Last night a couple friends and I were talking about the nature of RTSs. One of them suggested that obstacles in traditional RTSs such as walls or trees or whatnot were an effective part of strategy, seeing as they made unit position management a necessity for good play. While I don't think that such a level of micromanagement would be a good idea, I realized that having a giant wall in space would really rock.

Instead of the Advent's Deliverance Engine - a device that is far from user friendly, has questionable effect, and is considerably less useful than the other experimental weapons, having a giant, inpenetrable shield wall - for frontier worlds - would add new, relatively simple tactics to fights with them. They could be a sixth of a sphere whose radius is a third of a terran world's gravity well radius, and can be repositioned within the well. Maybe it could have slow radial movement, but move quickly parallel to the planet surface, in order to effectively divide the enemy.

I think there are a lot of possibilities with this idea, and most sound pretty cool to me. But the wall should probably not cost 18 slots - that would be a bit prohibitive.

Ben