Underground bases!

I don't know about you all but I want to be able to build underground bases just as much above ground and or be able to use special terrain workers to bulldoze and or dig holes create motes etc lol

My belief to building underground can be so the player can build special projects or protect certain projects.

Build annoying tunnels to the enemy base and lay down bombs below them lol...

How would you show what was going on underground in game?

For tunnels, It's easier to just have stuff above ground that has an underground component you don't see. Put units in one tunnel entrance and they pop out in another. That's how most RTSs handle it and it works great.

For keeping a base hidden, you can use cloaking gens obviously. I suppose building buildings underground for extra cost would work ok just as a means of camouflaging them, but the underground terraforming sounds like something I'd rather not have to deal with as a player.

For underground minelayers and stuff, there could easily be burrowed units that work just like in Starcraft 2. A minelayer bot that moves underground is perfectly reasonable.

What I'm saying is there are ways to accomplish what you're asking that would be way easier on the developers and wouldn't add to gameplay complexity.

Transparent 3D graphics with 3D visualization where the underground cave surface and planet surface would be drawn.

Some other problem is that if I select a unit underground and want to order it somewhere it would be hard to know at what layer I'm giving the command. Is the command given on the surface or underground?
The mouse could be drawn at the level where the command will be placed.
Something that could work with or without 3D technology could be that the level of transperancy changes depending on what level you have units selected. But if you wanted to order some units above the surface to a place in a tunnel you would need a way to change the mouse position to a lower depth. It could perhaps be done with ctrl+mousewheel changing the mousecursor to appear at another depth like zooming but without changing the camera height.
If the transparancy of the surface increased while the underground becomes more visible as your mouse cursor goes inwards, towards the planet core, it might give enough feedback that you won't need a 3D screen to capitalize from transparent layers on a planet.

What about people who don't have 3d monitors? Personally I don't even have depth perception so 3D graphics wouldn't work for me.

That all sounds like it would just cause players a headache for little gameplay benefit. It adds another massive layer of complexity. I say with underground stuff we should stick with just below the surface with a visual cue on the surface that something is there. Multiple layers and cameras going underground is too much. I hate being a naysayer but I'm gonna stick to my guns on this one.

Then transparent layers with different levels of transparency could work for you.

I'm trying to find a way so you don't have to move the camera underground. If underground movement, caves and construction should be possible and comprehensive we would need some good tools to use it and a good way to visualize it. Okey, now we know that you are against the additional layer of complexity introduced by underground combat and construction but let us continue to brainstorm about good ways of visualising it.
The idea is that you take a complex gameplay element and find an intuitive and easy way to use it.

I don't think underground bases is a good idea but I do think some underground units would work like suicide units which go BOOM when the enemy walks over them

Ok...
I suppose I can imagine visualizing it in an unobtrusive way by having an "underground view" button that you toggle. But it doesn't really work for multiple layers.

Both Earth 2150 and metal fatigue did underground levels, I preferred the MF design over e2150. Having said that both weren't very good implementations of underground.

Metal Fatigues Underground was ok but I found it to be the most annoying theatre to fight in. Full enemy annihilation could take forever due to the fog of war. It didn't help that your Mechs couldn't go down there (As far as I remember). Armies of Exigo did an alright job of Underground combat too, it wasn't the most ambitious game but it was alright.

In a nutshell i'd rather they flesh out Surface and Orbital than muck around trying to get people underground too.

Can you imagine the forces that would be needed to clear a full planets surface and sub-surface. I shudder at how long games would last.

This would also require some sort of GPR, which means another type of detection we need to worry about.

I wouldn't mind underwater bases though. Seabed factories that build subs and amphibious stuff, underwater missile silos, etc. That's a decent compromise isn't it? I suppose it doesn't help on planets without water, but maybe a limiting factor like that would be a good thing.

If they are going for TA more than Supcom I think Underwater bases are kinda a given

I suppose its not 100% but I'm confident anyway

Again, underground may or may not be suited for PA itself, but I'd love to see the possibility for it with mods. There were talks about bridges and submarines under ice ; I'd guess that if this is technically possible, allowing another underground layer should be possible too.
Also, if we can have submarine or sea-crawlers under walkable ice, the UI problems (and solutions) shouldn't be that different for it.

This was tried in earth 2150, it didn't work. Mainly because unlike every other gameplay layer (ground, naval, air, orbital, space...) underground was obscured completely by other layers. There are only 2 ways around this - a "switch to tunnel view" approach and an artificial overlay. The former is easily forgotten and is no substitute for being able to see every other layer at a glance. The latter completely breaks immersion and will probably obscure other layers in doing so.

The only game I have ever played with underground stuff was perimeter.

It was ok, even having an anti-underground defense to defend your bases with.

But it did require on the games ability to morph the terrain to damage buildings, and could never damage units.


I would say it would be nice for modders, but not really necessary for PA.

I found Tiberium Sun did it reasonably. It didn't have underground combat; just tunneling units that could pop up anywhere and were picked up with a Sensor. Simple but effective.

But as a modding thing it sounds pretty interesting, although it'd be only worth it if you dig underground yourself, which is a pretty big thing to include.

When I hear something about "underground" I do recall engineer rush from C&C: Tiberum Sun.

Full underground (not just underground units) is somewhat redundant battlefield - it has same units as ground, just another layer of that ground. Of course, we can make special units for blasting ground bases from below, but this will only add more complexity.

It also questionable how underground will work with metal veins from surface.

In Metal Fatigue full underground made sense as it was restricted area for big bots. I feel that in scale of PA it would be simply redundant.

BTW, one of the streach goals were metal planets. Probably they would have some kind of underground/indoor environment.

I would rather prefer to have on-water platforms, some kind of "artificial land". Or ability to build a dome underwater. In either way - reuse available ground units and structures + small amount of additional units.

Adding a special "underwater shipyard" is somewhat strange.

Except for Empire's underground torpedo, that is - it wrecks anything along it's path, including units.

But such tech is based upon terraforming and voxel terrains, which is far too expensive (in terms of resources) for game of PA's scale.

the moon project did a good job with underground bases in an RTS

i could see a similar system working

What would this add to the game? How much work would it require? This is another suggestion that just doesn't add up.

Strategic options such as underground bombs and army access points. Counters on lava planets would be epic, flooding the tunnels.

That is a little far fetched, how you would visualize this is the first point to consider.

How to do that without cluttering the surface with stuff and making the game look like a mess.

A problem already with 3D planets.