Superweapon Types.

The game does need more variety, I agree with that. I don't advocate game ending units though, but I don't think that is what's being asked for here.

A good example would be a couples of Super units to solve the problem related to Planetary Invasions. Like a Dropship or similar. Its design shouldn't overlap anything else you would use for ordinary warfare, so it won't automatically obsolete other common units. But let's face it, we need a way to spend the income of a planet in something worthy, more than millions tanks and a bunch of Teleporters.

Exactly. I just would like to stress once again that having to load units on a Dropship is gonna be an hassle. While if the Dropship could be a Factory in itself able to producing normal units with addiction of a drop pod, it could be even more costly, and it would have a reason for intaking largely into the player economy - which at some point needs to be affected by something huge, specially when your net energy income approaches the 7 zeros.

Here a screenshot of the income of a medium size Moon.

Rally units to a loading facility, have the loading facility build the transport and load the units. Easy.

Oh wait, you want a 2-way transport? Use the Astreus. Bulk transport only needs to go one way- towards destiny.

With the right UI tools it doesn't have to be a hassle.

If you can declare a "loading point" and then point your factories any loadable unit could automatically load into any transport capable unit who is also ordered to use the "loading point". Now our orbital factory can build endless dropships that automatically fill with endless units built from our bot factories and no micro was involved.

If the "Loading Point" is an entity of it's own we add follow up orders like "move here" or "Unload here" so our loaded transports will disembark automaticly. If you use "Move here" they transports just move to that location and await your grand invasion order. If you use "Unload here" they will drop off all their units and then return to the loading point similar to a ferry location in SupCom.

Doing it this way would mean that any factory can make any transportable unit and any transport use the same load/unload. We could point our aircraft, bots, and avengers all to the same rally point, and then have an orbital shipyard rotating it's build between assault transports, orbital carriers, aircraft carriers, and then have 3 or 4 orbital launchers building astraeus to the same loading point. Every unit would load into the first appropriate transport and all the transports would move to support our invasion (or stage for it, depending on the loading point's follow up order).

We need resource sinks any way you slice it. Teleporter should be one, but megabots are needed too. Like carlorizzante illustrates, after getting even 1 planet I have more resources than I know what to do with...

Guys, that's a damn big hassle. Seriously, you're doing it so complicated.

Instead of build factories for transports, thousands of tanks, couple of dozen of rally points... and then having to double check that everything works as supposed, while under enemy fire, having to control an evolving conflict on two or more planets... folks, you're insane. That's a hell of a micro management.

What if instead we could build just three Dropships? Three units instead of thousands?

Their cost would be astronomical. Once built you simply order them to move on the target. During the journey those three Dropships consume a hell of energy and metal, and produce what so ever we decided they can produce - let's say 500 T2 Bots for Dropship, included the drop pod to encapsulate each one of them. It could be 500 T2 Tanks, that's not relevant right now. They're factories.

You reach the designated location, drop your 1.200 T2 Bots, and start producing new units *on the spot*. You gave four commands total, instead of 76, you had to double check nothing, and your framerate is pure like a baby's butt.

I mean, seriously?

I do believe that having a Dropship that is also a Factory would solve *tons* of issues related to framerate *and* logistic.

Your call. Mine is made

Why? A transport has no guns to defend itself. It is useless without cargo, which is already paid for. You could build a billion transports and do nothing with them, because without weapons or cargo they're totally harmless.

A ship with construction power is no longer a transport. It is a mobile factory. As interesting as they might be, mobile factories do not favor either attacker nor defender in any significant way. If anything the defender is at an edge, because he has factories that are cheap and don't have to move.

It all makes sense, 'till you jump forward a little and consider that PA is a game run by machines, and we on the opposite are human beings. The formers have performance issues the more units you ask them to render. The latters are simply unable to cope with a management of few planets and an increasing overload of micro actions to take.

Simple as that.

Dropships do not need anything like guns or offensive capabilities. They simply need to solve two or three issues we are all gonna have very soon.

1. Helping us in using 7 zeros Ecos.
2. Helping us in not killing the framerate spending our 7 zeros Ecos in small units.
3. Helping us in reducing hundreds of micro actions in few, elementary ones.

Dropship are not even an unit, they are a placeholder. It's like when you play Risk and instead of putting 10 tanks on the map, you pick up a flag - if you know what I mean.

Patching the symptom doesn't fix the cause. 7 digit economies exist because the economy is itself out of control. Uber was already warned about reckless use of zeroes. If they insist on staggeringly huge and confusing numbers, so be it.


Players already have a factory complex to make use of their resources. It's called their home base. You are suggesting a completely new and separate base to make use of those same resources. Why should players have to double build their bases? Why should this second base have to be placed in danger to be useful? Why can't they have one good base, and stage a successful attack with that?

I disagree. Even if you have not built any units and your factories are not in looped build mode we're talking about 11 button clicks to manage an endless attack force.

Click:
1. Select LoadPoint UI
2. Right click to create Load Point
3. Right click to create Unload Point
4. Left Click Bot factory.
5. Enable Looped Build mode.
6. Right Click on Load Point.
7. Left click Doxxen.
8. Left Click Orbital Factory.
9. Enable Looped Build mode.
10. Left click Assault transport.
11. Right click on Load Point.

Units will now load and attack the destination endlessly. If we setup a "Patrol Planet" order on the other end you don't even need to micro your attack force.

We don't know that yet.

Mike

Fewer resources would also do the trick. The T2 extractor allows the economy to grow 5 times as large, during a time when players already have damn good income to work with. That's an incredible surplus of resources.

You do not build proxy bases?

It's all right, I may be wrong. But for what I've seen so far, I do believe in what I've said on the topic.

We will see. We can only speculate and suggest solutions. At Uber should have a more defined picture of the subject. Let's see what they will end up doing. Either way, I trust it's gonna be good.

To be fair, I really like the idea of the mobile factory dropship. The ides of building troops in transit is novel, but given that transit times are variable I don't want my attack force to be variable, I want it full. That means I have to build my ships in orbit, wait for them to fill up, and then send them. Instead I could just build the transports preloaded with T1 troops, and after it lands it continues to work as a T1 factory.

I think something similar should be used for naval invasions. Drop an armored shipyard from orbit and let it deploy and build the ships under fire. Combine it with an Air transport to help secure the area until your battleships come off the line.

Ideally, I'd like to see each type of unit (air, ground, naval, orbital) have a distinct method of invasion with as little overlap in style as possible.


EDIT: additional thoughts.

A one way transport, like the drop-factories described above, works especially well for ground troops because we have the portals to get the troops back off world again.

Water invasions are less common and much more scenario specific, so I'd be comfortable letting them be one way trips because 90% of the time after my water invasion I don't have anywhere for my ships to go even if I could get them back off world again.

Air invasions however really need an ability to recover your aircraft and move them to the next world. Have you ever left a couple airfactories on looped build with Patrol Planet orders? It works great for locking a planet down super hard, but sometimes I think to myself, "Wow, this moon hasn't seen any action in hours. I wish I could use half of these bombers somewhere else."

For invasions the best unittypes are bots tanks air and later hovercraft for water ....
Taking your example with naval you are speaking about dropping basicly a whole city of houses on a water planet f.e. ... but from orbit? ... this beeing a game and fantasystuff aside ... this is too rediciolous imo ... just way too rediciolous

Well, it's definitely very WarHammer inspired. I think the Imperium of Man has a long standing precedent that it's OK to drop buildings on people. If you have a way to slow the descent from orbit it's not far fetched at all, they're just big landers, a heavier lander just means you need more thrust to decelerate.. They would more like huge droppods with sides that would unpack and reveal fabricator parts.

My biggest concern is that I definitely DON'T want to see naval invasions devolve into "A unit cannon for ships" or "A teleporter for ships". I'm even loath to suggest a transporter unit because we're suggesting transports for ground and air units.

My challenge is... imagine a way to invade an ocean planet that doesn't involve making a "but for ships" version of an existing invasion method. I dislike "my boat is also a spaceship" (unless it's Starblazers!), but I'm very open minded about other interesting solutions.

That would never happen with *my* Dropships

Guys you talking alot of super weapons but what about real ending ? We have asteroids/moons smaller celestial bodies , but as far as we know they will be not wiping entire planets.
I was just thinking about real ending with some visuals

Weapon that could destabilize planet core, therefore that would be some % of chance of entirely obliterating planet or just changing its Biome from what ever to Lava etc.

ie Lava change:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HocBWTFeiw

or % for end of the entire planet:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkd7iVxqv44