It's time to talk unit ideas

A mobile shield from certain orbital units. I think this is a must to balance the 'one unit wins the game' death from above laser. It's easy to snipe all the commanders on the battlefield with just two (advanced radar and laser) orbital units.

The assault engineer is actually a really good idea!

A simple bridge building unit.
false radar signal unit (would take longer to code) that fakes an incoming attack with clever false positives on the enemy radar.

I don't care too much about these. They are just ideas and would take a while to code so I'm not hoping for them any time soon.

Supplemental sub-commanders that (depending on the match settings) are controlled by an AI! i posted a thread which was pre-beta... but now that beta has come around i believe my point is better understood!

I would like to start by bringing up the current level of control required to maximize your production capabilities.

I have a lot of engineers and wish to build and maintain my infrastructure, (econ and fabrication) pace my

Upgrade to T2 econ, fabrication and military

Manage engineer assist etc....

At the moment it isn't to terribly much for one surface but as we begin to move to multi-planet/surface combat it will begin to become a lot to handle for one human being. To many processes to handle now this shouldn't be a problem when playing against other human players as we are all "slow" compared to the death dealing AI that will be developed, Thanks Sorian. However for people who wish to play single player galactic wars vs. an AI the a human will be at a significant disadvantage especially towards the back end of the game lets face it we can't compete.

So what I'd like to see discussion on is the addition of a Supplemental commander (obviously toggle on/off based on match preference) that is controlled to a degree by an AI. I'm not a programer so I don't understand how difficult the implementation of such a feature would work however some features I'dlike to see are as follows

(Behavior is probably a more suitable replacement for the word Personality but as long as my point is well recieved)

1). Sub commander AI personalities

a) much like the traditional personalities you can set for an opponent AI in most other RTS games. (base builder, econ, aggressive)
2). The ability to select a range of operation for that commander

a). After the commander is built i can, via some user interface menu (similar to construction?),
select my personality for the sub-commmander and hold lets say left click and then drag out to adjust a radius that will become the circular area of "operation for that sub-commander AI.

3). I want to be able to change personalities as planetary situations change

a). obviously if I'm on a planet alone i want a base builder/ econ focused sub-commander as opposed to a planet that I'm being attacked on where i will need a more aggressive unit producing commander
4). Balance.... tricky and i may be going about it incorrectly.... The Sub-Commander AI "intelligence" would scale based on a few parameters.
a). The presence of primary AI's in game (I define primary AI as an army only controlled by the neural network... no human control) If a Say a level 10 Opponent AI it present in the game all human sub-commanders would be at level "x"(chose x for the sake of discussion). we don't want sub-commanders to be smarter then our Computer opponents as that would be to easy.

b). my second scaling parameter would be the size of the simulation. larger maps would mean more fronts, units and bases to manage therefor the sub-commanders should be more intelligent to scale. the inverse also applies

c). once a sub-commander intelligence level is determined by the above parameters that intelligence level is applied to all human players no exceptions as to balance it out

i). perhaps sub-commander limit per planet the preventing a spam of little AI's

A gatling bot, which can turn into a turret. In bot stage it shouldn't have much life, but transformed (shield stuck into the ground) it makes a pretty good turret.

mobile repair units that can't assist in build/reclaiming would be helpful with the current builder AI.

Amphibious transports (air or hover).

a tech 1 ground-mobile instant-hit weapon platform.

anti-artillery defenses.

While I'm dreaming:

more robust orbital trasportation

solar-orbiting staging platforms

"Mobilized turrets" - vehicle, which is slightly more costly, than a turret, unarmed on creation, with average speed, but it can be turned to a 'deployed' turret, when it become a full blown turret, either anti-air, or anti-vehicle.
This would be awesome for setting up rapid fire-bases, or raiding

Units that automatically, or rather when ordered to, clear an area of destroyed units reclaiming them. This has come up before. It could also be the unit that someone suggested to clear trees. I don't care as much. These are ideas. If their good and you like any of them, great, If not, meh doesn't keep me awake at night.

Different, terrain dependant energy production methods - Geothermal, wind, tidal. These should be different than regular power generators, such as:

• Variable Production (eg. Wind)
  
• Specific Locations only (eg. Geothermal)
  
• Fixed production, but planet specific (eg. Tides)

I suggested in another thread a nice folding out five sided solar panel (because it would look cool and doesn't infringe on anyone's IP ).

Oh and I REALLY like that idea.

Sweet.
Thanks Neutrino.

Some of this is more of a vote, as I know alot of these ideas exist

Transportation:While trying to not have too much redundancy:
-Air Transport: classic unit. Possibly for ADV factory only. Carries decent number of units. Possibly a ferrying system involved? Non-Orbital from creation on planets. Can lift off low gravity asteroids/moons and be a drop ship into higher gravity. Needs launch to escape planets.
-Identical air transport but built on the orbital launcher, loads up units before launching.

Orbital:-Nuke launcher. (more death from above)
-Long range anti-nuke system (heavenly savior, with more range!)
-Orbital factory platform (makes orbitals.. IN ORBIT!)

Standard Land Units:-Flak AA tank. (Less damage, but area of effect, kills more air units over time as a constant wear-down unit)
-Gatling tank (similar role to Flak,except against land units. Constant area of effect but low damage. Again endurance mechanic, could probably make both vehicles one vehicle if comfy with anti air anti ground unit)
-RailGun tank. Long range, long reload, medium-high damage. I dont want this to be a commander snipe though. ultra vulnerable to incoming fire, especially bombers. Might make for a good legged crawler bot instead of a tank.
ADV. Land Units:
-Brawler Bot. Got real excited about this one suddenly, melee unit. Big robot, big arms, big fists. Great front line meat shield. They punch things to death. Excellent against slow or light units and buildings. Not friends with artillery or bombers. RailGun walker would do a good deal against them...until they get close.
-Cruise Missile Tank. This is pretty much your classic giant missile box on a truck. Useful for reacting to naval attacks off shore. Slow rate of fire. Think of catapult for slower targets, little less range. Help from recon is essential, pretty terrible against oncoming hoards, lacks area of effect. Precision indirect strike is the role.

ADV. Air Units:
I like where most of it is, i can go both ways with the torpedo fighters.
-I hate gunships but artistically speaking, a chunky heli-bot would be cool.
-Carpet Bomber. Hates carpets...jk...Leaves long streamed area of effect damage that lingers a bit. Better against Standard land units, especially eats up basic bots. A good micro player can do a great deal of damage when picking the targets to start from. Attack ground feature is important here.

I need to get back to work, but that is what I got for now.

A few ideas I think might go well with Planetary Annihilation:

-jet-pack bots / amphibious tanks. Basically, units that fulfill multiple niches of war (naval, land, air). Amphibious tanks would be obvious in how they work. Jet pack bots would basically fly over obstacles instead of path around them, but while flying would be vulnerable to anti-air (fighters for instance). This would open up previously inaccessible fronts and create interesting counter-play I think.

-"gunships" of some sort. I keep flipping back and forth on whether I'm for or against, but I think that a tank-like air unit could work if balanced right. Could go for light gunship (basic?) or maybe a super-heavy, slow-moving hover-ship (not hovercraft, because it flies).

-Hovercrafts: could be an alternative to amphibious tanks -- basically tanks that can go over water like in TA. These could be useful for crossing lava on lava planets, which is the most important use I can see for them.


For more basic, "filling up the t1 roster" units, you could just re-use some from TA. For example, Rocket bots for more long-range attacks (possibly acting as anti-leveler-'s). Other ideas for more "normal" units could be...
-Short-range, high damage/high rate-of-fire units, which could act well in specialized flanking manuevers but be worthless in most ranged encounters where the enemy just stays at range and picks them off.
-non-AA-missile units, which would act as weak artillery units that have the balancing mechanic that their projectiles always hit (as opposed to slow-arcing artillery shells that are easily dodged).
-A long range, low rate-of-fire laser-beam cannon unit, which would have a short charge-up time before it ultimately fires its laser beam. Would work well as a kind of alternative artillery, but is balanced by the fact that it would have to stop completely before it can charge up its laser.

Wow, lots of great ideas in here. You are sparking my imagination.

I really like the idea of jetpack bots and ampihious tanks @GalacticCow.

Also maybe some kind of heavy transporter, that can take a punch before it dies, basically to reduce the damage of turrets and artillery before releasing small bots close to the enemies base.

EDIT: maybe the transporter could also function as a mobile factory in some way.

like this @3:05 :

What about a transport that drops its units like a payload when it dies? Like a kinder surprise egg, except filled with deadly robots and not fun toys.

Everything in your kickstarter video. Including the flying bots (even how they come in to the atmosphere from orbit) and the little moon asteroid landers (even how the spilt on landing). Would love to see all the meshes reused in the game because frankly it was awesome even those construction type bots - simple but cool. Hope that's enough!

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/659943965/planetary-annihilation-a-next-generation-rts and here is the video. Now get fiddling with those 3DS files you already have!!! Lol

I forgot to add the one I was leaving to last..

-Built in orbit by orbital fabber.
-Very expensive planet siege factory. Build in orbit, send to planet as lead invasion centre piece. It drops into atmosphere and smashes into ground and folds out like a Dethklok concert. Spews out some preliminary units and folds out a mild amount of defensive towers as seperate units (the existing ones). Is now a basic bot factory. Can make fabbers as well. The ultimate start to invading on a rather developed planet.

Expand on this, and perhaps just orbital drop factories of all 4 types. (this will help for those water planets too). The building is done in space. Once deployed, its there and not recoverable.

That egg putting a unit on top of a large rocket, that then shoots up into the air and to the moon looks epic. I would prefer that way over the current interplanetary transport system.