Teleporters

Discussion in 'Planetary Annihilation General Discussion' started by neutrino, December 20, 2013.

  1. neutrino

    neutrino low mass particle Uber Employee

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    Some of you have been asking about teleporters. We've decided to go with a system that is similar to how stargates work. Each gate is tied to one other gate and they are bidirectional. When the gate is turned on it consumes a fixed amount of energy. At this point they are mostly functional but we haven't played a full game with them yet.


    teleporter_tease.png
    elvisior, ghost1107, Crymaw and 39 others like this.
  2. elitedanzel

    elitedanzel Active Member

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    Looks AWESOME!
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  3. emraldis

    emraldis Post Master General

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    It might be cool, just as a visual effect rather than having any gameplay value, to have it so that rather than being a true teleporter, the gate just shoots the unit into orbit where it transfers rapidly to the other planet and is captured by the receiving gate, kind of like a mass relay from the Mass Effect series. It would still have the same end result, it would just look different from just a standard teleporter, and I don't think anyone has ever done something like that.

    EDIT: the unit would be flung at such a speed that it would be pretty much instantaneous transport. But maybe you can have them show up on orbital/deepspace radar, as somewhat of an alert that you do have a teleporter up. You should still not be able to shoot them down or anything, they're going way to fast.
    heyiisrandom likes this.
  4. Cryonicfire

    Cryonicfire Member

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    HOLY CRAP I LOVE YOU!
    Last edited: December 20, 2013
    stormingkiwi likes this.
  5. Arachnis

    Arachnis Well-Known Member

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    That sounds hard to program.

    Anyway, good news.
  6. Xagar

    Xagar Active Member

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    How do you pick the start/end points? Just build an entrance/exit or something?

    Anyway, that looks pretty cool.
  7. zack1028

    zack1028 Member

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    Looks really good!!!!!! When are you guys going to stream a game with them in play!!!???
  8. OathAlliance

    OathAlliance Well-Known Member

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    Cue Stargate theme.
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  9. Zoliru

    Zoliru Active Member

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    the better question is when they will put it in for us.

    looks cool btw.
  10. zaphodx

    zaphodx Post Master General

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    Please have some sort of segmented visual indicator as the stargate teleporter charges up to become active. It would be a dream come true if I could scream "FIRST CHEVRON LOCKED" in my gameplays.
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  11. Culverin

    Culverin Post Master General

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    This is outrageous.

    I want to be able to hijack an enemy gate and deliver units to their main base.
    Tier 2 special forces infantry?
  12. cwarner7264

    cwarner7264 Moderator Alumni

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    I.e. capturing a galactic gate. :)
  13. quigibo

    quigibo Member

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    Ok one question that I have...what happens if you have 3 of them up at once? bad things? it dosn't know what to do? the third is null until a fourth? ...hmm guess that was more than one question.

    Can't wait to use it anyhow.
  14. metabolical

    metabolical Uber Alumni

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    You can move the way point from A<->B and make it A<->C or B<->C. Or build gate D and have two connections.
  15. abubaba

    abubaba Well-Known Member

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    Sounds and looks absolutely brilliant. Christmas came early.. great work guys!
  16. quigibo

    quigibo Member

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    [​IMG]

    Genius!!! Super excited now
    nateious and thetrophysystem like this.
  17. allister

    allister Active Member

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    Well, I can't wait for this. It will make it easier to conquer solar systems, but will need to drain a ton of energy to be balanced.
    Can I send a nuke through it?
  18. ledarsi

    ledarsi Post Master General

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    I know that a continuous time period of operation is how it works in Stargate. But for gameplay reasons, can we pay in discrete increments to send each unit rather than for a continuous period of operation during which you can send as many units as you like? It can still visually look the same way.

    The issue I am anticipating is the potential significance of micromanaging your stargate to manually toggle it on and off. And of the need to minimize the amount of time it spends open in order to save energy. Manually shepherding your units through to minimize the amount of time the portal needs to stay open does not sound fun to me.

    Instead, why not make players pay a certain cost to send each unit through depending on its mass? Then it doesn't matter how long the portal is "open" or not because the cost will be the same.

    The visual appearance can be left the same by having the portal stay open for a time period after a unit goes through, during which another unit can go through to refresh the delay.
  19. mrqasq

    mrqasq Member

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    Does it take more energy depending on the distance or it's constant value like for orbital radar? How to you set the coresponding gates to work one with another (setting A and B) - this is some context menu after choosing the building or?
    carlorizzante likes this.
  20. WarriorServent

    WarriorServent Member

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    I think it looks AMAZING, but this is just a screen shot, please tell me that those 4 things sticking out of each of the four sides of the gate rotate around it! On a gameplay point of view, I like Culverin's idea of being able to send your units through the enemy gate, they would still control it and tell it where to put your units, but it would still be cool, like how in HomeWorld 2 you could capture the enemy Hyperspace gates and use them.

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