Fake buildings and the joy of misdirection

One of the most satisfying things you can do IMO in FA is set up a stealth base and unexpectedly rain fire on your opponent. It's rare that this happens though, perhaps because it is too easy to gain intel in SupCom.

Either way I think that having lots of options for subterfuge is a good thing, and I propose that a number of buildings should be available in fake versions. The fake versions would look identical to the real ones, and they would take as long to build. However they would cost much less, be non-functional and have very low HP (although you wouldn't be able to see this by mouseovering them).

This would increase the ability to misdirect the enemy by having a badly-hidden fake base set up at the same time as a well-hidden real base for instance, and could also be used for gathering intel about the size and composition of defending forces.

Sounds like you should play RUSE that game does this sort of thing properly. I loved that game so much.

See http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... Nao#t=222s

Reminds me of the original Red Alert. Could be fun, if done properly.

+1. An old C&C:Red Alert concept that worked incredibly well if you wanted to annoy people

I'd say reduce the production times of fakes to reflect their cost though... Let you build a very cheap and very quick fake base rather than taking ages to build one that costs next to nothing...

But if an enemy gets a scout into your fake base then he will see factories being built at an extremely quick rate and will probably be able to tell what's up.

I like the idea of fake buildings, but only if stealth generators are available and they are not as easy to defeat as in SupCom.

The trick there is not to build buildings whilst enemy scouts are in your base attacking your engineers

I've always enjoyed misdirection. Reminded of red alert too!
I've got no problem with fake buildings, I was fond of putting three fake barracks in a line. ^^

Pretty sure someone coded command n conquer in html 5
Yep here it is If anyone's interested:

http://www.adityaravishankar.com/projec ... d-conquer/

Love how quick it loads! :lol:

This is the exact reason I said that the build speed should be the same.

Also if you think about it there is no reason you would want the fake buildings to be built especially fast, the fact that they are being built is enough incentive for your enemy to try and stop you.

I actually saying why fake buildings should build at the same speed by providing an example, but what ever.

Could these fake buildings be in a separate build menu? It would kind of suck when you que up some orders and find out that your engies built fake factories instead of real ones.

In a game with the ultimate in high-cost-high-destruction weapons, a fake base could be a very useful tactic (bluff your enemy into dropping a precious asteroid into a fake base).

I should think that the build-speed of such structures could be adjusted on the fly; best of both worlds.

Would such a thing even work in this world? Scan it for 2 seconds to see if it's real or not.

You misunderstand me, my first sentence was agreeing with you, and the second part was directed at people saying the build speeds should be different. I could have formatted it more clearly. To be clear, I think that fake and real buildings should build at an identical rate for the reason you stated.

I would think that the best way to do it would be to have a special construction unit that only builds fake buildings. It would look identical to normal ones from your opponent's point of view, but it would somehow look different to you so that you couldn't make those sorts of mistakes.

I see your handwavium future scanner and raise you a handwavium future scanner spoofer.

Just seems like an awful waste of time waiting ages for those fake buildings to appear - far easier (and, if it could be said, more realistic) that a fake building would just be a shell thrown together for misdirection purposes, and therefore not kitted out on the inside, thus created far faster.

I'd be happy with a slider to let you choose build speed for your fakes though!

It's just kind of suspicious that a fully functional base appears in a few seconds. That's why you want them to build slowly, to not give away the whole trick. Plus, as has been stated, a base under construction is a much better target than a completed one. Defenses not being functional yet and such.

There are tons of instances of fake-outs like this on the historical battlefield. Fake structures were built, airplane cutouts were used to trick satellites about airplane shapes, and even recently there was a story on fake tanks that are essentially giant balloons with heat generators to make them look real.

I don't doubt that futuristic robots could come up with stuff like this quickly enough.

Pretty much this. As a final thought, there are also buildings where the mere threat of completion is enough to send your enemy into a panic. No enemy is going to sit still if they see you building a nuke, or a big bertha near their base.

With that said, perhaps their should be some kind of limitations. Fakes force the same response as their real counterparts, but without any real risk to the person using the fakes.

why not just build fake commanders?

Problem with fake buildings is, that they can't produce anything.

How about building a hologram generator, which generates a fake working base? ("Working" means, that it looks as if something is happening there.) Including fake units which are produced.

Seriously look at RUSE they do this sort of thing perfectly. The whole game is about this stuff

- Covert hidden bases
- Hidden units for sneak attacks
- Speed attacks (double the speed of your units for a brief period)
- Decoy bases
- Decoy units (of each type light, heavy and air)

All of which are really easy to use and don't require lots of horrible micro (just 2 clicks and the rest is automated).

I don't really think PA needs this (its a different type of game) but in my opinion RUSE shows how this sort of thing should be done.

If you don't do it for anything else at least add a decoy commander unit .