Asteroid ideas

I have a few suggestions, mostly regarding asteroids.

Like in Armageddon where they drill into an asteroid with the purpose of planting explosives to break it apart so that the asteroid does not hit earth ... can we not have a k-bot with a similar purpose for achieving the same function? The k-bot probably shouldn't be able to break asteroids apart by itself (though there is no law that says asteroids are dense clumps of rock- they could, for example, be made of ice or consist of mostly ice and have a flimsy internal structure holding it together. What I think should be represented in the game is that the outcome with respect to asteroids should not be predictable, their behaviours should differ. I think it would be good if structural damage can occur to asteroids which ensures that if halley's are operated on that asteroid, that the fissures in the asteroid just lead to it fragmenting or disintegrating into pieces. Not all asteroids should be suitable for navigation with halley's, the power those forces apply should have a big impact on the inertia of the asteroid and lead to them splintering and also been affected by the heat and gravitational pull of the sun if they orbit too closely. What it would mean is that asteroids should become a hazard to the faction that tries to control them as much as it is to the faction that one aims to destroy.

I also think asteroid impacts shouldn't necessarily lead to a planet's crust being broken and blown away as is often shown in the trailers (unless the asteroid is massive). It would be more representative to see other consequences of an asteroid impact (like a nuclear winter) for the whole planet and tsunami. I also think they should introduce more natural hazards in the way of either inhabiting species attacking units and structures on planets as well as the possibility of random meteorites naturally striking a planet or knocking asteroids out of their orbit and potentially onto a collision course with a planet or into a decaying orbit etc.

Just some thoughts.

Also, I just want to enquire, since I haven't played the game yet. However, are you able to acquire upgrades for your commander as on Supreme Commander where you could add extra range to his weapons, increased rate of fire, energy or mass generation, radar, teleportation, a cloak, extra armor etc ? I enjoyed that aspect of making your commander a warrior, mine would often lead an army into battle (and get destroyed in the process -though take half their base with him). I think if the game ends when a commander dies, it loses an edge. If this is the way the game is going can we at least have the subcommanders that supreme commander had, some of them were very powerful.

Please check the FAQ

The drilling unit wouldn't ever be useable. Invading an enemy occupied astroid or moon is already difficult enough as it is. Sending one unit on there would get noticed and destroyed as quickly as, well, any other unit – quickly.

It's already confirmed that moons and astroids will have differing levels of destruction based on the mass of the moon and the mass of the planet.

I wouldn't mind this being possible on very small moons (requires few boosters but also can be destroyed outright).

This would balance ease to boost vs ease to take out of gameplay.

Also, there will be many ways added to the game for fullscale invasion of a planet. His idea requires simply fighting for a foothold and buying time, rather than fighting for the whole asteroid and/or trying to "competitive build" boosters against the player to get your boosters before they get theirs.

We've talked before about doing that "nuclear winter" type scenario before. We'll have to see! Thanks for the input, though, dude. Keep the ideas coming.

Those are indeed incredible ideas, imo. But some of them might be hard to implement into the game.

I actually think there's loads of cool ways you could mitigate the threat of asteroids if the designers want to level the playing field and add some unpredictability into the threat of asteroids (which I think shouldn't be easy to control at all). For example, rather than just attempting to destroy asteroids with nukes or the drilling and exploding k-bots like I suggested, another cool option might be to allow players to build (in true sci-fi style) giant tractor beams that can push asteroids out of orbit or into decaying orbits or into the sun or knock them off course etc. That would be a much more successful and safer strategy. There would of course be no chance that any player could hope to accurately control asteroids with halley's if their trajectory could be manipulated by outside sources and asteroids would become seriously hazardous for everyone.