Idea Box

These are just a few ideas, some crazy, some awesome. I'd bet many of these have been thought about or brought up before, but hopefully it will generate some discussion on how the game can be balanced and expanded going forward.

Some things that would be interesting to see:

• more aqueous maps, even islands, and water transport craft.
• players starting on different planets.
• The full range of tech available in custom single player skirmish matches (so I can actually figure out what all of the items do in a more relaxed setting)
• Human vs. AI matches from easy to punishing settings, including where the AI is handicapped to get bonuses. (Sometimes it can be fun to try 3 humans vs. 1 godly bot!)
• Varied richness of the metal deposits, some providing far more than average and some providing a pittance
• Strategic locations on the map that provide tech buffs. (imagine fighting over a beacon/tower that conveys extra health to tanks, better energy efficiency, or other bonuses
• An easier way to "upgrade" metal reactors from level 1 to level 2.
• Skirmishes and multiplayer matches where everyone has agreed/is forced to turn off specific parts of the tech tree (i.e. no space tech, no superweapons, no defensive structures, no air, tanks, or storage etc.)
• Total Annihilation mode, where the game goes on even after a commander is lost.
• Shields and shield generators for those pesky base attacks. The downside? They consume TONS of energy.
• Cloaks for units with relatively weak firepower (especially bots), the downside is that they also consume more energy and the unit cannot fire when turned on.
• Point defense turrets for your base that do pretty much nothing against units, but can intercept artillery shots. You just need a normal unit to destroy them.
• Options to turn on natural disasters, like solar flares that briefly knock out almost all energy production for everyone, fog that reduces global visibility for everyone, earthquakes that open up new fault lines, volcanoes that spew rivers of lava, wind storms that make it difficult for aircraft to fly, random occasional micrometeorite impacts (about the equivalent of an artillery shell's worth of damage),
• planetary rings, a single ring or even X-shaped ones that divide the space sky into multiple impassible parts. This makes it less likely that the first person into space can simply "take over" or rush to another base and construct an anchor. (at least not very quickly)
• Wild or natural flora/fauna/rogue AI that make it perilous for the first explorer to forge ahead.
• mines, minefields everywhere. Mines on the ground, air mines in the sky, space mines in the space. Let me build some mines and I will boobie trap the heck out of my base. Come at me bro!
• Varied energy generation mechanisms. I.e Solar power, it generates a lot, but only in direct sunlight. Wind - it fluctuates but can generate a lot, but only on planets with an atmosphere, geothermal - generates tons of energy next to lava. Nuclear - advanced tech that creates a crap ton of energy but takes a while to build and creates enormous explosions if destroyed.
• A high tech way to convert energy into metal that will naturally cost an insane amount of energy.

I'm gonna copy and paste my comment from reddit for the benefit of people who aren't on /r/planetaryannihilation/

1. Naval is currently very poorly balanced. I imagine water will be more common on planets once Uber works on balancing naval. All water planets can be made and do show up through the random generation from time to time, but they are rare.
2. Players starting on different planets is already in the game. You can do that by creating a custom system.
3. You can already do custom matches against the AI. In the main menu, click on "Multiplayer," and then set up a match against the AI. You can even invite other players to play against the AI and crank up the economy modifier so it has 5x the economy you do per economy building.
4. Personally, I don't like the richness of metal deposits. It likely means more matches will be decided by the luck of the spawn. However, you can mess with the metal quantities on the custom system generator.
5. Tech buffs like that would go against Uber's WYSIWYG principle. When I look at a unit, I know exactly how much damage it will deal and what it takes to destroy it. If units can deal different amounts of damage based on various factors, I no longer know how effective that unit will be.
6. Easier way to upgrade? Don't follow. All you need to do is build a T2 fabber and place the extractor.
7. Turning off different portions of the tech tree is already possible through server mods, and we'll likely have lobby options like that in vanilla PA in the future.
8. More game modes will be added. And we already have some fun game modes through mods.
9. Shield generators are a confirmed no. Converting energy into HP doesn't balance. Nor do shield generators work well with PA's playstyle – which is one of hard aggression. There are many many threads on this topic on the forums. I'd encourage you to do a search over there if you're interested in reading more about it.
10. Random events that cause damage are major no. Losing a match because of random destruction, especially destruction that you cannot predict or prevent has no place in a competitive strategy game. This also has been discussed a bunch on the forums.
11. Not really following your planetary rings suggestion.
12. Eh... maybe. Not a huge fan. Tanks don't really care about what plants are out there. They get crushed all the same.
13. Ground mines are already in the game. They're built by combat fabricators.

I highly recommend you take a look at the confirmed features list.

It would be cool if ground units auto created their own water transports like in rise of nations, so we can have those awesome assaults on beaches, or combat fabbers auto creating transports for units that sort of thing...

Also, planets with rings, both a cosmetic and a playable battleground/terrain for orbital units on smaller planets.

Ehh, self unit embarkation kind undermines the point of having transports.....and it undermines the point of terrain.

It works ok in civ 5, but even in rise of nations, it was really blererah

Or we can do something better and have a good selection of amphibious units instead of limiting variety by shoveling all kinds of things on regular basic units.

Mike