[Metal Planet Terrain] Bridges, Water Canals, Tunels, Gates and others

Soo.. now metal planets are practicaly boring, always with the same pattern
giant ring, some trenches, giant ring, some more trenches...

Its possible to add more terrain features to them? like a tunels or bridges that units can use? artificial water canal net across entire planet, with bridges above them (along with naval being posibble to swim UNDER bridges?) gates that can CLOSE and OPEN? natural turrets? teleporter gates? anything?!

They are a handwork (or stellar dyson fabricator work, whatever) of an ancient civilization, always being active (at least when it comes to passive systems like lights or structural intergrity monitoring) and with superweapon, it makes perfect sense to give them some natural defences, units, buildings or whatever that can interact with units in some way

And for that bridges and water canals, its possible to actualy create terrain features where units can path above (on bridge) and under (pathway under bridge)?

if yes, its possible to add viaducts like this?

(ships under and above, FIRING AT EACH OTHER)

and final question, in future metal planets will have another patterns for biomes? like one in this art?

(dat trenches... AWESOME)


Metal planets... all with the same pattern all over and over again... uber! MAKE THEM MORE AWESOME

Apparently i can't link images, and i have PA linked to this account, what the hell, uber?!
Images linked yay!

You'll need to make a few posts before you can link stuff. Until then I think you at least can attach images.

Bridges sure would be cool, I think PA should be able to handle them one day.

they'd be so strategic!

Hm...
Actually, this got me thinking.
The devs said that there will be reactivatable tech on metal planets, obviously hinting to death-star level weaponry.
But... why stop there?
In one of the lore entries, a metal planet is hinted at being a prison planet.

How's about some reactivatable turrets and such strewn across the planet? Maybe some prison building ruins even?
Would be interesting.

Honestly this sounds like a great idea! I love PA,even though I can't really run it on my laptop, but I am getting a bit annoyed by the planets being plain and no features that can be used besides choke points and such. I wanna fire from A HILL USING MY ARTILLERY UNITS!!!!!

Amphibious transports have already been suggested to Uber:

http://planetaryannihilation.shoutwiki.com/wiki/Features:_Proposed_and_Confirmed

I hope they add some sort of bridge, it would be very strategic. You could sneak an army of bolos around someone's base, where they would least expect it because of there being water blocking the tanks. So many possibilities

I don't know about having reactivated structures. It would be kinda hard to balance and we already have things in the game which are the center points of conflict between players, namely metal points. I like your idea of livening up metal planets but including pre built structures might be bad from both an engine and a balance standpoint.

EDIT: what if the reactivated structures were lights or something and merely cosmetic as opposed to directly affecting gameplay/harming your opponent?

Yes

Yes!

Swim under all the things!

Why would we want gates that don't do this? xD

Take all of my yes. All of it!

You have to remember:



So why would there be tunnels and canals and whatnot? Bridges you can get away with, barely. But too many surface features and it's just a big shiny planet.

I think water on a metal planet sounds ridiculous. Completely breaks the concept imo. But canyons that you can actually go at the bottom of would be interesting. Or maybe two conveyor belts along the equator, one going east, the other going west, which you can move land units on to move them more quickly.

Coolant. Some facilities on Earth already integrate ponds into their AC system to increase efficiency while having a nice view.

Keep in mind that water levels will be adjustable.

If I increase or decrease the water level, what happens to the water in the canals? What happens to the water under the bridges?

Same when you adjust max height on metal planet, in short nothing

Dont wanna water? change seed so no canals spawn in the pattern
Or add option to change pattern, maybe to biome? (currently is only one, that trench and ring biome)

The way i see this is to add more biomes to metal planet

Rings (current)
Canals Net
Square Trenches
Random
Maze
Whatever.....

I know uber will do more biomes, but biomes on metal planets its something that is never discussed anyway

Metal planets are more akin to forerunners shield world than death star

Honestly, I don't see any problem with water on a metal planet. I don't know why you guys don't like it, but I can respect that. It just doesn't change Uber's concept of a weapons station at all for me.

The way I see it..
If anything the "water" would be a manufactured supercooled gel type thing in this monstrous liquid cooling system using the extreme cold of space as a natural radiator and then proceeded to be pumped down into the structure's more in-depth innards, perhaps keeping cool the very power generators that run the 'planet' itself, and/or even the primary weapon it uses.

Also it doesn't always have to be massive naval pools that fit all ship types. The rivers could be small enough for scout and construction boats, while not big enough for battleships. With land on either side, it would be somewhat difficult to use naval units effectively to attack, while filling the role of efficient defense as well as an energy source :

As such, you could use tidal generators within the 'rivers' that flow coolant harnessing even more energy out of the system. Not only would they be cheap and efficient, but the liquid movement isn't even forced if designed in a slope to give a natural flow to the other end given that gravity apparently exists, it should affect coolant the same way it affects water irl. Small scale 'rivers' would make some interesting energy generation that, while aren't needed to play, could act like small scale Thermal Generators in TA. A risky but rewarding energy resource.

Of course, water would not form naturally on metal planets since they're hand-built. (relatively, anyway) It has to be placed there for a reason, and there's probably lots of ideas for why, but the cooling system always had purpose, and it seems especially efficient. Exactly what you may want for a massive Death Star classification space base.


Now.. There's always the instance that enough water for naval units is only on earth-like and water-only planets out of the plethora of others we have, and even that is pushing it a for "two" planets since the only differences are water height and temperature on one dedicated planet type. Land/water, Lava, moon, and metal. One out of four. Not to mention the gas planets we don't have yet. Five. This is a pretty volatile subject, though, so I'm just using it as reference that naval could be utilized better. Naval doesn't have to be binary.

Water as a coolant could work but you must remember
vacuum does not conduct heat

along water canal nets could be giant solar panel like redish glowing radiators with stations that could capture water to cool it again, imagine a giant spherical or octagonal ponds of water sorrounded by radiators and pipes, along with giant rift in center of it redirecting cooled water directly into the planet

THAT WOULD BE AWESOME!

Uber plz make this!

Id love some more platform like stuff, even if it does look kinda starcraft'y.

And id also love full intergeneration with the use of the trenches for travel, more exits and stuff like that on the larger planets.

But frankly, most of this stuff is hard to do on a smaller planet, so id also love larger planets.

See, this is what I'm talking about. Ideas that are out of the box, open, and make sense for a large space station. Good stuff. Some solar panels use sunlight to boil water and send that steam to spin turbines, so I'm not sure how you would use this in a scale to power a planet, but it's something to start with.

I'd rather see something rather than a whole lot of nothing and never delve into the possibilities.

Edit : First time seeing OP's images, and I can't give you any more yes than I already have, but.. have some more, because that would be awesome.

>Has ability to construct PLANET SIZED DEATH STATION.
> Uses liquid water on the surface as cooling.

Totally makes sense.

Steam turbines on a space station which is at least 500,000 years more advanced than us? Wut.

Just because a civilization is advanced doesn't mean they wouldn't use something that's efficient. We use the same ideas that old civilizations did in Europe, we use our technology to build on the ideas instead of replacing them. Why would this be any different?

The wheel was designed how long ago? It was used to move things from place to place easier. We use the same 'technology' now, it's simply much more advanced.

ccc

Instead of using a certain amount of space for steam turbines you could use it for a fusion reactor (or something even more advanced), this would produce more power.

On a side note, if we perfected anti-gravity the wheel would be obsolete.