It's time to talk unit ideas

and while we are at it, another mech suit for the mech suit, since we all know nesting is good (http://xkcd.com/878/)

I like the suggestions involving stealth, camouflage or decoy buildings/units.
The problem with these, as used in previous games, is the integration into the general information sources, at least most of the time. Often enough it was either to easy or to hard to spot the illusion. At least a separation of the detection methods into more sub groups would probably be needed, e.g., radar/visual into ground, air and orbital giving different options to detect/hide from certain groups of units.

PA endgame then becomes the TTGL endgame. I can get behind this. Planet smashing by means of giant mecha drills.

Decoys could be identical to normal commander but they would be detected as decoy by radars.

I think there should be an experimental unit tier like they had in Supreme Commander. It adds that big game changer unit to land combat and makes you stay alert if you leave people alone for too long.

i would like to see superprojects, they were a lot of fun in mods for total annihlation like TAUCP were you had this tier of units and buldings that cost absurd amounts of resources and were very powerful, like the Karganeth!

vanilla ta had these too like the sawblade that was basically a ultra rapid firing artillery that cost a lot of resources to maintain.

I'll start by saying that I realy like this unit idea.

It reminded me of the "Seed" that players will get (in the future) in the beginning of the game. Even though there isnt much know about the seed it will be customizable so that can fit a players personal taste. And that it will speed up the beginning of the game a bit.

This got me thinking...
It also might be fun to have a point system to "fill up" your own "Seed". Lets say you have 1000 points in your "Seed". Then you could start filling it up with things that you prefer. 800points for and tank factory and 2x 100 points for 2 engineers. This would give early game a boost and get you started a bit faster.

Idea's for the Seed unit (it must not be capable of everything at the same time):
Deploy location - In the beginning you should be able the choose where you want to deploy it.
Production capabilities - Production capabilities for either air, water, tank or bot.
3 - 4 Defence turrets - Your beginning base instantly has some defence.
4 - 6 basic units - Choose a couple of starting units.
Increased Metal or energy Capacity - More max metal or energy
Increased Metal or energy Production - Produce more metal or energy

Unit suggestions:
Obital Drop turrets - An Orbital unit that can be sent to another planet. When dropped on a planet and then turns into a turret.
Nuclear Sub - Submarine with Nuclear.
Orbital Lazer - An extremely powerfull orbital lazer that can create trenches in the planet. Good for offence and creating a better defencive position. Needs to power up before using, requiers Laser Command Center.
Lazer Command Center - Command structure for the orbital lazer and also transfers the power to the Lazer.
Bridges - Just an normal birdge to get over trenches.
Ramp - To get to higher ground.
Advanced AA tower - Please put in the game already.
Radar jammer - Only hides a very small area from radar, to hide commander, a nuke silo or to hide a metal extactor. Cannot hide large buildings and it drain a lot of energy. (no power no cloak)

Unclear thoughts
Something to destoy mountains.
We got a planet why not something to build into it, units that can hide under the ground a building that you build into the planet and leaves a hole when destoyed, a bunker for the commander.

The game needs more Lasers and plasma wapons. So that combat is more Colorfull.

Two ideas IMMEDIATELY came to mind.

One is a PA analogue to the A-10 Thunderbolt II. Essentially, in game, an air unit with zero air-to-air capability, designed entirely around a weapon system that only has one purpose: destroying enemy armor. It could be balanced by making it "lock-on" to a heading prior to a strafing run, but be unable to adjust while engaging in said strafing run. Thus it would be good against slow or massed groups of enemies, but not against single, agile targets. I can't draw very well, so I will leave that you your imagination.

The second is somewhere along the lines of a skirmishing/ambush/flanking tank. Forget the tracks, go for over-size all-terrain wheels. In lieu of a light gun to match with it's light armor though, put on a large, slow-firing, rail-gun. Something that's like a cross between a monster-truck and an M1-Abrams. There's similar "real-world" examples out there, but most have 8 all-terrain wheels, and I think 4 MASSIVE ones fits the bill for PA a bit better.

As far as super units go I do have some thoughts along those lines but that's not what I'm looking for at the moment.

Right now want I want to do is flesh out the T1/T2 air/land/sea stuff so we have a bit more variety and specialized roles.

Terrain modification is something I'm going to be incredibly careful about as I think it has the ability to change the fundamental way the game plays very easily. One of the things we've experimented with along those lines is having commanders leave craters behind when they go up...

What about a unit that goes around seething mines, this can be a T1 unit that lays basic mines and have a T2 counterpart that can lay much heavyer hitting mines. This could be implemented on ground and sea, and could give a very interesting game mechanic. It could work along the lines of the unit sits there and you select a area within range and it slowly build up a mine field by fireing mines into the selected area.

apologies for not reading the thread yet, but will do this week and post something more informed when I get 5!

Initially what I'd do to add to the 'fun' of the game - I'd just have some T1 stealth/cloaked units, great fun for the opening game, undetectable by base defense without a certain radius/radar upgrade/radar unit or commander nearby etc - send them to attack fab units or surround an area early on ( low damage in small numbers, but not too cheap to make and without using obvious air attacks it would add to the tension/unpredictability early on)

keep up the good work

T1 or T2 unit ideas

Paladin - Tank. Has a shield (physical metal shield, not energy) that has roughly 3-4 times the regular units HP and has a separate hp pool from the unit. The shield only takes damage from the front. If attacked from behind, or if the shield dies, the actual unit begins taking dmg. The paladin turns slowly but has a powerful, fast projectile railgun. High dmg, low ROF, medium range. If it overkills a unit, no wreckage is left. (dunno if this is already a mechanic).

Zombie - Bot. Fast, med-low HP. Short range, high ROF weapon. Upon death, if the wreckage still exists, after 20-30 seconds, the bot will pull itself back together with about 1/3 of its original HP, will not leave a second wreckage. If the wreckage is destroyed or reclaimed, no effect.

There is an obvious interplay between these two units. Zombies attacking paladins headon will be crushed, and the wreckage obliterated, so no reviving. However, the zombies can flank the paladins to avoid their weapons and bypass their shields, shooting the unit directly. That way, neither is a hard counter to the other, but they both affect the other.

Edit: You could even replace one of the T1 or T2 bot/tank sets with these two units to get rid of the T1-T2 mirroring.

I'd LOVE an A-10 unit.

@neutrino These are some of the better (in my opinion) ideas from this thread that match those criteria:

• A T2 anti-air tower. The current anti-air tower doesn't do much good against the T2 bombers, leaving me to have to amass Fighters and spinners to guard my base. A better anti-air tower would be quite helpful to that end.
• Better scouts. It would be helpful to have radar on the scout units since the current ones are horrible for scouting due to their short range. That would also allow use as a sort of mobile radar system that you could park near important areas for surveillance.
• Gunships
• Transports

I'm not sure if the Devs would want to include any kind of close quarters assault bot, however I don't recall seeing anything like it in TA or Supcom. What I'm thinking of is a unit that has to get extremely close in order to attack the enemy perhaps with a shotgun type weapon, plasma torch, or pseudo melee weapon (plasma whip, hydraulic mace, etc ). The problem from what I can see is how to handle durability and mobility. You could either make them have high durability for their tech level with low mobility or you could give them medium-low durability but high mobility.

Another idea is to have early to mid game hover-frigates/light cruisers. These would allow naval forces to be more of a factor during the early/mid game on maps where water is present but not ubiquitous. They should be slower on land and have a proportional reduction in durability for the hover tech.

T2 Assault Gun
Tank with a potent direct-fire cannon. Above average range and very slow fire rate, useful for picking off levelers or destroying heavier mobile targets, but not an optimal choice in slug fights or against mobile artillery, and vulnerable to walls (unless you have them skipping across the sky in the claws of an Astraeus).

T2 Heavy Crawling Bot
Large many-legged bot that can crawl over or on top of buildings, walls and CLIFFS. Armed with medium field artillery. Useful defensively to supplement base defenses by standing on and protecting them with its bulk or using factories to achieve a heightened line of sight, and useful offensively to exploit natural terrain from which to ambush, harass or besiege the enemy from unexpected directions.

AWACS/EWS Aircraft
Airborne countermeasure and Early Warning System plane with high durability. Possible features:
- Can attract SAM fire away from more fragile fighters and bombers (e.g. aggro and tank)
- Detects the launch sites and targets of tactical missiles and nuclear weapons. Extends beyond radar range.
- Detects heavy artillery sites and impending targets. Extends beyond radar range.
- Distinguishes bombers from other aircraft. Applied within radar range.

a T2 unit that breaks into multiple T1 units when destroyed

oh. or an aircraft T2 air unit that converts to T1 land unit when crashed

Could I suggest something along the line of the Teir 2 Uef amphibious tank out of Supcom. A tier 2 Land Factory unit, on maybe a similar power scale and build time to ants. The specialization would be undefend lake and ocean mass points, naval factories and launching suprise attacks from yet another direction. Naval units would have an advantage in being able to kite the AT and subs would be hard counter due to the AT inability to target them.

On the same topic, this might not get much agreement but I feel teir 1 and 2 vehicle fabs should be amphibious. This would promote variety in starting builds and would give people a reason to build vechile fabs over bot fabs. I'm not suggesting that the vechile fab gains dedicated naval structure as this would allow the naval fabs to retain their own niche.

Can't believe I forgot a baneling/mobile bomb style unit. If they could also be buried, then groups of the unit could also be used to make minefields.

Adv. naval, cruisers, basically, some better naval AA for t2.

I liked aircraft carriers from supcom, but i feel without the fuel mechanic they end up being pretty redundant.

+1 for gunships, t1 gatling gunships, adv. rocket-pod gunships.

gatling bots.

aquatic tanks or hover tanks.

Air transports.

artillery naval unit. (battleship may already fill that role, but i feel battleships should be very expensive, rarely seen superships.)

If we can touch on buildings at all: Pop up weapons. TA had some good variety for this but I'd like to add a bit to it. Fog of War allowing radar spoofing so it looks like it's in a different spot or there's more than one unit there as opposed to a pop up gun.

Long range sniper emplacements for anti-bombardment but expensive to build/take a while to make. Basically something other than artillery- maybe even more direct fire, like a long range laser.

Beam weapons, constant fire, high energy use. Or even rapid fire weapons as well.

Hover units- Oh my God, yes. By making lava on magma planets act like water so ground forces avoid it but if they get pushed in, take damage- making a use for hover units to traverse. Also for short distances of water impeding barriers.

To go along with the former, transports. Flying, floating, walking, teleporting, swimming.

Could even go as far as to say certain factions have certain weapon types. One using ballistics, another using energy (lasers) and another using say- plasma or something.

Light Crawling Bot
Lightly armed and armored bot, relatively slow, and armed with a very light rocket launcher. It can crawl on other vehicles, either allowing them to carry the bot into battle if allied, or to distract their targeting systems and block weapon fire with its body if hostile.

Orbital Drop Shock Bot
Delivered only in orbital drop pods. Powerful and durable enough to do at least some damage after being deployed in a hot zone, but too slow to compose a practical offensive force.

Special Delivery Transport
Modified transport, designed to pick up enemy units and wreckage and then drop them on unsuspecting forces below. Commanders are highly resistant to fall damage, but can make threateningly effective payloads.
Optionally: A modified Astraeus that can hurl objects from orbit.

From the few games I have played with friends, here is a small list we thought that could be added:

Units;
Commander upgrades - weapons/stronger fab/stealth/interplantary boosters

T1:
Air - Scout, fast moving, large LoS/radar
Land - Mobile Radar

T2:
Air - Ferry, fast moving, no weapons
Air - EMP bomber
Air - Recon plane, stealth, increased LoS/Radar
Land - Anti-tactical missile
Land - Mobile shield generator
Land - Amphibious vehicles
Land - Jump generators
Sea - Anti-tactical missile, armed with shields and anti-air
Sea - Mobile anti-nuke
Sea - Mobile Umbrella

Structures:
Shield Generators
T2 Anti-air
Stealth field generators
Anti-tactical missile turrets
Upgraded umbrella (as it has a rather slow fire rate and is not that accurate)
Jump gates/generators
Power to metal fabs
Unit cannon - both intercontinental and interplanetary
Experimental units
And some way to deal with naval units early on.

Just some ideas, some of which have already been mentioned.