It's time to talk unit ideas

I made a bad assumption. I assumed he was right with it not giving more

how about a perimeter defense system that works like an "invisible fence" (like some people use with pet dogs)

1. you set the perimeter a la an area command (click and drag a circle)
2. any enemy ground units that pass over the perimeter take damage (the 'fence' is invisible to enemies, except perhaps with radar coverage?)
3. the damage taken by an enemy unit is a function of your available stored energy
4. the energy cost per unit of damage is a function of the size of the defined perimeter (i.e. you can make a huge perimeter, but it will cost a TON of energy when enemies cross the fence)

the idea is that this can be an effective way to defend a large base from small raiding parties, or a small base/portion of a base from large numbers of units

edit: apologies if this has been proposed elsewhere and i missed it

1. Too complex
2. Not a unit
3. No shields.

NEXT!

I don't really care what units are added along as there is the variety that the original TA offered.

I'm totally gonna take responsibility on this (i'm lazy went right to page 42) so if it's been said I'm sorry. MIRV bots? Or... any type of rocket that splits into many deadlier rockets, nukes are nice an all but sometimes you just need to litter to earth in flak to take care of an enemy.

I have to admit I didn't read this whole thread to check if my ideas were already posted.

The first two are basically single-use mobile weapons platforms:

No-Fly-Zone: A tank that drives to a location, anchors itself to the ground, and becomes a vertical shotgun with a wide spread. If a certain number of flying units (say, 6 minimum) cross into its cone of fire it will activate, doing large damage to all of them. It will then disintegrate, being spent. If it has not fired it can pack up shop and redeploy somewhere else.

Missile Matryoshka: A large, expensive air/spacecraft designed to bypass missile defenses. It will fly headlong at its target and deploy a large number of warheads, which will spread out before converging on the target(s) for small damage each. The sheer number of projectiles will make it difficult to counter. The craft itself will Kamikaze into to target for very heavy damage. It could be set to patrol and only auto-target large/expensive air/spacecraft.

I also have a couple of ideas for what are essentially giant guns:

Rail-railgun: Construction vehicles could lay train tracks, circling structures or even entire planets. Expensive but extremely powerful anti-air railguns could be set on cars that could move around (slowly)

Walking Petawatt Laser: This is a unique unit in that its purpose is not to attack other units. It's a huge, 3-4 legged platform with a swiveling laser that is too slow and inaccurate to target air/spacecraft. Its primary purpose would be to target the side of an incoming planetoid. It would flash-vaporize the surface rock, ejecting it into space, effectively creating propulsive rocket at a right angle to the object's trajectory. In this way, it could deflect the planetoid and avert its collision with the planet the laser is based on. It may also take potshots at stationary structures on other planets when they're close in orbit. It would be... very expensive.

Burrower- Stealth Unit

A strong but slow ambush unit that can burrow and move underground, making them invisible to units. The burrower would mainly be used as a specialized unit to set ambushes or burrow under enemy defenses. To see the burrower underground you will need radar. This unit will be built in a t2 bot factory.

Orbital-Debris-in-a-Box: The best way to take out a spacecraft or fleet of them in real life would be to put a cloud of debris in front of them and just let them run into it. They would impact with the force or railgun rounds if the velocity difference was high enough. This unit flies at a right angle to an oncoming ship or fleet and drops a bunch of junk in their path. If it can make it close enough that they are unable to avoid the cloud without being destroyed first, the debris impact will do extremely heavy damage to the fleet. The craft itself will be lightly armored to provide some balance.

Railgun Well Drill: A mobile drilling platform that trundles along the equator drilling wells half-way to the core and outfitting them as massive railguns. The only purpose of these guns would be to automatically take shots at other planets when they're lined up just right. They'd do damage equivalent to a nuke. If bombed at the surface, the surface will cave in, sealing the barrel. The gun must be manually decommissioned. If it is not, the next time it automatically fires the underground explosion will cause an earthquake that destroys all structures in an extremely wide radius.

The power output could be doubled by extending it with an expensive space elevator. If cut at the bottom it would fly off into space. If cut at the mid-span, the top would fly off and the bottom would wrap around the planet, doing light damage to equatorial structures.

planetary annihilator - this is a cannon a cannon that can annihilate planets but its not just build done no it need 4 parts it can only be built on a size 4 planet 2 pices on the North and South pole 2 on the sides then it needs a LOT of energy to charg the cannon when its charged it fires a huge gided Artilery shell at any planet of your likeing destroying the planet

Orbital could use some serious beefing up, some thoughts:

Orbital Constructor:
High cost, high build power, low efficiency, launched from the orbital factory. This unit is the equivalent of T1 in an overhauled orbital game. It constructs both new space infrastructure as well as several units previously launched from the orbital factory such as the radar arrays, orbital lasers, and power arrays, also constructs new orbitals outlined below.

Orbital Yard:
Orbital construction factory, essentially T2 in the orbital game, constructs heavier orbital units that can't be launched from a planet. Constructed by the Orbital Constructor.

Deep Space Transport:
Constructed at the orbital yard, able to transport a large number of units from the orbital zone of one planet to another, further capable of dropping "bot" type units from orbit onto a planetary surface without itself leaving orbit. This unit is fairly specialized, think of it as a robot C130 in deep space. It can bring in an orbital drop, and it can even transport heavier equipment, but needs receiving facilities for transferring the heavy stuff. Most important, it doesn't descend, thus it requires units to be moved up into orbit for pickup.

Deep Space Cruiser:
The big brother of the orbital fighter, constructed at the orbital yard, operates more akin to a naval unit, with much heavier armor and multiple weapons. Acts as a heavy escort for transports and a breacher unit for assaulting orbital zones held by opposing players.

Heavy Orbital Constructor:
Constructed at the orbital yard, similar to it's T1 counterpart, very large and inefficient compared to other constructors. Constructs the largest orbital facilities.

Orbital Defense Satellite:
Capable of firing at extreme range, armed with both missile and beam weapons. Primary purpose is planetary defense, able to shoot down incoming orbital units quickly and from the greatest range of any unit, also mounts anti nuke launcher. Note: this unit should be extremely pricey and take massive power to operate. constructed by the Heavy orbital constructor. This unit is limited to the orbital zone in which it is built and cannot move beyond orbit.

Orbital Ion Cannon:
The big brother of the orbital laser satellite, able to rapidly destroy structures and units with an AoE beam weapon. constructed by the Heavy orbital constructor, incredibly energy hungry, expect a single shot to effectively stall your econ no matter how many storage units you build. This unit is limited to the orbital zone in which it is built and cannot move beyond orbit.

Beanstalk:
Basically a space elevator, constructed by the Heavy orbital constructor. The beanstalk is constructed over terrestrial planets, and acts as the bridge into orbit or onto planet for heavy equipment. Entire armies, even production lines can be routed to it and then be lifted quickly into orbit for transport on deep space transports to other planets, or even to perform drops onto heavily turtling opponents. This structure along with it's sibling the skyhook is unique in that it's vulnerable to attack both on the ground and in orbit.

Skyhook:
Constructed by the Heavy orbital constructor on gas giant bodies, similar to the beanstalk, but with a different function. This structure is the ultimate in energy generation, bar none. It sucks up gasses from the effectively limitless atmosphere of gas giants, it pumps these gasses into an array of massive fusion reactors built into the station at the orbital end.

Explanations:
Rather than simply throw out a bunch of units I thought were cool here, I'm trying to come up with a balanced approach that creates both more interesting, and more meaningful play in orbit and on multiple planets. Truthfully interplanetary movement currently needs work, it takes too long to move units around and generally if one player gets booted off the primary then most likely they're going to lose, it'll just take an extra half hour. I'm anticipating that this will get fixed by allowing for more direct orbits, but if that doesn't happen most of this post is rendered pointless because no one will play in big systems due to the extra time it takes to play those games.

The second big issue is that right now orbital mostly exists entirely as a sideshow to planetary play. To a degree I think this is intended, but as it is right now it's not in a satisfactory state. A lot of games don't bother to take advantage of the possibilities of multiple planet systems because they don't offer anything beyond the same gameplay dragged out for longer.

In the unit set I outlined above there are several units/structures that act to bring a new level of gameplay, and several others that act as window dressing for those core concept units. The core units are as follows:

orbital constructor>orbital yard>heavy orbital constructor>deep space transport/beanstalk

This lineup of units brings in a new style of play, specifically, orbital invasion. as the game stands, there really isn't a good way to drop onto an enemy held planet that doesn't involve nukes, the only plans I've seen out of uber for moving units around beyond the already implemented single transport are the unit cannons and teleporters. Unit cannons are cool, but they look like they only shoot bots, probably wouldn't be good for use beyond a moon's primary. Teleporters so far look like stargates, which makes me think that they won't really be good for invading so much as reinforcing, also the only units we've seen in relation to them are again bots.

In an orbital assault with the core unit list above, I envision the assaulting player first sending in orbital attack units like fighters and the cruisers if they were put in. The first units would probably be followed with a staggered launch of orbital lasers, heavy constructors and deep space transports loaded with bots to drop, including probably all varieties. The bots drop from orbit to establish a beachhead, rapidly constructing as many defenses as they can using the orbital lasers and dropped attack bots to hold off the counter attack. Assuming the beachhead holds, the heavy constructors in orbit start constructing a beanstalk over it, as this is going on the aggressor launches his next wave, this one equipped with vehicles. As the beanstalk finishes the vehicle transports arrive in orbit, the first loads of heavy equipment start descending to planet. By this point the beachhead is probably developing into a full base if it holds on, but the extra units coming from off planet are a huge help against an entrenched opponent, and it allows infrastructure on one planet to assist operations on another.

Basically what I'm envisioning with this is space robot D-Day.

Planetary Denial Flak Frigates: If a planet is lost but you want to give your opponent a hell of a time actually using it, send a fleet of these. Each one, upon reaching orbit around the target planet, will explode, leaving behind the remains of its frame as well as its payload of caltrops. About 50 or so would induce Kessler Syndrome, filling the planet's orbit with so much junk that anything trying to get onto or off of the planet would take medium to heavy damage.

How about a Gatling unit 9mabe a spider?) that shoots projectiles out of the sky like the one on modern day cruisers.
it would be slow, but could fire constantly and negate all artillery such as hulkins, pelter, catapult etc.

it would not work on lasers.

I'm curious whether the devs even got the time and enthusiasm to read through all of this. I somehow doubt it

How about a slow moving generator vehicle that works a bit like the repulse wave building in SC2, while not completely stopping units or weapon fire it's make it take longer to pass through the area of effect, giving you time to stack defenses or pull back from incoming fire.

i like the ideas

-interstellar cruser and a lot of other space ship ,

- orbital station where you can create space ship, unit ect..

- orbital defence to protect the planet from the enemy space ship and astéroïde

- soldier , weak but at low cost

-long range artillery but when it must shoot need to be deployed and so can't move anymore

Maybe give the option for t2 fabbers to improve t1 factories like Starcraft 2's Terran tech labs so say you can have higher armoured ant (slightly) or produce two at the same time perhaps?

No point adding complicated stuff like that. Why have an "armored ant" when you can just make that a completely separate unit? Why make a factory make 2 units at once when you can just build 2 factories?

Mike

Because this is the unit ideas thread.

I have an idea factory that once the plant can be run on another planet (like a rocket).
You just build a similar building to the launch pad. Book there and build a plant like a nuclear missile is launched at the right place for you.
P.S
Sorry if this idea was already.