Ideas about the Egg.

hey hey, im just giving some speculative ideas. To be honest I am open to anything really, as long as its not the most basic implementation, like in SupCom.

Maybe an interesting option could be a few offensive units to hold some ground, or a v early tiny attack force to get rid of some of the opposing team's mass extractors if theyre not defended at all as an alternative to building bombers to cover the distance quickly to said mass extractors (because bots take ages to walk) though I appreciate that could introduce some unwanted side effects.

There's no reason for the egg to be complex, because we already know what it does. It speeds up the early game so that base building doesn't take like 10 minutes. A game needs starting resources(I.E. storage), production power, and some resource generation to get things going. Can engineers do those things? Sure, they can and have done most of them in TA without issue. Will it be enough? Probably not, because base building demands a lot more resources than engis should have. It would be pretty silly to have a strong economy by simply having tons of engineers.

A vast majority of the egg's features are things that the Commander already does. Creating a fast early game is pretty much its role, after all. But if the game doesn't start with a Comm (which is a possibility), then something else is needed to give a strong game start. So what can you have?

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Hmm... Aha! How about a malfunctioning commander? Due to some horrible accident with intergalactic travel, it barely survives to hit a planet and set loose some engineers. Its resource reserves can only last a few minutes before the dying husk gives out and has to be cannibalized for goods. Naturally this would not be used for assassination mode, but it has all the features a unique egg needs.

There is no reason for the Egg to be boring.
Just because we know what it's for, doesn't mean we know what it does, or how it does it. Yet.

As for a standard game starting without a Commander; that's absurd. There's no need for the Egg if you're just using it as an Energy generator/Metal maker. The Commander does that and if you're playing a theoretical game mode without a Commander then that is something you should lose the pleasure of having.

What is the point of the Egg being a carbon copy of the Commander. If all Uber does is make the Egg give +50 Energy and +5 Metal on top of the Commander giving +50 Energy and +5 Metal, I'll be sorely disappointed.

It's boring and redundant. Way to go, making the Egg a boring unit that we could have just rolled into the Commander from the start by having him produce +100 Energy, +10 Metal and have Junior Birdman jet-powered rocket pants.

(Points if you get the reference)

Here is my idea for how the egg should work and look ...

I do smeg head

Idk Nano it may not be that dull.

Your commander will be tanky, have the uber cannon, and provide your starting income and starting mobile build power.

Your egg would be modestly fragile and provide no income. It would instead start with a full tank of resources and storage. You can adjust starting resources through the egg in the lobby.

Then give it a lathe. This would provide immobile starting build power.

The egg would then permit a fast base build assisting the com or the com can go off for fast expansion, but risk the egg since it is unable to defend itself from a t1 rush.

After your initial resources are used up the egg will still be storage as well as an engineer tower.

That's significantly more than "just a T2 transport", which is what I took exception to

I imagine the egg as being a very powerful stationary construction unit with a non-refillable reservoir of metal and energy, that quickly (or instantly) builds a base template of the player's design upon landing.

In an editor of some sort, the player arranges a starting base template, a la FA, equal to or less than the mass/energy value of the egg's reservoir. The template can contain any T1 building: factories, extractors, turrets, whatever. These templates can be saved and loaded before matches. When a match starts, the player picks a template to use.

When the game starts the egg lands and unfolds into a small platform, and the commander steps off. The egg then uses little engineer turrets of some kind to build all the structures in the template simultaneously.
Once all structures are complete, the egg folds back up and becomes an inert crate, and can be reclaimed for whatever mass or energy it didn't use constructing the starter base.

Other notes:
- I'd imagine the egg would be amphibious, able to land on water or straddle coastlines, in order to build naval factories.
- Players could possibly tweak the starting resources the egg contains, trading mass for energy or vice versa.
- Probably has a limited build range. The base template will need to fit within a certain radius.

^this! I want this so bad!

Why not have the 'egg' concept to be a 'fold-out' unit that has some limited (limited by radius of base from unit deployment) capacity for 'scripted' base assembly.
i.e. player creates a script for a base layout, then sends this 'egg' to a location for deployment.

The scripts or templates should be flexible i.e. if the deployment is too close to a mountain then the script should automatically adjust by moving units to the left or right in a correct ratio. (not sure how to define a correction ratio for this, maybe by location of defensive structures)

The 'egg' shouldn't be loaded with resources though, i think that could just be a big waste if the deployment should fail.

As long as there is the possibility for a reasonable lone commander start. I hate prebuilt bases. I'm missing out on building it. I like the idea as a way to deploy onto the map instead of just spawning in out of the blue. Just don't have anything in the egg.

Well why not have the egg sacrifice build into your starting extractors and power-plants bmb?

Being placed where you designate, the egg would have say, a limit to 6 buildings or 2 factory's (Or a mix) and once the egg is done it uses it's own metal to finish the last building on the list.

I like whatever the egg does being completely optional. So far here are some good ideas I got:

-Commander has starting resource income, Egg has starting resource storage, and vice versa.

-Egg releases Commander upon landing, as well as additional starting units like engineers or basic combat or scout units, as defined by settings.

-Egg builds or deploys a set of structures ajacent to it as defined by settings.

-Egg has abilities of a formidable yet late-game-obsolete turret, or a turret that is powerful yet burns itself out early game.

-Egg creates a "metal deposit" on landing, or alternatively, Egg creates reclaimable salvage.

-Egg is an option, and when it isn't selected, the commander lands on it and it disappears so the commander is left alone to start whever he landed.

-Obviously in case the Egg does something vital, if selected not to have an egg or that the egg not to the vital task, the game will somehow give you it automatically as an inherent starting thing when you begin (if it is storage, you technically wouldn't be able to build ANYTHING with 0 storage, so no egg would mean you would require the storage as an automatic inherency to have for the whole game)

I always thought of the egg like an assisting tower from FA, only it would degrade itself in a very short time. Essentially a self spending bundle of energy and mass.

There's very little a mythical egg can do that can't simply be put on:
A) The Commander
B) His stuff
or
C) The planet itself

Need build power? Put it on the Commander.
Need more build power? Drop in some engis
Even more build power? Drop in a factory or some gens.
Early game too slow? Increase the Commander's storage, resource generation rate.
Early game still too slow? Cover the planet with STUFF. Rocks, wreckage, trees, ancient generators, neutral factories, geothermal power, dead bots, reclaimables and captureables ahoy.
Still too slow? Give cheaper bases, faster base construction, and pump out bots at an even higher rate. Drop in scouts to immediately contest surface resources.

While the economy may be exponential in theory, you can still have a very strong starting point without waiting for the curve to catch up. Gift lots of resources at the player first thing, not just as a free huge income but as world resources ripe for the picking. All the extra goods will build an expensive base quickly, so that full scale war can begin as early as possible.

No. Nothing. Just the commander.

That could be a start option.

Isn't this the exact opposite of what we are trying to fix with the egg?

Your suggestions here would mean...

More map memorization of reclaim

Same number of start game clicks to build the starting base (often in exact same order for every game) but you must now click them all FASTER.

Start with 3+ build units instead of 1 or 2? Whoever can click the fastest on start wins. Will encourage scripted starts.

Yes, like prebuilt bases in supcom.

Indeed!