It's time to talk unit ideas

Wait a sec...

Nobody has mentioned the Sharktopus!

Snowden - Leaker of secrets
Small cloaked spider bot that can latch on to enemy units and provide intel based on what the host can see (i.e. their radar/vision radius).

My god. This is a serious problem!

Quick, someone! Suggest the sharktopus before it's too late!!!

SHARKTOPUS
Advanced unit that when built is cool.

I think generally:

-Should be a basic orbital factory and an advanced orbital factory. Basic fabber builds basic orbital factory, advanced fabber builds advanced orbital factory. T1 orbitals should include orbital fighter and t1 radar satellite with reduced price and reduced range so you can use it to probe planets. More expensive ones should be t2 laser and t2 radar that is its current price and total vision. Maybe make a t1 unit launcher, though I think the current reuseable one is t2 material.

-Orbitals should be very fragile, orbital fighters should do less damage, and then they should be able to attack all layers and be attacked by all layers. This means they still effectively shoot down orbitals but are weak against anti air units like fighters or spinners but can in fact defend themselves against ground units although it has a low dps against them. The trick is it's low dps against ground units is still considered a good dps against orbitals which are more fragile, and fragile orbitals still can't be shot down because nothing can target that layer anyway except the umbrella/orbitalfighter.

-Levelers could be bigger tanks and still not be "replacement" for ants. They could fire two rounds of really high damage, maybe even enough to kill 2 ants, and then they could have a 7 second reload so they are sitting ducks against ants after their first shot. This still makes them useful as a door kicker against turtle bases for your ant army, or as a hit and run against enemy structures.

-Besides these, I have many ideas for different roles through burst damage, damage resistance types, self-healing though reclaim, self replicating through reclaim, exploding-on-death, cloak, radar jamming, and other things. These are mainly ideas I came up with when I thought this mod concept out.

I feel like basic orbital is important, but there should really be more focus on basic ground unit diversity.

Excuse me if this was already said but, I believe we need some sort of... "Orbital Laser" to get the job properly done here.

What would this new orbital laser do?

Orbital Mine Layer.

You make the assumption that mines can be found and shot, yet you started off by responding to the idea of "mines in any way shape or form", which would include mines that cannot be found and cannot be shot.
You say delaying an air attack is a success, but you say delaying a ground attack is completely useless.

This is evidently not a matter that can be settled by logic. I'll get the boxing gloves.

What is everyone's obsession with mines.... if you want a defense build some walls and turrets... and they are even reusable xD

*A shadow is lifted from the thread*

And thus the ultimate suggestion was made, and Uber saw that it was good. Amen.

You know what would be really cool? If there was a special type of bomber that specialized in dropping reclaim bombs. These bombs would work by converting a unit's health into mass via an energy exchange just like a fabber does. It would use energy instead of mass for it's reload/ammo system and would be best against structure. A good name for it might be the eagle or the hawk?(I'm really bad with names by the way :/ feel free to name it whatever you want)
[Edit] name it Valkyrie -thanks BulletMagnet

Name it the Valkyrie, because it's for collecting slain warriors blown up tanks.

Transmorpher - Converts units from one type to another
Adv. building that you setup a unit build queue in like a factory, but then have to feed existing units to it to start progress, balanced to be more cost & time efficient than the conventional alternative of reclaim & build.

An unarmed T2 bot that can quickly bring T1 bot wreckage back online with low heath at the cost of energy. This would help serve two functions. By making only T1 bots "resurrectable" they keep their usefulness in the later game. This also helps to widen the difference between vehicles and bots.

i'm gonna go ahead and say what i feel needs to be.

anti-orbital missiles, anti-missile whatever, a sniper bot, some kind of gunship perhaps a T2 wall that comes in a larger, rotatable slab.....and....maybe get to work on that T2 AA.

Wow, so many pages - don't know if it was suggested before:

T2 perimeter control bot = semi automated worker which (re) builds mex, maybe (rebuilds) defenses and reclaims stuff in a selected area (automated mid- to late game eco), expensive and low HP.

The Diplomat, an unarmed T2 vehicle that when killed vocally taunts the player that killed it. Maybe put a built limit on them to promote strategic use of your taunts.

Vulture, because it scavenges wrecks. Or Buzzard or Raven. Valkyrie should be saved for something like a jetpack bot.