It's time to talk unit ideas

Of course it's a similar to direct fire, fundamentally. A gatling weapon likely wouldn't be very effective against armor of future aircraft, as they're not specifically powerful in terms of bullet damage. An autocannon shooting much slower with more powerful bullets would theoretically be in the same family, but more effective against heavier armor. I don't think there would be a problem if both weaponry existed. Both types are effective and reliable at what they do.

I realize there's some major issues in terms of air balance in SupCom, but this game isn't SupCom. The game is at an early enough point where planning what aircraft can do, and how anti-aircraft works is viable.

I like some of the mechanics SupCom2 has, but one of them that I did not like was the AA, or the entirety of aircraft in general in that game. One of the problems was that there was no possible way to take out air without having air yourself. The ground-based anti-air was just inefficient and useless. You'd need some obscene amount to even take on the smallest air force. On top of that, things like UEF's AC1000 gunship was very cool in itself, but when in large numbers easily broke every bone in basically any base at all with very little land resistance.

Also, would you be able to define the 'old system'? Are we talking vanilla SupCom? TA+CC? Vanilla TA? What does said old system have to do with what he said?

So basically your idea the the same as the Direct Fire I proposed in my AA Trinity then.

This is separate from what we were talking about, me and IGN are discussing the idea of the basic weapon being missiles and that shifted over into talking about SupCom's Flak and so on and so forth.

Mike

What are you talking about? TA's old system had tracking missiles as the first AA defense. It was Supcom that chucked it out to try something else. Turns out that a direct fire weapon isn't terribly effective against the lightest and fastest units in the game (which were placed at Supcom's T3, compared to TA's T1).

Direct fire AA is pointless when half of everything on the ground is already a direct fire unit. Use those instead.

Mulberry Harbours from WW2 these artificial harbors were massive structures built out of concrete blocks, sunken ships and wooden roadways, all floated over in pieces, moved into position and locked down, making it by far the largest Lego project ever undertaken.
At about 1 mile long, each harbor was like a floating city, with depots, docks and roadways sturdy enough to drive tanks on.

Mobile walls. (Requires formations)

A strong unit that can't fire or do anything else, it just tanks a lot of damage. This is different to a mobile shield as a mobile wall would have to be used in a formation. It would be essential for efficient assaults on Point Defence lines. Defenders would need artillery/bombers to shoot over the mobile walls and damage units at the rare of the formation or they would need to flank the formation from the sides/rear.

Radar Jammer unit/building. Making sneak attacks on enemy bases possible.
Also a jammer space ship, to launch sneak attacks on planets.

Buildable nanolathe towers and a stationary scathis [experimental unit in supcom] artillery with maybe 3 arms. It lies flat when not used but then the arms rise and then they begin their spin around. Long range aa missile/laser. Tech 1 aa laser turret, weak damage, fast turning.

Subs that can fire ordinary cruise missiles [non nuclear] and maybe a new necro [resurrection kbot in ta] that a) resurrects units from wrecks and b) actually works properly this time ^-^
My early mine thread- https://forums.uberent.com/threads/mines-land-sea-other-how-to-make-them-work.35007/

Level 1 multiple rocket gunships, tank that has projectiles that can fire through wreckage and maybe landscape. Heavy kbot that has dual railguns that fire through several units at once. Hover tanks and magnetic defences that attract enemy units. Emp missiles that can be fired onto land or space disabling units there. Ground based laser weapons that can bring down orbital weapons. False signature decoy missiles. Working mine fields. And my current avatar!

Crab tank like this

And everything in Hudson's inventory here

I'd like to see some units with special abilities. In other games these would be spells, however to reduce the need for excess micro these could be units with passive abilities that power up when fired upon and last a certain length of time.

I would like to see something like an expensive unit that has high hit points but no attack, and has an AoE that slows the movement speed and fire rate of enemy units. You'd put them at the front of your army to tank and debuff, while your units fire upon them. Could help against large swarms of T1 units.

I'd like to also see some sort of mine that doesn't explode but pops up after a delay and creates a section of impassable terrain, splitting the army.

Having said that. I can imagine that the problem is less"what cool units can we have", but more "how can we get people to build these cool units instead just a standard tank/mine".

Sprayers: Assault bots with a cone-shaped AoE weapon that sprays acid, the acid would lead to a damage over time effect

Burners: Tanks with a cone-shaped AoE flamethrower, like the beforementioned unit but with fire, does more DPS but has a shorter effect time than a Sprayer, the Sprayer's acid effect would deal more damage, but over a longer course of time

Freezers: Slow spider-like bots which spray liquid nitrogen in all directions, slowing enemy units

Pinpointers: Unit with a laser-targeting system, units being targeted by a pinpointer receive more damage

Wardens: A large assault bot that can be toggled to deploy it's shield, changing it's speed to about 10%, but increasing it's HP

Peekers: land units with the capability to bury themselves, useful for creating ambushes

Pulsers: Slow-moving tank that can emit a EMP beam, disabling enemy units in the area

I like damage-over-time units

weak tier 1 units with stealth or cloak ability. Maybe a stealth or cloaked engineer? Idea is to enable some sneakyness.

or a small stealth field generator to get a few buildings up without showing up on a radar on hostile/entrenched planet.

Perhaps some kind of sattelite that can disrupt radars, making your units under the sattelites being invisible for a enemy radar.

The opposite could also be a possibility, a sattelite that amplifies radar activity on certain locations.

Misinformation is the best information, if your enemy is the one who receives it...

A radar jamming satellite? Neat. If the advanced spy sat wasn't such a map hack it'd work fairly well.
+1 for cool support.

Sergeant units they have no attack but make nearby units form formations for better effectiveness

every unit is robot that follows orders exactly... why would sergeant exist?

To create formations such as ants surrounding levellers, or diamond formation etc

Aside from being cryptic, why do you need a unit to do that? Why can't teh commander, which is the AI for itself and every unit under it's control, need to build something so it can tell it what to tell other units to do?

If you think that last sentence is confusing, my point is proven.

Mike

how can i have forgotten that ?

Just generally when doing path finding some units will split off from the group but I do see your point

The solution to that is fixing the pathfinding, not trying to arbitrarily force it because a specific unit is nearby.

Mike

Ever since my days on DM4 in quake 1 i really love / hate everything with knockback that could push me into lava and melt me to death.

Suggestion is to put more hazardous environment in (acid pools / gas clouds / lava) and give some of the weapons, like ubercannon and maybe a few more, knockback so you can have yet another element of danger in the early commander rushes.