On tech tiers, planet types and special attributes

So I've seen a lot of discussion on how tech tiers should be used. Should it be TA style? Should it be SupCom1 or 2 style?

I'm here to propose a compromise.

The Commander, tier 10 technology
Somewhere in Total Annihilation, it mentions the Commanders and Warp Gates being level 10 or so technology, while everything else is around level 2. This could be used to justify how the commander has the Life Brea-instakill shot, but oh well, same exact fugging as Huskar's ult, but that's a rant for a different forum altogether, how it can build faster and why you can only have one at a time. This could also be used for building very, very large structures and units-in my previous thread I mentioned artificial moon-sized orbital bombardment ships and rings used for various defensive purposes that would only be able to be built with a very, very large metal economy-with the justification being that only the Commander carries the proper schematics-think of how the real Baneblades are only built on Mars, and any Baneblade built on another planet sucks in 40k.

This brings me to my time-based tech trees possibility.
Now now, put down the pitchforks and torches. Just because Zorua is a dark type doesn't mean I have malicious intent... always.

This would work like this: the Commander would have access to every building in the game from the start. This is operating under the assumption that your Commander is a veteran of a thousand battles over dozens of galaxies, and doesn't need to develop technology, just build the bases. But what, you may ask, stops you from hoarding metal and energy to build the Giant Metal Death Cock? Several things, one, you wouldn't have enough to build anything really big with just a small planet's supply of metal and energy, you would need several solar systems to build something REALLY dangerous, and in any useful amounts. Two, you would need a minimum amount of extractors, generators, engineers and storage tanks to build a big structure, think of it as your Commander, drawing on his extensive battlefield experience, knowing not to rush for the biggest and the baddest early on. I call this a time-based tech tree because it's much more efficient to go through step by step, such as spending the first 20 minutes expanding over a quarter of a planet, the next 20 going to nearby moons and asteroids and taking over more of the planet, the next 20 you own the solar system and are leaving it, and so on and so forth, so that a Death Star that shoots ships that shoot units at lightspeed across the galaxy would only be truly cost-effective around the 3 hour mark, and even then might not be required (See: Awesome but Impractical).

So we've gone over how the Commander scales up, but how about the units? For this I propose a hybrid of SupCom 1 and TA, in that you have your tier 1, 2 and 3 factories, and each can be upgraded once for a new unit or two, and faster building, but each are independent of the last. You need a tier 1-2 engineer to build a tier 2 factory, a 2-2 engi for a 3 factory, and 3-2 would be for anything bigger, and so on and so forth.


Now that the tech tiers are done with, let's move onto the planet types. I propose a system that generates a planet based of a few unique modifiers:

Biome: Exactly what it says, is it the Death Star, Hoth, Tatooine or that lava planet from episode 3? These would have their own advantages:
Metal planets have a weak gravity well, but a strong magnetic pull, in addition to no atmosphere. Any bodies of "water" are randomly, ultra-cold coolant that increases the rate of fire of units moving in it, ultra-hot coolant that slowly destroys a unit in it or acid leaks which also damage units in it, but at a faster rate. Any unit that is based around an electric weapon is rendered near useless, as the arc would go straight down or to the nearest piece of metal.
Lava planets have a higher concentration of metal, smaller than average gravity well, weaker magnetic pull and a thin atmosphere that damages any atmospheric aircraft in motion. All bodies of liquid are lava-durr-and act as barriers except for certain special units with strong heat-shields (see below). Units designed for arctic planets take damage over time on these planets.
Ocean planets are exactly what they say on the tin, almost exclusively covered in liquid water or a water-like liquid, have very few deposits of metal-unless there's underwater bases-islands are rare and it has very strong winds. Atmospheric aircraft suffer from reduced movement speed when flying against the wind, but an increased speed when flying towards it.
Gas Giants have no solid ground, and as such, all operations "on" them are conducted in orbit. Due to it being in orbit, there are no metal deposits, but you can build gas extractors for a very large energy gain. That's really all there is to know here other than only space-worthy aircraft or spaceships are capable of traveling through them.
Ice planets have frigid temperatures, which better cools weapons, resulting in higher fire rate at the cost of lower health-due to the cold making the metal brittle. The ground is slippery here, so some walkers and buggies aren't as effective. Has a relatively high concentration of metal and high wind-speed with a relatively level terrain. There is no liquid water on any of these planets, instead, the oceans just increase the slipperiness. Stronger than average magnetic pull, but weaker than metal planets.
Arid planets are covered in canyons, have lower-than-average amounts of metal but very high wind. Nothing really special about them other than this.
Desert planets are pretty level, although the shifting sands decreases the footing of walkers and buggies. They have no metal deposits, high wind, but the sand in the air damages air-breathing engines and wind turbines.

Gravitational Pull: The gravity well of a planet is determined by the size and if it has a regular, liquid, porous or ultradense core (normal for that size, smallest, lower than average and much higher, respectively) and affects any walker or flying unit, decreasing the speed of the former and the reliability of the latter, or increasing it if it has lower gravity. Any unit that has some sort of jump-jet gets a buff or debuff depending on the gravity.
Magnetic pull: This would affect any unit that relies on magnetics-hover tanks, railguns, etc.-and is directly varies to the amount of metal on a planet and inversely to the temperature.
Atmosphere thickness/composition: The thicker the atmosphere, the more effective an air-breathing engine would be, the composition really just means if it has a lot of particles in it or not. Particles damage anything that requires moving air, so an air breathing engine would suffer massive damage from flying in a lava or desert planet.
Temperature: This affects the rate of fire and hitpoints of units, and in higher temperatures, starts to cause damage. Starting at a middle point, let's say, 50 Celsius, hitpoints would start to go down at 25 Celsius as the temperature made the metal brittle. Hitpoints would also start to go down at about 125 Celsius, as the heat would weaken the metal. Rate of fire varies inversely with the temperature, as colder temperatures assist heat-sinks, and hotter temperatures hinder it.

Now that the tech trees and planets are out of the way, how about we go to the unit attributes? That is, if you're still reading this, and didn't just scroll past and reply with "TEE ELL SEMICOLON DEE ARR LAWL".

Movement types: This is broken up into the following catagories.
Treads: are good with gentle hills, and are the last to lose traction on desert or ice planets. Extremely slow on metal and lava planets due to the jagged terrain.
Walkers: Better at crossing rough terrain than their treaded comrades, especially those with more legs, walkers suffer severe movement penalties on ice and desert planets due to the unsure footing, and can often fall over. More legs = more stability, but less speed.
Hovers: Hovertanks are strange, they don't touch the ground, so they don't gain buffs or debuffs from cold or hot liquids, ice or deserts. Their speed and maneuverability are dependent on the magnetic field of the planet they're on, however, so they can move over the rough terrain of a metal planet due to the strong electromagnetic force acting on them, but are near useless on a lava planet due to their lower magnetic field and rougher terrain. Usually carry rail-weaponry and weak armor, but their speed and maneuverability is unmatched.
Air-breathing planes: An air-breather is a plane that is restricted to atmospheric flight only, they are more efficient in thicker atmospheres, but take damage if that planet has some sort of particle in the air.
Spaceplanes: Near useless in atmosphere, these are designed for fighting in the vacuum of an asteroid, moon or metal planet.

But you may ask, if you're fighting on a particular planet for a long time, wouldn't it get boring to be restricted to one or two units? That' why I propose an automatic Planet Compensator. This is a separate tray of units that can be built that are optimized for that planet type only, so if you have a small ice planet, you can build walkers that have higher health and move pretty quickly, but if you put them on a larger and hotter planet, they suffer severe movement and health debuffs.

So as always, replies are always accepted, don't complain if you didn't read the whole thing, and suggestions, questions or ideas are always appreciated!

Seriously, what ever happened to airbag hovercraft technology?

You can armor plate them you know, and you essentially cant shoot under them because of the skirt.

The problem with so many tech levels and so many types of units that can be customised is that one ends up with an insane number of units in the game. A lot of which will be pretty useless and be a waste of space.

Your planets idea is pretty neat though.

Someone somewhere decided that technomagically hovering above ground was better-looking and more awesome than airbags, and everyone followed.
That said, magitech hovers are probably more all-terrain and versatile than airbag ones, and I'm not sure airbags would work on airless worlds. And they would probably produce stupid amounts of dust clouds on dusty terrain. But I think the main reason is still better look.