Modular design and transformations?

I realise its a lot of work but i would really like to see modular design applied to units as well so we can save our own custom templates and what is a robot game without transformers?

What you do is called "presumption" not "thought". Morphing was removed, i 'presume', because it was too inefficient due to time spent disabled and nobody used it anyway. What i mean is dynamic transformations, transformer style. Like light vehicle with high speed transforming into slow walker able to climb. Or rocket bomber transforming into sub.

Design a very unique unit concept built around the morph feature from the ground up, make sure it fills a niche and that it actually has a role, not just a bunch of everything. Report back once you got anything usable. :]

I will assume that this thread is about transforming units instead of modular designs (based on the first and third posts). Please, nobody split the topic by talking about modular units or old morphing.

There is nothing wrong with transforming units, it is in fact an interesting idea. ZK has no real transformers but that is because modifying movetype on the fly only became possible post 91.0. Otherwise someone would have added it at some point (see Owl and burrowing chickens).

Transformations have practical issues though:

• It is a lot of work and currently nobody is looking to do that work. Polish is much more useful in this phase of ZK.
• All transformers should have a flying state. This is because other transformations are nothing new. A vehicle <-> spider unit is merely a fast spider with much slower hill movement. A walking ship is just a hovercraft.
• Most factories already have a full unit lineup. Figuring out where to put the new unit would be an issue.
• Every factory provides either land or air units. A transformer in a factory would break this divide and the balance of this would take some work.

Your transforming commander, flying sub and vehicle <-> spider ideas need fleshing out to become full designs. The commander idea is not viable, it would be able to escape or expand too rapidly. Think about where the unit would fit and what its role would be.

My suggestion for anyone who wants to do this is to make a strider level subplane. But my suggestion to anyone with anywhere near the skill to do this is to work on something more vital for now.

Glad that you agree. It is indeed correct that an option which is too powerful would be bad for the game.

Okay being a robot you dont get sarcasm my mistake.

Thing is, you can get flying com you just need 500 m and a minute of time to get airborne. Have you played Airmech? If not try it and maybe you will get how flying around dropping units spices up the game of "crawl crawl crawl pooooork".

Speaking of powerful, one certain game haves level ?? enemies and nobody whines. Because it is as it is and it wont change.

-1 votes? I get BANS regularly and enjoy it. What doesnt croaks you makes you STRONGER.

I quite like how the Warlords Battlecry Undead work but the game is in an entirely different context. The economy model is different, armies fight differently etc... there were some attempts to put a similar system in with the chicken economy but it never developed.

[quote] A transforming commander unit able to fly to avoid ground units, land and run to avoid aa and being generally mobile from the game start and able to easily escape and rebuild early and mid game instead of slowpoke lump devouring huge metalz to become something [semi useful.[/quote]
Here you go:

But you already have modular design!
Shield Balls are a wonderful example, you can combine any number of Felons, Outlaws, Thugs, Convicts, Racketeers, Rogues, Aspis, to get a ball with different properties, strengths and weaknesses!

The difference between one unit and multiple units is semantic, they're both just ways to win the game.