Teleporting air and naval?

All this talk about teleporters being added soon and I realized that I don't think I've ever seen an RTS that allowed you to teleport naval and air (except maybe the chronosphere from Red Alert, which wasn't really a portal). What do you think? Should teleporters in PA be able to teleport these units?

I remember they said they'd have to customize the teleporter model based on its capabilities (units going in one side, or both, etc), and this ability would certainly require it to be much larger (to fit ships) and buildable on water. As for planes, they could either swoop down into the portal or just make it tall enough (pretty dang tall) for them to fly right in.

I'm not sure how I feel about this, but I know it would look sweet seeing a fleet of ships or aircraft go through a portal and materialize on the other side. AFAIK this would be the only way to move these types of units between planets since unit cannons will only fire ground units (although ships flying through space and splashing into water on another planet would be mind-bogglingly awesome).

It would be pretty bad *** to teleport an entire air force...

I think stuff like this is always going to be very awkward, more so for Naval than Air. I don't think it'd be really possible to create some kind some kind of 'Omni-Portal' and it would require separate solutions which could create complications for Uber and players.

That is actually exactly the kind of thing I'd be worried about really, especially given just how FAST air is it could cause issues.

Mike

Teleporting air could cause problems, but we kind of need a way to assault water planets. I have no problem with it being harder or diferent to add variety, but there should always be a way to beat a planet without dropping a moon on it.

That is a very good point.

Could cause issues... but if the Teleporter's cool down time and/or energy costs were high enough it wouldn't be too far out there.

Well, one of the problems is that neutrino said in one of the livestreams that he'd like for fighters to be the primary AA solution. So how do you go about invading an air infested planet if you can't bring to bear the most effective AA? (Assuming you could even get a teleporter on the surface with all the air flying around.)

I remember in CNC: Tiberian Sun, some maps had "ion storms" which grounded all air units for a time. Maybe if there was some orbital unit that could do something similar (grounding both friendly and enemy air in an area). It would be an interesting unit without outright just killing all air.

(I'm embarrassed that I had to google how to spell "tiberian"...)

Remember, too, that you probably have to build the other end of the teleporter before you can start sending units. We still need a way to get a base there in the first place. The egg is a start, but what if we can make a second kind of egg that is nothing but a pre-built teleporter?

really I can't line up against this idea.... I just can't, it packs too much

why not? if you can teleports tanks.... why can't you teleport ships or planes or orbital units? just why not?

I request ability to teleport naval units onto land for the lols.

Maybe a separate teleporter for water is the best option? Anyway teleporting aircraft and ships (in a balanced way) is very important to have as an option to attack or scout well armed bases.

DO IT DO IT NOW!!!!!! * Arnold voice* I don't see why an omni teleport would be difficult...... just charge more for air and naval. As far as invading an air infested planet something like an aa cluster should be a unit that could be dropped,I think it would suffice I think...

The only way to make it work is to have some sort of unit flow rate limit. With no limit you could send in 100 bombers and fighters at once and wreck stuff. With no air at all your gate will get bombed and it would be almost impossible to keep a gate active to someone expecting one.

I've assumed there'd be a cool down time. Only possible to send so many units every few seconds. Or only 10 units every time period or something.

If it costs energy to send units, then technically that acts as your cooldown. You can only send as many units as your energy storage supports, after that you have to wait for it to fill back up again. I thought the whole purpose of having units spend energy for their abilities was to avoid having to set arbitrary cooldowns on things.

That is a limit, but not a hard limit. It would still be possible to send 1000 bombers in at once. I would like to see both.

Exactly. Such a limitation could easily be exploited with a bunch of energy storage spam. They're easy and quick to erect and energy can be a very easily obtainable resource if other things are focused on. It'd be very easy to spam out a bunch of energy and then boom – crap ton of energy.

The teleporter will likely be like bombers and defensive structures. Teleporters will have limited energy storage and a fixed recharge rate. So they'll likely only be able to send so many units in spurts or at a stream.

Perhaps you might need to build a triad of linked teleport towers, and units inside the "bermuda triangle" area can teleport to other "bermuda triangles". You could name the unit "Bermuda" (amphibious, of course) and have the build positioning command include one extra step before orientation; size of the triangle, for minimal micro. That way it's also fragile, since the death of any one tower stops it from being used.

Since full-ocean planets are planned, naval teleporter is a necessity. Not a separate building, just a different model when you place it on water.
Aircraft should be transferable through both types.

I have imagined that the way this would work is:

* You build the teleporter
* The transport from the orbital facility can load and unload it
* To invade another planet you really just need to live long enough in orbit to get your teleporter landed and then start driving through it. (and bring a horde of other transports to soak up any missiles. Transports are pretty tough though.)

I would also be tempted to add:
* Teleporters have tons of hit points. TONS. Like 5 nukes worth. So dropping one in range of 5+ catapults and Holkins and a nuke launcher (i.e., exactly what's going to happen on any small moon) will still give you time to start pushing units through.

I agree that if we have to land and build the teleporter then we've accomplished nothing. The whole problem with invasions right now is there's no way to establish a beachhead. (Although orbital nukes might help with that, I am loath to make nukes an even bigger part of the game than they already are. I'll just send 7+ orbital nukes your way and skip the whole "invade your planet" scenario by killing your commander directly.)


There will necessarily have to be a "water" and "land" version.

I would allow air to go through either.

Oh, another reason air is mandatory:

I am on a planet with 100% land.
You are on a planet with 100% water.

Going through with a large air force to try and clear a path for fabrication planes is our only option to invade each other.