We have walls but there is a problem. Do I leave my walls full of holes so my army can quickly intercept possible enemy attacks while at the same time making my base easier to breach, or do I surround it with a completely sealed wall while forcing my troops to spend 5 minutes slowly crawling through some small hole (that is always on the wrong side) to get out? There should probably be some kind of a gate building that acts like a wall except it lets your own units through. Possible ideas: -Mines could be used for this purpose once they are made not useless. They cant be built by normal fabbers though. And I would prefer mines to not let your own units go over them either (unless you explicitly tell them to). -You know those metal poles that rise from the ground in some places to block passage of vehicles. Something like that. Metal poles that are up when nothing is on them, but go down if your own units are crossing. -Sheild walls. Energy sheild is inactivated when your own units pass. -Wedge walls. You can go over them in one direction but not in the other. -A special 'gate' building. This would require some planning to set up properly and is not as flexible as the other options. You probably could modify the teleport to make one (since units can already pass through a teleport and go straight through if its inactivated). -Self-fabricating/recollecting walls. A wall block that has the ability to fabricate itself using some metal. It will reclaim itself to let units pass and refabricate itself to close.
A long time ago Uber mentioned the possibility of adding gates. Like. A long time ago. Before Alpha even, if I remember correctly. Gates would be a pretty handy addition. I hope they're added, but they're probably pretty low on the priority list.
You can use teleporters to achieve this effect, with one teleporter on the inside and one on the outside, and factories rallied to the internal teleporter. It would be nice, though, considering the massive HP difference between teleporters and walls. That sounds glorious.
There's no need for gates, keep it simple, every wall section should just be made to lower into the ground when friendly/allied units are trying to get through. That way there's no need to worry about where you put your gates and it doesn't require an additional structure.
This reminds me of Empire Earth. I had build the Great Wall of America to defend me and my allies. It was brought down by an army of robots though in the space age. :/
The problem with this one is that it entirely removes the mobility disadvantage that comes with a ton of walls. I dont want to reduce that disadvantage significantly. Of course gates will make it possible to have more gateways for your own troops since they wouldnt be so vulnerable as with no gates at all, but there still shouldnt be too many since walls are still stronger defences and probably cheaper too.
I fully support the idea of Tiberian sun style gates, walls, and wall turrets. Addendum: Oh and Tesla Coils. And pavement as a structure.
I would prefer for there not to be gates. Then, as you said, you have to make a tough decision between having the ability to get your units out there and how good your defences are. Gates mean that you can wall off everything with no consequences.
I think we need terrain to provide movement buffs and debuffs. You can build a bunch of pavement at your base to speed up movement, but when it gets into forest and grass and hills, your bots and vehicles and whatnots slow down.
I would hardly call what we have now "hills" and the rocks are like a tabletop set piece, not really what we are talking about.