Trying my hand designing the US faction (ideas, lots of them)

[Nerdfish]

Take Two !

Notices:
• TLDL Version: Drones and Planes. Tech building switch tech, lose HQ and you lose.
• Nobody cares that you don't want a USA faction. If enough people want to buy a DLC it will happen.
• I never expect Bioware Devs to read or consider this. I post it is because I think it's fun. for this reason I will post my wall of text for my own entertainment. If the Devs look at this list of ideas, there is no expectation of them considering all of them.
• Balance is not possible without precise knowledge of other factions. All the numerical values are intentionally omitted for this reason. all balance complaints are pointless because if something is overpowered there is no way for you to reasonably know it.

I will now present various ideas associated with this faction with no regard with the long line of trolls.

Overview:
The new US faction differ from EU in its experimental nature. The EU faction uses improved version of tried and true designs, the US faction uses untested technology of questionable reliability. While very versatile and reasonably powerful, US units have a tendency to suffer from unusual Achilles' Heels.

Doctrine:
"Working Everyday to unman the frontlines."
Most US units are remote controlled. They are naturally resistant to propaganda, toxin and radiation, but are vulnerable to hacking, EMP and ECM attacks.
"The few, the Proud"
The few manned US units are arguably some of the deadliest in their respective category. They are also some of the most expensive.
"At first if you do not succeed, call in an airstrike."
This faction features devastating air units and airstrike power for players that can afford them.
"Technology of tomorrow, today"
The new generation of US units have not seen as much action as EU designs, and tend to encounter unforeseen practical problems on the field. Fortunately for the US player, these units also tend to have some nasty surprises up their sleeves.
 
Base Building
Overview
- Unmanned engineers are sacrificed when laying down building foundations. the player cannot get the builder back by canceling construction. This faction tend to expand slowly because one builder can only construct one structure.
- field bases are network of bunkers rather than standing buildings. This allow Both friendly and hostile units to pass over them. Cannons also do less damage to bunkers. Ground Units are built underground then moved onto the surface. Aircraft is likewise stored underground and surfaced for launch.
- There are no dedicated power or defense structures. Each building instead have a number of expansion points. Power and defenses are attached to other buildings, making it easy to defend expansion, but difficult to turtle.
- Light drones can be attached to structure at additional cost, much like vehicles. A structure can initially support 3, a drone bay expansion increases that number.
- Buildings are remote controlled like many other units. They take no damage from radiation and chemical attacks.
- Building expansions stop working when not attached to a building.
- Unit production is completely stopped rather than slowed when the base loses power.
- Because the HQ building is required to establish a connection to remote controlled units, losing the last HQ building result in an instant loss for the US player. In some campaign missions, a Command vehicle is used instead, and losing that also result in instant defeat.

Bunkers:

HQ: Citadel Command
- Enable radar
- Deploy Support powers
- 6 Expansion spots
- Losing the last HQ result in a loss

Supply structure: Supply Center
- Build directly on top of supply dumps
- Garrison builders to generate income
- 4 Expansion spots

Factory: Manufacturing Facility
- Build land vehicles
- Research vehicle upgrades
- 4 Expansion Spot
 
Airfield: Forward Airbase
- Deploy manned aircrafts
- Research aircraft upgrades
- 4 Expansion Spot

Tech building: Combat information Center
- Allow the player to enable one of three specialized strategies
- Each tech path enable its own set of unit and provide a global bonus
- Switching strategy cost resources
- Switching strategy paralyzes all land units temporarily, and cause all air units to return to airfield.
- Each additional CIC increase the global bonus of declared strategy but with diminishing return.
- Perform advanced research.
+ Shock and Awe Strategy: Allow Superiority Fighter and Advanced Bomber to be deployed. Each CIC provide 20% additional chance for all attacks to stun enemy units for 1.5 seconds. Unmanned units are not affected. (20% on the first one, 36% on the second one, ect)
+ Hold the Line Strategy: Enable Railgun and Laser turret attachments, Decrease power requirement for all structures by 10% accumulatively (90% first, 81% second, 73% third, ect)
+ Rapid Maneuver Strategy: Enable Advanced Heavy Tank and Mobile heavy artillery to be constructed at the Factory. first CIC increase land movement speed by 10%, each additional one increase it by 80% of the previous one (110% first, 118% second. 124% third, ect)

Superweapon: Advanced Communication Center
- A superweapon that have multiple modes of operation
- Switching mode cost money and reset the timer
+ Configure Logistic AI uplink: Configure the building to reset cool down on general abilities and temporarily reduce all cool down (except its own) to zero.
+ Configure Missile Defense uplink: Configure the building to block enemy super-weapon attacks that would land in its vicinity.

Expansions

Fusion Reactor
- Provide Power
- Can switch to money producing mode with a late game upgrade
Armory Expansion
- Deploy builders and infantry
- Provide research for builders and infantry.

Drone Bay
- Increase light drone capacity of attached building by 3
- build and house up to 3 Hunter Killer Aircraft

Auxiliary construction bay
- Garrison up to three builder
- Each builder increase the speed the attached structure build unit or generate resource

Railgun Position
- Enabled by Hold the line strategy
- Concealed underground when not firing
- Consume a tremendous amount of power when firing
- Inflict a tremendous amount of damage against all land units (not just enemy land units).
- Railgun shots will continue past any unit it kills.
- If enemy vehicles gets too close, the turret will shrink into the ground to avoid being crushed.

Tactical Laser Position
- Enabled by Hold the line strategy
- Concealed underground when not firing
- Consume a tremendous amount of power when firing
- Have a tremendous rate of fire against enemy missile and aircraft
- If enemy vehicles gets too close, the turret will shrink into the ground to avoid being crushed.

Units
Symbols (+ advantages, -disadvantages, ?situational, > activated abilities)

Overview:
US faction does not have a "hero". Instead it has rangers which resembles its previous hero, sans the demolition ability.
Also, instead of using a traditional gunship, its medium tank serve the purpose of tank destroyer.
Veteran piloted vehicle and aircraft will eject pilot when destroyed.
Vast majority of US units are unmanned. unless marked as exception.
- Unmanned units have a chance of becoming permanently paralyzed when hit by a EMP or ECM weapon. The only way to save such a unit is to repair it to full health.
- Unmanned units near enemy hacker or ECM units may fail to respond to command.
 
Infantry
Builder: Unmanned Engineering unit
A small drone does all the chores
+ Repair building and units
+ Build and gathers resources
+ can be garrisoned in transport and buildings
- Sacrificed when constructing buildings
- Can be crushed
- Does not have shoes
? can be sacrificed to capture buildings quickly

Gun/Missile Infantry: Sentry Drone
Tracked drone that can be equipped for various missions.
+ Immune to many things that quickly kill conventional infantry
+ Expensive for an infantry
+ can switch between anti-vehicle and anti-infantry unit
- helpless against aircraft
> Switch weapon - MG: Default weapon is a machine gun, only effective against infantry.
> Switch weapon - ATGM: Secondary weapon, only effective against vehicles.
> Turret mode: Deploy the sentry drone into a turret, give it building armor and stealth detection but cause it to consume power. Sentry drone can still be crushed in turret mode

Elite Infantry: Rangers
A elite solider in exoskeleton suit wielding a chain gun.
? Not a Drone
? Vehicle armor - This unit can garrison in building and transports, but has vehicle armor. It takes very little damage from bullets but more damage from canons and missiles.
+ Cannot be crushed - This unit have vehicle armor so it can only be crushed by unit capable of crushing vehicles.
> Switch weapon - Chain gun: Default weapon is a chain gun that deals AOE bullet type damage, very effective against aircraft and large group of infantry.
> Switch weapon - Objective Sniper Weapon: Switch weapon to a high powered sniper rifle.

Vehicles
Transport: Stryker
? Not a drone
+ Transport 8 infantry units
+ Have a number of mutually exclusive upgrade, each upgrade cost resources.
+ automatically evacuate occupants when low on health
- infantry cannot fire out it.
- Poor armor and high cost
> Switch Weapon: Grenade Launcher - default weapon that clear buildings from a long distance.
> Switch Weapon: ATGM - Long range anti-vehicle weapon
> Switch Weapon: MEV - Provide the vehicle with ability to heal infantry, but it cannot fire in this mode.

Medium "Tank": Black Knight
a "Equalizer" autocannon mounted on a tracked unmanned platform. It's a "gunship" on tracks.
+ peerless firepower against enemy vehicles at close range
+ respectable armor and speed
- very short range
- Like regular gunships, this unit have limited ammo. It will have to reload after a few seconds of combat.
- May jam when firing while low on health. This will prevent the unit from firing until repaired to full health.

Heavy Mobile Artillery: Democles
Targeting Drone for Zumwalt class destroyer
+ Calls down a shower of hypersonic tungsten slugs on targets and inflict apocalyptic destruction on everything within target zone.
+ A targeting reticule is visible for allied players to make it easier to avoid friendly fire.
- it takes a long time for the railgun shell to arrive, thus it's not effective against moving targets.
- The destroyer's gunnery system rely on the Democles's sensors to compensate for atmospheric interference. the metal shower has a chance of missing their intended target zone entirely depending how damaged the Democles is.

Advanced Heavy Tank: Templar
Nuclear powered, unmanned tank with armed with a Railgun,
? Irradiate nearby infantry, friend or foe (unmanned for a reason)
? Railgun inflict a tremendous amount of damage against all land units (including friendly ones)
+ Railgun shell continue passes any units it kills.
+ is faster and has a longer range than other Heavy tanks
- The vehicle must stop and deploy stabilizer to fire. (for the reason below)
- Has a chance of destroying itself by flipping over when it fires, chance depends on health.
- Have less armor and is more expensive than other heavy tanks
- Extremely expensive
> can power down and function as a power plant.

Aircraft

Fighter/Bomber: F35 Lightning
? Not a Drone
+ Invisible on radar
+ Effective against Aircraft and Buildings
- Can only change Payloads when docked
? Fly in from edge of the map when built
> Air to Air payload: equip the Lightning to attack enemy air units with missiles
> Air to ground payload: equip the Lightning to attack enemy surface units and buildings with bombs and gun.

Electronic Attack craft: Pegasus
+ Electronic warfare unit with various annoying abilities
- Completely unarmed
> Radar Jamming: Configure unit to create fake dots and pings on enemy minimap
> Communication Jamming: Enemy units near the Pegasus sometimes do not respond to commands.
> Targeting Interference: Misdirect enemy missile in vicinity

Advanced Bomber: Avenger Hunter-Killer
+ Invisible on radar
+ Built from a building expansion and can be massed in large numbers.
+ Can detect stealth
+ Highly effective against vehicles
- Can only attack ground units and buildings

Superiority Fighter: F22 Raptor
? Not a drone
+ Ridiculously fast
+ Fire a devastating barrage of Air to air missile at enemy air units
+ Invisible on Radar
+ Enters super-cruise after attacking, rendering them invulnerable when returning to airfield
- Can only attack air units (I know it's unrealistic)
- Extremely expensive.
? Fly in from edge of the map when built

Light drones

Repair drone - Recon drone from the previous game made stealth detection too easy, thus is replaced with a dedicated drone that regenerate unit/building it's attached to.

Hellfire drone - Add extra anti-tank ability to unit/building it's attached to.

Gun drone - Add extra anti-infantry ability to unit/building it's attached to, as well as shooting down the occasional rocket.


Technologies

Armory
Self-Destruct charges: Gives sentries a VERY large crush revenge. basically anything beside heavy tank will die instantly should they crush sentries. It can be used creatively to restrict movement of enemy vehicles.
Defense configuration Optimization: Greatly reduce the cooldown and cast time for sentry's ability to transform between turret and mobile modes and eliminate its cost.
Smoke screens: Attacking the sentry will sometime trigger a smoke screen, preventing enemy from targeting that sentry for a few seconds. This effect cannot occur more often than once in 10 seconds.

Assembly bay
electronic subterfuge Interface: make engineering drones invisible on enemy mini-maps and allow them to quickly capture buildings but sacrificing themselves.
Depleted uranium plating : Greatly reduce damage vehicles take from frontal attacks
Metamaterial Cloaking: Vehicles are invisible when not attacking or moving.
Telemetry multiplexing: Increase light drone cap of vehicles to 3.
 
Airfield
Automated Image processing: the Avenger earn money for each kill. Of course, nothing stops them from stealing kill from other units.
Anti-air suppression: if any of your air unit is killed by an enemy ground unit, the airfield will immediately launch a cruise missile at the unit that killed it. the cruise missile will follow the enemy unit and inflict significant damage, however it can be shot down.
Sensor Networks: Aircrafts now project an aura that increase range of ground units in radius.

CIC
Telemetry forwarding: allow each infantry unit to deploy 1 light drone.
Backup systems: Each time a unmanned veteran unit is killed, the next unit of the same kind produced will automatically have the same experience.
Electronic hardening: Reduce amount of time a unit is capacitated when hit by a EMP, hacking or ECM attack.
Control system Inoculation: you gain the ability to self-destruct some enemy units that has picked up a crate spawned by destroying one of your units
Source identification: Any unit that attack an US unit receives a debuff reveals its location for 15 seconds, this debuf is refreshed if it attacks again while suffering from the debuff.
Genetic Algorithm: If any of you units survive after been hit by an enemy support power, it immediately gain a rank of veterancy.
Patch optimization: Strategies are switched instantaneously and at no cost.
Fusion Power stability - Take that foreign oil ! A firmware upgrade to fusion power plant allow it to generate so much power that you can export some of it for money. Irony. allow power plants to switch from power generating and money generating modes.

[Commander32]

I would prefer if the USA didn't always invest on Drones, I still like old manpower too, however the USA still needs to be more reliant on Robotics compared to other factions. I want Flesh and Blood Infantry, and Good old Tanks too, though advanced ones at best.

[Nerdfish]

I'd read your ideas if you post them.

[Commander32]

And I still want Raptors too.

Argh, NVM...

I think you should look at the Various ZH mods for ideas.(mainly Shockwave, ROTR, and EC)

[cnc_kingbdogz]

To be honest I quite like the idea of primarily using Drones in a USA faction. It further diversifies each faction. What would be cool is if there was a Healing Drone which could heal nearby infantry, seeing as we have Repair Drones already for tanks.

[Alaskan_Viking]

I agree that the USA should not totally rely on drones, although it should focus on them more than the other factions, same with air, US should focus on air more but it should have land units too and not NOTHING but air units... Perhaps a Drone General if they add generals as sub factions?

I was going to make my own thread about this, but I think here would be as good a place as any for it.

FACIST USA.

Instead of having China or Russia as the semi evil heavy fire power, large numbers, big tank faction, they could have a somehwat bankrupted and lower tech (But still advanced) USA.

It could be added in as a new campaign/faction in a large DLC, or just be the thrid base faction (*isn't giving his hope up*) The story would be that after the USA was defeated and humiliated, and forced to accept unfavorable peace terms, the nation looked to a strong dynamic leader who promised to restore America to it's rightful place as the greatest most powerful country on earth.

The gameplay and units would be similar to China from Generals 1, except slightly more expensive, fragile, and offensive in nature.

DLC units could be Japense naval units (now facist again) or Aussie infantry.

Don't want to make a huge exhaustive list, but the high lights would be:


Basic infantry Unit: Dunno, lets say Marines, and Rangers as a replacement/ upgrade for an infantry or Special forces general.

AT infantry: Javalin infantry, aple to use a medium strength direct attack, or a manual aimed, 'top down" fire mode that does more damage, but takes more micro.

Commando: Exoskeleton equipted Col. Burton with a mini gun, stealth knife attack and C-4. (actually more realistic than the Generals 1 version because a single human cannot carry a mini gun, + ammo + battery lol)

Or maybe regular Col. Burton and mini gun armed exoskeleton infantry for an USA infantry general?

Armored Exoskeleton infantry as an advanced infantry unit?



APC: Amphibious landing craft,( LAV based design?) small turret with an anti ground/Anti air 20mm auto cannon (think 1/4 the fire power of a quad cannon) and infantry can fire out of it, comes loaded half full with Marines.

Anti air unit: LAV 20mm cannon. Each LAV can be upgraded (like an overload or Helix in Gen 1) with anti tank guided missiles, Point laser defense, or anti air missiles, neither of which is very powerful.

Medium Tank: Paladin, Point laser defense or Rail gun single unti upgrade when advanced tech is acheived.

Unique: Mine clearance/Medic Drone/Recon drone. Clears mines, heals nearboy infantry, and sees stealth.

Advanced tank: M-7A1 President Bush Tank. A Large individually upgradable tank, with an obnoxious double barreled turret. Upgrades include infantry Compartment/ Firing ports and replacing the double barrel general purpose cannon with a single anti armor Railgun. Has a tendency towards unilaterally attacking enemy armies and has a Texas/redneck voice when clicked. "Let's invade Canada!" "wheres the oil now?!"

Advanced unique unit: Fox News propaganda tank which stuns enemies and heals/frenzies nearby friendly infantry. Or just a Microwave tank...

General powers:

Level 1: probably UAV drone, and some kind of special unit unlocks? Maybe unlock the A-10C as a buildable air unit?

Auto Repair drones for certain buildings (war factories, barricks, etc) Maybe make this a for cash upgrade.

Level 3 :

Steel rain: works like the Chinese heavy arty ability except it's tunsten steel, FROM SPACE!

Carpet bombing: A B-1 Lancer (or some futirstic design based on it) swoops in and drops loads of bombs along a corridor.

Shock n' Awe: Frenzy like ability that increases movement and firing speed of units in a certain area.

Level 5:

MOAB, delivered by B-2.

Deep Logistics: Unlocks drop zone economic building.

AC-Some-random-number Gunship.

[cnc_kingbdogz]

I agree that the USA should not totally rely on drones, although it should focus on them more than the other factions, same with air, US should focus on air more but it should have land units too... Perhaps a Drone General if they add generals as sub factions?

Oh hehe a Drone General would be amazing. Nice idea

[Nerdfish]

a drone general would be amazing. More so if he is a Californian cyborg with sunshades.

[Commander32]

Drone General?

Then Look at this.

http://www.moddb.com/mods/contra
Cybernetic General (Algrin "A.I." Ironhand)

General Ironhand's main units are drones.
His superweapon reloads quickly.
The drones are fast and immune to toxins, radiation,
neutron weapons, snipers and hijackers.
His ultimate mech unit, Fafnir, is versatile and effective against everything.
This idea has been around for Generals ZH for a while now.

[Nerdfish]

Drone General?

Then Look at this.

http://www.moddb.com/mods/contra
Cybernetic General (Algrin "A.I." Ironhand)

General Ironhand's main units are drones.
His superweapon reloads quickly.
The drones are fast and immune to toxins, radiation,
neutron weapons, snipers and hijackers.
His ultimate mech unit, Fafnir, is versatile and effective against everything.
This idea has been around for Generals ZH for a while now.

There is still some minor difference between drones and giant death robots, IMHO
And why are there Cylons but no Daleks ?