Planetary Invasions

I think they already can. I suggested just making them cheaper or allowing them to carry more units.

The Astreus can only move Commanders and Fabricators.

They are by no means cost efficient enough for an invasion.

Invasions will be handles by The Unit Cannon and The Egg.

Who knows, maybe the Astreus will move regular units, but it won't be cost efficient.

Also, the Astreus can be shot down by fighters when it is in sub orbit.

The "egg" was supposed to be a game starting device. What does it have to do with invading?

I've been wondering the same thing, I missed this transition to where the Egg is a transport now.

Mike

Heh. There's no confirmation. It's just an assumption from people at this point.

I don't follow, ALL the dev comments regarding to the Egg have it acting as a quick start tool, not a transport. Obviously plans change but I've seen no indication of a change from Uber.

Mike

An assumption by the PA community to handle the issue of Planetary invasions.

There hasn't been any formal confirmation by Uber to make this so, but its just speculation to the idea of invading planets and what tools we "know" that can aid in that aspect since we have in fact a few methods of transport between planetary bodies but not effective if there is a lot of ground defense set in place.

This. It's an assumption based on a need within the game.

There needs to be another form of planetary invasions. With just the egg and teleportation gates, there's no way to invade a planet unless you use a moon or teleporters have a way to open a portal without building a gate, which I'm not sure there will be.

There needs to be a way to send units from large planet to large planet without a teleportation gate since teleporters must be built.

I would agree

I don't mind having a fleet of the Astraeus, if made more cost effective. My problem with single unit transports always was that they were a pain in the backside to micro, for example loading individual units into individual transports took a long time if you wanted to move a big army.

SupCom only kinda fixed this with the ferry+assist combo.

But since Uber are planning to implement group commands, where (in my understanding) you can select a group of transports, order them to pick up a group of units, and then off they go, that's not a problem anymore.

Edit: Brian, I completely agree with your beachhead assessment posted above, that would be an incredibly fun way to handle invading. And let's not forget, we need a unit based way of doing it, for maps that don't have movable celestial objects.

Also, I think the Unit Cannon won't be limited from the building point of view, but it's firing mechanics will be quite similar to the way the recently implemented IP nukes work.

It is confirmed (unless they change things) that the Unit Cannon can only fire off of small celestial objects onto stuff sharing oribit.

Lots of good ideas here.

My ideas:
1. Interplanetary EMP cannon/bomb, which disables radar over a large area (and perhaps artillery?). It could either be a long cool down but lasting a few minutes or it could be a series of shots knocking out radar for 9 out of every 10 seconds. I am thinking Star Wars and the escape from Hoth.
1b. Cloaking to allow establishing a beach head stealth like.
2. Teleportation without needing a target gate. This would allow surgical strikes to take out key structures in preparation for an invasion. This would need to be expensive e.g. 1k metal per teleport.
3. Allowing aircraft to move between planets somehow. This would allow an easy counter to artillery which cannot defend against air.

Well that's quite weird. The sharing orbit I think is good, but the small objects bit? What if you want to return fire to an object someone moved into the orbit of your planet?

I couldn't agree more!

The entire process should be EPIC! Like destroying the Dark Portal in Warcraft 2. Or sending a nuke through the wormhole in the Avengers. Or crossing the streams and taking out the gateway in Ghostbusters! I'm talking "dogs and cats living together... mass hysteria!"

My expectations might be a tad high though.

Yeap thats the central issue. I think they must put in some kind of mass unit transport.

interplanetary nukes and orbital fighters would be your first line of attack. A beach head however is what you are most likely getting at.

To be fair, in the original context of the unit cannon, is that it has enough power to shot out of low gravity objects and onto planetoids. Giving it the ability to shot from the planetoid to the moon would make the initial travel to the moon redundant.

Why travel to the moon in a single unit transport when you can shoot anything you want from your planet unit cannon to the moon unit cannon?

Its a big issue, I'd like to hear your opinion on it. I can't think of a decent beach head weapon for planets that have invading moons coming in to bombard the planet.

The initial fabber would still get to the moon in an astraeus because of the high up cost of making a unit cannon. The unit cannon should only be cost effective for moving armies, unless you already have one.

But should the Unit Cannon have a high up front cost? I mean, what does the Unit cannon really do in the large scheme of things? Just shoots Units around where applicable, it doesn't produce units or anything. Without factories to support it(Directly or indirectly) the Unit Cannon is quite worthless as far as we know.

I feel that based on what's been seen for Nucks and Orbital so far that high up front costs are a bad idea really.

Mike

That's the point. Other invasion techniques are needed to get units off of large planets.

Even then, it's a good lore/realism and gameplay balance to have unit cannons only on small celestial bodies.

Which is why I suggest The Egg as a drop shock trooper style transport.

Why not have the teleportation gate build a 1 way receiver gate node that is then launched at a planet to start a beach head

Because then you could just drop the receiver gate right on top of the enemy commander and teleport thru 5+ levelers to kill him almost instantly.