Pre-Fab Planet Landing Fortress??

So ever been in that situation where each team totally controls a planet and it's a half-hour race for fighters and lasers.

I don't find anything wrong with this per se, though whoever has the larger planet (more metal) will theoretically be able to win each time. I don't find anything wrong with that per se either, it's just that it takes about 30 mins to resolve.

I propose a new unit that costs about the same as 3 halley rockets. It is built of multiple pieces launched from orbital launchers, and requires a commander to 'assemble together.

What it does is that it's sort of like a pre-fab fortress that lands on a planet. Here's how it works:

1 - Landing has the effect of a nuke, clearing a little space regardless of umbrellas or anti-nukes. This is okay because it's costly to build this lander, and the commander must be in it for it to work.

2 - After landing, the fortress has 2 pelters and 8 anti-air worth of turrets (something balanced). The idea is that the fortress can defend itself against what is about one wave of an attack. Say 50 t1 or 20 t2 units. So do you land on the far side of a guy's planet, or do you nuke his main base but are near his leftover tanks? Much of the time, you might need to land additional fabs immediately afterwards with astreus's to fast build more defense.

3 - The fortress can construct any t1 fab except boats, or maybe just air fabs. This way you can immediately start making defenses without waiting for that first fab factory.

That's about it! Just a 'planet penetrator' that solves the problem of the orbital laser rush at endgame.

Lots of threads on this topic. It's a known issue and Uber is working on many ways to enable planetary invasions.

Here's one of the big threads on this topic: https://forums.uberent.com/threads/planetary-invasions.54449/

Thanks, didn't know what to search for.

Or you could play with asteroids and use the three halleys worth of metal to build three halleys and end the game with a click of the button. (that really needs a counter)

Not really, it's meant to be a game-ender, the counter is simply not letting your opponent do that, by scouting and attacking properly. Although I agree that attacking a small fortified asteroid to get some halleys is not the easiest thing, but that's why the unit cannon is being implemented, and why we have orbital nukes.

Although it is difficult to invade a fortified planet, this is currently being worked on, and should be the only way to stop an asteroid bomb, otherwise it would not be the game-ending weapon it honestly should be.

Don't forget that it is a one-off weapon and it's only effective if you lose your commander. Otherwise the game doesn't end.

What was that SupCom mobile factory with the four big cannons on it? I keep thinking we need something like that for planetary invasions. It doesn't have Pelters, it has Holkins and can spit out T1 units at a good clip.

You really have to have something pretty outstanding to land on a scale 1-2 planet thats been taken over and built up. Even if this thing had 50,000 hit points, you'll end up needing to land 5+ of them to really get a beachhead started on a built up world. The first 2 you land will get destroyed by Catapults/Holkins quicker than it can return fire. The next 2 you land will get nuked. The next 1 you land might live long enough to make some units.

A lot of people mention a lot of ideas but almost none of them really take into account what it means to try and land on a world where every part of the planet is covered by 3-10 artillery pieces. The kind of planets where I land 20 T2 fabricators and all 20 of them are dead within literally 5 seconds.

It doesn't help that Umbrellas are absolute murder on orbital lasers. If it followed the air model, Umbrellas would be great against orbital fighters but terrible against orbital lasers, just like missile turrets are great against fighters but terrible against T2 bombers.

There is a lot of room for something dramatic to happen in the orbital invasion scheme. I don't see Teleporters cutting it unless they allow T2 bombers through and can survive numerous Holkin shots.

Storming the breach is always the most difficult part of the siege.

I've watched a lot of orbital gameplay, never seen someone take out a halley or prevent an asteroid annihilation. If they get the chance to build up on the asteroid either by staying on it uncontested or managing to fight you off it then your on a doomsday clock, scouting won't stop that clock ticking down to your demise. (with orbital nukes you might be able to stop it, but why can't you use the same rockets to shoot it as it comes in for the killing blow!)

Any weapon is a game ending weapon doesn't mean their should exist a point of view where ants should be able to one shot kill a commander from across the map with no viable counter because how else can I win.

Game-Enders are a means to an end, it's the grind that's important, you can't grind against inevitability. Unbalanced game-enders are just that: unbalanced.

Yes, that's why they are implementing the unit cannon, so that combat units can attack asteroids. Proper scouting will allow you to stop an asteroid, and it's not unbalanced because it doesn't favor one player over another, both players get just as much chance to get to the asteroid as the other, and once unit cannons are in place, asteroids will probably go back and forth between players, especially if they make the unit cannon only a little more expensive than the orbital launcher is now.

How quick can you micro your's shots at the halleys catapult fire kills units that land on an asteroid in about a second? surround the halleys in walls, unit cannon will do nothing.

If you let them get to the point where they have fortified everything, you're going to die regardless, you have probably been playing worse than them anyway. If you scout properly, then using the unit cannon would be effective as you catch them off guard before they can fortify.

EDIT: I'm not saying there shouldn't be more ways to invade planets, mind you, I'm just saying why asteroid bombs should not have a counter.

Much of a counter.

Id like to at least try and blanket the bugger with nukes.

I don't see the need for any kind of landing fortress, the idea is that all the stuff that would go into that are instead placed on the moon/asteroid.

Mike

If you can't land a pile of tanks straight up, you have no chance of landing a stationary base.

Everything important about orbital needs to be centered around initiating invasions between worlds. Stargates and unit cannons are a decent start, but they depend on bringing another orbital body to the enemy world. What if you can't? A bulk transport will be needed.

How about adding in an artificial asteroid unit? It would be constructed in orbit by an orbital fabber Give it enough area to build a small base on (some unit cannons, nukes, that kind of stuff) and you have a mobile planetary invasion platform. It could be used for planet smashing but should have a much smaller blast radius (maybe a tad bigger than a nuke). It should be fairly expensive though, like as much as several Haley engines. I would probably design it so that it would use a single Haley for propulsion, that would come pre-built, but would be destructible. If you attempt to invade a planet and fail, your enemy could theoretically wipe you off this asteroid like any other, destroy your Haley, and then build their own to claim it for themselves.

The stalemate you described in inter planetary conflict definitely exists and some mechanics need to be adjusted to help deal with it. As for your suggestion I think it borders too closely on the "experimental unit" side of the house that the devs stated they did not want in this game. 99.9% sure I read that they don't want experimental units in the game on here some where at some point. Cool idea though dude.

I got your artificial asteroid unit right here.

You may have noticed that the Commander didn't use his D-gun. At that close of a distance it wouldn't matter.

The plan is to allow asteroids to not just be planet bombs, but to be mobile fortresses as well, building halleys on them would allow you to make your asteroid switch orbits.

With a planetary economy in your hands and a significant breach made on the enemy soil, isn't just a matter of making enough destination gates to match your production bandwidth?

I think I found what I want my Egg unit to be, a bunch of T2 engineers glued together, or a prefab Stargate.

The trick then in knowing how many to send and where, preparing for the counter bombardment!