In response to some ideas regarding planetary environments/biomes, I thought of an additional layer to planet generation. I'd love to see how toxicity of a planet affects your tech. Perhaps this could translate as modifiers to metal used for building or energy upkeep for shields. This might allow you to use the environment to your advantage even more so than just terrain. Anything that adds strategy to the game is interesting to me, but whether it meshes well with the game mechanics is open for comment. So, any thoughts?
I think it would be more interesting as a way to affect unit movement. IE: Lava flows and stuff like that.
Being a big fan of plopping down a base then giving up on it, I would absolutely hate to suddenly find a volcano where my manufacturing center used to be.
More or less this. I'm more interested in 'living' biome. It could of course make some units more or less interesting. I don't really like arbitrary modifier that you should just know. Well, It should not be random. If I take the lava example, you should see on the terrain that there is a lava path so you know that lava will sometimes flow through that path. The volcano could even give a warning.
Should a planet's environment affect your units? For the most part, these are killbots. A little hot or cold isn't going to disturb them. There may be situations where an environment reduces unit efficiency. For example, a swamp may slow down all your terrestrial vehicles and bots. A dust filled atmosphere may slow down aircraft as engines become clogged and lose efficiency. Super acid or lava may damage and even kill things that try to cross it. Should your units affect the environment? Absolutely! That's the name of the game. As to what actions damage a world, that's something each unit has to figure out for itself. But it makes a very powerful tool to improve attack units, or add extra risk to base structures.
So suddenly a bunch of robots are goin to care for nature? Man I'd love to have a commander made of dirt and wood and listening to Enya. "Living" or dynamic planets would certainly add a diceroll but I find it more annoying than cool... I'd hate to win a match just cause an earthquake hit my enemy and crippled his economy for 30 seconds. Shields are not in the release of PA, that doesn't meant they'll never be.
Im normally a lurker but since i like this idea i thought i would clarify. it sounds to me that all these planetary effect would be constants; as in a toxic world would always slowly eat away at your dudes, or dust will always be reducing sight radius. If its debilitating terrain you will know ahead of time. "There's a swamp. don't want to get caught in there." or "the lava tide is coming back up, better get my bots out of this ditch." I'm all against tornadoes and earthquakes too. i don't much care for the random effects ending the match; but if its a constant, its now a tactical decision to take the shortcut though the swamp or to hide in the dust storm.
Neutrino already said that this wont happen.. The robots are the best of the best, can survive outer space.. they don't rust because it rains :mrgreen:
it would be funny to see factories defiling the pretty planet :twisted: green waste oozing out of big pipes ^^ Complicated though, so a toxic wasteland biome/planet would be sufficient for me There was a map in supcom with black earth and unnatural green water, i loved the combination
Well, it would be pretty cool if constant fighting and the heaviest weapons had an effect on the environment - but then, we already know that's gonna happen with burn marks, wrecks and impact craters, so I don't think we'll be disappointed!
I think it would be nice if the atmosphere became more sickly looking after nukes going off, factories pollution and whatnot.
Soldering flux? It might explain why factories end up lower energy consumers than typical units. Pollution is very effective at obscuring vision and/or radar, as well as screwing around with aircraft. It may not be something a standard lathe makes, but it would have its uses elsewhere.
