If you think about it, this war has only machines fighting it. When they fire a nuke at one after the explosions over that's it, just rebuild what's lost there and move on as please correct me if I'm wrong but radiation shouldn't do the damage to a machine like it would to lets say a human. That's where the EMP comes in, with everything running on electricity the effects could be devastating. This would result in upgrading buildings or making shields to protect from such a blast but if there was a base in the open then it could be fair game for a full shutdown via that blast and could then be repaired by the faction that owns it or captured and reprogrammed for the agressor nation assuming it wasn't entirely destroyed. I'm just curious to know what people would want to see with balancing on it such as cost and actual effectivness in the field.
A nuclear detonation does produce an EMP, however it rarely matters as the explosion renders any effects of the EMP the least damaging aspect. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_nuclear_explosions#Electromagnetic_pulse As far as I know radiation wont do the same levels of damage to machinery as it would organic tissue, but there is the potential for interference with electronics and certainly provide interference to sensors. In any case I dont think the after effects of a nuclear explosion are often visited in an RTS setting due to gameplay implications. Hmm the idea of having something take over enemy units is an interesting concept. However when I think of EMP I think of it frying the electronics therein, making the damaged machine about as useful as scrap considering that new units being pumped out with 3d printers would be faster than replacing all of the electronics inside damaged ones. Perhaps that is leaning too heavily on realism over gameplay mechanics but were EMP's implimented I think I would prefer to see them as a perminantly damaging force.
The bots in PA probably don't use electronics as we know them, and could reasonably be immune to EMP, having some exotic super weapons with effects beyond "kill everything in a large radius" would be a great way of differentiating nukes/missiles/etc from asteroid KEWs though. That reminds me, have the devs mentioned whether you can build build over the husks of destroyed buildings? I liked doing that in supcom and I can't remember if TA had it.
in TA you are not able to build over building wreckage, first you have to reclaim the wreckage and then you can build on the same place Cheers
At first I was thinking everything should be destroyed but it then it occured to me that every one of those robots runs from the same sets of parts like every other one of their type. The reason I stated possible reclaiming is that engineers should be able to repair them or even ship them to a factory nearby which will insert the parts and you now get that unit at for example half the price of building from scratch. In terms of buildings I think a hack system with engineers repairing afterwards should suffice. It just seems fun to have something like that to think about so you can't launch the tank blobs of death.
I would belive that all military hardware has EMP countermeasures in the future were the tech has been perfected as much as the trailer indicates (And war is done only/mainly by robotic forces). If these countermeasures makes them totaly immune or just saves there hardware and allows they to reboot after a while (So it could work as a stun) is debatable.
EMP is actually a mechanic I wouldn't mind seeing in PA, assuming it is balanced properly of course. The idea is for a short duration attack that stuns units. Being hyper advanced machines, certainly they would know about EMP and design to counter such tactics. Designing to be completely immune to them for every single unit is probably just not cost effective. Instead it seems more logical to me that they would design to be resistant to EMP so that it only temporarily disables them and they recover quickly and get straight back into the fight. Better to build a lot of units that are resistant to EMP than to build a few units that are completely immune to it. Here's hoping for some EMP. A stun mechanic could be fun to use, and tactically or even strategically interesting.
