Were they going to change/update the way metal planets were generated? I remember them saying they wanted to essentially create 'death stars' with the metal planets in which you could move them around via halleys and wreak havoc on whatever planet you want. The problem I see, is the smaller metal planets (the ones which you could move with Halleys) only give you 2 small stripes near the equator that you can build on. The rest of the planet, while cool looking is useless. I would want space to build factories pumping out units that I could send into a unit cannon and bombard the enemy base, but it just doesn't seem feasible with this small double stripe build area...
There is nothing to say yet that the Thrusters, like the potential Giant Laser, aren't built-in. Mike
Another thing I would like to point out? When will be able to place Metal Extractor anywhere instead of on a Metal Point? As the entire planet is made of Metal? I do agree there is not much buildable area but you can change the setting in the editor to have lest feature to make more space to build on.
If I remember correctly. The final version of them would be that you could either activate them, or use them as a source of metal (but not both).
"Using as a source of metal" does not mean "First player to land on the metal planet wins because he now has infinite mass" which is what would happen if you tried to balance TA-style metal planets against any other map type. The biggest slowdown in getting your mass income up in the late game is travel time between mass points and solving the travelling salesman problem in your head. Drag-clicking lines of T2 mexxes at 24 metal a pop? Horrifically broken.
Players should be able to mine for metal anywhere on a Metal world. Though it is correct that this would likely lead to imbalances in the current state of the game, it is still early enough that solutions can be found, while still leaving the ability to mine metal at will on Metal worlds.
Who says that it's the right kind of metal? The whole planet could be made of aluminium, but maybe the deposits are all tungsten or something.
They will never have any spots nor will you be able to build metal extractors on them. Their sole purpose is to destroy. I really hope this will be the case. It would be HORRIBLY stupid and broken to be able to mine metal planets. Calling them "metal planets" already seems odd. They are basically just machines, not actual planets.
