New Unit Suggestions

Discussion in 'Planetary Annihilation General Discussion' started by soghog, August 16, 2013.

  1. archcommander

    archcommander Active Member

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    Simplez
    polaris173 and stormingkiwi like this.
  2. pieman2906

    pieman2906 Well-Known Member

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    I agree that a lot of these unit ideas are a bit silly.

    Crazy transforming/form shifting/tunneling/mode switching/stargating units and buildings. Do YOU wanna have to micro all that? Cause I sure don't.

    Heck in most of the games I've played it seems people are having enough trouble microing to dodge artillery rounds, kiting attacks, and managing their frontline fabbers, much less sorting out this unit jumping there, and those units mode-changing, but not these ones.

    In games of a smaller scale, like starcraft, or red alert, maybe there's a place for all of that craziness (though I'd cite red alert 3 as an example of it going overboard). But with armies the size of what we're planning to deal with here, you don't wanna be fiddling with toggle-states, or over-designed 57-stage deployable tactikool superweapons.

    What you want are units that may well have unique abilities, or passive stuff going on with them, but not things you have to focus all your micro and attention on just to have them function adequately.
  3. perecil

    perecil Active Member

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    I agree with pieman2906. The rule of thumb here is to avoid units that needs micro-management. So, why not "transformable" units, but this needs to be fully automatic (imagine the siege tank from Starcraft deploying itself when not moving: that's ok. a button to siege it? no way.).

    Transports / Teleporters should also be automatic, and set via a ferry route (we really need thoses) à la Supreme Commander. So you can assign Fab -> ferry route -> front line one time and let the game handles all of the micro management crap (loading units, unloading, adding transport to the ferry route, and so on).

    Heck I'd like to see a transport unit in assist mode pick the assisted unit and drop it where the target was.
    stormingkiwi likes this.
  4. tbos

    tbos Member

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    ok then i have an idea. why not make a single button that say ´destroy´.

    pressing it wil make Pgens, mexes and factories. Will attack the opponent and defeat it. Just sit back and relax. maybe get a cup of coffee? get yourself comfortable. I mean why even bother right?

    You could also not play this game and go watch a movie. I heard ´gravity´ was really good.
  5. perecil

    perecil Active Member

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    We already have that. You know, when you ignite Halley's ;).

    On a serious note, i'm talking about "micro" management, ie baby-sitting individuals units so they can work the way they're meant to work. This game is not Starcraft 2: you will have hundreds or thousand units to handle, some that aren't on the planet you're currently viewing. The last thing you want is to say to yourself "ha my attack has failed because I forgot to tell my unit to perform it's special action within the correct time-frame."
  6. Gerfand

    Gerfand Active Member

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    One of my Units Ideas is a T-1 Skirmish bot
    Of course you need to micro it to get out of range, but if the AI can micro it for you,Fine
    Also if you need to micro alot the game isn't a RTS anymore, it become a RTT
    Last edited: October 4, 2013
  7. klavohunter

    klavohunter Member

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    - T2 Anti-Aircraft Turret

    I'm not sure what form this should take: A straight copy of the Flak Turret from TA, which puts out loads of slightly-AoE death in a small area? Or perhaps something like the "Screamer" Long Range AA Missile that I remembered in TA Spring, where it'd launch a big ol (Again, slightly AoE) missile over a couple screens away! Yeah, it's got a long reload time, but when you combine Flak Turrets and Screamers in overlapping defense-in-depth, you can deny all but the biggest air raids from getting into your base.

    Of course, my experience in all versions of TA is that, The Bomber Always Gets Through. When you send at least 100 of them, that is... Pick your priority targets wisely, because if the enemy didn't skimp on AA, you're not getting the planes back!
  8. Gerfand

    Gerfand Active Member

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    T-1 Metal Maker- make metal but use a lot of power, use only if you don't have metal (and a lot of energy to spare)
  9. vermilliontrim

    vermilliontrim New Member

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    Has nobody suggested the G&C general's USA Particle Cannon?

    Its not that OP and technically you need a orbital satellite to fire it...
  10. comham

    comham Active Member

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    Having to build two separate units to use an ability is very much not in the TA style, unless we're talking about building a nuke inside a silo or building enough energy generators to power your LRPC. Even the two-part satellite from supcom was pushing it.
  11. Gerfand

    Gerfand Active Member

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    unless if the unit launch the satellite, like in SupCom, but is better build a SXX-1304 Laser Platform.
  12. mrj90k

    mrj90k Member

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    A simple unit called The Brain.

    The Brain would be a stationary building that has very low hit-points, it's function is to manage planets while the players attention is else where. Essentially you would build one of these on a planet and a AI would take control of the planet while you are not viewing said planet, it would function as a normal AI but would be unable to order units to leave the orbit of the planet is is based on and it would request permission of the player to take rash actions like commit more than a few units to an attack or to nuke an area of the map.

    The balancing factor of this unit is it would go nuclear on death and is very vulnerable to damage, this means that a player can only use it as a temporary solution and not to win the game. Once the unit on the planet would have short reboot time of 3 seconds while they adjust to the loss of one of there command signals.


    I would have a suggest The Swarmed

    This unit destroys enemy units via reclaiming them (would reclaim on an attack order), however the mass it reclaims doesn't go to your economy but rather towards making itself stronger (increasing hit points and size). The unit would start on low health but would have a very high damage per second meaning that it must be supported by Ants and Doxs.

    One of the cool things about this unit is if you tell it to assist a unit, factory, or fab it will put all the mass it has collected into the healing, building of creating of said unit. In my eyes this would be an interesting and high priority unit.


    Lastly we have The Swordsman

    This unit is has the health of a leveller, a speed slightly lower than the Dox and a amazingly high damage to match. The unit can only attack in close range however and so it must be escorted in range of the opponent by a contingent of other units or it must be used it raids on far out mexs.

    The cool part about the unit is the unit has a small chance to deflect direct fire attacks such as that of a laser turret or other ground units. This chance is very small when using however the chance increases drasticly when stationary.
    Last edited: October 14, 2013
  13. evolvexxx

    evolvexxx Member

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    This thread was posted in august, I think its time to actually re-open it...
    Uber probably won't need more units, but its always fun reading about other peoples ideas
  14. evolvexxx

    evolvexxx Member

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    I'd love seeing a t2 orbital launcher or a launcher. This could produce:

    1: orbital transport
    a huge ship that can pick up 5 units and transport them into another planet
    2: orbital cannon
    something like the halo mac-gun-station or similar, it could shoot to transports and fighters that are approaching to that planet's orbit (orbital-level artillery)
    3: nuclear torpedo launcher
    an advanced satellite that launches up to 2 nukes on a planet per strike, but the aim is slow and the nukes can be anti-nuked
    4: fabrication satellite
    allows the creation of a t1 orbital factory, that produces the same units as the launcher
  15. melhem19

    melhem19 Active Member

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    Armadrillo
    Armored drill that can transport units , dig under the surface of the planet( can't enter water, or lava area) creates a big explosion upon death
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  16. tatsujb

    tatsujb Post Master General

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    we've been in beta! let's use it!
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  17. moonsilver

    moonsilver Member

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    I got pointed to this thread, so I'll post my unit suggestion here.

    Would it be possible to have command based units. For example vehicles could have a mobile command base unit, which though is larger than other units, like a truck or something. It carries radar, possibly a repair beam.

    It could have a series of small weapons protecting itself, but nothing major. Small lasers and an anti aircraft missile launcher or 2. Would have the ability to build teleporters. It would be 2 or 3 times the size of a normal unit, and be expensive. It would exist to serve a command function, not be a powerhouse.

    Bots could have a field commander, smaller than our avatar, but carries a radar jamming device, no repair beam as that would invalidate the repair bots. It would gain a larger sight radius than most bots, not sure how much for balance purposes, but it would be significant. It would have the ability to reclaim and rebuild wreckage on the field like an engineer. It would again be expensive and larger than a normal bot. Your not meant to have many. It would carry no weapon as it has its engineer beam.

    Navy would get an aircraft carrier command vessal, or a submarine command vessal, I would probalyl prefer submarine command vessal as its more navy and doesn't mix with air. But carrier would also fit. It would have its own sonar, a repair beam and the ability to reclaim sea wrecks and transport many many land units. It would only have weak torpedos as its weapon. Again it would be big and expensive.

    Air could get the flying fortress. a very large air unit that is capable of flying to orbital and to other planets. It can transport many units, has radar jamming capability, no radar of its own. It has t1 style anti air missiles. It can not attack land and carries no bombs. Again big and expensive. I admit the air one is more to do with orbital than air, but asking for the space battleship Yamato might not have worked.

    That's my suggestion.
  18. BulletMagnet

    BulletMagnet Post Master General

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    Last edited: February 23, 2014
  19. polaris173

    polaris173 Active Member

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    To flesh out T1 air a bit, I'd love if there were a light ground assault aircraft for harassing larger groups of units.

    It would basically be like an AC-10, and make straight line passes like a T2 bomber, firing whatever the dox shoots. Make them reasonably cheap, give them somewhat weak health, and make them relatively fast. Being able to spam some of these out would make an air-only approach more viable, and provide a reasonable T1 assault option on clusters of ground units. Plus, it'd look awesome seeing these things strafing Doxen.
  20. igncom1

    igncom1 Post Master General

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    Abductor:

    T1 aircraft

    Bomber like costs, designed to directly go up to small enemy units, clamp on to them and use a point blank plasma cutter to kill their abducted targets, cannot be shot by ground units while doing this, but must remain still.

    High dps damage, but little burst damage, like 20 damage, 100 dps.

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