Teleporters

Skill, or lucky the enemy didn't scout?

I'd argue that not scouting is a lack of skill. And I'm not excluded from that.

Your view of units abilities in general and teleporters in specific is highly restrictive/conservative.

I also think that teleporting depends a lot on range. I am assuming teleporting gates are without a range limit, but I think a lot of short ranged teleporting technology can perform things like one way teleporting, single unit teleporting themselves very short distances, teleporting in and out of transports, etc.

I think that teleporting units to a teleporter instead of 2-way is a bad idea, first because it's counter intuitive + less fun and second because its a copy of Star Craft. Finally, it's just another arbitrary restriction.

Copying, should never be a reason not to do something if its a good idea.

The most important aspect of positional play is that a spread formation of units is a substantial impediment to enemy units. You should want to arrange your forces as a kind of moving wall which permits your own units to pass through the area, and which blocks the enemy's movement. Your forces want to move forward to constrict the enemy's options while expanding your own. Both sides want to do this, creating conflict spread across space as these large formations collide in various places. In order for positional play to work, the small groups of units that are covering the map like this need to be relatively slow compared to the size of the map. Therefore, you want to spread them out across space, instead of grouping every unit together and simply moving the entire group wherever it needs to go. Super mobile units can be omnipresent, allowing an army of such units to project all its power anywhere without needing to spread its units.

The ability to teleport out from a teleporter freely (without a receiving gate) undermines positional play in a different way, by encouraging centralization near the teleporter. However in my opinion this wouldn't be as pathological as having super-mobile units because the teleporter can have limitations like energy cost and limited rate which make it less effective at making an army omnipresent compared to just having an army composed entirely of fast units.

Recall capability, however, does not destroy positional play in the same way. What it lets you do is pull units to the teleporter. Which, if it is a static structure or highly valuable unit, will be in the rear and you want to keep it safe. Recall lets you pull units back from a forward position they reached by walking there, which is risky and time-consuming, although the recall capability lets you potentially save their lives. It supports raids or harassment, but it doesn't increase the effectiveness of raids/harassment directly, like how the ability to teleport out makes them much faster and harder to stop since they can teleport right through your forces and pop into existence anywhere.

You could try to use "proxy"-gates though, and port your armies around between multiple gate points. Probably a nice way to confuse enemies.

Why not just make a cloaking unit?

Yes, but it is possible to deny the enemy access to an area with their teleporter, thus preventing them from teleporting there. Also, this exposes the teleporter, which should be expensive and an asset you don't want to lose. For teleporting away from a gate, it is impossible to prevent the enemy from teleporting right through you.

Forward bases equipped with recall capability could bring reinforcements forward to them. So you should stop your opponent from building bases in places where you don't want them to be able to teleport.

However, if you can teleport away from a teleporter freely, then you can't stop the enemy from appearing anywhere they like. Is it possible to design a mechanic using teleport in some capacity that would be fair? Sure. But it would be so expensive and have such severe limitations that it probably isn't worth including at all.

Maybe as an advanced interplanetary transport method, with massive inaccuracy, essentially an undeniable interplanetary paradrop. Maybe as an expensive and very-short-range tactical teleport. But the ability to freely blink large distances into empty space is so powerful you can't really put a price on it that wouldn't be so prohibitive that it was effectively removed from the game. To make it available without major limitations would almost certainly break the game.

Free range teleport is basically a game ender power. Why? Because teleport on the Commander. Focus fire. Win. No amount of defense can save you against losing at least one unit.

Uh what. Recall is badass. It's pretty useless for most things, because units stream out and defenses are pretty effective. But on a Commander, it is a game changing power. The idea of a "cheap" snipe completely vanishes, because there is always at least one chance to get away from something bad.

Recall is probably best set up as a special beacon structure that only the Commander can use. For everything else, use the Stargate.

I think there should be a building that connects to the gate and controls it and gate should only connect to other gate (even if its on the other team) also there should be a restriction that only one gate per planet ( what i mean is this for example both teams are building gates and one of them builds the Gate Control Building first that gate should become the dominate gate) unless the other team can destroy that GCB their gate wont work.

p.s. i know this sounds a lot like star gate 101 but come on it would be nice. =D

Sounds very complex, awkward and needlessly limiting to me.

Mike

Please explain what you are addressing. I don't see a connection.

On

One way teleporting, single unit teleporting themselves short distances. ..

Why not just have stealth cloaking units

But stealth cloaking units would be great.

Just don't use Starcraft cloak. That was stupid. TA cloak is best.

never forget to make this feature as neutral as possible for all factions.

Wha?

They serve different functions. You cannot cloak onto a plateau. Teleporting does not mask your location from intel. Cloaking does not change your position. Again, as stated previously

What is the basis of this comparison? I cannot grasp your train of thought.

...darnit double post. remove plz.

heeeeeeeeeeeeeeell yes, this is exactly the scheme I'd hoped for.

will they be neutral too? meaning they don't have vision and can be used by enemies if left undefended?
this would have such a rebalancing factor and be so strategically deep.

Didn`t they say that they weren't gona make the teleporters look like stargates?