Wishlist/Request for Comment - Debris, Atmospherics and Related Commands.

Hi all,

Just wanted to ask what Uber/people think about:

• Atmospherics (fog and clouds, smoking volcanoes).
• Debris falling from Air and Orbital layers, burning up or crash landing depending on units' size and heights.
• Placeable Debris in the System Editor (wrecked buildings/units).
• "Capture" function for taking control of enemy structures.
• "Resurrect" function for rebuilding wrecked structures more quickly, as an alternative to reclaiming if an area is secure.

Anything along these lines people would like to see?
What are Uber's priorities coming up - are these types of thing on the back-burner?

I believe resurrection should be only done by Mend (adv combat fabber) and capture should be only done by both Stitch and Mend

There's some debate to be had about resurrecting units, too. I'm currently against as I think it has the potential to be cheesy.

In TA only the Commander could Capture irrc. I think resurrecting buildings could be a T2 Fabber function in PA.

I don't see these things being used in a combat situation; they're post-battle tools used for consolidation/recovery.

They'd make the economy battle less of a tug of war by making it easier to bounce back/grab what's left of the enemy's stuff if you overcome their defences efficiently enough.

Combat Fabricators are deployed at the frontlines however, and they do need any additional purpose they can get. They are currently what I use to reclaim, lay mines or build teleporters at the front

I vote yes for all these features!

Oh and I would love to resurrect an enemy commander as a Colonel, except maintaining the looks. Wouldn't cause any problems with how only Mends should be (at least in my opinion) be capable of resurrection anyways.

Edit: Now that I've re-read the OP, I take it you didn't intially suggest units to be resurrectable?(they have wreckages now) If so, what would your opinion be on only Mend resurrecting dead hulks of units? I guess regular advanced fabricators can resurrect building wreckages only then.

I think resurrecting enemy Comms as Colonels would be cool. It could be a unique way to include Decoy Commanders in the game (in addition to Colonels as Support Commanders). Alternatively they could just be Support Commanders, but it would need to be obvious to the opposing team that they weren't the main Comm.

I think resurrecting regular units has the potential to be cheesy.

What do people think about:

T2 Fabs - Resurrect Buildings

T2 Meds/Combat Fabs - Capture Buildings

T2 Fabs+Meds Together - Resurrect Dead Enemy Commander as Decoy/Support Comm.

?

I feel like capturing buildings could be potentially cool, but it've have to be a time intensive investment, otherwise mass capture-deleting of walls would happen, and that's just cheese incarnate.

One interesting thing it would allow for is more of a scrapper-raider playstyle. maybe you can't compete in raw economy of another player, and cant affort the build power to grind out a t2 factory, but mayyybe, if you're sneaky and cunning, you can wait for an enemy to build t2, and then capture the factory off of them (if they havent defended properly), giving you a much cheaper tech up.

I believe that capturing would be basically useless in PA, the only reason I ever found myself capturing anything in TA or SupCom was to get factories/engineers of another faction - obviously there aren't any other factions here.

I think Capturing times would need to be proportional to build times. Bear in mind that capturing would be done with engineers, which would be vulnerable, so mass-capturing walls is unlikely to happen. If it became a problem I'm sure Uber would think of something.

I like your thinking regarding altered playstyles. I think giving people an option besides "Blow it all up" is good in a strategy game.

Ill be honest i do really miss the fa placing buildings over their wreckage and the value of the wreckage goes in to the initial build - faster rebuilds and costs a bit less due to consuming the wreckage

And it would definitely be useful to have a capture command purely for engineers capturing other players mexs instead of having to
a) sit and do Nothing whilst tanks / bots are on route
b) spam up a laser turret and wait for it to slowly kill the mexs then reclaim and then finally get your mexs up!

So as a rough estimate capture times 1.5 build times? + uses same amount of energy per tick as you would for building?

c) Reclaiming the mexes with your engineers while getting juicy metal from your opponent?

Yes, I'll take it!...

"which one?"

All of them!

*thrusting money at the screen but nothing's happening....*

atmospherics for sure,volcanoes and clouds obviously, but i think a little slightly funny coloured fog over chunks of ocean would de-boring it pretty well.

large orbital units (omegas and factories) should "sink" for a while before exploding in-between orbital and air layers. maybe showering the ground with little debris chunks.

air should blow up then crash and blow up again, but only if it isn't overkilled, like if it just barely got clipped by enough dox to kill it and not a billion AA missiles.

not really a fan of the other two options really, in other games i only ever capture other factions builders/factories, otherwise its just not worth the effort imo.
resurrecting i dont like more so because of the way it makes everything feel, right now, with the way PAT is set up it feel like weapons tech has completely overtaken all else: armour, planets and even intelligent life, when i see a building die, i want that to mean its totally and completely dead. you could however add a phase between dead and not dead: "wrecked" where a building survived destruction on its own (presumably semi-randomly, based off of overkill), but cant build or do anything so its not prioritized by enemy fire and you just have to repair it to get it up and working again which costs less then building it again. when it leaves the wrecked phase it has ballpark half health.

resurrect would be awesome. was always doing that in SupCom FA when i lost a building