It's time to talk unit ideas

An aircraft recon unit would be quite nice for scouting purposes and a T2 anti-air tower is a must.

Yet it's still important to expand the "break and butter" unit pool, in my opinion. If we only have one type of basic bot, what kind of unit interactions are there for "normal" engagements? Compare this to TA, where right off the bat you could make rocket kbots, artillery kbots, and "normal" peewee kbots. Each were "alternative ways to achieve the same thing": blowing up the enemy's stuff. Yet HOW they interacted with each other was important. Having units like the Rocko countered certain slower-moving, shorter-range units, while things like the flash-tank could counter, to an extent, much of the artillery. The point is, I would argue that we need to expand the basics before adding in completely new mechanics like radar jamming, space mirrors, tunneling sandworms, etc.

edit: though don't get me wrong, a lot of the suggestions for units are "This would be so cool" without considering the balance and counterplay involved in the design. I'm just saying that it's not hard to expand the unit pool with basic, "simple function" units when you have the specific niche in mind.

Damn that tread is huge... a lot to nom on. I'm on page 5 out of 29. I see what you were warning me about and it's helping me shape the idea better. I'll definitely dwell deeper into it before I start posting my own tread (If I even will after I'm done reading), but now studies.

Anyone remembering the Deviator tank from Dune II ?
I would like to have a similar weapon :
- Average looking missile launcher tank, which warheads have a nano-virus, which could reprogram the enemy vehicles, so you can command it for a minute. Of course, bigger, and more heavily shielded units has a less percentages to be infiltrated, but it's highly effective against T1 bots, and tanks.

That would be fun...

that might be a counter for mega stompy bots we are looking for (you get the bot for 15-60 seconds they you delete it, shouldn't work on commanders). It would also add some interesting mechanics if it worked on structures. For example: Steal the enemy nuke silo just as it finishes building the nuke or orbital factory just as it finishes a lander or get a t2 bot by stealing the enemy factory that was just about to finnish it. I'm all in for this one.

An Area Denial weapon/unit would be nice, something that drops or places an area denial effect kinda like mines to a degree but continuous damage over time rather than instant damage, so the longer you stay in the area the more damage you take. Would make the area effectively unbuildable (for a certain amount of time) and costly to move through, especially if your army stopped in one.

Might make better sense as an additional Nuke type, mine type or orbital weapon system as currently we have alot of weapons that do instant damage but nothing that just does damage over time.

Aka Nanotech Swarm or Irradiator System Missile/Orbital platform/mine field.

The idea would be you launch one of these or build one in an area where you want to discourage movement or building and it covers a radius 100 area on the planet and lasts for 5mins once it has dealt damage. If a unit walks through this area of the map it takes say 5-10 damage a second while it's in the zone. This would allow you to discourage building in an area or make certain routes on the map painful to traverse. Potentially the damage would be to both friendly and hostile units.

It shouldn't be able to steal a nuke, but temporarily taking control of a mob of bots would be great.

That would be quite useful too, as long as you can't surround your base with it or use it as a giant wall.

Unit idea:

Give us something big.
All units sofar are just small and "nothing to worry about"
But Imagine having a tank big as 3 adv. Tanks with 4 cannons.
Sure it has to be balanced with costs 'n stuff so you can't spam the unit.

But then we finally have something to be proud on the battlefield.
And not just another unit..

So the enemy has to react and send in bombers as ( as an example) it can't shoot air units.

It would require careful balancing but I suspect many people would find having to lay down dozens of these every 5 or so minute to renew the effect and surround there base far to irritating to use in the manner you described.
Also it could be balanced additionally by requiring Energy to stay active & via moderate to high cost. Finally fast units could still get through it without too much damage & it wouldn't effect aircraft...

It would open up a number of tactical options though, use it to weaken enemy attacks or delay them. Prevent the building of forward bases in critical areas and as a really nasty option if a missile or mobile orbital unit drop them on critical parts of the enemy base to weaken or prevent rebuild after a successful attack.

True. As long as the balancing was done right I'd like it.

Mobile wall -> a tank like a giant plate of metal. The tank has no weapons and is very slow. But it endures massive artillery projectiles like no one else.

Forgive me if some of these are duplicates, I made it to page 4 of the thread before I realized I didn't have time to finish it all.

Maybe planes capable of moving to the orbital layer and between planets?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_X-15
That strikes me as a viable alternative to orbital fighters.

I'm also in favor of the "super unit", but I don't think they should be primarily combat units. Maybe some kind of very expensive teleporter between planets.

I also like the idea of making bots that are difficult for tanks to hit. Just a small bot (or maybe this could apply to all bots) that have a 20% chance of being missed by tank fire.

Please no such things as ' x% chance to miss'. This should get sorted out via projectile and unit speeds.

what about a ... battering ram?

Just imagine a ram, hovering on anti-grav engines and packed with jet boosters to gain an immense speed and crush those puny laser turrets.


I haven't read everything but my votes so far:
+1 Anti-ground and anti-air basic gunship
+1 Flamethrower bot (basic)
+1 Railgun tank (advanced)
+1 Mobile unit spawner/factory (like the Swarm Host in StarCraft 2)(advanced)
+1 Mobile radar (basic or advanced)
+1 More missiles, like emp (preferably made in the same missile silo, not separate ones for each)

If you don't feel like reading all of these I at least suggest looking at the second to last paragraph, that's my favorite one.

A slow but well armored flamethrower unit with a decent range.

A larger bomber, slow and low health, but drops a massive payload.

A spy unit that can transform to take the shape and color of an enemy unit. The identifying factor for the spy unit could be an incorrect map icon so that its icon might be that of a turret, but it looks like a bot. Spy units can have low health while their speed is slow too, another identifying feature that a unit is a spy. Field of vision is relatively low to make it more difficult for spies to just rush into a base to get good information.

An orbital unit that has 4 separated parts with each part connected to a corner of a giant net like structure. This unit can be positioned and used so that if there is an incoming meteor, moon, or planet that is being controlled using boosters, the net can be deployed to reduce the speed of the incoming body by a force equivalent to a number of boosters, and if that reduction of power pushes that body to have less engines than required to push it, then it will stay not impact the planet and stay in a new orbit until either the net is destroyed or the engines are destroyed. Destroying the net would make the body finish its impact (if that is the player's goal still) and destroying all of the engines will allow the net to slowly put the planet, moon, or asteroid back in its original orbit.

A melee bot like unit that has a moderately high amount of health and is moderately fast. It has the disadvantage of being bombarded by range attacks as it approaches units that can attack from a range, but it does a significant amount of damage to units if it is able to get up close because it can accurately target weak spots on units with its melee attacks.

Medic units that are swarms of nanobots which can heal units both in and out of combat. In combat nanobots are much less effective at repairing units due to the movement that makes it difficult to repair them, but out of combat when a unit is still, they can more easily repair units. Nanobot swarms consist of possibly a hundred or so bots but are easily destroyed by attacks that result in shockwaves or explosions near the bots and groups of swarms are taken down together because each swarm is so tightly packed together which is necessary for their formation so that they can communicate with each other on a group by group basis.

Defense units that are relatively slow and have low health. These defense units have very quick response times and as such their role is to target incoming enemy fire and to shoot it down. These defense units can more easily shoot down slower attacks like rockets but have a lot more difficulty shooting down quicker forms of attacks. These units can shoot very fast which helps to provide more defense when shooting down enemy attacks but their low health makes them very vulnerable especially when they have to be in the front lines for any hopes of effectively taking down enemy attacks. These units are great for ground combat defense but are vulnerable to air and sea attacks that are able to drop bigger bombs and fire bigger shells that require a lot more damage to take down with little time to do so. These units can also attack units directly but they deal very low damage despite their quick rate of fire. Shooting enemies with this large barrage however can cause good suppression making it hard for enemies to return fire.

Ant units that are very tiny and have low health but are very strong and can move around existing structures given there are enough ant units for the size of the building.

I'm bad at having good ideas myself, but i'm good at throwing crazy and stupid ideas that give great ideas to people good at having good ideas (still following ?)

Has not been mentioned yet, but sea mines could be great.

Some kind of defense fence (not wall, fence).
Almost invisible, not direct damage (or maybe some kind of electrical damage ?).
Could do some actions when crossed :
- trig an alarm (visual or audio) to inform about some unexpected sneaking
- trig the explosion of all nearby landmine...

Some kind of "camouflage" unit that, when immobile, "morph" into any useless object depending on the terrain type (rock, tree, big block of ice...).
Cool effect, but very similar to stealth...

Infinite range laser bot/tower/whatever.
When the unit start the laser (continuous, laser, not burst or shot laser), it does not stop on obstacles and goes strait with no end.
Other cool effect (would be nice to see a beam of light across the galaxy...).

Has been mentioned in the thread, but a BulletMagnet could be very interesting (like the one on the big exoskeleton in the film District 9).
Very similar to shields, but the repulsive after effect could add some fun.

Some units that have some kind of "modulability" : normal at initial state, start dismantling itself when damaged, but can repair by fusing with an other unit (any unit ? Or only with an other unit of its kind ?), and fusing with a lot of unit could render it way more powerful than usual.
(maybe with some kind of tech stealing ?)

How about some structure that is some sort of ACU bunker? Right now, the ACU is a liability... so why not get a structure that protects the ACU against some basic attacks, nothing fancy though... but still... ^^

Your armies should do that for you

UNIT SUGGESTION:

First off, i don't really miss any unit other than a gunship. A gunship in my mind is something that can get a sustained ROF from the air, but isn't overpowered. Mostly used to hunt down armies.

Water Unit:

The Invader: a transport naval ship with an onboard Unit Cannon.



UNIT DIVERSIFICATION:

-Change the floating power plant to a Tidal Energy Generator
-Change the floating Mex to something like a drilling platform (make metal spots visible as Black Smokers or so)