Is there a possibility that we will see units in PA that are capable of tunneling underground? It would be really cool to see digging specialist units.
No. [EDIT:] viewtopic.php?f=61&t=42074&p=636626&hilit=dig+digging+tunneling+subterranean#p636626 viewtopic.php?f=61&t=44059&p=681204&hilit=dig+digging+tunneling+subterranean#p681204 viewtopic.php?f=61&t=35702&p=680378&hilit=dig+digging+tunneling+subterranean#p680378
Aside from making it notoriously difficult to see anything, the game engine doesn't appear to support underground at this point. You could probably make a whole genre out of underground warfare if you wanted.
The only game I've seen attempt this was metal fatigue. Its been a long time since I played that game but from what I recall... They used 3 maps - ground layer, underground, sky base things. http://img203.imageshack.us/img203/6363/augbatch2.jpg You'd build some tunneling machine that looked sorta like this http://www.adventuresinpoortaste.com/wp ... 02/003.jpg And it would dig a hole to the underground map. then you could tunnel around finding some resource and popping up in an enemy base, the middle of nowhere, or running into the enemies' tunnel... Now the problem with this, is PA will have many mannny maps on worlds. It was a distraction on that old game, but on PA it would be a nightmare to try and find your enemy if he is underground across several planets. Would you just asteroid every planet in the galaxy that isn't yours until he died? Any ground scanning tech. would balance this back it back out but underground adds to the already complex... I've played StarDrive some lately, and it isn't even an RTS but it takes hours to win on a small setting. Imagine having to fight skirmishes on each of those planets - you'd be there for days straight :shock:
It does; overhangs and 3D terrain have been confirmed a few times, and the rendering planet tech in neutrinos blog post shows it as being very possible.
I think you could add something like the subterranean APC from Command and Conquer easily: Make an animation of it going under the surface than make it invisible, take from him the ability to fire than give it a VERY big HP boost, lets say if normally the APC have 1000 HP under the surface it would have 100000 HP, oh and add a no clip so it can go past anything, and there you have it a subterranean APC without the need to code anything new to the engine. In CeC this APC could be used to do surprise attacks (if the enemy didn’t have radars) and it couldn’t be hit under the surface but it also could not hit the enemy or explore. I didn’t suggest to make it impossible to hit because now we can blow the entire planet and even in real life something like a bunker buster could take out one APC like it so just give it the HP boost, if the enemy hit the area where it is with a lot of weapons or a nuke (to say nothing about asteroids) it should die. I don’t think one tank like it is necessary and I believe the developers have a lot more important things to do with their time than it, but it could be an idea to be used after the release, I think it may be ease even to a modder to add it after. Yes it would be just some eye candy (or not since you will not see it lol) but it could be done without problems in my opinion.
The last game that i remember making effective use of this concept was a game way long a go called Metal Fatigue and you could build on the planet surface, underground, and on floating platforms in the air. I really enjoyed this game back in the day, but i felt that the multi layer stuff became more of a distraction and a disadvantage for the human player. The computer could watch and manage all 3 layers at once while the player could only effectively handle one at a time. I am not a fan of this idea.
Well I believe that what he means by underground is basically a new map level for a new unit type that travels underground. not overhangs created by objects on the same "map level".
There's 2 types of tunneling, both of which should be possible. They'd also be difficult to implement and not necessarily user friendly. 1 - Units that "tunnel" underground in animation only. No tunnel is left behind for other units to use. The unit would be restricted to pathable area that any other ground unit can use unless it is given super wall climbing ability while tunneled. With super wall climbing ability it would still appear just under the surface of the ground, so "tunneling" through a mountain would look kind of janky. There might be solutions for this, but it'd be complicated to say the least. 2 - Units that dig a tunnel that other units can then use. Basically it would just use a weapon that shoots a string of subtraction brushes. The UI and AI for telling this unit where to tunnel would need a bunch of problem solving. Units should automatically know to use these tunnels if it's the shortest route. Unfortunately, the UI has no support for seeing or giving orders to underground units, so this would either need more problem solving, or would be potentially difficult to use.
