Idea that's Bound to be Unpopular

Ice planets are all-but confirmed. Water planets are confirmed. Naval is confirmed. This means the potential for ice sheets and planets with oceans almost entirely covered in ice. Like they can IRL, submarines and bottom-crawling amphibious units should be able to go under ice where normal ships cannot, allowing them to hide from ships and potentially attack from unexpected locations.

Because everyone agrees that submarines were under-utilised in SupCom, right?

Not sure why it you think it's bound to be unpopular. Personally, I think it would be fun to see. Not sure how well it would fit into the game, but that's a given, seeing as we haven't had something like this in any other RTS games.

I seem to recall a lot of hate for subs in other threads. I'd actually like to see it, but I don't envisage it getting a lot of support from the masses.

Well, that's subs being unpopular due to balance issues. You are just suggesting things subs could do. So long as subs are balanced, I think this would be a fun feature.

I like the idea, I think subs where under used and would like to see them as more useful units.

The unpopular submarine thread was on giving subs. ammo. Subs as a concept are fine.

Ice sheets (which I envisage to be nothing more than spectacularly large bridges, that extend in many directions) are a technical difficulty. Neutrino made mention of bridges at one point.

There is extensive underwater things such as subs in Total annihilation, I think you an count on it being in PA.

What are you talking about? TA's engine didn't support units going under ice sheets on a very fundamental level, due to the way maps were encoded.

Well I like it.

Agreed, this idea is awesome... Balancing issues can be worked out later..

Sounds awesome, but when were ice planets confirmed?

I've always loved the idea of naval battles, its just that I don't think previous titles did them well enough. They moved too slow, turned too slow, took too long to aim, or any combination of these. There is definite room for improvement.

And I like the idea of underwater craft being able to move under ice sheets. It just makes sense, and can provide another layer of tactics. But I think it would be difficult to implement. Oh, the swimming under the ice thing would be easy enough, its the balancing of units to deal with this that would be a problem. How do you attack these units? By having similar units, and no other way? Can aircraft mount "bunker buster" style missiles to penetrate the ice layer and drop a depth charge on them? Can these units break through the ice to the surface to form impromptu artillery? Are the holes permanent in the terrain, allowing more access? Can a building on an ice flow be taken out by disrupting the ice flow itself?

And what about the sore loser with one sub left tucked under the ice?

Sounds like a lot of fun, but sounds like as much work as one of their stretch goals.

this is a great idea

Although subs shouldn't be able to win alone normally, their first strike capabilities should give an advantage, that this helps.

(I think that subs should have good attack and stealth, but low HP and speed. That might just be me though)

Water planets may have ice at the poles, assuming the maps have poles.

It's a good idea, the only issue is that it would have the knock-on effect of giving ground-walking amphibious units the ability to hide under ice. It would make hiding your commander under ice the default strategy.

In Supreme Commander, T1 submarines were faster than the Bugatti Veyron. How fast do you want them to be?

He lost when he lost his commander, because you're playing on Assassination.

The environment should definitely impact your choice to strategy though. Ice camoflage might be great till late game, at which point you are a sitting duck.

There's the UI concern with floating ice though. Mostly with amphibians able to enter land. When you click on a spot like this, how will the game know if you want to be go above or under the ice?

Now if you'd solve this problem you could have caves and all kinds of stuff... But I think that's quite outside the scope of this game, there should be quite enough UI complications to solve with the interplanetary travel. Leave RTS centeread around 3d cave systems to someone else for now.


What you could possibly somewhat easily do, though, is make areas cluttered with iceberg debris that ships cannot go to, and neither can land units stand on it, but subs can be under it and so can aphibian tanks.
Though I don't really think things like this are needed, considering how often you'd see them and how enough of them inevitably would take some focus away from just getting the main thing - the planetary thing - into a good shape. Which really is NOT an easy task at the end of the day.

How do you handle land units under planes?

Great idea that could add a lot of depth to the game. The only question is how difficult "Ice" is, although I would imagine that it would simply be a textured "bridge." Also, in regards to the UI being tricky, I'm sure there are ways to deal with that. A simple on/off style button, while perhaps a little messy, could do the trick.