You have all most likely seen this thread, http://forums.uberent.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=61&t=40730, it was such a bloody awefull poll in it that i just hade to remake it. Some super weapons has allredy been confirmed, such as mini experimentals (They have claimed that they will be a few and that the game wont revolve around them as much as before), astroid projectiles, death stars (Unknown how these will work) and nukes. But what other (if any) WMDs would you like to include? If someone posts a realy good idea i might update the poll, so you guys will have to revote if that happens. Btw this is WMD's only, not other experimentals (like the FA paragon) or units (SCU).
You are allowed to pick just one. 6 is the maximum votes, if you want all of the "extra" WMDs, but nothing is stopping you from picking just 1 and then submiting the vote. You can however change your vote if you change your mind.
Could I use the asteroid engines on say, a moon to bombard the planet below with fiery plasma when the moon is over an enemy target? Preferably with vectored thrust so I can aim?
More or less confirmed, IIRC, Mavor said somewhere that you could put a moon on orbit and use artilleries on it to bombard the planet, or to send your troops. Still IIRC, he pointed out somewhere that moons, and even more planets, will be harder to move than asteroids. The reason for that is that the number of engines you can put on those depend on the surface size, while the mass depends on the volume size. And volume grows faster than surface, when you scale a body up. Also, again, by "black holes", do you mean "using a black hole of DOOM!!! to suck everything in the system", or "creating a black hole somewhere and watch the hilarious results as it goes through everything standing between it and the planet's core and begin to slowly eat it from the inside"?
I didn't mean moving an steroid into orbit. I meant using the engines as a weapon on immoveable body's as a kind of moon to surface or surface to moon bombardment stream. Kind of a plasma stream weapon when targets are lined up due to orbit.
Not realy, being able to move a moon into orbit around a planet and sending troops down is confirmed, but orbiting object to surface weaponry isent (Well unit cannons, but nothing damaging yet). Offcourse most (me included) assumes there will be such weapons, but as far as i know we havent gotten a confirmation on it. The poll option is more "in general". Do you want natural disasters that you can start somehow? (For example those mentioned).
A black hole attacking the system could be a good gimmick for some systems, as well as things like swarms meteors attacking the systems worlds, making permanent defenses unfeasible. The thing is problems like this don't just show up, but a present problem by the time the war reaches the system.
The poll option is "with things to trigger them artificially" disasters, not something that shows up at random or outside player control. For example, if you send a small astroid into a ocean it could create a giant tsunami that damages most of the infrastructure on the world without damaging the world itself. Or a sort of gravity generator that collapses a area into a black hole that then slowly grows stronger and spreads dragging astroids, moons and planets in and crushing them. It could even effect time closer to the black hole (slows down). Etc.
Weaponizing the environment? Possible, but not on a system sized scale. And probably not with an actual black hole either. They could be related towards the metal worlds with each one possessing a different super weapon.
Ah, sorry I hadn't understood that. Well, I vaguely remember someone (Mavor?) evoking the possibility of landing asteroids and moons, more as a "fun" thing to do, but nothing confirming that it will be possible. Using the engine exhaust as a weapon is indeed an old SF trope, as any engine powerful enough to let you go somewhere in a interesting time is as powerful as a weapon of mass destruction, so a planetary engine would be a fearsome thing to behold. OTOH, this could lead to OP weapons quite fast (engines able to move the Moon would most probably scorch the Earth and strip it from atmosphere and oceans, even from that far), and as it is highly stylized SF (probably minimal or non-existent delta-V questions for interplanetary movement, fun scales, giant bipedal war robots of doom, the graphical style...) so I doubt that people would complain if it wasn't there. But if there is a way to make it both fun and an interesting gameplay option, it would be quite amazing! No need to make it go stronger with time passing. Just make it do what a regular black hole would do, if you compressed enough stuff hard enough to create one (that's how you create artificial black holes, no?) If you just create it at the surface, then it falls into the ground until it reaches the centre of the body you're standing it, then slowly begins to eat it from the inside, until the entire thing collapses. Then you simply have a small black hole (and probably varied stuff orbiting it) instead of the asteroid/planet, though anything else (trajectory, orbital layer, moons...) stays as it was. And the place where you created the thing would probably be devastated when the black hole falls down. This could be caused by singularity super-generators when they blow up. Not only they destroy everything around them, but they even condemn the whole planet to be destroyed some time after. If you create it in orbit, then the black hole simply stays in orbit, doing nothing. If you use it as a projectile, then it destroys everything in its path, and ends up either in orbit or eating a planet/asteroid like above. Black holes are awesome enough as they are, no need to make them stupid by changing how they work. Note that if it's possible to create artificial black holes, we will also need ways to control them, if only to modify their trajectory/orbit. It could still be used to make an asteroid attack even harder to stop, though, for example by building a singularity supergenerator on the asteroid. Even if you blow the asteroid up, then you still need to stop/deflect the black hole... So if this can be technically done and balanced gameplay-wise (and that's a big if), yes, black hole weapons would be truly awesome.
Since these rocket engines already have a well defined purpose I'm not convinced why this should be possible. I would rather say, that other structures should do the job of inter-celestial bombardment.
It was mentioned in one of the interviews that they would be build able on non-asteroid surfaces, so I was thinking of another use.
That's right, but i don't see any reason why this structure needs to have (possibly very powerful) dual-use. I just don't want to have a unit/structure which is so powerful/useful, that it renders other choices nearly useless.
