Surely redundant but Metal planets?

I know that there are "Metal Planets" in the game and that they are supposedly ancient or abandoned planets that allow you to reactivate parts of them for some purpose. Here are my 3 questions.

1) what will be on metal planets that you can use? such as structures to be reactivated or long lost super powerful or even normal unites that can be captured or used?

2) Could parts of metal planets still be active? like a weak base here or there to add a little more challenge to the capture or metal planets? I feel like a planet that could randomly spawn in a system your playing in (not as in it just appears but has been there the whole time) that is full easily accessible goodies with little or no challenges to acquire them could mean a total win or loss for a player?

3) Finally i have a bit of an odd question. If the constructive material you need for you economy is called metal, don't you think that a "metal" planet would be entirely harvested? sorry if thats obnoxious but to me thats a bit confusing.

I'm currently under the impression that rather than activating parts of the metal planet, you activate the planet itself. Think along the lines of the deathstar off of Star Wars. I would guess you could, at the cost to the structural integrity of that station, mine it for vast quantities of metal gaining a huge boost to the economy but at the same time losing a powerful weapon. As to what a the metal planet/space station does when you activate it, I've no idea but if it doesn't shoot planets I want it to have engines pop out the back for a super carrier/bombardment ship.

Remember metal maps in Total Annihilation?

Yeah, that

For those not in the know, the metal maps, one could just plop a metal extractor on any spot on the map and have it run at best (and better than you could on the biggest deposits on other maps) efficiency.

So that's point 1, and figure that as a for-sure, provided you can find one.

Point 2, apparently it's been said that these metal planets can be fired up to go Death Star.
If this is actually a thing, then hell yes!

Metal maps, as money maps? They were certainly a blast in TA, but can it work in this game? There could be multiple planets, each with their own resources and problems to deal with. Dropping a money map in the middle of things could cause problems pretty fast.

I guess it'll take some work to figure it out.

Could be interesting if players all started on the 'money map', or if the planet fought back with automated defences and creeps.

HELL YA,,,, lol that be cool

Capture points that you must kill then claim? YES!

*angry metal ball*

Hmm that makes me wonder can you blow up a metal planet and when asteroids hit do they make dents or rip up the metal?

Yes, I believe it is possible but much more difficult than other planets do to it's density. According to the way Uber has described the planet mechanics they should all be deformable and destroyable. How the deformation will look on metal planets has probably not been decided yet.

I'm not especially fond of weapons that must be destroyed before you can capture something. I can get over it though so long as there are not always weapons at a capture point.

Let's not forget the hard part of reactivating a metal planet will be keeping your opponent from mining it while you reactivate it.

I think metal planets could work. Some of my thoughts:

1) It might be a bit excessive to have as many extractors taking as much as they want in resources from the surface. There could be catches, like an extractor in one spot can only pull so many resources, or that its performance deteriorates over time, or that it runs only slightly better than a weak metal deposit on a regular map (which is good considering you can spam them anyway).

2) As for the weapons, maybe they should be like any other "built" unit the player can make.

Factories, planet boosters, giant cannons, storage silos. Possibly all slightly stronger than a player could make, like storage silos that are capable of steady-rate streaming some of its contents anywhere for you to use on any other planets altogether, planet-size-moving-boosters instead of meteor-size, and cannons that can literally bombard planet-to-planet with shells similar to on-planet cannons, and factories that are capable of making multiple unit types with that one factory, or making special hybrid units that are basically a form of two-units-in-one (combat capable fabrication unit, a unit that is able to fly and swim underwater, a unit that has weapons capable of fighting air and ground units efficiently, and similar mixes).

ALSO, the ancient technology, being just like playermade technology, can be destroyable and capturable by the same means, such as sustaining fire on it or capturing it back and forth again or a chunk of the planet being annihilated.

LASTLY, the ancient technology being similar in function to playermade technology would make it in-game programmable on the developer side, making it take less time for them to design, test, change, balance-tune.

Make the money maps entirely out of bacon. Let metal worlds try out their own thing.

We could make metal worlds have not extractors at all (It would damage them) and Instead have surface metal maker plants for the players to fight over?

I was initially against metal planets entirely as they're (as mentioned) money maps and game-ending weapons. But if you think about it, maps with metal planets in them are almost essentially different game modes due to the huge availability of resources (at least when you start-off there)

Maps that have a metal planet in them but start you off on a traditional planet present another variation on traditional gameplay as well; players will have to race off-planet but will have to trade-off teching-up as fast as possible (leaving them vulnerable) and harassing the other player (leaving less resources to tech-up).

You could mix up things up even more by having the metal planet as small as an asteroid making it a highly strategic piece of territory. Being the first one to get there would be more important than in the previous scenario, you could prevent the other player from being allowed to land there entirely (as opposed to having a large metal planet which could have two or more players on different sides of it), forcing you to either bombard it or destroy it entirely.

In a game on this scale, metal worlds would obviously be a goldmine (Or metal mine i suppose)
As such I'd say they'd either have to:
1 Be relatively mall so even if the player fills most of the planet with mexes they still won't get a ridiculous boost
or
2 Not allow for mexes to be placed anywhere, instead just having a relatively high number of metal points compared to a normal planet

Can you say RAMPANT SPECULATION?!

I can.

I am more with the idea that it would be an abandoned ship. Make them unharvestable and you have to capture points with engineers.

in TA metal map r the best ... i cant wait to see in PA weth 40 players makeing a run for the metal planet =P ,,it will be chaos :twisted:

I could not have said it better.

I was hoping for Cybertron.