It's time to talk unit ideas

Well, any units that have to do with intel/counter-intel always get my vote (radar, jamming, spoofing, etc). There's nothing quite like a good information war, in my opinion.

Also, it would be cool to have both hover and amphibious vehicles, with distinction. Both would be more expensive than regular units, but hover would be faster and weaker, while amphib slower and more... well, tanky. Hover would be good for interception, while amphib would be good for planning and executing surprise attacks on the enemy's beachhead.

Finally, some unit with some sort of arcing or chain lighting weapon would be cool, just to discourage deathballs. Of course, if/when formations are implemented, this might render that issue moot anyway.

I'm seeing a lot of suggestions to add more units that fill the same role or a role that is all ready filled. This worries me a little because having multiple units that fill the same role promotes micromanagement. With that being said, role overlap is fine as long as it don't make a unit obsolete. The roles I think need some love are mobility, intel, counter-intel, infrastructure, & damage control. Here are a few ideas to start thinking about those roles though not all are unit ideas.

- Mobility
* Teleport gates, have to be built and connected to another gate.
* Transports (There are all ready a few suggestions on this)
* Unit Cannon
* Amphibious units (There are all ready a few suggestions on this)

- Intel
* Advanced Alert System, acts like a turret but fires a non-controllable drone at the target to fly around it and gain line of sight.
* I'd like to see reduced line of sight at night.
* Radar units (There are all ready a few suggestions on this)

- Counter-Intel
* Cloaking buildings as long as they aren't production or resource generation.
* Stealth units and buildings (This role is open to being filled.)
* False radar signatures

- Infrastructure
* A unit designed to reclaim
* Engineering Tower, to auto repair, reclaim, and help build. (There are all ready a few suggestions on this)
* Stackable metal and energy storage
* Metal makes (For when get stuck on a planet that only has >5 metal spots but lots of energy generation options)

- Damage Control
* Shield Wall Generator, it creates a wall, not a bubble around an area the reduces direct fire damage at the cost of energy for each damage reduction.
* Some kind of indirect fire mitigation.
* Doomsday device. (There are all ready a few suggestions on this)

Well, let's not forget the purpose of this topic, specialized roles for units. Combining properties makes that useless.

Naval:
-One ship should be long range (Cruiser?), bombardment, missiles, arty, laser (for direct fire) or otherwise. Maybe it has depth charges or anti-torps with slow refire. Maybe they have anti-air, radar or sonar.
-Another ship should be more of a brawler, closer range but can still bombard from sea to land. Destroyers, basically. Have torps and sonar but no anti-air or radar.
-Scout boats, light armor, fast, maybe AA or torps, depending on faction.
-Mobile air staging platforms/air craft carriers. Store and repair planes on the go with AA for defense, maybe even anti-tactical as well.
-Battleships, long range brawlers, heavy armor. Maybe AA or torps, depending on faction and radar or sonar with corresponding previous weapon types. Or anti-tac weapons for defense.
-Subs, basic sub with torps
-Sub hunter/killer, deeper diving/sonar jammer, higher rate of fire or more torps shot at once.
-Tactical/strategic subs deep diving/sonar jammer, tac missiles/low yield nukes with shorter range than regular nukes. Surface capable for firing the previous and maybe AA for defense (but not highly accurate for a weakness)

Ground units:
If we're to include shields AT ALL, I also agree with shields being directional only and nothing overhead, no domes. Shields could be energy or armor based as well, depending on faction. Slow moving, weak armor when flanked, no offense abilities or intel. Just a defensive unit for armies.
-All terrain bots, likely multiple legs, low tier or not, maybe even experimental types with this as well. While not able to scale the tall mountains, they can still move along their lower slopes so they don't get stuck or the like.
-Transforming units, mobile point defense and even amphibious for moving across water or under it. Maybe a tank turns into a sub with a turret but moves slower in water.
-Bots should mirror vehicles in a certain fashion that their abilities are relatively the same but armor is weaker and movement faster compared to their relative vehicle counterpart. So an arty bot moves faster but has less HP than a vehicle arty. A heavy bot moves faster but has less HP than a heavy tank. So on and so on. AA, shielded units, direct fire, etc.
-Combat 'medic' fabber that auto repairs instead of having to micro it. Something akin to the Kennel in SupCom but mobile and you don't have to focus on it. So instead it has an aura or 'range' in which it tries to heal/repair the nearest, weakest unit.

Air:
I'd love to see the Arm Brawler come back. Light, fast gunship with rapid firing and sways back and forth to dodge direct fire attacks. Carpet bombers, emp bombers, anti-ship bombers, planes that dive into water to be subs?

Structures
-The teleporter idea is pretty cool, too, along with that seed idea. Two way, point to point teleporter that you can link with only one other station. If you want to make a 'hub' you need to make more stations and link them. But only two linked at a time. Maybe with the name of the planet/moon they're linked to. The Seed idea with a rapid deploy factory/base for invasions would make this far easier and more reliable, too. Could also work in conjunction with a planet being invaded. Also, with the teleporters, they should cost energy based on the unit passing through them perhaps? The larger the unit (or tier, even) the more it costs to pass through. If that'd be possible. So that way you can't just cluster a massive group around a node and instant teleport a thousand units to another planet.
-Stationary air staging facilities for water and land.
-Submersible or underwater buildings as well. For those sneaky under water bases on complete water planets or with limited ground.
Mass/metal fabrication but by far less useful than metal extractors or have a high energy consumption in order to maintain. Balance it out.

If we want units with more abilities, a veterancy sort of mod or something should be the one to do this, like what SupCom had. If this is included in the game, it should be a style or mod that can be activated but not always on.

I'm sure there's more but a lot of the other ideas, especially orbital transports and the like are very cool, too. Also, the above comment is quite nice. I like the intel bits from most people. Information warfare!

I would like a sort of scrambler tank.

THIS IS NOT A MILITARY TANK, we already have those things in the game (ant swarms are scary). I just made the name as what I want its purpose to be. It would move very slowly, have no attacks, but when in range of enemy units, those units would have to target the scrambler when it attacks, if the unit were to attack at all.

The idea behind this is that you would put a scrambler in the middle of a large army when you attack, so that when you meet the enemy, your own units would last substantially longer because they would not be focused.

Of course, this guy doesn't just shield everyone around him forever, as even if he is aimed at by units, rail guns and explosives would still hit his nearby allies. And, of course, he would have no effect on nukes/planets crashing together.

This could be massively OP, UP, or just irrelevant with advanced strategies... I don't care, though, I'm just spitting out my brain child to this forum because it's something I'd like to see.

Also, the entire time I've been writing this post, I've imagined this thing looking like a Fujibot.

You mean something like an AAAAAAA bot?

A gigantic bot doesn't scale in utility against an arbitrary level of threats. A cloaking generator does. Besides, there's nothing a gigantic suit&Commander can do that can't also be done with a gigantic suit sans Commander.

Just going to point out that mines scale with enemy SPEED. Land mines are naturally going to be the weakest possible implementation, because land is the slowest thing around. Anti air and anti space mines will be very powerful and much more effective deterrents.

Remove that god awful laser and give it a reclaimer, and it'll become the most useful unit in the game.

=I
Don't let Neutrino see any of that. He'll do it! By god he'll do it...

Terraforming is definitely a game changing role. Leave it for the big things like Krogoths and nukes and dead Commanders. It's okay to blow up planets a LITTLE bit in the course of normal play! That is what we're paying for, after all.

Two way teleporters are a great way to provide common access to two bases on distant worlds. They're a nice thing to speed the game up. One way teleporters are game enders. They can snipe critical weak spots and directly target the enemy Commander.

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, and yes. Make it happen captain.

T1 Mobile AA Gun
A defensive tank that fires a relatively strong anti-air gun. Useless against fast moving fighters, but effective against large groups of T1 bombers. Possible to use in ground fights, but too slow moving to support an ant blob.

T1 Mobile Radar Vehicle
A tank equipped with a small radar sensor. Same speed and durability as an ant and can be scattered among an ant blob.

T1 Multi-Stage Rocket Bot
Light early game artillery unit with a multi-stage rocket similar to the TA Merl. Strong at hit and run attacks, but vulnerable to Doxi. Short sight radius.

T2 Offensive Reclamation Tank
Equipped with heavy offensively-aligned nanolathes. Heavily armored and capable of doing constant damage to anything it is near while accumulating metal at the same time. Also rapidly clears wreckage, but at a reduced metal efficiency.

T1 Bunker Gun
Fixed heavy cannon with a tight turn radius and low elevation. Easily blocked by walls or raised terrain and most optimally used to defend coastlines or plains. Enough range to match T1 ships. Projectile easily avoided by faster units.

Land

T2 radar and jamming tank.
T2 flak AA tank.
T2 Laser bot that is extremely fragile but can sweep enemy lines like a monkeylord.
T1 chaingun tank which is very effective versus bots but does negligible damage to buildings.
T2 radar-cloaked bots that do significantly less damage than regular T2 bots.
T2 bots that can transform into passive air units.
Slow moving beefy T2 tank that auto-reclaims wreckage in a certain radius as it moves and spits out T1 assault bots.
T2 walking platform which acts as a small base on which you can build radar , artillery , catapults etc.

Air

T2 Seed bombers which launch assault bots.
T2 laser bombers which shoot a beam of energy directly below them and keeps firing it as it strafes. Does low damage but decimates long lines of T1.
Slow moving artillery gunships.

Blimp: A slow moving air unit that provides large line of sight or mobile radar. Or maybe give air scouts radar?
Mobile Radar jammer.
lower tier Mobile radar unit.
The Can: (From TA Core faction) a super slow, super armored, short range but super powerful unit. Something that can absorb hits while attacking a base with a land army (instead of battling with just artilery).
Walking Magnet: A heavy armored unit that draws all nearby fire to it
Carrier: A ship that holds/makes aircraft.
Phoenix (from TA) I love the bombing mechanic it has and the tail gun is cool too.
Air Transport: something that makes moving a small army across the planet really easy and fast

I really like this!

Disagreeing here. Air units can easily change course and approach from a direction that isn't covered in mines. Orbital may behave differently, at least when it comes to interplanetary travel, but interplanetary invasions are currently poorly designed as it is and mines would only make it more difficult, but probably not more difficult than the current anti-orbital weapons. Land units, however, can be forced into natural chokepoints, and their slow speed means that attacking from another direction is time consuming and could paralyze an onslaught.

This goes to a very real fact about mines: They don't scale with enemy speed, they scale with the value of their victims. The counter to mines are cheap, expendable units that can be thrown in to clear the way for the units that you actually care about.

I think a fire control tank/plane/ship that coordinates attacks within the group it is assigned could be invaluable. The fire control unit could take visual intel from other units in the group and hand out prioritized targets for certain units such as interceptors targeting bombers over other interceptors or artillery targeting groups of enemies greater than 5 over a single enemy unit. It could also focus the fire of the entire battle group if a super weapon was detected and in range. The unit could also provide increased accuracy to units within the group with enhanced targeting software.

These are just examples of effects the fire control unit could have within a battle group. I would expect it to be expensive for its tech level and fairly low on durability.

Therefore, the mine was successful at forcing enemy air to take a LONGER path, which means more time eating anti air, fighting interceptors, and letting the enemy respond. Sounds like a great success to me!

You can also put the mines directly over your base. It is impossible for bombers and direct assault aircraft to avoid, because they need the direct line to stage their attack. In addition, it provides protection from jump jets/unit gun/orbital drops, which are all high priority risks against your base. And with Sorian AI spreading the bombers around, you can rest assured that they will find every last mine. That sounds pretty damn handy.

Except it's really not, and they really don't. If mines are in a chokepoint, you find them and shoot them(or likely bomb them) and continue on your merry way. The value of the target is irrelevant, because the mine was completely useless.

Mines work when the enemy can't avoid entering the space. Fast units and short range units are the least capable of this.

Self Replicating Crawling Bombs: Instead of reusing the old classic of the Crawling Bomb; give it the ability to self replicate as it moves toward its target.

Hover Tanks: Just a little weaker than normal tanks, but can move across land and water.

The answer is 42....
Now I've got that out of the way.

Anyway apart from that profound statement I think some of these ideas will find their way into the game. Some brilliant ones.
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"But what is the question" I hear you say?

Carpet-bomb artillery

Artillery that's not designed to be accurate or aim at specific units but instead can weaken giant blobs when they are approaching a defensive line. To balance them they can be restricted to firing in the direction they are traveling/facing so that you can't use as a small blob while running away destroying a large blob rushing their position.

Bricky - Rapid wall builder
Tough little unit, with a super-high build-rate, but can only make walls.

Orbital Pre-fabber - Bases from space!
Unit that can build any single building while in orbit, transport that building across the gulfs of space, then drop it fully-formed and ready to go the instant it touches down.

Denier - If I can't have it...
Defensive turret that can only be built on mass points, metal is not added to your economy, instead the turret slowly grows and improves in strength and damage output.

I would really like to see some more basic unit diversity, so here are some ideas:

BASIC
Hovertank
The Hover Tank has less health and damage then the ant but can hover OVER crevasses and water, giving it a large mobility advantage. The hover tank also has a speed advantage over the ant, rivaling possibly even the dox.

Popper
Essentially a mobile artillery unit, sacrificing health and projectile speed for higher damage and higher range then the ant or bots. This tiny terror excels at taking out buildings from range, but a single bot could destroy a pack of them.

Probably already stated...... but..... can, sumo, goliath, all heavies from sc2, krogoth, escalation style units?????