Teleporters

Naval support at the least! PA has been doing so well making naval as complete a game as land, but without transports or teleportation or unit cannons, gameplay with aquatic planets is going to be hurting.

A. Since you need to build a destination teleporter first, you can't instantly teleport an entire army anywhere in the map. You can only teleport that army where you already have a teleporter. And they'll have to go through single file, apparently.
B. Having a fixed cost per teleporter does not equate to teleporters being cheap.
C. Transports can be made cheaper, don't require you to build the destination, and may not even be an alternative if, like the Astraeus, they can't carry combat units.

Not to mention that your opponent would need to be an idiot to build his base around your stargate in the first place.

Well it's these kinds of things that lead to Uber not really wanting to do Naval in the first place and why it was set as a stretch goal because of the added complications. I'd imagine they want to get teh basic land gameplay flowing well before they try tackling the Pure Naval stuff. Same kind of reasoning as to why we were without orbital for so long, because if the game didn't work on a single planet there was no way it was gonna work on multiple planets.

Mike

What i really want to know is the intended gameplay "slot" this will fill, sure it's mobility but is it after you've almost conqured a planet (because it is expensive) or can it be used as a beachhead on a new planet because it builds fast enough.

I would really like to see a fast teleport reciever that is one directional and can only recieve units to be used as a type of beach head.

I believe that the unit cannon is already being considered for the role of establishing a beachhead, the teleporter is something you build later after you have established a defensible firebase through which you can stream your army.

Yes, this is all fine but what if you want to invade another planet that is not in your orbit, is the only viable method of invation a asteroid + Unit canon?

Imagine a senario where you have 2 very large plants not in eachothers orbit no asteroids, 2v2v2v2 2 teams on each planet one team is going to win the planet and have total control, how do you invade?

Nukes- No
Asteroid - No
Asteroid w/ Unit canon - No
Teleporter - Maybe, but it will probably be too expensive to build so it's not viable
Single unit transporter - (How is this going to work well? no unit is strong enough except the commander and he's to "important" to sacrifice)

If we had a single reciever teleporter where we can pump units out of we trade safety for fast building, and i think that is a viable option with the teleporter (Have it still drain the same energy)

Considering we will be able to shift asteroids and other planetoids into different orbits at some future point (if someone could find the link for that, that would be great!), a unit cannon on an asteroid will be a completely viable option. Also, an asteroid in general at that point should solve the problem, but in the case that you want to keep the asteroid, this will be an option.

I think there's something to this idea, and it inspired an image in my head of a ridiculous number of fabbers assisting the teleporter. Not for the "running cost", as Uber has followed up with:

Instead though, I was inspired by your fabber idea to help solve the "beachhead: how do you start one on an entrenched planet/moon/rock?" issue... What about allowing a teleporter to remotely build a receiving gate? I envision you simply select your local gate and designate a target spot just as you would with a nuke. It should build extremely slowly with a huge penalty for lathing through the fabric of space-time to an un-teleportaled destination. Far less efficient than standard fabbing another portal, or than the various orbital options available. As with any other structure it would be vulnerable until completed, and the loss would represent a huge resource loss disparity, so it would typically be a risky endeavor. But possible.

Perhaps useful in mid-game cases where you have been out-orbitaled quite badly but have a fine eco and need options to get to other possibly unclaimed planetoids. And also useful as a late-game mechanism to bootstrap into well defended territory with. In that kind of situation, intense levels of fabber assisting would be critical for the speed/surprise needed for success, and this retains a premium on scouting intel as well (find a catapult/holkins dead-zone, maybe lead with some IP nukes where their anti-nuke holes are, etc).

I suspect from the OP reveal about the gates being "bidirectional" that once completed they have significant HP to maintain non-trivial risk of counterattack. This certainly seems key, but I'm not sure how risky it'd ever be in practice, if you necessarily needed to have enough existing build power already located at a remote location to create a gate there (that requires a protecting force, and implies you already have established a solid footing).
This concept of remotely fabbing a gate in potentially hostile territory would bring a high degree of counterattack risk into play though. For example, I think it'd begin to place doubt on the part of the builder if their scouting was less than perfect, they expected obvious resistance to a remote gate construction, but that resistance didn't come. What if they started shooting at the remote gate, but then stopped! Maybe that's just where they'd want your forces to stream through... maybe that's where their counter force is best ready to stream your way too.

Very cool! Looks Awesome!

Some questions though...

-How will ownership of a teleporter be determined? Can they be captured, or once built will they just act as a neutral NPC type unit that your units do not attack and destroy (but could if explicitely targetted, like wreckage)? Can they be used against the enemy that created it?
-How will we be able to tell where it is going (especially if we can capture an enemy teleporter)? Will there be some graphical designation on the destination planet/asteroid somewhere, or will we just have to send some units through to find out?
-What happens when the destination side is shut down? Can units still go through the source teleporter? If so, will they be lost? Will the source teleporter change color from blue to red to indicate that the destination teleporter is closed?

*Also, I think that air units need to be included in the list of "teleportable" units. This would make it a viable option to build on water worlds.

In the scenario i put in there are no asteroids and from what i've gathered there will be no viable way to push radius 500> planets as all, and 250><500 require 25 halleys and that radius planet cannot have unitcannons

The whole thing with moving a unit from planet to planet should be realy expensive. For the gameplay it would be awesome if the Gate takes the wohle economy down to 0 then you have to acivate it in the right moment. Untill the gate stops economy should be stable again. But to activate you have to have a special ammount of power 100000 or more. If your power is underneath this lvl you can not activate it. This will give the gate a strategic effect. You have to activate it in just the right time.

Some scenarios:
1 Your base is under attack, your enemy is pushing a lot of units to your base. Last option activate the stargate an push whatever you can push through it to save your units or to fight.
2 You want to start a big attack building everywhere units on different planets. How to get all these units to the right planet..... open the gate an push them through.
3 You want to start building on a other planet. You send 3x t2 fabbers to the farest planet in the sunsystem. Building a gate and then push more units through....


I don't like the idea to activate it and push units through the gate and build everywhere without an effect.

Here's a question though: Will I be able to send airplanes and nukes through the stargate?

I dislike an on/off function, partially because it means dicking about with switching a unit on and off even though the times when you want it on and off are entirely predictable, but my greater objection is that it removes the ability for counter-invasions. A player should be forced to defend the gate because once it's on it's on, and another player can invade you right back. This then leads to interesting decisions where a player decides whether they can retake their valuable investment should they lose it, or need to self-destruct it.

Wrong sci-fi bro

I'd prefer no running cost but a per-unit cost instead. I see the on/off switch as unnecessary micro, and if done well it's pretty much identical to having a cost-per-unit anyway, except with more clicking. Unlike other structures that draw power (radar for instance), this one grants no benefit when not teleporting, so why have a cost?

A constant power drain adds micro with no gameplay benefit that I can see.

Will air units be able to travel trough the gate?

No they wont

Agreed.

Naval units were completely pointless in the campaign of Earth 2150, simply because of an inability to transport them. Because you couldn't retain them between missions, any investment in them was an absolute waste, and you were much better off giving the experience to your airforce.

There really isn't anything to stop the teleporter and unit cannons from transporting air. And there isn't anything to stop them from having a floating variant, which is only buildable on water, and only transports to other floating variants.

Thanks for the info!

A couple of thoughts- I think perhaps where air is concerned it would be fantastic to have 'puddle jumper' craft specifically designed for invading via a gate. Probably just a couple of units like a fighter and gunship. These would be especially designed to small enough to fit through and be generally inferior to standard equivalents on a cost or performance basis, but good enough to provide cover for invading forces.

I also think all gates should be accessible to all players once built making them hotly contested sites.

I'm very pleased to see a stargate network being introduced into this awesome RTS.
It does look really cool.

Will the units be instantainiously teleported when they cross the "event horizon"?
Or will they travel in some kind of tunnel/wormhole until they reach their destination?

If a wormhole mechanic is used, will the units in transit be destroyed if the sending or receiving gate is destroyed or is being shut down due to lack of power?

Can you dial only friendly gates or enemy gates as well?
Or will you be able to capture an enemy gate to gain access to their network?

I noticed you wanted a fixed amount of energy to be taken while the gate was in use.
And some suggested it should take more power depending on how many and how large the units are.
Some saw the problem with the gate take a fixed amount of energy, you had to babysit the gate until all units has been teleported and then you could shut down the gate.

My suggestion is the gate drains more power the longer it's being used.
First the gate drains said fixed amount, then after a while it increases and increases until you can't afford to keep it open anymore.
(I haven't thought this one through. The idea just fell down into my head and I have no idea what kind of problems or sollutions this will bring to gameplay)

This game just gets better and better! I think a good idea would be if there's a fairly large delay with powering down the teleporter. This would make it a risky thing to have open when the enemy attacks cause they could jump through before you shut it off and wreak havoc in your main base.