where we're going, we'll need roads

just a simple thing, can we have roads? just a simple thing to have an engineer build to make terrain more traversable, make engineers and commanders running around their bases more efficient, and perhaps even transport of tanks and such to front lines quicker on smallish scales where bringing in transports seems silly. also roads make things pretty =D

as an afterthought, with roads hanging around planets, i wonder if bored commanders will engage in racing lol.

I hear they're going to be releasing a new simcity soon.

From a philosophical perspective, I really like the idea of mobility-enhancing features like roads. It's a great idea.

The only problem is that on a big map, that's going to be a lot of construction. Pragmatically speaking it's probably more trouble than it's worth for the player.

If the speed gain from such a construction were great- more than an asphalt road provides to wheeled vehicles- then they would be viable. However then we have the problem of road spam, where if they are that powerful, it becomes a good idea to cover your sections of the map with them. So we need limitations.

The idea of constructions that enhance mobility is good, but it is complicated to come up with a good system.

Perhaps they must be built adjacent to your own buildings? Good for speeding up base movement, but not making them too obnoxious.

I do believe terraforming was proposed, so making large areas have more road like conditions is already there. I'd imagine if they did it like Zero-k it'd be fine. Otherwise the idea of actual paved surfaces might be neat, but also I don't feel it's worth the time. If it's something super easy to implement then cool, otherwise do something else.

Having ground effects like supcom would be nice, with abit larger radius.

With tracked tanks and legged robots (which are capable of moving at speeds which are comparable to modern sports cars even when off road), roads don't make a huge amount of sense. In any case, the benefit from being able to move from somewhere you control to somewhere else you control along a route you also control faster is so minor that it's not worth the effort to implement. Roads are competing with the fact that factories are necessarily cheap enough to build at advanced bases when they're secure, and advanced factories don't have to be defended at every point linking your two bases, whereas a road can be attacked at anywhere along its length.

The only thing I can see linking bases is energy/mass pipelines, and I haven't suggested that because I can't actually see it being worth the trouble in a fast-paced raiding game. Maybe if there were a much slower game mode such infrastructure might work.

That was a 'feature' of Warcraft I. It was not a feature of any subsequent Blizzard game. This tells you something. That thing is that that mechanic is too micro-heavy for the developers of Starcraft, and you won't find many RTT games more micro-heavy than Starcraft.

Realistic roads don't make sense given the technology at issue in PA. However the basic idea of a construction that increases movement speed may still have merit, depending on implementation.

The real question is, how great an effect, and at what cost? I am leaning towards large effect, high cost, because small bonus accounting is dull. You are correct that a small movement increase between two areas you control seems useless. What about a large movement increase, using some other tech, like mag-tubes or something?

I'm leading towards roads being a complete waste of time. Just build moar tanks.

I think that if you could even out terrain that would be useful, but the idea of putting down some type of hard top to make the terrain tougher (less susceptible to deformation) could be interesting.

I like the concept of movement speed increasing structures for vehicles because it serves to differentiate them from bots a little bit more. While bots are good climbers (which they already tend to be) and can attack from the more obtuse angles, vehicles are slightly more powerfull but pay for it in terms of speed and manouverability.

I love this idea. But maybe not for this game.

That was a 'feature' of Warcraft I. It was not a feature of any subsequent Blizzard game. This tells you something. That thing is that that mechanic is too micro-heavy for the developers of Starcraft, and you won't find many RTT games more micro-heavy than Starcraft.[/quote]

You have a good point: That would add to the micro by A LOT, now that I think about it. Perhaps not...

You know, honestly, transports will probably make up for any lack of speed that ground units have.

Road building would be an interesting mechanic in and of itself. However, I think such mechanics would shift the gameplay focus from fast-paced hectic skirmish and war to slow-paced economy and development. It could still be fun, but it seems to not be in the spirit of PA. I mean, to take it to an extreme, I like simcity and minecraft, but I'm not sure they should be in PA

The other issue is what role would roads serve. In our world, we need to transport materials, energy, fuel, ammo, personnel, etc.; PA tech does away with all that. For mobility purposes like flattening terrain, I believe we're already getting deformable terrain.

For those worried about implementation, it needn't be tedious. It could be like a slow-moving machine that paves wherever it rolls: building roads would simply be assigning movement orders.

I'm not worried about tedium, since it's a simple enough task to fully automate with a single order. "Build road from here to there."

I am concerned about roads being a pointlessly weak waste of resources, or being so effective that you build them literally everywhere. It is entirely possible that there is no happy medium between these two.

The alternative system I am envisioning is a linear connection, not a surface that confers a movement speed bonus. The bonus would need to be large enough that the change has a concrete effect on their plans, rather than slightly increasing the efficiency of an existing setup. And in order to justify such a significant effect, it would need a high cost.

Hmm. It has potential to be an interesting mechanic. Build something between your base and a destination in order to speed unit movement to that point. But like ledarsi said, maybe not so much a surface, more like a connection. Like maybe a gigantic conveyor belt

And since we're sort of talking about connections, what about being able to build bridge structures so that units could cross map features like rivers, canyons, etc?

Bridges! Now that idea has legs. Lets your bots and vehicles cross an otherwise impassable obstacle such as a river. And your opponent can destroy it to once again block you from crossing.

Destructible terrain- hah! How about destructible constructibles like everything else?

Probably the best way to implement this is to allow the construction of floor surface that units can path over. You can construct this over water, or open space to cross a canyon or what have you.

And to link this back to the OP you could, if you really wanted, construct this floor on already solid ground.

I donno if it needs to be in the base game, but I would like the game to support mods that have roads and rail-systems.

BUILDING roads? No thanks, but if terraforming allows it, some kind of trail would be nice, reducing rough terrain to flat terrain over time, increasing movement speed / decreasing terrain malus.

I'd rather not see buildable roads, but instead use large structure footprint decals. Think of the SupCom UEF buildings and the concrete looking tiling that goes down under structures. There was a mod at one point wwaaayyyy early on that increased the footprint decal like 500%. It gave bases a nice look when buildings started coming together. I'm not sure how it could be done but it would be really awesome to see a base actually look like a base instead of a handful of buildings glued to the ground.

I like the idea of mobility boosting structures, but I'm pretty sure we already have them:

-Terraforming mountains into plains (and rivers into dry land!)
-Unit launchers

So roads are more trouble than they're worth IMO.