway. But there wouldn't be anything practical preventing someone from making a modded mode that allowed a single engine to move a larger body around the planet.

Theres also the problem that a planet rotates. That means you wont be able to point the engines in one direction and could only thrust a small fraction of the time.

Build the engines on the poles...


But yea, as i said before: i only see this happening on metal planets. And even then, metal planets likely have their own way.

I think the core concept of the Uberian robots is that they're a mobile war force. They move core groups to form armies and build out. They don't bring armies, and there's some kind of reason they don't. Moving planets goes against my intuition on that one.

What is going to be awesome is that Uber will come up with their iteration of this - balanced for the average player...

And then the modding community can have fun doing all the things that have been discussed here; to your hearts' content - to be as freaky or as conservative as anyone would like their experience to be.

THAT .. is the true beauty of this new engine

That wont work either as the orbital plane the planets are on is a plane - so you wont get any effect from thrusters up there as that dimension does not exist for the planets. Even if they changed that you wouldn't get much out of that as your not moving in that direction so it would be a terrible waste of energy.

I imagine it wouldn't be too hard -- just changing an equation or a constant in the physics engine, I imagine.

Awesome, at least it's good to know that it'll be something possible. Cue an interplanetary game of billiards...