It's time to talk unit ideas

Planet Destroyer Cannon: For when you can't get a foothold to take out those incoming planets. Note: range is limited to just outside of orbit.

Interplanetary Rail Gun: Built like abuilding, but will over of the surface of a planet. Instead of building ammo it will take a chunk out of the planet that it is on and fire that. It's shots will travel faster than that of most other weapons.

Entirely lacking originality and stealing from past games, I miss the following concepts as I feel they can all serve a specialized purpose where the current unit batch is lacking:

- Maverick (TA): High damage, low armor bot, very useful in a group with some damage soakers but tend to be a bit weak without some armor alongside them.

- Salem-class Destroyer (SupCom): A destroyer boat which can grow legs and walk across land. Obviously really adds a dimension to your naval choices.

- Hovercrafts: Not sure if an entire class of units is necessary, maybe just the basic Tank/AA hovers but give them a bit of oomph so they might still fill a void on land. Perhaps they could be high speed but low acceleration / turning speed so they could almost act as interceptors as well as naval.

- Popup cannons (TA): Viper/Toaster, fairly low range turrets which hibernated under heavy armor until they were needed.

- Goliath (TA): Slow, armored tank, with a low-range high-blast radius shell for crowd control.

- Flak AA: Direct fire AA with a blast radius for air crowd control.

- Can / Brick / Sumo: Very high armor, high damage bot with very slow movement.

- Rapier: Air Gunship, hovers and strafes left/right instead of the typical attack runs associated with other air units.

Two units I'd like to see...
- False Intel Bot : Displays false radar signals.
- Strategic Missile Countermeasure Truck : Can launch a counter missile to intercept strategic missiles.

If you ever add a naval transport, please give it a miniature unit cannon, much better than any other unloading mechanic IMO. Imagine using 10 of them for a D-day style invasion while amphibious tanks roll up onto the shoreline.

Anti-naval artillery that fires depth charges. Can only fire at naval. Projectiles sink for a second after hitting the water, then explode in a watery pillar. Damages ships and subs.

Aircraft carrier that also acts as mobile radar.

Every naval game has a battleship with massive guns. Lets be different and give the "battleship" a massive MASSIVE battery of dozens of inaccurate dumb-fire rockets instead. Every other ship already has deck guns. This would also make it suck against other ships requiring an escort instead of just spamming battleships. You could even let it fire at air, if only for the LOLs.

Some kind of Sumo/Can analog. Big heavy unit that is slow as molasses. Hard to kill but vulnerable to almost all artillery. Something that strikes fear into the depths of your soul when you see 20 of them slowly creeping towards you.

Mechanized Infantry. Some kind of advanced tank that can carry its own, weaker version of the Dox as ammo. Also has some weakish weapon for defense. Upon reaching 2x its attack range, it unleashes 1-2 of its infantry and they continue together towards the target. If the infantry dies the tank will begin building another to replace it in 20-30 seconds. After the target is dead, if there are no nearby targets, the infantry loads back up. (similar to a protoss carrier, but less units released, and ground instead of air). Might be overly complex, but I'm just brainstorming and trying to spark imagination.

I've got some ideas below, but it's really interesting to think about the units and weapons that made TA unique versus the weapons that are in supreme commander. TA had some more wacky ideas, almost world war 2 inspired, Supcom tended to be more "realistic scifi" inspired by modern warfare hardware. With PA being a little more cartoony, I can see a few more off-the-wall units being present.

Ta inspired:

• Gunslinging bot ala Maverick, just call it Woo.
  
• Some sort of homage to "The Can" (Anyone else remember the ta unit previewer discussions?)
  
• Boat/Bot, Pelican style.
  
• Vertical Missile Launch Units.. Dominator.. Merl..
• Millennium style warship, six cannons baby.
• Doomsday Device
  
• Pop-up turrets that use active camo doors!

Ta 3rd Party Units Inspired:

• Underwater Landfactory
• Mobile air repair pads
• Armored and armed frontline advanced metal extractors.
• I always liked the Bantha mini-krogoth-level bot for ARM.
• Long range inaccurate missile spam bot, has to have a report that strikes terror upon raining firing off a barrage.

Latest Technology Inspired:

• Homage to Mars Landers, sky crane/air bag style delivery units to surface of nearby planet.
• Imaging satellite that sends you updates on troublesome enemy troop movements.
• Actually on that note, think about the imaging strips that NASA gets back from Cassini, would be awesome if satellites had to closely follow Newtonian laws.

Excited to see what gets picked!

A boat transport which delivers by beaching itself and lifts is lid and dropped its sides so all contained units freely walk out in formation battle ready all guns blazing. The boat would be heavy armour when sealed but very low armour deployed and so in many respects it could be considered disposable.

Just want to toss my vote in for mobile radar and mobile radar jamming. Also, mobile missile defense.

@neutrino to be clear,should we be showing support of ideas in this thread or would you like to try and keep it to a community brain dump?

Decoys and mind-fakes, just to mess with opponents.

Decoy Nuclear Missile Silo - Builds Decoy Missiles.

Decoy Missile - Flies to a target conspicuously like any other, but makes a tiny explosion. Distracts anti-missile silos.

Camouflaged Missile Silo - Builds missiles. Appears to be a Metal Extractor (and only marginally more durable). Must be built on a metal node. As a game-balancing exchange, that metal node contributes nothing to production.

Camouflage-capable Commander - Commander sits on a metal node and acts like a Metal Extractor. Commander cannot contribute to production in this mode. Opponents can tell because this extractor produces more metal (normal MEx + commander normal output) than it should.

One of my favourite ideas for a unit is one that can lock down its weapons and hull down to reduce incoming damage. A great way to essentially block incoming fire to allow units behind it to dps down an incoming threat.

A weapon that does relatively long-lasting area effect damage.

Something like the death spark from the Chicken in SC:FA but obviously toned down damage-wise.
It needn't be sparks, could be fire, plasma, acid, that super-hot jam found only inside fresh donuts, etc.

May/may not continue to move a bit after landing.
But I think some randomness/inaccuracy in where it lands would be good to stop it blobbing up too much.

cloak / stealth units, flak unit, hovercraft / amphibious tank, building that detects nuclear signatures , no micro units (switching abilities), quantum gate - for additional clan players?

- Walkable walls. For forcing the opposing team into artillery. Slow moving, very high HP (though not as much as a normal wall).

- Trip-wire drones. 2 fragile units tethered together. Enemy units that pass between them briefly power down. Going beyond the maximum tethering distance detonates the drones.

- Chaos bombardier. Fires/drops bombs that cause no damage. Affected units lose control and fire randomly.

- Hologram drone. Temporarily displays player-selected units that do no damage, have half health.

- Jet bots. For jumping behind enemy lines. Distance traveled determines cool down. Can be shot down in air.

Fully agree with no micro units and the nuclear signature radar is real nice.

Flak AA is going to be needed, especially if uber end up adding gunships.
I also love the idea of build-able platforms over water/lava/metalplanet trenches for units to walk over(though i'm not sure if this falls within the scope of units that neutrino is thinking of for this thread).

A light arty designed to counter turrets and soft naval would be neat.
Some flame units, that leave a temporary aoe to diter units would be cool.

Reminds me of Red Alert. Does make me think it might be fun to steal the 'beaches itself' idea for, say, a coastal attack ship.

stealth units? with the big range of radar and vision provided by orbital satellites, I would think some kind of cloaked or stealthed units would be great.

Both of these. Yes. The anti-naval arty would be very useful for when the enemy has complete domination over the naval theatre with submarines, making it impossible to expand in that way. And the transport with the mini-unit-cannon would A. be awesome, B. be more intuitive than the old TA-crane-lift transports of yore, and C. Add a bit of cool strategies, such as firing walking bombs into the enemy shore defenses.

Don't forget base defense Turrets: (on top of what we already have)

Keys:
Catapult missile launcher is used as a reference.

SPEED
Very slow (catapult Speed)
Slow
Medium
Fast
Very Fast

RANGE
Very Short
Short
Medium
Long
Very Long (catapult range)

DAMAGE
Very Low
Low
Medium
High
Very high (catapult Damage)

SIZE
Small
Medium (basic base defense turret now)
Large
Very large

RoF = Rate of Fire​

Basic Defenses:
Laser Turret:
Small Size
Medium RoF, Very Short Range, Low Damage.
Description: Red Beam or laser bolt shot from a single laser cannon.
Other Suggestions: Could shoot air as well, cheap to build.
Reason: Internal base defense for units dropped past main defenses, also good for Air defense backup.

Plasma Battery:
Medium Size
Slow RoF, Medium Range, Med Damage.
Description: Slow moving amber colored Plasma Glob that explodes on impact, small AoE, cant shoot on very short range.
Other Suggestions: One of my favorites from TA, could cost small amount of energy each shot.
Reason: Good Basic base defense to compliment faster shooting defenses, cheap to build.

Minigun:
Medium Size
Fast RoF, Short range, Very low Damage.
Description: Shoots fast moving streams of metal.
Other Suggestions: Two miniguns per pylon..?
Reason: Tracks fast moving targets, dual targets with twin miniguns

Advanced Defenses:
Adv. Laser Installation:
Large Size
Fast Rof, Medium Range, Medium Damage.
Description: Green Beam or laser bolt shot from a cycling triple barrel laser.
Other Suggestions: Could cost energy to shoot, could have tri turret target 3 targets simultaneously
Reason: Powerful defense but easy to destroy. Good for backing up your frontline.

Adv. Plasma Ubergun
Very Large Size
Slow Rof, Long Range, High Damage
Description: Large Violet slow moving Plasma Glob that splits into 5 globs close to impact, medium AOE
Other Suggestion: Costly build and cost energy to fire, no good against fast targets, good at suppression fire. Volatile when destroyed.
Reason: Backline defense, good support fire, help crack a massive rush.

Adv. Melta Minigun
Very large Size
Very Fast RoF, Medium Range, Low Damage
Description: Big monster minigun, shoots metal slugs so fast that they cause micro explosions on impact. Very small AoE
Other Suggestions: Cost Metal to Fire, costly to build. have two small mineguns each side that shoot air.
Reason: Tough frontline defense, works best against masses of bots clumped together. Can take a pounding.


Anyways, this is what i have been thinking about...choices for defense, aswell as offense with units would be great!

Regards,
Nayzablade

I think a unit that will help clear the wreckage would help. Back in TA a proper amount of artillery/defenses would stop any army regardless of the size because their own wreckage would almost completely stop their progress. So maybe a flame thrower that could destroy wreckage and also serve as a close quarters assault unit. Or a high hp field engineer.

From somewhere earlier in this thread, Im also in favor of an ai controlled sub commander. A lot of my attention while playing PA is focused on finding a perfect balance between economy and building an army, rather than coordinating attacks and witnessing awesome battles.

My other random ideas
Self replicating dragoon teeth
Would serve as a base building denial by building more of itself around the area. It would spread like a virus consuming resources, until there is no more room or its told to stop. The enemy could still reclaim them, so you might just end up giving them resources.

Suicidal orbital unit
Will be easily destroyed, but can be used to patrol far away planets or to destroy unprotected transports. Maybe even ground targets, and used as a last ditch effort to stop an incoming asteroid.

Observatory
Land based building to watch planets. Because of the speed of light, there would be a delay before registering an enemy unit. Maybe if it will only scan planets in it's field of view, it could add a bit more strategic thought in the system builder.

Unit catapult
This is probably just a ripoff from a building from supcom2, but I think it would be cool to launch an army between planets/moon when they are close enough.

Tank/bot split
A large medium armored tank that will split into 2 bots upon death.

Btw, hello guys, this is my first post here