The Unit Cannon

Let me get one thing out of the gate right now:

I DON'T CARE.

Let's be honest: The unit cannon is an overhyped gimmick which would be a complete nightmare to balance. We can all live without it. It's not that important. Let's concentrate on getting more important things out like offline servers and tutorials.

Geers... I agree, at least partially, but...

What have you done? Be prepared...

I think combination of unit cannon plus multi unit orbital drop ships creats an EPIC invasion/defense situation that could not be rivaled for years and years and years in any RTS. Properly balanced these epic situations unimangable in any RTS vision to date set this game apart. Plus comon shooting bods with units inside that break apart and commense death or breach head on planets gtfo, how is this not the 3rd best concept of PA after huge metal planet gun, shooting moon, astroids into planets with rockets, and sneakly creating interplanetary teleports that send assual forces through. Its needed, I will back HR, with big patches to PA comming down pipes, but I still think PA will be my passion with HR something to play on the side to take a breather. Just my humble opinion though.

I've been looking forward to it since the kickstarter was running, so honestly I'll be pretty annoyed if it never gets put in. As for this...

...well it sure seems to me they've been focusing on what they deem more important things for a long while. I mean by all indications they are working on offline at the very least.

I'm hoping they'll get back to the unit cannon soon because I've sure been waiting freaking ages for it, it has been on the backburner for a long time, and I've played plenty of games where it would've been extremely useful.

The backburner? I don't want an 'overcooked' unit cannon

Geers, I'm glad you don't care. In fact, I'm happy you don't care.

The issue is that a majority of people do. The unit cannon was ( still is ) a fantastic gameplay mechanic and had a significant amount of time to itself in the original Kickstarter video. I don't think you nor uber understand that the cannon was as much of a symbol of PA as planet smashing. There are countless situations where I have thought the cannon would be useful, but equally an amount of times where I have thought planet smashing would be pointless. The cannon does not have to be a be-all and end-all building to be considered for addition.

There are only two methods of unit transportation in PA with no middle ground. Costly and vulnerable single unit transport, or a slow vulnerable teleport. ( which requires the former transport to be utilized in order to build). The unit cannon would be the middle ground. Not able to pump out anywhere near as many units as the teleport, but reducing the time taken to populate a planet.

Is it really? First of all it would be a nightmare to balance, secondly you'd need at least three or four or otherwise your little ODST homages are going to be ripped to shreds one by one as they descend into the atmosphere, and it doesn't really do anything that Astraeus' and teleporters don't let you do. If the Astraeus stopped acting like a poetic ballet dancer when trying to plop down units you wouldn't need the unit cannon at all.

The balance is already shot unit cannon can't make it worse.

Planetary invasions require creating a beach head creating a beach head is a pain in the arse.

I bet someone could prove you wrong

I just wish they would make orbital assault ships that could fire hundreds of loaded units in drop-pods from orbit, and perhaps manufacture more units on the go.

It would be far less complex to implement than unit cannons, and it would look far cooler.

People place a lot of stupid bets.

You never say something couldnt "get worse," there is always room for it to happen

Balance is something you have to do after a new feature is introduced. Nightmare to balance, that's stupid. Anything added to the game will be a nightmare to balance in comparison to not adding it. (that affects gameplay)

Since when was invasion of any sort anywhere easy? It's not supposed to be a walk in the park.

A T1 automatic minelayer bot is a lot easier to balance than something that plonks Vanguards on top of other Commander's heads.

I wasn't suggesting it should be, only that the unit cannon would allow you to stick your foot in the door when someone tries to slam it shut. You'll still have to earn your conquest.

Please explain why it'd be a nightmare to balance. I don't see how it would at all.
The unit cannon's main function is to bombard another planet with X amount of units before reloading.

The only issues I can see with this requiring balancing is the distance the cannon can shoot. In the KS video, it seemed to be a planet -> moon and vice versa thing. The cannon shouldn't have interplanetary range.

What other issues does it then pose?

LoL I love your description of the reason I really dislike using the Astraetus!

Although with the unit cannon I'd always imagined the epicness of having factories on a moon, auto-producing a stream to autolaunch from the unit cannon and rain down constantly. For the Astraetus to rival this we'd need automated ferry points, that you could set for the astraetus' to automatically act on once produced in an infinite loop.

Also I have a few assumptions (Since it's just a concept at this stage gotta assume something at least) about the cannon that make it better than the astraetus. I always imagined the unit cannon wouldn't "produce" any units so wouldn't use metal, while producing endless astraetus would, and the unit cannon would take less time to perform a whole transfer maneuver considering Astraetus need to be deployed, then load up, before launching, while the cannon would fire units as they stream into it from a factory. I mean it'd probably have a loading animation or something, but however I think of it it seems like it'd be quicker and require less complexity of orders to use it for a continual orbital assault.

I get that this post does contain a bunch of assumptions, but I honestly reckon that the fact that it was a rather large star of the kickstarter trailer is enough reason that they've gotta put it in. I personally feel it'd work amazingly to give us more options to invade planets, and look seriously cool too. It's not like we don't already have things in this game which require you to get onto the enemy's planet to stop them, so it seems like it wouldn't be that much of a headache to balance compared to the craziness we can already access.

Imagine ten Vangaurds appearing out of nowhere right next to your commander.

Well, by that logic, why don't we just remove the astraeusses whatever the hell it's called as well?
It's a tactic. You even said yourself that AA would be able to shoot down the "paratroopers". As with everything else in PA, counter it with defenses.
That's not a balance issue remotely.

Think about it. How would you know where the CO was anyway? You'd have to have orbital units. Unless you ( the CO being attacked ) are completely undefended and have no anti-orbital forces by the time the enemy has made an advanced orbital radar, you're seriously going wrong somewhere and that's not a fault of the Unit cannon.