An idea for a weapon i would call "The Penetrator" Its an "advanced building" that builds a "prefabricated base in a box" that can be shot at another planet clearing the landing area with a boom and deploying ready to invade.. The base would consist of 6 factories surrounded by some anti air, laser turrets and walls. And it would also have a small invading army that matches the factories in the prefabricated base. The prefabricated base could come in 3 different flavors, bot, tank or air (maybe a 4th "naval" if water planets come into play) And have a layout something like this maybe when deployed. (sorry for the ASCII art .. i'll make a proper pic later) Code: WWW WWW WTA ATW F F F F F F WTA ATW WWW WWW legend to my ascii art pic W - Wall T - laser turret A - Anti-Air turret F - Factory Invading army that comes in the box could be a mix of the units from the factories in the prefabricated base, the prefabricated bases could come in basic and advanced levels too. Cost of the box would be the same as building everything individually or maybe slightly more it just comes prepacked ready to deploy on another planet. Not sure if something like this has been suggested yet , i don't read much of the balance forum. Would like to hear some feedback from people who frequent this forum section and maybe scathis and meta too.. I'll try and go into more detail on the idea later when i have some free time to draw some pictures too
Second idea too add to this "Advanced building" It could also pre-pack a teleporter with a similar base layout, where the teleporter is surrounded by some walls, anti air and turrets, so an invading army has time to pass through before the teleporter is destroyed after it lands and deploys.
I'm pretty sure that the exact same line was heard in the Volition offices during the development of Saint's Row 3.
I quite like the idea of being able to drop down defensive structures and factories from orbit (but only if there is a cool looking "landing pod" around it and an epic impact animation !). I wonder whether we should have premade bases, though. Maybe you should simply be able to construct such "drop-able" buildings on their own and then drop them down where you want. Such buildings would have to be more expensive and/or weaker than their normal counterparts to balance them. It should also be relatively easy to shoot them down either while landing or while in orbit to prevent someone from planting towers in his opponent's base all the time. Edit: Sorry for spoiling the fun and posting something on topic :/
A pre-build base may be a little overpowered but dropping a quick assemble factory from orbit that folds out from some kind of space form would be quite cool. When it gets dropped an AOE of damage would also happen. A variant that dropped units from orbit would also be quite cool. I'm not to sure about how this would be balanced but it would provide a way to crack fortress planets.
I think there should be orbital built structures, which can be deployed once, and once deployed lands on the ground beneath and doesn't take back off. Structures include a land flak, land laser turret, land factories for each terrain including naval, and maybe even a land antinuke. Also still think maybe t2 air should have some spaceplanes. Fighters and bombers can at least assist capturing an area for a foothold.
This has been suggested before. I'd love some sort of fortification-foothold like this that you could crash into a planet. I'd also like Orbital Teleporters for Air ^^
I would like there to be a teleporter structure built in orbit, along with my ideas for terrestial factories and turrets and antinuke, that you can build into orbit and descend onto the planet as permanently stationary after landing. Still think the best option, is allowing a basic ground base, be built overhead, nuke the area below it, and then drop the base onto the newly cleared land. Also puts emphasis on keeping enemies out of orbit. By basic, i do mean t1. The only reason I say antinuke, is because if you land a base without an antinuke, in some situations its suicide because of nuke spam. At least with orbital antinuke dropped onto ground you can actually be safe from nukes right at touchdown.
Not criticising your idea or anything, but have you tried massed orbital transports filled with units yet? Its really cool to watch, and is fairly practicable when y have your T2 economy up.
A viable suggestion if you want earlier t2. Bring transports. Still, this is a way to errect a base on a new planet.
True, but that's hard to do until you have caused quite a large amount of havoc already, especially on what will now be a urban world filled with their stuff. But id still love more options for dealing with orbital and nukes that doesn't rely on slow firing or massively expensive buildings.
Wouldnt that be what being able to drop structures from orbit does? If you can drop 1 or 2 antinukes from orbit onto land prebuilt, and a factory (you would need to import all your eco from another economized planet), and flak and laser turrets, you would have more than a fighting chance in an invasion. To clear the area, maybe we should have sxx nuclear missile platform (only fires directly below, fires a nuke including explosion, otherwise acts like nuclear silo and sxx)
It still seems like to me that you would require far too many buildings for a job that units should also be able to do. And besides, I feel like this might create problems with how players value their planet side military vs their orbital units. Id much rather have access to make it easy to drop vanguards, engineers and possible anti-nuke and anti-orbital units to breach an enemy base at point blank range and begin setting up factorys for immediate reinforcements, while your landing troops can carve out a safer landing zone, trying to keep enemy satellites, nukes and others at bay.
Well to be honest, you could nuke their base from orbit instead of build your own base, you could just drop antinukes and flak and a teleporter and flood units from another planet, you don't have to just use structures, you could use units too.
Yeah, I prefer having units do the job, even if ineffectually. But don't let me hinder your idea however, you go for it.
I don't see point of setting up factories during invasion, as we probably had our factories somewhere else with teleporters as rally points... in this case we need only light drop-able turrets (or crash landed anchors) and teleporter (even ability to drop teleporter from orbit may be just enough as units would start coming right after deployment) to secure the invasion. Anyway I'm curious about new teleporter (I like new model !) and how it would change difficulty of the invasion if they would be cheaper and had buffed health.
Being the kind of person I am, I wanted to see how viable this would be to actually use, so I made two in-game versions of what you showed, one for land units and another for air. The reason I made one specifically for land was because land needs much more space, and would probably be less viable: Comparing that to the more compact air, it's pretty easy to see that there's less space used: Since by the time orbital warfare really kicks in most planets will be 95% covered, you'll really want to take up as little space as possible so as to not run into enemy turrets, units and nukes, add onto that the fact that advanced factories would take up twice the space and the unused space between land factories becomes even more problematic.