This isn't exactly in development, but it's far from being widely used, or used in the field at all.
The seasonal unit should be: Infantry equipped with ENVG-B(or something similar.)

- Long Range (but rather slow) cruise missile that can be redirected mid-flight.
- A long range ground to sea area denier.
- A engineering unit providing on the move HP regeneration.
- A engineering infantry unit providing on the move entrenchment.
- a elite AFV using a similar mechanism to rising tides domed city, with a depletable missile defense.


i just throw random ideas.

However, i remind of the power creeping problem that is associated with our elite units, regularly.

Rheinmetall has been coming out with some cutting edge weapons.
Also, those who are comfortable and capable of trading stocks and can handle risk, this company is publicly traded on the open market.

*Edit: An elite version of the Mobile Anti Air unit which can engage ground and air units is what I would think could be interesting.

*Or as one of the videos depicts a static ground based anti air defense system.

An Elite-Artillery.
Like Supre/CoW Railgun!

Oh,

Another concept that is in development are air force fighters / command and control type weapons that can not only conduct air to air & air to ground attacks but also launch and control AI drones in conjunction with other manned air assets.

The drones act as AI (*drone swarm) wingmen so to speak or are used for direct attack as a "kamikaze" drones / missiles.

* = edit

Then as always, we have the AC-130J gunship. Big boom booms!

I hereby promised i wouldn't ever birth into this world the Stealth Airmobile artillery you all crave for.

Get back to the abysses, monsters

An air unit that flies so high that it can only take damage from ship flak and aircraft, it bombard all enemy territories and troops below it as it passes, at each flight it must land in a base that is in a certain radius from the path of the bombing, it never goes back except with a second trip, to unlock it you have to research both aircraft and bombers and it seems like the Avengers' Helicarrier but without the "carrier" and with smaller size

Edit: it doesn't bomb, it shoots with mega machine guns and it can attack all the others unities, but it doesn't do defensive damage against aircraft

personally i would prefer new features than units, something balanced relating to the market or resources.

The most urgent feature i think is missing would have something to do with notifications, noob-rushes from offline users at 3am which fade into the stream of other useless notifications. Really that makes me not want to start a new game and invest a bunch of time and effort.

The Notifications could be greatly improved by combining (grouping) ongoing engagement into a single dropdown, to help distinguish new engagement on the main list.

It would be nice if
• a specific unit could be set to trigger a notification upon sighting,
• better moving patrols like wpt for aircraft.

I was going to suggest a new building,
Coast Guard Station which inspects incoming ships from nations at peace to make a territorial water route from connected ports.
(at least some naval sight if not territorial)

The idea of an Elite missile seemed pretty innovative, maybe something hypersonic.

Something to do with space would be nice, like recon satellites and maybe ways to shoot them down.

any recon units would be nice and realistic,
• Elite Chinese spy Balloon,
• faster spy planes (eg sr71 or u2 dragonlady are 60s tech)
if it costs as much as a military unit then we may as well use the military unit for recon, if it costs the same then it should be faster and/or longer range.

Many basic units aren't yet elite
• Elite Motorized, Armored, Marine or NG (lol airborne)
• Elite Corvette, Destroyer or Cruiser,
• Elite NPA or AWAC
• Elite MAA, Sam or Radar (i may use an Elite MAA)

I think the team has done a pretty good job of introducing new units which are exciting but don't totally break the game so far.

Lol maybe other buildings like Elite Bunker, or Elite Arms Industry

I'm not sure what counter (what new unit) to suggest, but I would like to be able to drive away a player who is using a Navy bombard my coastal cities (including their shipyards) from far offshore.

Perhaps this is the MLRS and I just don't know it yet?

Ineffective.
You can't mobilize enough MLRS to protect all the coastal cities (what is necessary because they are slower than ships), if they are your main ground force (if they aren't main ground force, is not worth producing them). Especially in early/mid game.

Understood

I wonder if your over-estimating the MLRS cost a little bit, if you compare it to the cost of researching and building a strong Navy.

I was thinking that even though the MLRS would have way less HP, they could hit a little bit harder, and could be healed faster.

But, since you appear to be speaking from experience, I'll defer to your 1st- or 2nd-hand experience.


Back to thinking about an Elite/New unit - It just occurred to me that my calling suggestion a wish for a "Land Navy" unit might be a good way to think about it, even though in the real world you don't actually build land-barges to counter enemy navies.

1)The thing is that I, who do not base my attacking forces on strike fighters, have a huge surplus of components (several tens of thousands already in the early game).
Therefore, I can effectively focus on a navy sufficient to defend the homeland.


2)If you want a solid defense, you need at least 5 MLRS in the city. (5 x 3 att. vs ships) which is slightly more than the power of 5 cruisers (5 x 2 att. vs hard).

Now let's take a look on hp of units (15 vs 50) and we come to the obvious overwhelming advantage of cruisers (which also have anti-aircraft defense).Now multiply the number of MLRS by the number of coastal cities and we get a number that is unattainable in the early/mid game, when players who focus on the navy already have a solid number of cruisers.Don't forget speed of cruisers...

Sounds like we might be describing an opportunity to (carefully) introduce a new/Elite unit.

What about a unit such as the Green Berets?

A unit that could go into insurgent cities and convert (train) the insurgents. A timer would be used to simulate the training / conversion. The insurgents then become national guards & the city is taken. The timer then continues to spawn maybe three more national guard there after.

Or / and: The Green Berets could use the deployable gear to spawn partisans (national guard).

Green Berets would not have very good Attack / defend numbers however due to small size and mission objective. Maybe their speed would be faster than an average unit?

The would add a morale bonus to all partisans & conventional units alike when stacked as such?
They would also have recon ability, stealth and possibly amphibious landing capability.

Also, when the green berets level up, the partisan / insurgent training increases in effectiveness, for example The Chosen insurgents vs normal ones.

The unit would use some of the already existing game mechanics / code already in place.

Although this unit wouldn't necessarily fall under "cutting edge or under development", would it not be a fun, useful unit to use in CON?

Engineering unit.
Abilities: building bridges and/or roads (one per day)destroying enemy buildings (attack function - 1att./h)

lvl 1: max 3 units
3 att. against buildings
research 1d
1200 supplies 1700 rare materials

lvl 2: max 6 units
5 att. against buildings
stealth
research 1d 5h
2000 supplies 2500 rare materials

lvl 3: max 10 units
7 att. against buildings
stealth
helicopter assault
amphibious
research 1d 12h
3000 supplies 3500 rare materials

Mobilization:
lvl 1
army base lvl2 arms industry lvl 1 recruiting office lvl 1
lvl 2
army base lvl3 arms industry lvl 1 recruiting office lvl 2
lvl 1
army base lvl5 arms industry lvl 1 recruiting office lvl 3

Price:
lvl1: 1100 supplies 500 electronics
lvl2: 1350 supplies 650 electronics
lvl3: 1600 supplies 800 electronics

I want mines and minesweepers

Here's a brief story around my trail of thought.

Early teens. Sweltering hot summer Malta. Playstation 3 on the shelf fans winding to the vertex processing of Metal Gear 4: Guns of the patriots.

Tens of hours in, I am nearing the end of the game. I encroach a squad of unknowing guard infantrymen.
An idea, I strategize on a flank to the left. Gut hugging the ground, In typical solid snake fashion I make my way to the designated location through the decided route.

But what's this? A military crate with fortune inside I could not imagine.
With unrestrained curiosity, I make my way to it and unclip the latches which stand between me and the fortune that awaits.

"An assault rifle! Oh? An XM8? Huh never saw this."
And I tell you, it was love at first sight. In general I really, really like Heckler & Koch manufacturing, from the form to it's functionality I would be lying if I said I don't have an inexplicable inner H&K fanboy in me.

So you can imagine, when I consulted my local personal computer - finding out it's manufactured by H&K had my jaw drop. By then, I was overcome by this. I had never seen anything like the XM8, it's lightweight construction infused with a fresh post-modern design bearing efficient costs and reasonable flexibility. To me, at that time, it was something out of the future.

I tried to consume every piece of media which the XM8 featured in. I remember Battlefront Bad Company 2 being one such game.

--

Fast-forward to today, I very vaguely remember reading that the XM8 was not delivering intended results, and was curious what ever came out of that. Which is when I came across the XM7. For sake of reference I will paste the Wiki article intro

wiki wrote:

The XM7, previously known as the XM5, is the U.S. Army variant of the SIG MCX Spear, a 6.8×51mm (.277 in), gas-operated, magazine-fed, assault rifle^[1][8] designed by SIG Sauer for the Next Generation Squad Weapon Program in 2022 to replace the M4 carbine.


The first batch of 25 XM7s is planned to be delivered in late 2023. The Army plans to procure a total of 107,000 rifles for close combat forces including infantry, cavalry scouts, combat engineers, forward observers and combat medics; there are no plans initially to issue the weapons to non-close combat soldiers. The contract has the capacity to build additional weapons should the U.S. Marine Corps and U.S. Special Operations Command choose to be included.

I also found some sources state that this rifle was not delivering intended results either, and that it will be issued to designated units.

--

To conclude, this is a perfect example of the type of tech we are looking for. Modern, in development or soon to be, and realistic.

I hear you wonder how we could include something like this, and well, through research. Yes. Through research. As Opulon rightly pointed out we are seeing 'bloat' in some sense with the seasonal units and are looking into how this can be revised.
I've personally been curious about having seasonal research features and am curious what the community thinks too. I spoke to the team and it is not in the realm of impossible, actually until now I've heard positive feedback, but we are still making sure to cross our t and dot our i.

Edit: To make sure I'm clear, when I say research, I mean ingame research. We are looking into the potential for adding additional research tiers, for example, adding the XM7 to special forces in late tier.

Don't fixate on the XM7, I only brought it up as an example and case study. Another example was the RS-28 Sarmat which had it's first test flight in 2022. With this newfound knowledge and example I give you, I'm hoping you can 'get nerdy' on Military developments and share exciting developments that are ongoing! Of course not everything would fit as a seasonal feature, but let's brainstorm and share our findings.

Idea of the day:

A new aircraft unit that will make other aircraft units patrol longer:
(or even fery further we can always ask even if it is probably a nightmare to code)



It will continue in the way of making the game more realistic, developing the logistic aspects.

Regards

I had the same thought,
What would be most crazy,
the idea of doing a Falklands style tankers refueling tankers...