It's time to talk unit ideas

MINE QUEEN
This unit starts off short, but extends its length by building "segments" onto itself. Those segments are essentially X landmines built into a shelter for surviving orbital entry and impact. These segments, once they come to rest on land (lava or water don't work), will eject the landmines, which will walk some random distance and then burrow into the ground (with possible difficulty on metal planets?). The Mine Queen can built up to 10 (or so) segments and needs at least 2 segments per Y size of the planet/moon/asteroid before it can launch into orbit (larger planets = higher gravity). In this way, the unit can break the orbit of asteroids or particularly small moons. While traveling within a solar system, it can deploy its segments, which will fall onto a planet and then spread into landmines.

Perhaps terminal segments can be upgraded and released as individual spacemines after a certain tech-tree position has been attained.

The idea is to have this cosmic worm be built on asteroids/moons to manufacture its segments and then fly other planets/moons/asteroids and drop denial of area devices (landmines). Popping out spacemines could just be an advanced feature to deter orbital platforms from coming to a certain orbit (mines won't do enough damage to kill them, but might make the difference in a battle where they were initially present).

I was thinking maybe the virus would give the information of what the unit is going to do to the other team. Maybe the virus could spread and infect other units that come in proximity, or hack a factory and all units made from that factory are infected, while the factory orders are visible to the other team. Or maybe have the virus disable units or something along those lines.

Or maybe even start hijacking the commands of the units and have them set to random or sabotage settings.

Only issue is that this starts to fall into the "casted effect" realm. I dont think this game was ever going to have any of that. Neither did supcom, and I dont recall TA had much in that either. This is more of a blizzard thing.

Pop-up Turret ala TA

Iron Maiden Tank:
A large slow moving Tank that has a thick iron plate protruding from the front that covers units behind and adjacent to it from direct fire, eg laser turret. Can be deployed to help artillery become entrenched. Could be used like a mobile wall.

Hovercraft Ferry
Ground unit manufactured by vehicle factory, slightly faster than a dox. Can pick up four T1 units (or 1 T2 unit) and transport them quickly over water. If destroyed, its wreckage is pathable and the units it is carrying are usually unharmed (though they can't swim). Useful for quickly and safely transporting fabbers or for delivering units quickly to an enemy base. More versatile than sea transports, less vulnerable than air transports, and not likely to make air fabbers obsolete.

"Dogs and Cats" Suicide Delivery Craft
Advanced air unit. Can pick up numerous T1 units or half as many advanced units. It self-destructs when it approaches the landing zone, scattering its cargo in heavily armored landers, healthy and ready for combat.

Repair Hovercraft
Advanced amphibious ground vehicle. Automatically loads damaged ground units with a magnetic crane and repairs them. Units are discharged with their previous orders intact.

Fast Escape Lander
Very fast three-stage orbital unit. From its initial state in orbit, it can quickly rocket itself to the ground and convert into an 'escape' pod. Immediately after a unit walks into the pod, the pod rockets back into orbit. From there it functions as a one-use lander.

Hybrid Transport/Gunship
Advanced air transport. Carries a unit (or units) in a forward position and uses the carried unit(s) as its primary weapon when operating as a gunship. Increases the range of loaded fabbers, allowing them to more conveniently reclaim enemy units. Hostile weapons fire may damage carried units directly.

"Uber Crane" Orbital Assault Lifter
Very heavy orbital transport. Capable of lifting naval units, small buildings, and enemy units. Moves in the orbital layer, and can drop its cargo to deal considerable damage.

Dont know if this counts as a unit but what the hell,
using a nuke to kill orbital... might be the way to go if you want to overcome a brutal fighter force just over you

Although i am against units that focus on micro... a radar jamming unit that makes a range invisible to radar might be interesting... not for hiding a base, but hiding a decent incursion force

T2 Laser defence tanks/bots... can shoot missiles out of the air before they hit, small range... great for covering a force from a catapult based defence

Some kind of t1 artillery units!!! anything to counter t1 turrets apart from raw numbers

T2 anti nuke truck... can build or pickup an antinuke from the launcher (both or one) great for countering a defensive nuke.

Nuke vs Orbit : Nice idea, I'm pretty sure that it's already on the list. At least for orbit-to-ground-nukes I'm certain it's planned so why not the other way around. Would require a reliable way to target an orbital position though, since you surely wouldn't want to nuke your own launch pad...

Radar Jammer - So often suggested and yet I still don't know if it's planned. Really should pay more attention!

T2 Point Defense - Well, that'd be interesting and in combo with a radar jammer and unit formations (all huddle around these two) it'd surely be interesting and make artillery defense (more) useful

T1 artillery - I think there's some reason behind T1 not being able to bombard T1 turrets. It gives the start of the game a bit more calmness in the sense that you can't be killed immediatly by some artillery your opponents place just out of range of your turrets. And besides: the T2 bots are easy (speak: fast) enough to get.

Anti Nuke Truck - That's an interesting idea! If the truck is only able to carry/launch the AntiNuke but not to produce it you'll have a one-shot safety against defensive nukes but the second/third will leave your force wide open. And Hollister/Pelter/Catapults can still take out that truck.

For planetary invasion I think a transport for multiple units would be cool (and suggested a million times before I'm sure ) so I was thinking...

Orbital Linebreaker

The orbital linebreaker would be a single use interplanetary transport with very high HP but no defensive weapons. After being built it would stay on the ground and you would load up a large amount of units into it. After being loaded up you'd then select a location on an enemy planet (it's designed for attacking planets so it would not be able to transport units across a planet's surface) for the lander to aim for. It'd launch via attached rockets that disconnect one it reaches orbit and then immediately start a planetary transfer.

When it reaches the enemies planet it would shoot in straight through the orbital layer at speed then engage a large set of retro-rockets to slow itself very shortly before it lands and disgorges its payload automatically. The catch to this is that if the transport takes too much damage as it's coming down it will be too damaged to slow down enough and will smash into the surface, taking your units with you but also creating an explosion of some cool-lookin' sort. If it does make land the transport would then become an obstacle that could be used for cover or reclaimed by you, or your enemy if your assault fails.

So um yeah, on the pile that one goes

I like that bit in particular.

Special moon units? Lets face it currently they're either being lobbed or being just bases perhaps specific units for moons and asteroids? Adds variety

Interesting idea.

So we could have moon factories which make lunar/asteroid units lets them build the unit cannon as an unlock that way same for Halleys or just reskin current units for lunar....

OK we seen units that can fly like a satellites now make units that go further out into space not to other planets just out to space to fight i mean space ships would be cool

And some cool thinking you did there! I was already aiming for something like a 10-unit transport or even bigger the 25-unit-transport as an upgrade to the Astraeus but this sounds way more intersting!

LASER FENCES
https://forums.uberent.com/threads/better-idea-for-the-wall.52981/

Dark reign had them, so did C&C.

Why not make the current wall like in my thread "better idea for the WALL"

Place one wall piece then move over and place another wall piece within a short distance from the first (not too close yet not too far from each other) and it will make a laser fence automatically.

Laser fences could use Energy per section, so bigger fences need more Energy per tick.
and if a player Stalls his/her Energy economy then the fence should turn off like the radar does
This would force players to maintain a good economy or be at risk of having their laser fence shutdown allowing for attacks to get past easily without need for destroying the wall pieces.

Destroying a wall piece should shut down that section of fence too (obviously .. lol).

Dark Reign, that takes me back, the waypoints were a revelation.
But good old TA cut my love affair with it short.

Never played TA, but teleporting in 3 bions followed by "temporal distortion detected" right in the middle of their factories was awesome.

Speaking of bions: How about a T1 or cheap T2 bot that can attack both air and ground. Something to mix in into your dox army. Maybe even change the slammer to do that since they really can't compare to the strength of levelers now.

Here is my idea:

Spy bot


-really expensive (because they wear expensive suits)
-short - medium/normal line of sight
-short radar
-fast moving speed

Spy bot has free invisibility. Enemy can't also see them on radar when they're invisible. However, if the spy bot is too close to enemy unit it loses the invisibility.

Spy bots can turn visible and disguise as enemy team's land units. You can then move around enemy base.

Spy bots that are disguised as engineers can fake that they are assisting (assist enemy engineers, factories, etc.).

edit: But what if the enemy selects spy that is disguised as engineer and tries to start building something instead of assisting? Well, imo the best option would be that the spy bot can actually build like normal engineers. So spy bot can build enemy buildings and use enemy's resources. I think it is better to accidentally give your enemy one extra engineer than your spy bot being revealed as obvious spy.

Spy bots that are disguised as offensive units such as tanks can fake shooting (they shoot but they don't do damage).

edit: Spy bots can also fake taking damage. If your spy bot is disguised as enemy unit and it is taking splash damage from friendly units, it fakes that it is losing hp.

edit: If the disguised spy bot is within range of friendly offensive units ( tanks, point defenses, etc. ) and there are no enemy units around it (it can turn invisible), the spy bot will automatically turn invisible and lose its disguise.

Enemy player can give your disguised spies commands (move, attack, assist, etc.). This makes them less suspicious. This means that if you hide your spy bot in the middle of your opponen's army, your opponent doesn't know it's there because it behaves just like all the other units. When enemy commands your spy you hear a "ding" (not loud or annoying) noise and you can see what the enemy commanded it to do on the map.

Spy bots can spot enemy's spy bots on line of sight.

Enemy can also spot spy bots by selecting them and pressing "delete" ;D. If the unit is spy, it doesn't explode, but it loses its disguise. (Logic behind this: Spy refuses to obey the enemy's self destruct command so the enemy now knows that the unit is a spy because it disobeyed a command, get it? )

Spy bots can shoot EMP to any mobile unit within its radar range. Target is then disabled for few seconds. Really, really slow rate of fire, you only use this to high priority targets (you rarely need to use this gun). Enemy can't see the projectile or know who shot it. You can order spy bot to automatically shoot whenever it can or you can order it to only shoot manually. EMP doesn't use energy when fired (spies have their own energy supplies and are not dependent of player's resources).

edit: Spy bots can also copy enemy unit's waypoints. Example: If the enemy units are partolling between point A and point B, you can order your spy bot to join in their patrol route.

It's an interesting idea but ruins the feel of the game I think. It's meant to be big armies so focusing on that. Instead of individual units just my opinion.....

EMP fences sound better. Dark Reign is still an awesome game.