Most RTS games have fallen into this rut of having land and air units as the two major types. Some games include naval units, or and maybe amphibious units, but there has been very little creativity and invention of entirely new types of units. I think we should try and come up with some new types that are interestingly different from anything that has been made before. Brainstorm time. I am not talking about big weapons, or fancy armor, or gimmicks. I am talking about new categories of units, which might have a variety of units with different weapons, armor, roles, etc. Skimmers: A skimmer utilizes a gravitic or EM drive which allows it to lift vertically or move in any direction with up to maximum speed determined by the size/power of its drive system, and the mass of the unit. Skimmers can land and hover slightly off the ground, and they can lift themselves high into the sky, using the same speed, regardless. They are faster than land units, but much, much slower than any aircraft, even though they can fly. Suborbital Craft: An aircraft that has an engine that can operate in a vacuum, such as a scramjet. These craft are both air-capable, and space-capable (this may involve having two drives with differing performance, such as a turbofan and an ion drive). The ability to fly around in orbit and dip down into the planet's atmosphere to conduct a strike, drop units, etc. could be quite useful. Or, vice versa, they can fly around inside the planet's atmosphere, safe from orbital weaponry, and then sortie into space to attack an orbital target. Disposable Units: These units do a specific task, and then die. Very inexpensive, potentially even free, and created by a suitable host unit with a relevant function. Scout drones, micro-transports, missile strike drones, orbital insertion pods, etc. Could be a useful utility for transports, or for ground armies to gain limited air scouting, or other capabilities. Could also be applied in other ways, such as dropping a unit or structure from space to a point on the surface.
I think "skimmers" are a bad idea. Something similar to them was made for TA and either they are too good (because they are so much tougher than aircraft) or they suck (because anti-aircraft is so good at taking out a slow moving target). Also the added micro of controlling how high they fly (which sound like it would be important to reduce its weakness to some anti-aircraft) is something that should be avoided. Suborbital craft sound decent but these would behave very similar to aircraft. Also the devs have hinted that there will be orbital anti-aircraft units, which suggests that orbitals will be able to target units in atmosphere. Disposable Units, like the crawling bomb in TA, and other kamikaze/suicide units are a decent idea if they are implemented in a way that they are not useless (like the crawling bomb in TA was)
Swarm units Something similar to the sentinel swarm in the matrix revolutions, where the swarm needs to make close contact to work effectively while being vulnerable to ranged weaponry and AoE attacks.
I think being able to smash a planet into another planet would qualify as a new unit archetype. I'm satisfied with that.
Types usually derive from some common characteristic among a bunch of units. For example, using the same platform (feet, wings, etc) or having a special ability (large self-destruct). With that said -- and just brainstorming without regard to realism, fun, development practicality, balance, or even game genre -- here are some characteristics that can be used to form new 'types': - goes through terrain (tunneling, subs) - time-space manipulation (teleportation, slow/stasis, warping) - matter/object moving (transports, paratroops, gravity wells, force pushes, grappling hooks, flipping things on its back) - self-modifying: (grey goo/biological, "megazords", T-1000) - vampiric (nanolathe as offense and defense) - damage mitigation (dodging, shields (won't be in pa)) - information warfare (cloaking, stealth, disguise as unit, disguise as terrain, illusions) - steerable land (asteroids, floating islands, etc) - control subversion (capturing, emp, hacking, mindcontrol, viruses, lays eggs in enemies) - resurrection (a la T-1000) - terrain restriction (mines, physical barriers, energy barriers, land-modification, tar pits, wind machines) - terrain destruction (Planetary Annihilation, but also things like flooding/draining, atmosphere destruction) - hazards (mines again, pits, spikes, nets, avalanche traps) - economy warfare (stealing, sabotage) By no means a complete list.
In addition to the objections already posted, orbit-capable flying units with infinite loiter time are a bad idea. One-size-fits-all units should be avoided, especially ones with extra micro. Scramjets are air breathing. They don't function in vacuum. Ion drives are the preferred form of propulsion for spacecraft that don't care how many months it takes them to get to their destination. For orbital insertion they're flat out worse than chemical rockets. Why would being in atmosphere protect something from orbital weaponry? We had the ability to build orbit-to-surface weapon back in the Cold War, and we live on a big planet, not a teeny tiny PA one. In general, spaceplanes should probably be not a special class of unit, there are already a lot of layers to deal with. If they exist, all advanced planes should be spaceplanes, and that can be that. Hardly new. TA and SC already have kamikaze units (none of which were great ideas, they were either useless or overpowered), and pretty much any unit can become disposable in certain eco situations. Remember when the Czar was something you self-destructed over its target? And that was an experimental.
Yes, you are right on most counts. I wasn't really aiming for 100% scientific accuracy- I would have double checked. Ion drives have low thrust, a bipropellant intermittent-burn chemical rocket makes more sense for a craft that needs speed, and can't use a solid rocket. And scramjets are air breathing. Just replace the drive type with your choice. The point is, it functions in a vacuum, unlike normal aircraft. They can go outer atmosphere, and they will still work on planets that do not have atmospheres. I am aware that kamikaze units are not new. That is not what I meant, although it is one application. I was more thinking that a transport ship might use many small, disposable transports to move ground units onto land, rather than using a boom-arm like TA. Or we might have a vehicle that constructs and launches a timed-life flying scout drone.
Why even mention real-world propulsion if you're not going for accuracy? You could say it functions by burning high-pressure pixie dust and it won't make any difference. That is seriously not new. We had that exact thing in the Ogre Mage back in Warcraft II in 1995.
