Unit Ideas?

[Freeza-CII]

sticky foam already has a effect of damge when it hits another unit. Not as much as acid cloud tho. I dont even remember if its possible to do a damage per second like your suggesting with the foam.

As far a s a magma based weapon goes you would need extreem power and insulation to keep any magma stored in the vec molten to the point where its still a liquid enough to be shot or sprayed.  Thats just a bit impractical.  The only weapon that ever made any sense with magma but still impractical is the magma gp that would utilize magma wells to power them.

the best weapons in my opinion are just the every day conventional projectile weapons.  cannons gatlins.  because in those you can have several different variations. sabots, flachettes (sp), air burst,  shot gun spread types, incendiary, and pure heavy kinetic rounds.

how ever  these types of weapons would end up being near identical to weapons already in game rather then being unique like the difference between a laser and a rail gun.  a pure heavy kinetic round would be the same as a rail gun.  any such impact explosive rounds would mimic rpgs just like air burst would mimic the acid clouds esg sticky foam.  as far as eden countering the the sticky foam you might want to search for the NOG.

[Sirbomber]

A Gatling Gun/Chaingun/Pipe Organ type thing could be interesting if, rather than working like every other weapon in the game, it fires for a fixed amount of time, going from target to target, and then has to cooldown.  Research could upgrade how long it could fire before having to cooldown.

We also need the Chainsaw (Eden), Battering Ram, and Brick Launcher (Plymouth).  

Edit: Does anyone feel the sudden urge to vandalize the Genesis forum and spam it to (un)death with bad ideas?

[Freeza-CII]

pipe organs no those will never see the light of day.

the chain guns would still do a damage per volley basicly since they would be burst mode weapons that big cant chain fire for long.

battering rams no it would get killed before it got in range.

and the brick launcher well i dont know the bricks would be better used for walls.

oh yes i have noticed some one talking about a blight weapon. both colonies were running from the blight it could not be contained so how are they suppose to fire it or even reverse engineer it.  viral weapons are noooooo biological weapons could only work if there inside the building as they are seal environments hehe.

[Sirbomber]

The Brick Launcher shoots bricks through windows, causing all the people inside to suffocate to death (or get sucked out the window in some unfortunate cases).  The Battering Ram works similarly.

It was a joke Freeza.  

Anyways, how about Eden gets an upgraded EMP weapon which releases a small EMP shockwave?  Of course, it'd be easier to spam than EMP Missiles, resulting in BLARUGH...

[Freeza-CII]

a emp wave sounds more like a upgrade for a flare.

if any thing eden needs a emp hardening and all that means is there is a chance the unit wont become disabled by emp missile or emp turrets.

[Sirbomber]

Yes, that would work nicely too.  It just lacks that certain "suck on this" finesse though.

[Freeza-CII]

oh you mean a son of a b**** device

[Spikerocks101]

If there would ever be a third faction, all thoes weapons coult fit nicely. I.E. earth survivors could have Chainguns and Pipe Organs, since some might still be around, as for New Terra colonies, well, its been years since they seen weapons, so they created there own. As for the battling ram, sounds more of a Spider type unit which can just enter a build, and either blow it up, or kill every one inside it...

[Freeza-CII]

chances are if there were survivors of earth they wouldnt beable to leave the planet for a long time just to do the temp out side underground statis chambers.  earth would be in hospitable for a while and there really wouldnt be any need to go look for the colony long ways off in the middle of no where. why scarefice a s*** ton of people to find them when you can just head to mars or stay on earth once things return to a state of normalcy.  then for even the humans in the sol system (earths solar system) were to even build a space ship its possible the new terra is long dead.  not to mention it would be another couple hundred thousandyears to get to where new terra was.  i just dont see people from earth getting the long lost colonists when its better to just sit and wait to find a transmittion from them. and rebuild humanity instead.

[Sirbomber]

Indeed.  I think I'm handling the "third colony" in OPSC fairly well: they're a group of 3 Eden/Plymouth renegades who have banded together to destroy their mother colonies.  Who needs random Earth survivors of plot convenience?  Anyways, third colony discussion is off-topic I think.

[Freeza-CII]

indeed it is.  but its really the only way you can add weapons in that dont f*** up a balance between eden and plymouth or add in weapons that do the same thing that they already have.

[Hidiot]

Lasers, Rail Gun and Thor's all inflict damage. They all do the same thing, basically.

The difference is in how effective they are at doing their job. (And then there's sticking to realism,etc.).

A Thor's Hammer risks losing to a weapon that inflicts damage at the same damage/time ratio as the Thor at a faster rate much more than that other weapon.

[Hooman]

And since they manage to get quite a fair bit of Sci-Fi technology, why not anti-gravity units? I know this is a sort of far fetched thing, but then again, so are a lot of the weapons. (Granted we do have the technology to make most of these weapons.) Perhaps the scientist isolate a strange phenomena on the planet that is a result of the blight ridden land that creates a geo-magnetic force causing rocks to levitate, and on several dangerous expeditions into blight infested territory they get enough data to create a Geo-Magnetic anti-Gravitational engine?

Just... no. Anti-gravity sounds more Fi than Sci. It's not something I'd expect to see in the near future, or possibly anytime in the future. It just seems like gravity is too fundamentally related to mass to ever really be manipulated on a small scale for unit transportation. Magnetic levitation, yes, but that doesn't strike me as being "anti-gravity" really. I'd imagine most things dubbed anti-gravity would be more about magnetic levitation, and then all the practical systems would only work for materials that are strongly magnetic. That implies you need some sort of track, or specialized roadway for the unit to move on, as well as specialized material in the unit itself. A mag-lev train I could see, but floating, flying, gravity defying units, no.

I also don't see biological weapons being used on the last survivors of the human race. Blight weapons would obviously not be controllable. The only person who would be foolish enough to use such a weapon is someone who actually wants to kill of the human race. That just doesn't seem very Outpost like.


As for giving flying units bigger wings for the thin atmosphere, remember that bigger wings add more mass to the unit, so at the very least, this is only effective if the extra surface area gives them more lift than the extra material has mass. Sure, you could also increase their speed, but that increases fuel requirements, and the JETO thing gets into that other argument about flying around on rockets is probably not very economical. That and the air-breathing problem mentioned with conventional jet propulsion means more rocket like drives, which means more fuel requirements. I don't see such small colonies being able to keep rocket based propulsion systems operational for everyday use.


Btw, I remember reading something about the explosive units in Outpost 2 making use of TNT, which, according to the chemical reaction listed on wikipedia, doesn't seem to require an oxygen environment. However, it does state that it is more effective in the presence of oxygen due to the production of carbon. I assume this is from further combustion of the carbon?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinitrotoluene


What I find interesting about these discussions, is that new units generally focus around new and more powerful weapons, or perhaps, occasionally, new armour. However, since we are talking about the last survivors of the human race, who probably don't want to blow each other up, you'd think this is the last thing they'd be doing. Perhaps they would be developing less powerful weapons, or rather more targetted weapons, that would render military units inoperable, but nor harm people, or vital structures keeping these people alive. Or better yet, perhaps there should be more non-military upgrades. Sure there is always that cargo train idea, but I think we could come up with a few more that are similar in nature. Besides, where does all that ore go in actual game play? Mostly to create weapons....
 

[vennom]

And since they manage to get quite a fair bit of Sci-Fi technology, why not anti-gravity units? I know this is a sort of far fetched thing, but then again, so are a lot of the weapons. (Granted we do have the technology to make most of these weapons.) Perhaps the scientist isolate a strange phenomena on the planet that is a result of the blight ridden land that creates a geo-magnetic force causing rocks to levitate, and on several dangerous expeditions into blight infested territory they get enough data to create a Geo-Magnetic anti-Gravitational engine?

...

What I find interesting about these discussions, is that new units generally focus around new and more powerful weapons, or perhaps, occasionally, new armour. However, since we are talking about the last survivors of the human race, who probably don't want to blow each other up, you'd think this is the last thing they'd be doing. Perhaps they would be developing less powerful weapons, or rather more targetted weapons, that would render military units inoperable, but nor harm people, or vital structures keeping these people alive. Or better yet, perhaps there should be more non-military upgrades. Sure there is always that cargo train idea, but I think we could come up with a few more that are similar in nature. Besides, where does all that ore go in actual game play? Mostly to create weapons....

you are talking about some EMP-WAVE-LIKE weapon .-.? (Like a storm .-.) The intention is not to hurt ppl, just nerf other weapons o.o...

My other crazy/useless/usefull/weird ideas:
Food trucks (Mobile-agridomes)
A self-defensive tokamak (A tokamak that can shot EMP missiles, that would be interesting... if you use this as a defense, you can lose your power, it just prevents your enemy from blowing your base at once lol...)
A defensive unit (A unit capable of attracting attacks to itself within a certain range)
 

[Spikerocks101]

ok... then more peace related stuff is in order? well, i am sure that if you take out the war, you are left with 1 smelter on one mine with 1~2 trucks, that are only there to get some resourse to build more residents-agridomes-power plants. so, unless you can add another aspect, like, say, expand on the cosumer goods factory, adding more strategy to it, i say that adding bigger, better weapons would be all that eden and plymouths leaders would be thinking about.

[Hidiot]

OP1 is what they basically had in mind for an OP2 without combat.

There, they'd fix your lack of resource needs by adding requirements of the rarest resources on your most important buildings.

And it does make some sense that researchers need more than just funding for researches, does it not?

[Hooman]

I'd thought of that too. It'd be interesting to have to go on an expedition for research purposes. I suppose collecting the wreckage for the Tiger speed upgrade is an example of that. Of course, it gives you the tech right away, rather than allowing you to research something based on having the wreckage. It's be more interesting if collecting samples of stuff, or observing natural phenomenon opened up more research possibilities. Perhaps you'd need new units, or unit upgrades to observe, or collect the things you needed. Better scanners, diggers/excavators, vehicles to reach high cliffs. Maybe even have them build weather stations or something.

It'd be neat if you had less catastrophic disasters like blight, and instead had more things like lava. Sure, it's predictable if you're played the level multiple times and the path doesn't get randomized, but maybe that should change? Maybe lava should take a more random path, and perhaps something about the path it takes is measurable. Then you'd be able to better plan for it if you put in the effort to study it.

Perhaps a scout can scan some region of lava rock, bring back (or transmit back) a digital elevation model (DEM), which would open up a new research topic at one of your labs. Researching it would produce a computer overlay of the expected lava flow areas for different flow rates. Then maybe analysing a vent could help you predict what the flow rate would be. All subject to some degree of error, of course. But, that could give you incentive to research more topics in that area, so you could reduce the error in the predictions.
 

[Freeza-CII]

My other crazy/useless/usefull/weird ideas:
Food trucks (Mobile-agridomes)
A self-defensive tokamak (A tokamak that can shot EMP missiles, that would be interesting... if you use this as a defense, you can lose your power, it just prevents your enemy from blowing your base at once lol...)
A defensive unit (A unit capable of attracting attacks to itself within a certain range)

food trucks a ok idea but impractical the cargo truck can carry food the evac transport can support like 50 i believe.  but nothing that small is going to support colony wide levels.

a tokamak doing emp bursts well i dont know about that as it would be detrimental to itself and probably exploding due to the fact it has a torus of sun in another slightly larger torus of magnets. not to mention you can spam these more then missiles and be completely untouchable.

A unit that attracts the enemy units.  there computer controlled units run by a bank of savant computers not a group of murlocs on the plains of evergreen forests.  

The only thing that i can thinkof that would actually work since all the units are control by remote control methods is white and pink noise.  just make the units go beserk and they loose control of there IFF (identify friendly foe).  thus they will attack each other or they will switch and attack your units with in there sight range.  but that is per unit so 3 units get hit with a white noise 1 unit may attack you the other 2 may attack each other so on randomness.  and i am not talking about sounds either think ECM generator.

[vennom]

My other crazy/useless/usefull/weird ideas:
Food trucks (Mobile-agridomes)
A self-defensive tokamak (A tokamak that can shot EMP missiles, that would be interesting... if you use this as a defense, you can lose your power, it just prevents your enemy from blowing your base at once lol...)
A defensive unit (A unit capable of attracting attacks to itself within a certain range)

food trucks a ok idea but impractical the cargo truck can carry food the evac transport can support like 50 i believe.  but nothing that small is going to support colony wide levels.

a tokamak doing emp bursts well i dont know about that as it would be detrimental to itself and probably exploding due to the fact it has a torus of sun in another slightly larger torus of magnets. not to mention you can spam these more then missiles and be completely untouchable.

A unit that attracts the enemy units.  there computer controlled units run by a bank of savant computers not a group of murlocs on the plains of evergreen forests.  

The only thing that i can thinkof that would actually work since all the units are control by remote control methods is white and pink noise.  just make the units go beserk and they loose control of there IFF (identify friendly foe).  thus they will attack each other or they will switch and attack your units with in there sight range.  but that is per unit so 3 units get hit with a white noise 1 unit may attack you the other 2 may attack each other so on randomness.  and i am not talking about sounds either think ECM generator.

i was talking to hooman about the tokamaks, and, my idea is to make the tokamak the same as a emp-guard post .-. (not an absurd fire rate)

[Spikerocks101]

Or, you could just block enemy signals from reaching the units, instead of redirecting there fire. Or, instead of that (since it would make EMP and Stickfoam weapons useless), could just slow everything about it, like its moving speed, reload speed, turn rate, and maybe limit range to. Could be  a virus or such.

[Hooman]

One thing I would point out about unit control, is it can't be easy to do. In particular, some sort of long range missile, like an EMP missile would be a very bad idea.

Consider someone that built up a huge army, and massive fortifications. They've spent hours building up an impenetrable base. You fire a missile. Their mass of weapons all misfire at once, and level their base in seconds. Not exactly fun. (After the first time you see it happen).

Now, I have my doubts about the effectiveness of blocking signals. Perhaps you could block signals and prevent new orders from being issued, but I doubt this would disable the unit. I'm sure they have their own on board computers. Particularly military vehicles, which probably have some sort of tracking system. I doubt these systems are all that easy to overload or fool, and they probably have redundant sensors, and probably of different types. If you jammed signals, you might prevent a savant from communicating with it and giving it new high level orders, but I'd imagine it's low level systems would continue uninterrupted with whatever the last command (or sequence of commands) you gave it was.


I suppose having a self destruct option on power plants could be interesting, and potentially useful (in combat). I don't see a more reusable option being very likely. It seems like a big waste of money though, and rather peculiar thing to do. Would the last survivors of the human race really build self destruct mechanisms into structures that are vital to support the operation of the colony? Think about what you're actually doing here.

I suppose people's desire to do things like this is best explained by a certain ... lack of faith in the communist ideals, ... err, no, I meant, but a certain divorcement between the novellas/storyline, and actual game play. (Like mines never running dry on a resource limited planet, or people so desperate just to barely survive, vs. all that ore being pumped into weapons in multiplayer games).
 

[Moley]

i have an idea relating to the tokamech defence.
use it as a eminating EMP waves.

in other words, turn the power generation, through an antena, ino a constine, short range pulse.
perhaps only long enough to stop suicide vechiles or the low tech weapons

[DartStriker]

Aye, step out for a few days and we get a ton of posts here. I'm surprised this has lasted as long as it has.

Anyway... back to topic.

Expedition Research:
This is an awesome idea, making it so you have to preform mini-tasks to complete some research, or even to unlock new research topics. For example, Geo-thermal Power... say you have to at least discover a fumarole, which is helpful, especially if there isn't even one on the planet.

Speaking of energy, the MHD gives a huge advantage in power over EDEN until you get GeoCons and Solar. However, since there is no wind or water on newterra, this leaves us with little sources of natural energy. What if you could create lightening receivers that could absorb shocks from electrical storms to give you a temporary power boost? Though, storms roll through at random, and this would be heavily unreliable. (Unless you sat there and shot at it with a thor.)

As for a disabling weapon, what about an electromagnetic bomb? Not like EMP that fries the electronics, but an actual electromagnet that generates a quick burst to attact metal vehicles towards it.

And what about walls... the lava wall is pretty useless, so it's not really worth building, but wouldn't it be nice to get a tougher wall for base defense? Or perhaps a higher wall to block weapon fire like RPGs? Survival is the key, so if you choose a more defensive rout your options are fairly limited.

And just a bit of a side note: Why does the earth worker damage itself when it destroys tubes?

[Sirbomber]

... the lava wall is pretty useless, so it's not really worth building ...

And just a bit of a side note: Why does the earth worker damage itself when it destroys tubes?

I bet you think the same thing about the Microbe Wall, too.  Try playing the Survivor multiplayer maps someday.  Anyways, all of the walls are useless unless you figure out that you're supposed to layer them.

As for the Earthworker problem, it's to prevent n00bs from cutting tubes in other people's bases.

[DartStriker]

Well, I'm not a big fan of military multilayer myself, so no I don't really find the microbe wall useful unless I have to deal with the blight, or lava walls. I play for the colony building aspect and walls are purely aesthetic. And, as for the Earth worker deal, that makes a lot of sense.