...And Now, Venus Needs Men

...following up to yesterday's idea, I was contemplating how the game mechanics of such a game would work.

For Martians, they'd have to capture women...leading to all sorts of joke/kitch ways to catch women (shoe-sales traps, beefcake sales, etc, etc). And, Venus has to catch men, so we have the Strip Club and the Hardware Store.

Us poor humans don't have to catch men and women. We clone them ourselved, via the Commander (whom can't be affected by these traps because Commanders are downloaded brains).

Also, bases rely upon transports carrying materials and supplies from various salvage points-you can build up to six transports per location, which can be upgraded (Martian transports gain better defenses, Venusian transports are stealthy). Humans don't need them, because teleport technology means that the supplies are beamed through hyperspace to bases-slower than transports, but can't be intercepted and interrupted.

The design philosophy of the various units are as follows-

• Martian equipment and vehicles looks like it came from the late '50s to mid '60s sci-fi sets and art. Which is to say a lot of flying saucers, fins, guns with disks on them, and all the sort of stuff that makes the Golden Age of Science Fiction so much fun.
• Venutian equipment looks like it comes from the '60s to the '70s sci-fi. Lots of printed circuits, bulky designs, and strange development concepts.
  
• Earth equipment is ultra-modern and ultra-high tech. Masamune Shirow is pretty much given a budget, design concepts, and told to build units for each tier of the system. One of the most important units is the Commander, which is going to get so many customization options that it isn't funny.

Of course, when the game comes out, there will have to be an expansion pack...I'm thinking of a few other planets...

• Mercury has lots of small, fast units that are very cheap. Late-70s to early '80s sci-fi design concepts, they're the race that does Zerg Rushes. Of course, once you get up to Tier 3 units, they have some very nasty systems inculding the Apollo Tank.
• Uranus reilies upon capturing men and women and doing painful, painful things upon them, to power their Hate Machines. '80s sci-fi designes are prevalant in all regards and concepts.
  

I'm thinking about grabbing/stealing the Dawn Of War engine for the game, though the 2nd gen DOW engine might be more to my needs (it's being designed and built, from what I've heard, to accomdiate a LARGE number of complicated units, since Relic couldn't deploy Tyranids in the current engine).

The ideas are just flowing...