Superweapon Types.

Why should we have only one way to annihilate a planet?
Here are some suggestions:

Ride a planet into the sun-
This has been mentioned a few times,take the planet and use the
trusters to ride it into the sun.

Blow up the moon of a planet-
I remember someone suggested this,
Blow up the moon with a some kind of bomb and
its parts rain upon the planet.

Death star superlaser-
a dormant superlaser randomly generated on a metal planet,
they had mentioned dormant technology on metal planets.
Huge energy cost of a single shot.

Planet-wide super nuke-
It explodes at one place,and then its shockwave spreads across the planet.
As it passes it leaves a trail of destroyed units and buildings

Orbital (Ion) Cannon-
Basically the same one from C&C 3 Tiberum Wars,
It shouldn't be planet-wide but at least powerful enough
to make a crater.

If you have any suggestions please post them.

P.S. I have tried using search, and it is horrible, I type
"metal planet" and only thing that comes out
are metal extractor articles.
P.P.S
I am aware this is beta,these are just ideas.

I don't think we can ever have enough Ridiculous weapons to cause global destruction, even if its just visual flavor. Though being able to build some sort of planet mounted super laser would be wonderful.

I think a greater variety in buildable missiles (tac nukes, long range nukes, etc) would be nice but that's about it. PA is meant to focus on the armies and not the super weapons so we don't need a ton of them. Ideally the super weapons would assist and argument your armies instead of replacing them.

I think we need more variety in the types of damage and application.

Smaller, cheaper nukes for depleting anti-nuke defenses. Larger than a tactical missile, smaller than the strategic nukes. They would also be better suited for taking out strategic targets (gates and missile defenses) instead of whole bases.

That's the idea behind a tac nuke. Smaller and cheaper then a full nuke. It would be great for overwhelming defenses and taking out signal buildings or chunks of armies.

Yeah, you posted while I was typing.

From the last live feed I saw posts saying the Devs have said they will be making a variety of new missiles, including Planet-to-Planet.

I'd like to see some non-missile super weapons. A giant laser that can shoot anything it sees could be awesome, but I'm not sure if LOS can be determined between planets. Also, we would need some new UI to support it because your LOS is variable. The orbits and rotations of all the planets could leave you with a very narrow window for firing. Maybe you give the order and it just waits until it has a chance?? It's a fun idea, but I'm not sure how practical. If it's not too hard to raytrace from the gun to the target and wait for a clean shot it might be viable.

Well the SXX laser sat is similar to that and is almost a super weapon. One thing that is missing is a reasonable path of defense against being smashed by an asteroid.

I'd like to have some long range bertha/mavor planetary artillery or space gun.

Single game ending units/buildings degrade the strategy involved in a RTS game.

It's used by people who lack skill and instead must rely on a single unit to win, rather than using strategy and skill.

They would be bad for Planetary Annihilation.

Before you people start crying "but what about planet smashing?" I'm not a huge fan of the planet smashing strategy – mainly in its current implementation though. However, in it's full implementation, planet smashing won't completely wipe out the planet. Smaller astroids/moons won't completely wipe out larger planets. In fact, Uber's hope is that planet smashing will be a common occurrence – and thus, not a super game ending building.

That's ok, but "super-weapons" don't have to be "single game ending units/buildings" which would indeed degrade strategy. They could be horribly inefficient for their costs, and players would still use them just because of the extra variety they'd offer. And variety is something this game dearly lacks atm.

This game could be so much more. You see so many threads about mega-units, super-weapons and the like (which also tend to be in the top ranked threads for clicks), that I can say with certainty that the demand is there in the community.

We know your concerns brian, but adding units that win you the game if you build them, is not what we want, nor is it something that Uber would ever want to let happen.

But that doesn't speak against the idea of "super-units" or "mega-units", or whatever you want to call them.

Which then we run into the issue of "experimentals" "super units" "tech 3 units" whatever now invalidate other units – which goes against Uber's design philosophy – which is an awesome design philosophy.

Why do I have the feeling that you played SupCom and hated experimentals?
Please just forget them. It's not what we want. Atleast I don't. And I'm an advocate of "very big and expensive" units.

I played SupCom and I enjoyed experimentals because the game was built around the concept of experimentals dominating the late game and invalidating other unit types.

And if you read what I said, I stipulated a lot of things.

Even if these units, which what OP described is pretty much all game ending single units, aren't experimentals and are more like larger units, which would be the equivalent of SupCom's Tech 3 units or some unit inbetween SupCom's Tech 3 and Experimentals, these units would invalidate other units.

If we make a unit set that is more powerful than our current Advanced units, the entire Basic unit tier will be invalidated – which goes against Uber's original design philosophy.

From what I've seen of these threads most people just want more powerful units or a single unit that can blow up everything because it would be awesome rather than good for game balance.

Super game ending weapons are a nice way of saying "we screwed up and have no idea how to resolve this game through normal battle". It'll work, but maybe it's worth the extra effort to make a game that can be resolved through normal battle?

Hold on, which is awesome? Having super units, or not having super units?

Who said that with the implementation of super units, that the focus of the game couldn't stay on ground combat (normal battle)? Why would they automatically be the focus of the game?

Why should there be only one way in designing them, which would be to make them so OP that everyone needs to build them?

There are more clever ways than that.

I sometimes get the feeling that people have unreasonable paranoia on this topic.

Are you not reading my comments? I don't want them to be more powerful. They should complement the basic units, and not replace them. Is that so hard to understand?

Or are you just not able to imagine a way of making that happen?
Why do you think that just because of the term used, or because of their size, that they HAVE to be OP?

I'm sorry, but I'm tired of hearing that. Because it's just not true.

I would be ok with interplanetary railguns similar to interplanetary nukes
They would be less efficient in targeting but have a good aoe with good amount of damage but only use against bases on other planetoids that orbit eachother kind of an offensive umbrella with artilleryshells instead of lasers ....

Ps:
What is a super unit ,what an experimental what just a big unit?

Certainly you've hammered this point in pretty well. So what do ya got? Surely you must know of at least one idea that can do the trick.

So now you're just suggesting other Advanced units?

I should also point out that what you're advocating is completely different than what OP has brought up.

So in this thread
https://forums.uberent.com/threads/end-game-mega-units.55641/
I've already given you two detailed designs of Megabots that would not ruin the game, and would still leave the focus on ground combat and massive armies. I have also explained why.

Because one of them is ment to be protected by armies of small units (because of it's low hp), which in turn gives you the need to focus on massive armies instead of just building Megabots.

The other one is very weak but can travel interplanetary. It's purpose is to act as a spearhead unit and to set up a teleporter in order to set up the following invasion with your massive armies.

The third one I had planned should work something like this:

It should be able to shoot down artillery shots and tactical missles, maybe have a flak cannon for anti-air.
No other weapons. Very expensive, very slow, high health. Purpose?
Put it in the middle of your army to cover them from artillery fire and from air strikes. The very high health should make it a tank for your small armies. It should not invalidate artillery and tactical missles, nor air. But it should protect you a little bit.
(I'll add a more detailed post on the design of this Megabot in the mega-unit thread soon).

Why not have normal units fill those roles? Because Megabots are just more awesome. They make the game more interesting visually. And they have a whole different "risk vs reward" aspect, because it's only one unit vs many units. What I want to achieve is VERY FEW really big units lurking around in those VERY BIG blops of small units. I think it's the way a futuristic battlefield should really look like.

More ideas:

A railgun was mentioned, I'm in favor of that. Horribly inaccurate, horribly inefficient, but easy to use.
Why? More variety.

Another idea is a super unit that is in orbital layer and creates a tornado on the ground, whirling around big blops of units and dispersing them, so that your armies have an easier time destroying them. Very expensive, but super.

A big drop ship. We had the discussion about that asteroids and nukes won't be enough for interplanetary warfare. It could transport loads of SMALL UNITS, and drop them on another planet.

By the way, I think the unit cannon qualifies as a "mega" or "super" unit.


ALL those that I mentioned would be supporting small units instead of replacing them. Even the railgun, because it would just be a tool to prepare an invasion, for which you need your armies again.

Why not give those roles to simple advanced units? Because BIG and EXPENSIVE units give a whole new flavor to the game, make it more attractive visually, and can also act as ressource-sinks in the late-game of the really massive battles. They'd also be something you want to work your way up to, by teching. I also want more variety in the higher tiers, not strictly more power. Also there's a question of when they should be available to you. And some things should only be available really late into the game.

Besides that, it just makes sense to me to have some big units here and there. It's a gutt feeling if you want.
Notice how I gave all of those units different roles that no other units fill. Even the rocket Megabot has a different role than the orbital fabricator, purely because they'd act on different layers (ground vs orbital layer).

So that's my 2 cents.