Yeah, I noticed the new respawn bug today. It's really odd, there's no reason it should happen. I've not touched the respawn trigger in a long while.
Fixed it anyway. Will upload immediately.
The turret destroy thing, I want a good method of handling that. For now I'll add a suicide function to the turrets and barracks.
The NPCs, well, I don't know. Playing alone means you aren't going to get mineral rewards from killing players, which is huge. I'll wait with changing the NPC forces for now.
Thanks for the feedback. They're pretty good points. I'll get a fixed version with AI up for tomorrow.
Oh and infantry AI is changing. I actually dislike the whole infantry system right now, but I'll see before I do anything drastic.
Edit: Did a little tonight. You can now change to deck view by selecting your worker/hitting F1, and field view by selecting your mech/hitting F2.
Fixed the errant marauder, the artillery typo and the friendly fire thing.
You can view your deck while dead now by hitting F1, but you can't really go back. You also can't build while dead. I'll change this tomorrow as it requires more effort than the above changes and it's 2am.
I've uploaded it to EU servers. If you play this, please remember that it is basically fresh out of my head and nearly entirely untested. Everything should work fine (I'd appreciate feedback on anything that doesn't), but what I'm testing most is how intuitive and polished things are.
Catalyst: War Machines (BETA)
If you want to play, hit "create game" and search for "Catalyst".
This is a quiet beta test for people to see the map if they are interested. I will add AI shortly, though don't expect it to be great. It will only be there to make testing more enjoyable. Basically, if you have feedback over how to improve the intuitiveness of the map and the polish, I'd appreciate it. I want to release on the Tuesday night popularity reset so I have a shot of getting to the front few pages immediately, which is why I'd like to get that polish sorted now.
After you've played, I'd appreciate going down this list and seeing if anything highlights anything for you;
sounds amazing, when will you release a public version?
I don't want to make the same mistake I made with Cityscape. I want to get everything in there, functioning and polished before I release so I don't have to make such drastic changes. I hope to get a beta out in the next few days. The game is very playable as it is, I'm mostly just getting all the content in now.
Yeah i know already that there is loads of customization don't get me wrong but as i understand it the tech trees work like the ones in diablo2, where you have to get at least 1 first tier weapon to use the 2ndtier weapon.
Well maybe i don't want the 1st but only the 2nd tier thingie cause the 1st doesn't work well with the rest of my build you see thats what i meant with restrictions.
I think a gated approach coupled with your vehiclelevel is good enough without a actual tech tree but what do i know.
Well I would hope that you want the first tier weapon. If they aren't desirable, they'll be buffed. The general idea is that you build a lot of tier 1 weapons that are just generally good at handling everything, a few tier 2 weapons that make you excel in one area, and finally your tier 3 weapon which is more of a reward for finishing that tree anyway.
That said, it'll be much clearer when you see it in action!
There's 3 main trees. As I mentioned, weaponry, support and production.
Each tree has subtrees. For weaponry these are;
Light Weapons - Short range with special properties
Heavy Weapons - Mid range, your hard hitters
Missile Weapons - Long range, good for clearing out lots of targets
But in addition there are "floating" weapons that aren't really in any tech tree. For example, say I go for a carrier build and pick up a load of drone producing structures from the production tab. I spend all my vespene in upgrading my drones while slowly teching up the drone tree. There are floating components in each tree to spice things up. Such as I could be heavy drone focused but pick the radar up from the support tree, or tech down the point defence tree from weaponry. These "floating" components don't have associated upgrades (mainly because they don't really need them), and are just there to really blow up customisation.
That said, everything is gated so that it shouldn't be overly confusing for new players. You shouldn't feel overwhelmed with choice from the moment you start. The vehicles are tiered to unlock new weapons as you upgrade, and all the subtrees are ordered into tech trees that unlock as you progress down them (while not making previous tech components useless as you tech down, it's more like more specialised components get unlocked).
Overall I'm happy with this new system. Very happy. Reinforced by that I've never had anyone even had to explain it to anyone for them to grasp it. I dragged a friend of mine who barely plays sc2 at all and he never had to ask.
As an example, the heavy weapons tech tree (part of the weaponry category);
Assault Cannon (turret)
Ion Cannon (turret)
Ventorini Beam (targetted fire)
The ultimate weapons for each subtree are target fire weapons. This is for a reason. The system I used in Catalyst was silly complex and annoying to work with. I doubt I'll be returning to that system.
Incidentally, the mid tier weapons are more situational. In the above example, the assault cannon is your bread and butter weapon. The Ion Cannon is more niche but has it's advantages and will be one reason to choose that subtree over others. The ultimate is a slightly overtuned weapon that you may only have one of.
You see in catalyst1.0 it was already annoying when 2-3 turret-carriers planted their turrets in one spot basically rendering this spot inpenetrable for the enemy. Now whith the new system there is no limit to how many turrets you can deploy -> hope you see the problem right there.
You may only have as many active turrets as you have turret cores. If you have 3 artillary cores, you may have 3 artillary turrets. If one turret dies, you may replace it, costing only energy. The only way you could get a 4th artillary turret is by purchasing a 4th artillary core, which costs minerals.
It's basically just like the turrets in Cityscape, only replace "items" with "cores".
Also what is the purpose of selling some at controlpoints, some at the base and some being random drops? Thats just confusing and unneccesary imo. Do it like blizzard does with ui, clear basic features easy to understand and not 99 different ways to do the same thing. That reminds me of the forest shops in dota, i mean what is the purpose other than unnecessary legwork? xD
Yeah come to think of it I hated the forest shops with a passion. Internal factory "shop" it is.
I assume you still need vespene gas to fortify your control nodes with towers right?
I changed things around a lot. The way this works now is more akin to how the deployable turrets worked.
You build a turret core internally. There are 5 different turret cores right now. Building a turret core enables a build menu on your vehicle in the field. Building the turret core costs minerals. Building the turret itself costs energy from your vehicle. Basically, it works exactly how deployable turrets from Catalyst worked, only these are placeable.
I've done away with vespene as a team resource. It's now used for upgrades. For example, you can improve your vehicle's armour by 1 point for 75 minerals and 75 vespene. There are no purchasable buildings in the field anymore. Everything is constructed by players. I feel this makes the whole experience much more dynamic.
I'm not sure that was a good explanation. It's very simple to get to grips with. I've tested with a few people and I've not even had anyone have to ask questions over how things work. I'm really pleased with how intuitive this all fits together, and making things fit together well is a top priority for me right now.
Well you'd be constructing them. Like some cheap, but techy structure that builds a nuke.
I might try a little of everything anyway. A few sold by control points, a few more sold by your base and a few different ones "sold" by constructing them. I might add them as random spawns during lategame too but shall see.
For now I might just add a consumable chemical nuke and see how that plays out before going further. I'll be keeping an eye on it during beta and if it doesn't fit, I'll get rid of it before release. They will basically play a similar role to the support powers from Command & Conquer.
This is starting to seem more like potential update material than something I'd want to fit into release though.
So I'm back on the drawing board for one final concept.
Basically, the game is split into 3 main stages. Early game, mid game and late game. Early game you will be limited by minerals and not really have to worry about vespene much. Mid game, you will be limited by minerals and vespene. Late game, you will typically have more than enough minerals and be limited only by vespene.
To ensure the game keeps it's flow, I will be introducing consumables. Consumables will cost minerals and will typically be designed around bringing the game to an end. Some examples for consumables are tank drops, which airlifts in a tank squad which will operate autonomously to bring victory, and more traditional ones such as nukes or chemical weapons.
While ideas for consumables are more than welcome, what I would like is a method of purchasing these consumables. Consumables will be displayed like items are in SotIS, and for all intensive purposes will be items. Just they won't provide passive effects and must be casted in order to gain benefit, at which point the item is spent and removed. I want a way to purchase these items.
A little background for a moment. Right now the team bases are rather useless. It's part intentional, you never need to really visit your base. You can repair outside combat in the field and vehicle components are also constructed in the field. With that in mind I have 2 main options:
1) The shop option. A shop in your base that sells these items in the same way most RPGs work.
2) The construction option. You build a "shop" inside your vehicle and purchase from there.
I'm seeking criticism here. I'm not sure consumables will make it into release if I can't solidify their design. Basically I want an end-game way to spend minerals and draw the game to a close (without being overpowered), and this idea seems to fit the bill.
Enough working on the splash for now. SC logo is a placeholder until I can get someone to make a decent Catalyst logo or get around to doing it myself.
I enjoyed the first Catalyst. Version 2 sounds really cool, Will keep a look out for it;p.
Will it still be EU only?
The beta will be EU only, though this should be short since I plan to get all the content I want to add in BEFORE I release this time, it'd be entirely for balance and bugs.
Still working on polish. Spent a while on the intro screen today.
I want a nice Catalyst logo in the middle, but for some reason any .tga I import has it's transparency removed and it just looks plan bad;
So all the core concepts are in. Everything works and it's all nicely polished. Did some basic testing and fixed all the oversights I made.
I don't want to repeat the same mistake I did with Catalyst though. I don't want to be adding new content weekly, but rather in monthly patches or similar, with weekly balance changes/gameplay improvements until balance and gameplay are stable. People complained a lot about this, and in hindsight I should probably just get all my ideas into the game before I release it.
This is mostly focused on what you build "inside" your vehicle.
Right now there are 3 basic choices. Weapons, counter weapons (guns, an aoe missile snare), and drones. I want to expand this.
Here is my concept;
3 major internal structure types.
1) Weaponry
This type is mostly damaging weapons. There are 3 types of weapons; light, heavy and missile. Each type has their own associated upgrades, for example you can upgrade heavy weapon damage which will improve all of the weapons of that type.
Light weapons are generally short ranged weapons with special attributes, for example the napalm turret leaves a smoldering patch of damaging fire in it's wake. The flak turret is highly effective against infantry and drones, and unlike most weaponry, cannot miss. This trend continues.
Heavy weapons are your big hitters. They do a lot of damage, but with a slow fire rate. These are your go-to weapons to demolish hardened targets like other players. To make other weapons useful, heavy weapons are soft countered by multiple targets. That is, a player who focuses on drones or engaging a player surrounded by creeps will make heavy weaponry less useful, and make mixing your heavy guns with lighter ones to clear the creeps a valid tactic.
Missile Weapons are your long range hitters. Typically focusing on hitting multiple targets or generally huge splash damage. Not too effective against players, but their range creates some options. One problem with the original Catalyst was that missile weapons were the only choice early game. I feel this is alleviated by the new systems somewhat, but I'll be keeping an eye on this weapon type the most.
Counter Weapons Point defence turrets can shoot down incoming heavy or missile weaponry. Light weaponry either cannot be shot down or simply fires so many projectiles that they can overwhelm pdd. As such, pdd soft counters heavy and missile weaponry, but is soft countered by light weaponry.
Healing Weaponry I'm sure this one doesn't need explaining. The new independent turret AI allows better prioritization for repair beams and such, so hopefully this type will see new light.
This concludes the weaponry section. All of this is already in the game and fully functional, in addition to a few drones.
2) Production
The production archetype consists of 2 main types of structure.
Drone Bays automatically produce drones, similar to the drones from Catalyst. The difference is that these structures all independently build and maintain 1 drone by themselves. That is, if you have 12 drone bays, all 12 will build independently rather than the old model of building 1 drone at a time, regardless of how many drone items you had.
There are a few different types of drone. The types aren't important really. They are generally all short range and lightly armoured, but very quick to be replaced. There are a number of drone support structures too. Basically, focusing on drones turns your vehicle into a walking aircraft carrier, with all the associated advantages (long range, low risk strikes). An aircraft carrier type vehicle will beat out a defensive type vehicle (next section), but lose head on to a weaponry type (last section).
Barracks type structures are the second production style of building. The way this works is that you build a structure inside your vehicle. This costs minerals. This structure allows your vehicle to build something in the field at an energy cost. For example, a barracks. So you spend your minerals on say a "Barracks construction kit", which allows you to build 1 Barracks. If the barracks dies, you can replace it for only an energy cost.
The barracks, for example, will produce units Nexus Wars style. I can already hear the screams, but hear me out. Firstly, the barracks will only produce up to 3 marines, similar to a drone bay. If a marine dies, it'll produce another to maintain 3 marines. The marines will attack towards the enemy base. "So how is that different to Nexus Wars?", well, if your barracks is safely in your base, it will happily produce 3 marines and the marines will slowly trudge towards the enemy base while the barracks sits idle. When they die, it will produce 3 more. However, if the barracks is close to the front lines, the production rate will be closer to the fatality rate and you will, overall, have higher production.
This keeps in line with the style of the game. To reinforce this (this part is conceptual), buildings will only function while near your vehicle, protoss pylon style. This could potentially be rather annoying and perhaps the production limit would be enough to ensure keeping your production buildings on the front line, but it's a potential fallback. There would be multiple types of barracks; Marines, Marauders, Medics, Ghosts, Firebats and some infantry artillery unit like a mortar team from wc3. Barracks buildings would need to be first purchased inside your vehicle before they can be placed on the field, after which the only subsequent investment is energy.
Defence
The last archetype. Again this is split into two types.
Support consists of things like internal radars (think the radar from Catalyst, provides radar info and debuffs enemies) and placeable structures that play a supporting role (such as a repair station). Internal buildings would simply function like weapon turrets do, except they would provide buffs/debuffs around your vehicle. Placeable buildings like the repair station would function like the above mentioned barracks; first a precursor building is built internally and then the structure itself is built costing energy. If the energy cost building is destroyed, it may be rebuilt, costing only energy.
Defence towers would be the final type. This is pretty self explanatory. Placeable turrets of various types for various purposes. They would, again, function like the above method. Think turrets from Catalyst, only rather than purchasing a turret item, you purchase a turret building. You place the turrets from a special tab on your vehicle. The final tier defence structures are artillery pieces designed for sieging the enemy base.
About half of the above is already ingame. The defence and barracks sections are conceptual right now. I'm interested in people's thoughts.
Yeah, I noticed the new respawn bug today. It's really odd, there's no reason it should happen. I've not touched the respawn trigger in a long while.
Fixed it anyway. Will upload immediately.
The turret destroy thing, I want a good method of handling that. For now I'll add a suicide function to the turrets and barracks.
The NPCs, well, I don't know. Playing alone means you aren't going to get mineral rewards from killing players, which is huge. I'll wait with changing the NPC forces for now.
Thanks for the feedback. They're pretty good points. I'll get a fixed version with AI up for tomorrow.
Oh and infantry AI is changing. I actually dislike the whole infantry system right now, but I'll see before I do anything drastic.
Edit: Did a little tonight. You can now change to deck view by selecting your worker/hitting F1, and field view by selecting your mech/hitting F2.
Fixed the errant marauder, the artillery typo and the friendly fire thing.
You can view your deck while dead now by hitting F1, but you can't really go back. You also can't build while dead. I'll change this tomorrow as it requires more effort than the above changes and it's 2am.
I've uploaded it to EU servers. If you play this, please remember that it is basically fresh out of my head and nearly entirely untested. Everything should work fine (I'd appreciate feedback on anything that doesn't), but what I'm testing most is how intuitive and polished things are.
Catalyst: War Machines (BETA)
If you want to play, hit "create game" and search for "Catalyst".
This is a quiet beta test for people to see the map if they are interested. I will add AI shortly, though don't expect it to be great. It will only be there to make testing more enjoyable. Basically, if you have feedback over how to improve the intuitiveness of the map and the polish, I'd appreciate it. I want to release on the Tuesday night popularity reset so I have a shot of getting to the front few pages immediately, which is why I'd like to get that polish sorted now.
After you've played, I'd appreciate going down this list and seeing if anything highlights anything for you;
I don't want to make the same mistake I made with Cityscape. I want to get everything in there, functioning and polished before I release so I don't have to make such drastic changes. I hope to get a beta out in the next few days. The game is very playable as it is, I'm mostly just getting all the content in now.
Well I would hope that you want the first tier weapon. If they aren't desirable, they'll be buffed. The general idea is that you build a lot of tier 1 weapons that are just generally good at handling everything, a few tier 2 weapons that make you excel in one area, and finally your tier 3 weapon which is more of a reward for finishing that tree anyway.
That said, it'll be much clearer when you see it in action!
It's funny you mention customization.
There's 3 main trees. As I mentioned, weaponry, support and production.
Each tree has subtrees. For weaponry these are;
Light Weapons - Short range with special properties
Heavy Weapons - Mid range, your hard hitters
Missile Weapons - Long range, good for clearing out lots of targets
But in addition there are "floating" weapons that aren't really in any tech tree. For example, say I go for a carrier build and pick up a load of drone producing structures from the production tab. I spend all my vespene in upgrading my drones while slowly teching up the drone tree. There are floating components in each tree to spice things up. Such as I could be heavy drone focused but pick the radar up from the support tree, or tech down the point defence tree from weaponry. These "floating" components don't have associated upgrades (mainly because they don't really need them), and are just there to really blow up customisation.
That said, everything is gated so that it shouldn't be overly confusing for new players. You shouldn't feel overwhelmed with choice from the moment you start. The vehicles are tiered to unlock new weapons as you upgrade, and all the subtrees are ordered into tech trees that unlock as you progress down them (while not making previous tech components useless as you tech down, it's more like more specialised components get unlocked).
Overall I'm happy with this new system. Very happy. Reinforced by that I've never had anyone even had to explain it to anyone for them to grasp it. I dragged a friend of mine who barely plays sc2 at all and he never had to ask.
Basically, it is ordered in a tech tree fashion.
As an example, the heavy weapons tech tree (part of the weaponry category);
Assault Cannon (turret)
Ion Cannon (turret)
Ventorini Beam (targetted fire)
The ultimate weapons for each subtree are target fire weapons. This is for a reason. The system I used in Catalyst was silly complex and annoying to work with. I doubt I'll be returning to that system.
Incidentally, the mid tier weapons are more situational. In the above example, the assault cannon is your bread and butter weapon. The Ion Cannon is more niche but has it's advantages and will be one reason to choose that subtree over others. The ultimate is a slightly overtuned weapon that you may only have one of.
You may only have as many active turrets as you have turret cores. If you have 3 artillary cores, you may have 3 artillary turrets. If one turret dies, you may replace it, costing only energy. The only way you could get a 4th artillary turret is by purchasing a 4th artillary core, which costs minerals.
It's basically just like the turrets in Cityscape, only replace "items" with "cores".
Yeah come to think of it I hated the forest shops with a passion. Internal factory "shop" it is.
I changed things around a lot. The way this works now is more akin to how the deployable turrets worked.
You build a turret core internally. There are 5 different turret cores right now. Building a turret core enables a build menu on your vehicle in the field. Building the turret core costs minerals. Building the turret itself costs energy from your vehicle. Basically, it works exactly how deployable turrets from Catalyst worked, only these are placeable.
I've done away with vespene as a team resource. It's now used for upgrades. For example, you can improve your vehicle's armour by 1 point for 75 minerals and 75 vespene. There are no purchasable buildings in the field anymore. Everything is constructed by players. I feel this makes the whole experience much more dynamic.
I'm not sure that was a good explanation. It's very simple to get to grips with. I've tested with a few people and I've not even had anyone have to ask questions over how things work. I'm really pleased with how intuitive this all fits together, and making things fit together well is a top priority for me right now.
Well you'd be constructing them. Like some cheap, but techy structure that builds a nuke.
I might try a little of everything anyway. A few sold by control points, a few more sold by your base and a few different ones "sold" by constructing them. I might add them as random spawns during lategame too but shall see.
For now I might just add a consumable chemical nuke and see how that plays out before going further. I'll be keeping an eye on it during beta and if it doesn't fit, I'll get rid of it before release. They will basically play a similar role to the support powers from Command & Conquer.
This is starting to seem more like potential update material than something I'd want to fit into release though.
So I'm back on the drawing board for one final concept.
Basically, the game is split into 3 main stages. Early game, mid game and late game. Early game you will be limited by minerals and not really have to worry about vespene much. Mid game, you will be limited by minerals and vespene. Late game, you will typically have more than enough minerals and be limited only by vespene.
To ensure the game keeps it's flow, I will be introducing consumables. Consumables will cost minerals and will typically be designed around bringing the game to an end. Some examples for consumables are tank drops, which airlifts in a tank squad which will operate autonomously to bring victory, and more traditional ones such as nukes or chemical weapons.
While ideas for consumables are more than welcome, what I would like is a method of purchasing these consumables. Consumables will be displayed like items are in SotIS, and for all intensive purposes will be items. Just they won't provide passive effects and must be casted in order to gain benefit, at which point the item is spent and removed. I want a way to purchase these items.
A little background for a moment. Right now the team bases are rather useless. It's part intentional, you never need to really visit your base. You can repair outside combat in the field and vehicle components are also constructed in the field. With that in mind I have 2 main options:
1) The shop option. A shop in your base that sells these items in the same way most RPGs work.
2) The construction option. You build a "shop" inside your vehicle and purchase from there.
I'm seeking criticism here. I'm not sure consumables will make it into release if I can't solidify their design. Basically I want an end-game way to spend minerals and draw the game to a close (without being overpowered), and this idea seems to fit the bill.
It does now.
Enough working on the splash for now. SC logo is a placeholder until I can get someone to make a decent Catalyst logo or get around to doing it myself.
More vehicles will come but release will have 3.
The beta will be EU only, though this should be short since I plan to get all the content I want to add in BEFORE I release this time, it'd be entirely for balance and bugs.
Still working on polish. Spent a while on the intro screen today.
I want a nice Catalyst logo in the middle, but for some reason any .tga I import has it's transparency removed and it just looks plan bad;
So all the core concepts are in. Everything works and it's all nicely polished. Did some basic testing and fixed all the oversights I made.
I don't want to repeat the same mistake I did with Catalyst though. I don't want to be adding new content weekly, but rather in monthly patches or similar, with weekly balance changes/gameplay improvements until balance and gameplay are stable. People complained a lot about this, and in hindsight I should probably just get all my ideas into the game before I release it.
This is mostly focused on what you build "inside" your vehicle.
Right now there are 3 basic choices. Weapons, counter weapons (guns, an aoe missile snare), and drones. I want to expand this.
Here is my concept;
3 major internal structure types.
1) Weaponry
This type is mostly damaging weapons. There are 3 types of weapons; light, heavy and missile. Each type has their own associated upgrades, for example you can upgrade heavy weapon damage which will improve all of the weapons of that type.
Light weapons are generally short ranged weapons with special attributes, for example the napalm turret leaves a smoldering patch of damaging fire in it's wake. The flak turret is highly effective against infantry and drones, and unlike most weaponry, cannot miss. This trend continues.
Heavy weapons are your big hitters. They do a lot of damage, but with a slow fire rate. These are your go-to weapons to demolish hardened targets like other players. To make other weapons useful, heavy weapons are soft countered by multiple targets. That is, a player who focuses on drones or engaging a player surrounded by creeps will make heavy weaponry less useful, and make mixing your heavy guns with lighter ones to clear the creeps a valid tactic.
Missile Weapons are your long range hitters. Typically focusing on hitting multiple targets or generally huge splash damage. Not too effective against players, but their range creates some options. One problem with the original Catalyst was that missile weapons were the only choice early game. I feel this is alleviated by the new systems somewhat, but I'll be keeping an eye on this weapon type the most.
Counter Weapons Point defence turrets can shoot down incoming heavy or missile weaponry. Light weaponry either cannot be shot down or simply fires so many projectiles that they can overwhelm pdd. As such, pdd soft counters heavy and missile weaponry, but is soft countered by light weaponry.
Healing Weaponry I'm sure this one doesn't need explaining. The new independent turret AI allows better prioritization for repair beams and such, so hopefully this type will see new light.
This concludes the weaponry section. All of this is already in the game and fully functional, in addition to a few drones.
2) Production
The production archetype consists of 2 main types of structure.
Drone Bays automatically produce drones, similar to the drones from Catalyst. The difference is that these structures all independently build and maintain 1 drone by themselves. That is, if you have 12 drone bays, all 12 will build independently rather than the old model of building 1 drone at a time, regardless of how many drone items you had.
There are a few different types of drone. The types aren't important really. They are generally all short range and lightly armoured, but very quick to be replaced. There are a number of drone support structures too. Basically, focusing on drones turns your vehicle into a walking aircraft carrier, with all the associated advantages (long range, low risk strikes). An aircraft carrier type vehicle will beat out a defensive type vehicle (next section), but lose head on to a weaponry type (last section).
Barracks type structures are the second production style of building. The way this works is that you build a structure inside your vehicle. This costs minerals. This structure allows your vehicle to build something in the field at an energy cost. For example, a barracks. So you spend your minerals on say a "Barracks construction kit", which allows you to build 1 Barracks. If the barracks dies, you can replace it for only an energy cost.
The barracks, for example, will produce units Nexus Wars style. I can already hear the screams, but hear me out. Firstly, the barracks will only produce up to 3 marines, similar to a drone bay. If a marine dies, it'll produce another to maintain 3 marines. The marines will attack towards the enemy base. "So how is that different to Nexus Wars?", well, if your barracks is safely in your base, it will happily produce 3 marines and the marines will slowly trudge towards the enemy base while the barracks sits idle. When they die, it will produce 3 more. However, if the barracks is close to the front lines, the production rate will be closer to the fatality rate and you will, overall, have higher production.
This keeps in line with the style of the game. To reinforce this (this part is conceptual), buildings will only function while near your vehicle, protoss pylon style. This could potentially be rather annoying and perhaps the production limit would be enough to ensure keeping your production buildings on the front line, but it's a potential fallback. There would be multiple types of barracks; Marines, Marauders, Medics, Ghosts, Firebats and some infantry artillery unit like a mortar team from wc3. Barracks buildings would need to be first purchased inside your vehicle before they can be placed on the field, after which the only subsequent investment is energy.
Defence
The last archetype. Again this is split into two types.
Support consists of things like internal radars (think the radar from Catalyst, provides radar info and debuffs enemies) and placeable structures that play a supporting role (such as a repair station). Internal buildings would simply function like weapon turrets do, except they would provide buffs/debuffs around your vehicle. Placeable buildings like the repair station would function like the above mentioned barracks; first a precursor building is built internally and then the structure itself is built costing energy. If the energy cost building is destroyed, it may be rebuilt, costing only energy.
Defence towers would be the final type. This is pretty self explanatory. Placeable turrets of various types for various purposes. They would, again, function like the above method. Think turrets from Catalyst, only rather than purchasing a turret item, you purchase a turret building. You place the turrets from a special tab on your vehicle. The final tier defence structures are artillery pieces designed for sieging the enemy base.
About half of the above is already ingame. The defence and barracks sections are conceptual right now. I'm interested in people's thoughts.