Now that this thing is slowly turning into a bare wasteland (counter-intuitively, tbh), I might as well just throw this in.
Simple-ish question, complex answers - your dream version of Cortex Command 2?

Of course there are two/three things we all want:
- online multiplayer
- better optimization (or any optimization, for that matter)
- 3D? (I honestly don't want it that much, but certainly wouldn't hurt)

Honestly, I imagine it to be played on a much grander scale. Let me elaborate.

Of course this idea will only work in full 3D, for better or for worse.
You start out with the entire planet being rendered in 1:1 scale. (impossible? HELL THE ♥♥♥♥ NO!)
You start out on the TradeStar station with your brain on a robot body. Here you can buy stuff like the diggers, puppets, weapons and once you're done with this, all your stuff is packed into whatever craft you've chosen and then you're on your own.

Once you leave the TradeStar and land somewhere, the fun part begins, as you start digging into the ground for gold, building your bunker (I imagine some sort of handy bunker-building handheld device being a thing here, because I don't see it making sense in any other way), scouting the area for potential enemies and whatnot.

You can either let the AI do the work for you or take manual control of the ordered bodies yourself. I imagine that it would have limited range, though.
To remedy that issue, you can order "commander"-esque robots from TradeStar, which act like your brainbot. Commander bots and brainbot can communicate over the entire planet, who in turn control their local puppet bots.
You can then venture out to build more bunkers, collect gold, destroy enemy bunkers and do whatever else strikes your fancy.


Basically, Cortex Command on crack.
Modding would be somewhat harder because you're working in 3D now instead of 2D, but hey, looking at what people make in G-Mod is a sign of hope, for lack of a better term. (in my dictionary, anyway).

You could even have persistent worlds, with multiple players making alliances and making epic siht and other shenanigans happen.
Proper campaign mode is not really a given, but would certainly be welcome.

And of course, ONLINE GODDAMN MULTIPLAYER! It's obligatory.

CC is quite inherently 2D. You could do a similar game in 3D (eg, Scraps), but it just wouldn't be CC.

I suppose my ideal CC sequel would have MOAR PHYSICS. Physics buildings (you have to build the considering load bearing struts) soil/rock physics, temperature and flammability considerations, fluid physics, soft-body dynamics. And procedural terrain (endless or pre-generated), a variety of enemies, possibly a vehicle builder, lighting, procedural plant growth, resources, chemistry, crafting, switches and electronic logic, machinery, internal organ/penetration modelling, NPC's and loot. Vector graphics as well, so you can zoom in and have fighting-game style boss battles with swordfighting or punching.

Also, handling of spherical planets with molten cores, orbiting space stations, and zero-g space combat.

Basically Terraria/starbound + CC with a roguelike vibe. Less about team-v-team, more about conquering the world or getting your ankles shot off in the process. Everything handled in such a generic way the game could be about crash landing on a jungle world, clearing out hive world tunnels, space battles, asteroid mining, or even a fantasy setting.

The amount of physics involved, even just for 2D, would probably be just about doable on a high end machine at the moment, in the same way CC took a beefy rig back when it first came out. It's kind of frustrating to think that people have probably done lots of hard work on each of these components separately but making a game with all of them together would require a huge duplication of effort. Makes me wish I'd grown up with a programming education instead of just learning how to use computers in a consumer sense.

How, about just adding more factions, make some of the mods implemented *COUGH*Unitech*COUGH* and have better AI. that's my hope for a CC2. (And also because i play it on a laptop that has terrible specs)

I hope it wouldn't be anything too fancy, because my laptop can't run that many games.

A proper and well-functioning AI, an actual campaign, additional foreground object support, passive wildlife, and physics for non-actor entities, such as buildings, rocks, and tunnels/caves.

A well-organized development team.

Utilization of the GPU could make a lot of modding ideas feasible (primarily because of lag), in addition to helping performance.

Allowing the use of RGB mode images would be nice too. Working with the palette has its advantages, like making everything uniform and reducing filesizes, but making backgrounds would be a lot easier.

One thing I'd most like to see is a comprehensive ammo system, with AI designed to conserve ammo unless they have a clear shot. One game that I think manages to do this well is the RTS Men of War: each soldier has an inventory with limited ammo, and it works whether you're sending orders to 20 soldiers at once or directly controlling a single soldier. In fact, changing CC's inventory system might be a good thing, like limiting the number of items you can carry. I just think with the whole "disposable clones" theme, scavenging weapons and limiting the usefulness of a single actor would make sense.

But the most important thing in my mind would be having a non-arbitrary, meaningful system of variables for everything in the game. (I'm looking at you, Sharpness and Mass.) I mean, the Coalition soldier's head has a mass of 36. If that's supposed to be in kilograms, I'm sure you can see why it's ridiculous.

A better weapon system, like, how to counter them. Same goes to the Actors.
More weapons, more actors, some sort of Vehicles...
Artillery and Stuff. Im crazy when it comes to Artillery.

Arne's story campaign. If that was made I would love CC unconditionally.

I would like to see a better marriage of macro and micro. On the macro scale maybe more strategy surrounding unit choice. Like a rock paper scissors of infantry > mecha > anti mecha > infantry in such a way that any given unit has units that it is cost efficient to use against and some that it is not cost efficient to use against. Furthermore better support for controlling multiple units and and also generally less damage on every weapon so that combat is slow enough to have long sustained fire fights which allows time for strategy.

On the micro side I would like to see a little bit of gun recoil and slightly slower reflexes on the part of the AI and maybe gameplay changes like partially regenerating health or greater/better means of health recovery such as healthpacks and healing units.

Really the core of it is that I would like to see a dev team that puts gameplay first, rather than just lumping together a bunch of things they think would be cool. We really don't need to be able to see units leaving footprints in sand, we don't need all damage handled by some arcane made up physics, and we don't need tiny little pieces of dropships breaking off and instantly killing units all the way across the map (as funny as it is). What we do need is deep, well thought out gameplay. Something that can sustain an adult's attention beyond "oh look at all the colourful pixels flying everywhere". Though of course that last bit shouldn't be thrown out.

Also yeah, more hand crafted single player missions.

The ending of which would be AWESOME.

If physics were an issue, we could look to CVE... when it replaces its linear-collision-based system. [Which disallows bending.]
But I guess there is merit in establishing a more refined version of the CC Physics Engines. [But still isn't what CVE is.]


I don't even know what I would want. :/

i think data already said the first game they make in the CVE will be in the CC universe/a sequal to CC

On the 3d/2d argument: It's possible to have a 2D 3D game, just look at Drillboid or other similar games. Perhaps a fully 3D environment (both movement and graphics) wouldn't work, because you'd lose the ability to see underground and such, but I think a 3D accelerated game using a voxel engine could still work quite well.

For all I care I want Data to make this.
Just throw in more CC-esque content. (Free Trade stuff and all that)

That would be nice and all, but imagine the preferences how annoying it world be to have to buy a pack for every unit or else they'll only get the tactical pack, and imagine the uselessness of the packs if the enemy has a heavily guarded base.