Teleporting air and naval?

The idea of boats is very human, and even though we're playing a game about robots, the game is made for humans. In an all-robo universe there is no reason for a boat. Subs, or even bottom walking robots are a much better option. We have ships in the game, and that means they have a density less than the water they are displacing. I don't think even psychotic murder bots are going to waste exotic mater trying to make a metal slab float for no reason.. especially when making it hollow works just as well.

I agree there are no humans in this war, but the robots are clearly still working under guidelines and expectations setup by humans long extinct. There's no reason for any of the robots to use remotely bipedal, or even remotely anthropomorphic forms at all. There's no reason for their tanks to be shaped like our tanks when there are more efficient shapes and lower ground profiles that would fair better if you didn't have to have a crew inside. The bot factory makes infantry shaped robots because the robots are still drawing from a knowledge of war that was provided by humans in that same age long past. With all that in mind, I say it's completely fair to think they use ships similar to our ships. They mimic us in every other domain, why would they make an exception for ships?

You just played into Bobs trap card.

As he wants to move into more submarine warfair that doesn't mimic most human ships at all. (Third person!)

That's interesting. Makes sense now how torpedoes explode underneath ships, creating a void which causes the ship to collapse under its own weight.. that was news to me.

I'm OK with that too, but I still raise the question... why would they memic every aspect of a human war, except naval warfare? I get too easily drawn off by hypothetical questions, so anything talking about "why would a robot?" is going to peek my interest.

I think ships are fun. I think submarines are fun. I don't have a real problem with the physics of moving ships orbitally. If you can push planets you can move a ship. My whole point falls back on lets find ways to invade the air and the seas that don't mimic the land invasions.

This isn't really what would be happening in PA, but at one point in supcom2 I discovered a bug that would let you send aircraft through a Space Temple (a two-way teleporter with an invulnerable "out" beacon that could be moved every 30 seconds anywhere in a strategic range). It was just a LITTLE overpowered to be able to instantly warp hundreds of gunships on top of a commander. The air concentration/deathball/noclip issue makes it pretty amazing.

I think there does need to be a naval teleporter at least, because 100% water planets with would be unassailable otherwise. Either that or a naval unit cannon, which is even sillier (it's not like there's going to be water asteroids).

The same goes for orbital as air right now. An orbital teleporter, presumably powerbuilt in orbit by a squad of orbital engineers, would be able to poof in a ton of lasers/fighters/nuke launchers all at once.

If there was a larger, fancier teleporter for non-land units that had a cooldown, I think it would be pretty reasonable.

I suppose it depends on what century of war fair is the most fun for the game.

Ground blitzkreig is fun and simple for most RTS games, and so we get WW2 land combat.

Air fir-balls are what TA and SupCom went for, as more modern styles of air combat has very few aircraft dominating the skys by killing targets they can't even see, so either WW2 or early cold war styles of air combat.

But what is the most fun for ships? WW2 battleships and aircraft carriers? Well I feel that, that kind of warfair it just dominated from the air by aircraft who don't even need carriers anyway, so most ships end up being mobile artillery then slugging matches between ships.

Personally Id like to see more Napoleonic ships that really have to beat the hell out of each other up close.

But most people might disagree.

I just think it's bland to use more teleporting. We've got a portal, and that's great, but I would rather see new units and structures fill the role of naval and aerial assaults.

Imagine,

Instead of build another teleporter you could descend from the heavens with a navy of bad *** orbital carriers spewing out fighters and bombers. If the descent from orbital to atmosphere isn't too quick and it's vulnerable to AA fire during transition it would reduce the "zomg you've spammed my commander with bombers" effect while still offering a solid solution to delivering hundreds of aircraft to an enemy world.

Instead of simply carrying another ship to the target zone you could drop pod a half dozen armored fortresses and mass produce a navy on the spot. If the fortress had enough health, and weapons it could hold it's own long enough to build multiple battleships. It could laeth fast enough that your economy is the only barrier to your naval assault.


These are just two ideas. I like them, but I'm hardly suggestions they are the only way to go. Is another teleporter really the most awesome way to attack an enemy planet??

Personally Id like stealth units to go on infiltration missions on enemy planets to try and take on important targets, and delay a counter attack on my undiscovered landing party's as long as possible.

That's the same reason most games mimic WW2 air combat, and it's a brilliant direction.

Personally, I find early WW2 naval combat as exciting as Nepoleonic. Empire: Total War's naval combat was among my all time favorites, but I think the style is too far detached from the gameplay most of us expect in a Sci-Fi RTS. If planes required carriers, and if battleships had substantial AA, we would see more real ship on ship combat. That might also open up room for more close in ship to ship combat with new vessels that are fast enough to get under the artillery barrage, but large enough to give a real stand up fight. I think that would also help scratch that 1700's naval itch.

You forgot to ask to be able to send in-flight nuclear missiles through a teleport!
Hint: no.

Water adds THREE layers to the game- The surface, underwater, and the sea bed. Why focus only on the surface? It is the weakest layer after all, vulnerable from attack in every possible direction and requiring an inherent overpoweredness to deal with it.

The seabed deals with terrain issues just like ground, so it can benefit from maneuvering, tactics, resource deposits, and all that fun stuff. Underwater is much like the surface but less vulnerable against ground.

The surface just sucks. There's no terrain, no resources, and no reason to exist there other than to attack stuff on land. It's boring, and has continued to be boring. Core Contingency helped, because they finally added naval resources, hovercraft, and showed a slight potential in water diving aircraft. But water warfare has still been woefully underdeveloped across all titles.

I think it's good that you can only teleport ground units. Think about it, there are few better ways to set the focus of the game on ground units.

Water is on the ground, too.

Naval, yes. Definitely, naval units are so slow, porters would be great.
Air? Ehhh, tough call...
It'd be cool for sending air between planets, and it'd look menacing as hell to see a bunch of hornets swarm out of a teleporter, but they move so fast, so I don't know.

You actually had me going there...

How about instead of air and ship teleporting, make the land based teleport being able to be built underwater aswell, then you can send subs and amphibious tanks and constructors to water worlds..?

I'm all for "Don't worry; mod it." Nuclear portals aren't my cup of tea, but I sleep better knowing we have a developer who cares about the mod community and is interested in giving us the assets we need to make it happen.

I do agree with many others here that at the very minimum we need the means to invade an ocean planet. I don't think portals should be the answer to every invasion, but regardless of what the solution we need *something* more interesting than nuking the site into submission and landing our commander.

Portals are only one solution. They are "easy" code-wise because the data path is simple. Remove unit from A, plop unit at B. That's why you see the gate in the game before the unit cannon, which requires an intermediary loading, firing, potentially getting shot (by a different class of enemies thanks to arbitrary firing restrictions), and landing sequence.

There is no particular reason that a water gate would be any different code-wise from a walking gate. It's a lot trickier with things like nuclear projectiles and perhaps air pathing, but for boats it's pretty much the same as tanks. Remove from A, plop at B. No biggie, except for dev preference.

Don't get me wrong, it would be nice for boats to have more cleverer ways of moving about the solar system. For example, raining boats directly from orbit while land units require a cannon would be nice. But nice is optional, and something the game can do without. What's important is making sure a movement option (likely more than one) exists. There's no reason to believe that moving a navy from world to world is any less necessary for a functional match than with moving tanks. It could be hovercraft, it could be torpedo bots, it could be any number of solutions. It doesn't matter how it's done, only that it is.

I feel like if you let air get teleported you would just see people massing armies of bombers, rushing in and rushing out constantly.

I think we're saying essentially the same thing here. I've worked on the code side of enough mods to have very realistic expectations. Portals would be easy, so would mimicking the behavior of an astraeus. Dropping a factory from orbit crash down style should be pretty simple too.

Making new units doesn't imply designing new engine behavior every time. It doesn't have to be as intricate a solution as the unit cannon to fall from space. As a modder I didn't have source code, so I made orbital deployed units in C&C Zero Hour using missile behaviors and fire on death weapons that created the new unit/structure... there are ways to do it without writing a ton of new source code.

It can be done reliably without an excessive overhead.

Also, moving your navy from one planet to another is not the critical function... it would be nice... but the critical function is establishing a meaningful beachhead for assault a water world. If an air delivery system were used, such as the orbital carrier concept you could use torpedo planes and air fabbers to build your beachhead base and new ships.