Suggestion: MORE Planet Destruction Weapons

As a young lad, one of my favorite games was Master of Orion II - its depth and complexity outstrips many modern games, but even moreso in the area of conquest. In addition to incredible ship-building and combat, there were almost a dozen ways to conquer a planet. Diplomacy, mind control, orbital bombardment, bio-weapons, ground invasions... and of course, outright destruction.

Dropping asteroids is awesome - perhaps comets, too, if added, or even moons. Heck, if big enough engines can be unlocked, one could make worlds (literally) collide! But why stop there? The universe is our playground, and the heavenly spheres our wrecking balls! To diversify whatever endgame inevitably appears, I propose the following;

We need tons of ways to destroy planets.

More importantly, these endgame tools should also have an effect on the game state, and add a breath of fresh air in super-long games if planetary combat becomes (heaven forbid!) monotonous. Just off the top of my head, here's a few to chew on. Each idea has some co-suggestions that would fit well with it, for synergy's sake and avoiding one-note gimmicks.

PLANET EATERS
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lo7JPLJUUU
If you don't do this, modders will. Why let them beat you to the punch, Uber? Planet Eaters would be scary, expensive, and - most crucially - insatiable. A player would have to plan their ravenous movements to avoid starving en route to a distant enemy, and may even turn on allies or their own worlds for sustenance. In truly heroic fashion, armies would battle across the surface of a planet-eater, trying to shut it down - or claim it as their own.

-Artificial Planets: A prerequisite, to be sure, and perhaps an important comeback option. This could open up new strategies, such as a planet collecting defensive moons for a heavy turtle strategy.

-Planet Size: Though a moon is always dwarfed by its planet, the size of worlds is variable. Forging a gigantic planet, or even hollowing out an existing one, would be a satisfying accomplishment if made appropriately difficult.

-Tractor Beams/Gravatic Shear: Optional, but deliciously fun to zoom in on. Same effect could also apply to planets being moved too close to one another, such as when worlds (literally) collide.

PLANET-CRACKING LASERS
You know you want to. Should be made incompatible with Planet Eaters, obviously, but should certainly be moon or planet-mounted. May even see defensive use to shoot down incoming kinetic bombardments, should the projectile's size be too large to be countered by regular planetary gunfire (if any). The resources to power it would be draining, but the predictability of a non-chaotic "FIRE" button would make this a safer investment.

-Planet Fragmentation: The beam's damage could scale with the target's size. Asteroids would be vaporized, moons and small planets could be shattered into tiny asteroids, and larger planets might fragment into continent-size asteroids with some buildings on them still intact. This last point would provide a hard kinetic counter to a defensive planet-destroyer; just throw a really, really big rock at it. The planet fragmentation mechanics may or may not be a core feature anyway, and be applied by other doomsday weapons.

-Volatility: Certain structures might deal considerable damage to its contingent planet when destroyed, and this would be a poster child. Where a simple power reactor might leave a crater, a broken Planet Cracker or similar weapon could ruin an entire continent, shatter its home planet, or (if mounted thereupon) vaporize a moon.

-Abilities as Objectives: By putting a charge timer on the laser, sieging the planet (or evacuating the target world) becomes a sort of mission, as does defending the laser or hunting down refugees. This same principle might lend structure to the overarching space game, diversifying objectives per planet beyond "scorched earth" warfare.

SUN MANIPULATION
Speaking of scorched earth, tinkering with stars might be an interesting super-late-game mechanic. In addition to collapsing suns to make black holes, one might supercharge them with a Solar Storm Inducer, bombarding every world in the system with destructive radiation, or build a Dyson Sphere around one to harness its power in an unfathomably potent (and fragile) late-game battery.

-Black Hole Generators: An important form of territory control and system removal, and a disloyally chaotic one at that. If the planet-engine-strapping game has trajectory mechanics anything like the demo video, a black hole would be an interesting way to take advantage of it. Naturally occuring black holes, if unprepared for or not spotted, would be a significant hazard for migratory moonbases and perambulatory planets. Add soul-crushing nihilism, gravatic shear and and "Everybody loses! Now that's winning!" policy, and it's distinct from other options.

-Solar Radiation: A possible aspect of terraforming, the output of different star types could affect its contingent planets. Without atmosphere and/or a "sweet spot" distance depending on the star type, a world might be cripplingly hot or have other difficulties.

-Supernovas: The technical term is actually "supernovae". The whims of fate and/or excessive star tinkering could result in truly spectacular fireworks shows; their lethality might be curbed somewhat by planetary/moon engines, but sabotaging the engines on an enemy world would be another interesting planet-level goal.

TERRAFORMING
Not all destruction has to involve massive explosions. Sometimes, all you have to do is shake the snowglobe. This would be another prolonged weapon, the temporal nature of which would urge players to snuff out the enemy quickly before something goes horribly wrong; it might also be used to raise the stakes of an otherwise stable stalemate. As a personal note, weaponized terraforming was literally the only thing Spore got right.

-Atmosphere & Water: Though war machines have no need for petty luxuries like "life support", increasing or decreasing atmosphere has tangible effects. Robbing a planet of atmosphere or water could yield considerable resources of a sort, while leaving the target world to be ravaged by solar radiation; fostering an excess could also increase weather such as fog, rain, or snow, which could be taken advantage of tactically such as by blocking communication with the Satellite layer.

-Tectonics: Micro-managing troops is one thing, but micro-managing terrain is another entirely. World-sculpting would make a homeworld much more defensible to planetary incursions, and would be a good lategame goal for the not-completely-destructive types. Or you could just cause horrible earthquakes and screw up your enemy's terrain advantage. Ties nicely into planet damage deformation.

That's all I have for now. Please add your own thoughts! There is also a poll.

I'm kinda with the 4th option here, sorry

While PA isn't the most realistic planetary-annihilation-simulator... I think planet-vaping lasers is a bit too much, along with star-manipulation. (That said, a 'singularity' generator might be a neat and different way of destroying a planet)

Also, as the players are all robots... I'm gonna go ahead and say that terraforming shouldn't really do much in the way of affecting them.

That said, an interesting idea might be to build ships, bases, satellites, or something similar that could be a 'planet-cracker' ... as in, slowly deplete the planet of resources while simultaneously destroying it.

From Wikipedia:

Aside from that, the only other thing I can think of is some sort of relativistic kill-vehicle (RKV)... namely, a projectile (or asteroid, or whatever) that can be sped up to relativistic speeds and [presumably] primarily sent from one star system into another.

Frankly, this kind of thing should be left to modders, Uber is working on a TIGHT budget here. Trying to come up with more Planet Attacking mechanics will require time to design, time to balance, time to create the art assets......and time is money after all!

This is Not to say they're bad ideas*, just that it's kinda outside the scope Uber has here.

*Except for Terraforming, it realistically takes waaaaaaay too long to have any effect and all the units are robots that can function in a vaccum, I don't think they have much to fear from the planet they're on being terraformed.

Mike

Not really a fan, except for one point: Artificial Planets (not necessarily player-built, though).

Metal worlds, anyone?

Seems a little over-the-top, to me. Being able to glass planets from orbit and smashing meteors into them seems like enough, to be honest.

I think it's just fine with one option to destroy planets (crashing asteroids into planets).
Otherwise there will be too much focus on destroying planets.

Enormous battles should still be a big part of the game!

Well, obviously! My purpose in suggesting these types of superweapons, however, would be to give some structure to those enormous battles later in the game. Where early planet-scale conflicts are a matter of brute conquest, interplanetary battles might become more deliberate.

Say you've got a big multiplayer game going. You've just conquered your starting planet, and are now scouting for planets from which to stage an invasion of your nearest enemy. You discover a third enemy has nearly completed a planet-destroyer tech by some kind of rush build.

Do you make a truce to team up and snuff him out while preparing for inevitable betrayal? Fund his research to turn it against your enemy? Leave him alone while your enemy provokes him and gets caught in a war on two fronts? These possibilities spice up longer games in ways that flat "I smash you, you smash me" might not.

I would love more ways to destroy planets, but they need to:

-be balanced
-make sense
-not make the game much more complicated
-be counter-able (I think)

I like the idea of build able Death-Stars (transforming an moon into one)
That is the one least alien to most people .
but the problem with this, it is way harder to counter, as the only way is destroying it before it is complete/fires. Another problem is, what prevents the player to shoot down planet after planet.

while the the sun tinkering makes scientifically sense, it destroys multiple planets at once, destroying all 40 possible players basically, if you want it to be scientifically correct. Does not make a whole lot sense gameplay-wise.

maybe not very creative, but why not simply inter-planetary nukes... as long as you fire enough of them the planet will eventually be destroyed for example. I am really against a insta-kill-everything weapon .

I hope also the asteroids are counterable in the way the trailer shows, by shooting enough nukes in its "face". scientifically, you would need the amount of nukes equal in power to the acceleration*mass of the asteroid, which will be allota nukes with large asteroids, but lets shoot for awesome, not realism

I'd rather they keep it simple. There only needs to be a few ways to destroy a planet. Even if all of these suggestions were implemented, I feel like only a few, the most effective ones, would be used. I think it would be too difficult to try to balance all of those interplanetary huge options.

The game needs to be about massive battles, not planet destroying weapons. Planet destroying weapons seems to be a way of avoiding massive battles, so it doesn't sit well with me (I like my battles, but destroying an entire planet from afar seems cheap).

IMO, only one way to destroy/waste a planet would be best.

I think a slow planet-mining weapon "weapon" would be a pretty neat alternative to asteroids -- and it could spawn massive battles to destroy the "weapon" as well.

Depending on how it's done... e.g., a big superstructure, this could allow for a massive battle to dismantle / stop the device.

Tempted as I was to blindly click yes to the idea of more epic scale planet destruction, after reading your examples, I'm going to have to say no actually. The one possible exception to this is inspired by the mention of terraforming and a little Steam game called Greed Corp.

I like the idea that asteroids, moons, and even planets themselves are finite resources. If you recklessly throw asteroids at a planet only to watch them all be pulverized by your enemies orbital missile defenses than you could find yourself in a situation where it is no longer possible to do asteroid bombardments because you've used them all up.

And then there is the planet itself. As you extract minerals of the planet, you are damaging it. What if this lush jungle environment we see in the demo gradually transforms over time. The skies darken. The rivers and lakes turn dark and foul. The trees shrivel up and die. Eventually you are left with a broken barren husk of a planet. And through it all, your mechanical armies are tirelessly battling the enemy.

Doesn't that sound epic?

More planetary destruction weapons would render early game units useless, and they said they intend to keep tier 1 units useful through the whole game, so I doubt it'll happen. Plus, as said before, the focus of this is gigantic battles that even span multiple planets, yet can interact with each other. After all, there are already games that have multiple maps going on at the same time, but I've yet to hear of one where you can use long range weapons to attack from one map to the other (which is kinda what each planet is, a separate map, but not truly separate).

I'm not entirely certain this is true.

For one, I'm kind of assuming that T1 units will be your basic ground pounding vehicles and robots which will pretty much always be relevant for bashing on enemies on the same planet, moon, or even asteroid you may happen to occupy with them.

Also, I'm kind of envisioning a world currently that is beaten into a smoldering ugly little lava spewing ball of rock that is threatening to crack right down the middle and split and half, and all this time, you're still stuck on this crumbling ball of rock with your enemy, you're still pushing ground units at each other struggling to end this conflict once and for all even if it ultimately means destroying the whole damn thing in the process.

What if that's the only ball of rock left? what if you've blown up all the others. If the battle drags on long enough, T1 units may be all you have left to throw at each other.

I'm sold on this idea too. I think you could take it even further. In the "Planets as Resources" thread I suggested that strip-mining a planet would eventually not just ruin it but annihilate it, converting its entire mass into mechanisms of destruction. So you'd have to spread to other worlds just to feed your war machine. They have already said there will be terrain deformation from nukes and planetary annihilation from KEVs, so it doesn't seem like too much of a stretch to implement. I really hope this will be considered since it's unique, awesome and suits the setting perfectly.