Before "but muh annihilations!" is posted twenty times, a utility structure isn't bad. In TA and SupCom lore, single commanders are sent through mass transporters/whatever you call them since it requires massive amounts of energy to operate and something that can build everything up there is more efficient. I say we should get to build a few lategame. I mean, you'd have to have an obscene amount of energy, so they'd usually only be located in systems with multiple gas giants that can produce massive quantities of energy, and even then, it'd damn near deplete you. The uses of this are twofold. One, the canonical "send the commander across the galaxy to make a base". This prevents people from being trapped and can have the game go on much longer, since if you do get caught in a corner, you can rush for a transporter and blast your commander away, leaving the husk sector back home to delay the enemy while you build back up for a sneak attack. Second, it allows faster travel across large empires. Why travel using conventional/FTL/hyperspace when you can teleport instantly? The next utility would be Energy and Metal Transfer Stations. Ooh, he broke out the bold text. Basically, it does what it says on the tin. Since-reasonably-you wouldn't be able to have a hyperspace backpack full of resources, your resources would be restricted to that planet, maybe that system if they feel like casualizing the game. Each would require a relatively high amount of energy to maintain, but could be used for, say, transferring that 5 gas giant's worth of energy to a barren rock that has your teleporter on it. Or it could be used for starting up a remote outpost faster, instead of running around finding those silver spots of rock to drop extractors on, you just drop a transmitter and suck up resources from some planets eight lightyears away. Or you could use it to power the Super Death Star you found. Remember in the 1/13/13 livestream, how the arid planet had a big ravine? Special landscape formations like that could be used for special buildings, such as the Ravine Production Facility, which would have four parts: A Geothermal powerplant that allows at least self-reliance, similar to the metal extractor built in. Why would you need to be self-reliant? Because this facility would be able to build either land or air units, depending on whatever the devs decide on. Since it's sunken into the ground, it wouldn't appear on radar. On a volcanic planet? Stick a geothermal plant on the plentiful geysers. Or stick a metal extractor on the caldera of a volcano for a pretty good metal gathering rate. And then, finally, the Planet Cracker. You need room for your giant supercannon? Stick this on a planet and in ten or so minutes, you'd have a hollow rock. Need even more metal but all you have is a barren rock with no surface deposits? Rip into the center to expose that delicious metal. Or are you the super Bond villain sort of person? During a prolonged assault, build one on the enemy planet and start a doomsday timer until you break it into four shards, rendering it useless and only letting orbital units fly around it. And now you all can rate my ideas, be a modder who always signs his posts with his name because we're apparently incapable of reading usernames and deride all of this, or call me an idiot on par with the likes of the Flat Earth Society and Obama.
Your ideas are not bad, but depend strongly on how the economy will play out. And yes: i would LOVE to see more planet-specific buildings and units. I would love to have a "planet specific" tab where you can order the building of extra-extravagant geothermals. About planetcracking: not sure about this one, really depends on what the end-game in general will look like.
Recombinator Consumes x amount of units. Decomposes the units into separate parts. Combines the parts into an Über level unit in significantly less time than building it with raw resources. If you are on the offense you have to pull back your units, giving the defender a chance to recover. But that Über level unit could break through the defenses where your low tier units failed. On the defender's side it would be a last resort move, allowing you to catch up or lose faster.
Having metal transfer station makes sense to me (though I like hammerspace more), but why have it transfer energy when you already are so advanced you can do this? How about an experimental mex? Takes less room and less building.
Well. They tried. But after like, 250 energy transfer it ended up being more of a kill beam than anything else.
I can't say I really like any of these ideas, they all just seem unbalanced beyond belief. I'm going to assume you're talking about the Galactic War game-mode (to which we're not even sure how it will work) since you talk about how these things will work between different solar systems. Galaxy-wide teleportation could be game-breaking in PA for a galactic war scenario. Any clan or team that can utilize it would become artificially difficult to destroy the commanders of. What's to stop them from building a teleporter in every battle they come across? The threat of losing becomes really insignificant when you are able to just park your commander beside a gate and escape with no bruises at a moment's notice. I think it would be more immersive and challenging if you had to launch a rocket / ship into orbit to enter hyperspace at the edge of the solar system. There'd be the risk of being intercepted before you left the atmosphere or having your launchpad be destroyed before its ready to use. I also think having a timer countdown of how long it'll take to move your commander between systems which could be around 2-8 minutes depending on how far the solar systems are (which isn't long considering all the other battles taking place at the same time). Travel times gives you an incentive to keep your commander in a system near the front lines rather than being deep within your territory and difficult to attack. I think energy and metal transfer stations would again only serve already economically-strong teams and clans; I disagree (unless done well) that resources should be transferred over different battles. Imagine a starter / intermediate clan or team decides to contest an empty but strategic solar system to get some sort of advantage in the war. This is a 2v2 solar system so both clan's commanders land on the planet; the newbie clan starts off as normal but the larger clan has several transfer stations directed at their commanders within the battle. The outcome? The larger clan is able to play like they're playing sandbox mode with 50 factories spewing out units and no resources buildings in sight. Even if you had to build a receiving station it would still be completely over-powered. The only way to balance such a thing would be to make it akin to the paragon in Supreme Commander (infinite resource generator) which requires so much time and resources to build and therefore you're better off actually building an army. I think it's important to note that just giving something steep build requirements doesn't actually balance it. Using transfer stations to "suck up resources from some planets eight lightyears away" is so hideously overpowered it's not worth thinking about - you've just replaced resource management and economy with god-like tools for galactic assimilation of physical matter. I think you might be onto something with geographical-specific facilities, like the hydrocarbon plant from SupCom, but similarly to the hydrocarbon plant they shouldn't be that influential on your production or economy. The hydrocarbon plant was capable of producing a nice amount of power for an early game scenario but could be out-matched many times over by higher-tech power-plants. Command & Conquer had a few uncommon production facilities which were a nice addition, you could take idea and put it into PA, for example, you could have an abandoned "amphibious tank facility" which you could only capture (and not build) which would allow you to build a hover-tank no other facility has access to. The planet cracker is - again - another way of acquiring countless resources. It may have a role as a super-weapon but asteroids already for fill this role which require a lot less energy to use. Personally, I think any benefits to territorial control in this game-mode should be made only specific to the game-mode. Territory control, geopolitics, game-mode specific resources and game-ending conditions should be focuses of a metagame style galactic war. Global Agenda had the right idea but flopped for a number of different reasons; I could still see many principles from AvA (Alliance Versus Alliance) apply quite well to PA's galactic war, but that's a whole-other thread's worth of posts (which I think I might attempt).
Drone hanger: Builds and deploys micro gunships and fighters to defend the area around it, but costs a great deal of power to run, and costs mass to rebuild lost drones. Recycler: A structure with a long range reclamer beam to scavanage resources from around bases, but cannot target enemy unit's and structues. Jamming tower: Creates a number of false structure and unit radar blips, possibly ocastrating them in a way as to look like a active base with units ammasing.
Repair tower Repairs at a faster rate than an engineer, with a slightly better range. Missile Defense tower Fires anti missile pulses in an attempt to neutralize the missiles without explosion. Advanced Recon Tower A tall tower which has a much larger sight radius when compared to any other building or unit.
Land/Orbital Radar station stationary radar station on land that can Launch into orbit. (larger range when on land?)
Teleporters and transfer stations are clearly not reasonable in clan battles. But what about single player, or a just a simple 2v2, no galaxy involved? By experimental mex, I meant something slightly above a moho mine. What do you think of that?
Why do we need resource transfer system which will make the difficult resource flow system even more difficult?
Point Defense. Shoots down projectiles, missiles, bombs, etc. Maybe even aircraft. Can it shoot ground units? Probably. It's really just a gun. vs. Tractor defense. Terrifyingly similar. Light variants can deflect projectiles, missiles, bombs, etc. They can even pull aircraft to the ground. Large ones have more range, less ordnance stopping power, but affect heavier targets like heavy arty shells and ground units. A huge number of defensive and offensive options are possible such as blocking shots, reflecting shots, or straight up smashing one tank with another tank. Basically, it's a physics gun done Magneto style. Why should it draw energy from the grid? The drone hangar already provides the power that keeps the drones alive, just like any other unit provides its own power. PA is a game based on simulated battle. Arbitrary targeting restrictions are jarring and should only be used when nothing else works. If a unit is ill suited for battle, then design it to be ill suited for battle. For example, a dumb drone can serve as long range support, but gets absolutely vaporized in a single shot. It doesn't matter that it can attack, because it's bad at it. It's a completely different topic of discussion. The economy will basically determine what support structures are needed for the economy. IMO, simple macro mechanics are just as important as having simple unit control for a large scale game.
Well to stop you from building 100's of these, and as a way to tie in the economy into your defences making power plants an important target during an attack to turn defences off. Well like the recycler from supcom 2 if it could automaticly kill enemy units then that's all you would need to build unless the sheer mass of unit's that can be sent at it overwhelms it's attack. It was ment as a utillity structure, not a defence.
Why do everyone keep saying that the flow economy is difficult? Its way easier to understand then the normal system we use today (single payments).
Once you get a flow economy, you get it for good. But untill you do, a 'buy' based economy still makes more sense. The problem is the UI mostly, as you can't really tell what you need for X number of resources per tick and what your money is going into. There are other problems but the UI is the biggest one, and improvments to that will make improvments to the people who use it.
Anyone that has had a home-loan, mortgage, or had to pay anything in instalments should understand the flow economy. If your entire economic experience has been limited to buying lollies at the corner store, then it's going to be a foreign concept to you (unless you had to put a mortgage on your home to pay for said lollies).
