It's time to talk unit ideas

Tractor Beam Turret/Tower

How about a defensive structure that "fires" a ranged, continuous energy beam at a single unit with a small AoE/Splash that can be toggled to either PULL or PUSH the targeted unit?

This way, the tower could PUSH a hard-hitting, short-range unit away from getting in range of the more vital structures. Alternatively, it could PULL an enemy Commander away from a retreat or separate a HealBot from its "pack." Of course, it's primary use would be to PULL obligate orbital units out of the sky and cause them to crash.

Perhaps it could prevent lift-offs of affected units. Presumably, it would either (A) reduce a unit's movement by a percentage while active or (B) have a certain power and overwhelm the motility stats of each unit differently (i.e. Subtractive effect). The subtractive method is probably better for overwhelming units and PUSHING/PULLING vs. just slowing them down.

ALTERNATIVELY, this unit could just be caused to create chaos and scatter formations by "stunning" units' abilities to alter their speed, trajectory, or targeting (i.e. Units continue moving at constant speeds, degree turns, and fire with fixed or continuously swiveling aim). This lock-in and continued iteration of last commands would only last 2 or so seconds, but could seed some real chaos in the moment.

That does sound quite cool

Posting this idea here as well.

An interplanetary UberBot useful for initiating planetary invasions. It will be launchable once only. This thing will land with an explosion, move around and shoot alot then explode taking out more stuff. This should pave the way for a regular invasion force. It would also take such an awesome amount of energy to use if it isnt destroyed you will have to turn it off to be able to continue normal production.

Sounds more awesome than an interplanetary nuke and alot more fun.

forgive me for not reading 40 pages of suggestions to see if this has been said already:

it's obviously not a problem in pa as it is, but in supcom once the enemies get the sea infested with subs it was really difficult to get back in there - torpedo bombers are too fragile. I though it'd be nice to have a hover torpedo platform that can hover just above the water and drop torpedoes just like the torp bombers do, but obviously not being vulnerable to anti-air

Oooh I like anti sea air

Sonic Spire

Since we can launch interplanetary nukes, why not launch a technological spear the size of a building to impale a planet? The structure could begin to send out a constructive frequency on the planet that slowly increases in surface area until the whole planet is quaking. Structures and tunneling units would probably take the most damage, with airborne/orbital units unaffected and hovering/naval vehicles only minority inconvenienced. Basically, staking a planet could be used to slow that planet down or ravage structural units.

The idea would be to create a fire-and-forget unit that establishes an offensive structure on an enemy planet that*requires* the enemy to swarm or otherwise engage (unless air/orbital units are present). Besides, when are you going to see a swarm of enemies engaged in a dramatic battle with one of your structures OTHER THAN the fall of a base or at the end of the game? Space it out with these Sonic Spires and force a ground-unit massing on your terms. []

Armageddiggers (Armageddrills?)

I believe I espoused the idea of drilling units depositing a payload under the surface of the planet somewhere on this forum before. Well, since we seem to have all-or-none attacks with use of the Delta Vs in celestial body collision, why not create a log-term, additive mechanism for destruction?

A step up from interplanetary nukes could be these units, which are costly in terms of time to manufacture (more so than regular interplanetary nukes). Their purpose would be to drill to a body's (i.e. planet's/moon's) core and deposit some payload within. A pseudo-scientific explanation about how the increased density and pressure at the body's core allows for catalysis of a powerful reaction that triggers this particular weapon. Maybe after a certain payload is deposited at the core, a reaction takes place that opens a temporary black hole (or maybe just creates a conventional explosion) and eliminates a good portion of the planet randomly. I suggest a black hole, as it would make sense for this to cause the destruction of mass and/or implosion. Amusingly, we've seen planets get hit on the outside in an opulent display ... How about watching whole sections of the planet swallowed into the core (perhaps a random portion?) and seeing the planet shudder and shrink to a much smaller size (perhaps emitting dust clouds from the various crevices/seams that briefly appear. I imagine that would create a significant WTF moment.

This means of attack would be largely for style points or, perhaps, for the player who can make punctuated resource expenditures, but knows they cannot risk the total attack on a single asteroid (perhaps the owner of the units has the option of detonating the payload at any time after the first driller/digger gets there, but will obviously have a smaller impact on the surface). A question of balance becomes whether this should be more effective on larger planets per payload than momentum weapons (asteroids with Delta Vs) or not as anti-nukes and/or defensive towers who probably be the surest preventative measures. Maybe this becomes the method of choice to take out portions of large planets by peppering them with payloads and hoping most get through their missile defenses vs. Staking it all on an asteroid or two.

Lastly, the creation of these units could make seismic attacks/defenses (such as the Sonic Spire or other proposed units) actually useful for a sort of scorched earth defense; sure, you damage or destroy less than half of the structures on your planet to kill these burrowing units at the core, but at least the surface of the planet isn't going to collapse and disappear forever (with whatever/whoever was on it). Also, wouldn't it be fun to see folks launch a Sonic Spire at themselves instead of at you to deal with a local problem rather than units on your real estate? []

Lets keep interplanetary invasions real. Dozens or hundreds of little drop ships, capable of mass deploying ground forces, racing towards the surface under the barrage of orbital fighters, AA guns and then ground defenses in a brilliant display of fire works and debris from transports that just weren't lucky enough to land.

The orbital invasion is just long and tedious and not very rewarding. Just mass fighters, overwhelm their fighters and make the ion defense platforms run out of ammo as your satellites pick off the ions and orbital structures with impunity.

I would very much like a floating depth charge Hover bot that destroyed subs.

A big list(include implemented or to-be implemented units)
Tank:
Basic
T-1 Fabber*
T-1 Scout*
T-1 Assault*
T-1 AA*
T-1 Minelayer
T-1 Arty
Avanced
T-2 fabber*
T-2 Tank*
T-2 Arty*
T-2 AA
T-2 Riot Tank(AoE)
T-2 Amphibious Tank**
Bot:
Basic
T-1 Fabber*
T-1 Raider*
T-1 AA*
T-1 Rocket Bot
T-1 Riot Bot(AoE, but less Speed and same range than a Dox)

can I steal this Idea? T-1 Hover Bot(like a Pelican in TA) that make what he say, can fight Doxes but will lose in Metal/Metal
Avanced
T-2 Fabber*
T-2 Raider*
T-2 Arty*
T-2 Spider**
T-2 Emp Bot(shoot emp grenades that stun)
T-2 AA
Naval:
Basic
T-1 Fabber*
T-1 Frigate*
T-1 Destroyer*
T-1 Sub*
T-1 Sub-Fabber*
T-1 Scout*
Avanced
T-2 Fabber*
T-2 BattleShip*
T-2 Missile Ship*
T-2 Nuclear Sub*
T-2 Carrier(repair Air units/Nuke defense/AA)
T-2 Transport Ship
Air:
Basic
T-1 Fabber*
T-1 scout*
T-1 Fighter*
T-1 Bomber*
T-1 Transport(I know that will be in the game)
T-1 Light Gunship
Avanced
T-2 Fabber*
T-2 Fighter*(improve it range)
T-2 Bomber*
T-2 Torpedo Bomber**
T-2 Gunship
T-2 Spy Plane
* in game
** not implemented, but in files

First, I want to apologize on not completing the GREAT LIST I started. Anyone is welcome to edit the list.

Ok, so this lil guy is from Empire Strikes back. Now, beyond being a robot, Viper Probe Droid had a very PA-esk specific mission. He was an orbital scout. Unlike a satellite he landed on enemy planets and did not have an egress system. In PA he might. Also, unlike satellites I envision such a bot to have only short range reconnaissance capabilities, because he could cloak himself from vision/intel costing you a lot of energy to scout defended bastions.

I see him most as an Orbital version of TA's Spy Bot. He could spy inside defended enemy defenses assuming you have enough energy to power his stealth/vision cloaking and short ranged radar. Maybe he could have a good self destruct explosion or a medium laser for sabotaging undefended enemy installations. He might have a high orbital speed. He is great for locating uncloaked enemy commanders and juicy targets of opportunity.

A moderate/low cost basic - one way - rocket transport could spice up early game as well as provide a quick escape for a commander on a doomed planet.

It would be interesting to have huge melee units in the game. Wouldn't it be awesome to watch melee bots wrestle to the death, destroying the terrain around them? If these units were put into the game they should be able to punch mountains, use volcanoes as swords and pieces of rock and rubble as ammunition to throw at the enemy. Another unit that would be fun to have in the game would be another wall unit. A big moving wall to be precise. This special unit should absorb damage and blockade land units to delay the opponent. You should be able to make the wall survive longer by boosting its health with fabbers / engineers.

If you are still taking suggestions, here are some of mine just in case I get lucky.
Please take these into consideration.

-Add bots or some sort of building that sends out non-hostile bots to reclaim destroyed units or buildings for a boost to metal or some sort of building that sends out non-hostile bots to salvage the metal.
-Repair bots that are especially created for repairing damaged or destroyed units or buildings
-More orbital uits, especially ones that can attack others mid-flight from planet to planet
-Orbital units that can take down air units or nukes (two differant units)
-Differant rockets that are actually like the staged rockets in the kickstarter video; could be cheaper or take longer to reach their destination (Tiered rockets)
-Third tier bots, that would be large objects that are build individually (not from a factoy) that are extreamly expensive and take a large portion of time to build, and would also could have an upgrade to them that can be built straight on them that will add rockets to travel to the other planets (this would take a long time too)
-Special units for each faction (such as an "Uber Cannon" or "Supreme Commander")
-Custom creation of commander design, if you were to take the time you could create your own custom commander that you could shape and chose a set color that you could choose in your battles against others

If you do decide to use any of my ideas, THANK YOU!!! This means so much to me!
(PS!!! If you chose one, please at least use the tiered rockets or the custom commanders! They are my favorites! )

Want to second this! There are so many cool ways to create that like i.e small flying robot swarms that scavanges the battlefield and returns scrap metal back to the "hive" building or "Wall-E" like robots that goofs around collecting scrap

I am not sure if this is mentioned before or not, but in the current game an orbital laser cannot shoot underwater so based on this, my suggestion for a unit is a seafloor unit that can target and shoot units in the orbital layer. This gives you the option of defending some orbital terrain while building up your own orbital units. Also, it makes people think twice about going naval or land.

Something I was wondering for some time. Why you do not get more resouces when you first build a T1 metal extractor and then a T2 on top.

Finally, the model has 2 towers or 3 if you build a T2 on a T1 and it costs more resouces to build them.

The t2 simply replaces the t1. The number of towers is just the t1 metal not being reclaimed before the new mine takes over the mineral deposit.
Wasteful building always cost more resources. in order for the metal income to stack, you would have to be able to construct t1 metal over top a t2 metal extractor. Then you could make a case for the extractor tiers to work in unison rather than low tier and upper tier.

Unit Idea: this in combination with for example the teleporter as outlined in the Vanguard newsletter.
The unit itself:
- A robot that can transform (transformers any 1? ) into an orbital fighter/bomber of some kind.
- The bots themself should be able to shoot at ground units.
And now the use: First you bombard with the laser platforms/nukes, then you let those bots I just described land and have them try to secure a landing place for the teleport machine. Once the teleport machine has landed and becomes active you can start pouring in a massive invading army. I think this would for sure spice up interplanetary war. Ok we have the unit canon for sure but a unit beeing able to go to orbit by his own, I think would be usefull!

-Scally out-

Yes i saw it. when you building a t2 you can build a t1 on top and also with t1 first and t2 later then both collecting metal. That means if you have both together on on metal spot you get more than with just a t2 on it.