Mine layers

I'm still a newb at this game but alot of posts I've read say that defences are underpowered, and that is certainly my experience in game.

A possible solution to this would be a mine layer.

If a specific vehicle can be made for this role, it could be tasked to plant mines in an area similar to the way a con is tasked to recycle an area, the vehicle will then work away automatically, however once a vehicle has deposited a specific number of mines it would have to return to base to restock them before carrying on.

A specific building could be made necessary for restocking mine-layers, this building could be required to use the energy grid so that "free" extra mines are mitigated by the cost of powering the re-stocking building, and the fact that its connected to the grid means that it is much quicker to lay a minefield by your base than by your opponents.

Obviously alot of balance testing would be needed for this new type of unit, and I believe that the initial unit cost should not be to cheap (to avoid spamming the whole battlefield with mines), also the damage / number of mines held would need to be carefully worked out i.e. how many reloads to deliver enough mines, to cause enough damage to recover initial cost of vehicle.
Also I believe the vehicle should not be to fast, also making it easier to mine near your base than farther away.

some other variations on this theme could include :

a) A fast kamikaze mine layer that drops its mines when destroyed. ( not too many mines and not to cheap ) an alternative to the walking bombs.

b) A mine detector, every unit can destroy mines by shooting, but only the detector can see the mines, the detector should be given only a short detection radius, and a slow speed, because linked with another unit (guarding it) the detector could be set on a path and the guard would take - out all the mines on the path.

c) The mine layer could double as a mine detector.

d) An Expensive bomber that could drop mines instead.

There are many interesting variations that can be made with this idea, in my mind hopefully it will make it harder to flank defences, and will just add many more interesting tactics to a good game.

Blastwing - fast, cheap mobile mine that turns invisible when it lands.

'Conventional' slow minelayers were around for a while but were found to be uninteresting. These types of minelayers are good for creating blanket minefields that always make cost so the game bogs down a lot, if they do not make cost there is no point building them. Also extra rules such as special mine decloakers are against the ideas of simplification and generalisation.

The mobile bombs that cloak when static turned out to be a much more interesting implementation of mines because bombs can be moved around rapidly and can move a little to make good ambushes.

As for defences being underpowered. Defences can be very bad if you use them incorrectly which seems to be what a lot of new players do. All defences are useful but they are useless if they do not defend anything important, figuring out what is important is the difficulty. As a general rule it's ok to have LLT and Defender coverage everywhere while a single Stardust or Faraday can completely defend an area behind the frontline. At the frontline a few Stardust are good and one or 2 HLTs. Even HLT is very situational though.

Heavier defences such as Anni, DDM and Behemoth are probably good but they seem to be rarely appropriate or it could just be a metagame thing. Anyway new players are best off steering clear of them.

Speaking of mines, am I the only one who thinks it would be awesome if the Roach had a puppy-goo mechanic? (note: I have not considered the balance or bug ramifications *at all*)

Don't forget the Blastwing!

It's built in the Gunship Factory. It can fly anywhere very quickly, and once it lands it automatically cloaks. Has a pretty decent explosion size.

They are very cheap and can be sent anywhere in the map in only seconds. Just watch out for AA (especially defenders) as one hit kills them.

One of the ideas you listed already existed in an earlier version, elethio!

Mine bombers used to drop a payload of a dozen or so mines, each with something like 20% the power of a roach. I don't really know why it was removed - I would've merged mine- and emp bomber into one unit, but didn't think of how that would ruin emping air units. Anyway!

I think the impulse-mine bombers were dropped when the CA/ZK merge happened. The unit was neat, but it seemed to be a solution looking for a problem.

We somehow need a Drone factory with light gunships ( If you want to switch to another factory anyways ).

Another factory can give you heavy gunships and light air units ( We have so much ground units but only so few air stuff ).

The air factory could provide heavy bombers ( Like tanks ).

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What I want to say is, why do we have 3 vehicle and 3 bot factories but only 1 AT and only a few anti-spider air units ( gunships may not hit crabe well if it is on the top of a hill ) - nothing can compensate the AT leak.

The only thing against a curled Crabe on a hill is Licho, but where hills are it doesn't allways hit.

Shadows do more damage but dies to the AA spiders - can't 1 shot them, can't burn them - stunner dies too easy.

Why haven't we merged some bots?

Why haven't we merged the light vehicles with the hovers?

Tere are only 2 air factories, because air is a support role. It would just be silly if an equal amount of combat happend in the air as on the land. All roles are well covered in air (Even with some extras like Gnats, Bombwing and Krow)

Nobody plays sea battles.

No just kiddin, but I myself haven't got a love for sea battles. Don't know, just not feeling the whole sea-battle thing.

Many ppls complained about no Amphibious units.

Hovers are light ships - and replace spiders on water maps.