I dont believe this was talked about just yet so I'm going to go ahead and suggest it. While i was not as interested in supcom 2 as i was in the first one, i liked the idea of upgrading buildings with extra features like aa towers, tactical missile launchers ect. I think a similar feature in PA could help with pacing of the game as well as make base building more interesting and easier to manage on a macro level sinc building have multiple roles now. Here are some ideas for a few addons. Factories -shield generators -defense turrets -tactical missile launchers -stealth field- hides from enemy radar -repair tower- a tower that passively repairs nearby units and structures (very slowly) -power reactor- the building builds units using less resources -dual builder- the building creates two units at time Generators, Storage -reinforced armor- makes the building more durable and acts as a hybrid wall/generator(useful for a stratgy that uses (generators as walls in limited space environments) -defense turrets -energy to metal converter- makes the generator output mass instead of energy (at a much lower rate than extractors) -bunker module-allows the building to lower itself flush with the ground or rise up (like starcraft 2 terran supply buildings) -builder module, allows this building to create other t1 buildings close to it at a super fast build rate(useful when allocating engineers) Thoughts?
It's been infinitely discussed and the answer remains "no". Uber goes by the saying "What you see is what you get". Upgrades for buildings clashes with that.
As was mentioned, WYSIWYG. I'll expand. What you see is what you get is an important concept in a strategy game as it keeps the game simple, while retaining depth. I direct you to this video on depth vs complexity. With WYSIWYG, I can look at units and instantly know what their capabilities are and what it would take to defeat them. With upgrades and leveling systems, I no longer can visually tell what its capabilities are at a glance. This keeps the game's complexity low, while retaining strategic depth. Sure, upgrades and levels would increase the strategy involved in the game, but it would also increase the complexity more than is ideal. As for your other suggestions, they've been suggested and discussed a thousand times over. I'll also expand on shields. The idea of bubble shields like from SupCom is rejected because of the immense benefit. They're simply too strong. Receiving a large health bonus only at the cost of energy, let alone when multiple bubble shields overlap. Also, the spherical nature of PA doesn't really mesh with bubble shields. I'll just go around them. Shields have literally hundreds of pages of forum discussion. I'd encourage you to search the forums and take a look at those threads.
