Unit Suggestion - Fenrir, the siege submarine

Well, the main reason why I chose the submarine was because I didn't see a proper way to deploy air unit to the surface, with the unit cannon (which I don't believe will drop air) and the teleporter, which I again can't see a proper way of transporting air with, I wanted a way to bring a sizable army with variation when sieging a planet, in the form of the unit cannon/Teleporter and the submarine to have the air force.

If i'd to make a land unit, I'm gonna try and make it a transport/production unit mainly for air, but I fear it might lose the awesome factor when it becomes a structure?

¨~ Chris

Maybe you're right.
The reason why I suggested the unit be deployed before production starts is to ensure you can't circle an enemys base constantly pumping units in from all directions, It might not even be an issue but I feel a unit that can move and produce units is a little too powerful since you could always keep it just out of range of any defence structures that your enemy may build and camp right outside their doorstep.

Having the unit take time to deploy at least would give the opponent time to react, scout, and destroy the factory.
It wouldn't really be a 'structure' when deployed, just unable to move again until production stops, this would also mean if the factory is scouted and found it can't run away while producing units that would take the brunt of the damage from its attackers.

After considering what you said about a proper method of delivering an air force from one planet to another it does seem unlikely the unit cannon or the teleport gate will fit these rolls.

I'd like to know how you (or anyone else) might try and approach the problem of not every planet having a viable surface to land the submarine carrier, how then will we be able to send air units from one planet to another.

Maybe if there was an inter-orbital transport carrier capable of carrying aircraft and launching them from low level orbit might be a better approach, but i cant think of a good way to implement this without the unit becoming an invincible aircraft factory (invincible to all ground forces as its in low orbit)

Flying factory's have been done in a few games, starcraft had one I think and it was later added to total annihilation by a few different mods if i recall correctly and I've never liked those as they kinda felt like a cheat.

I know its a silly point to get hung up on but I figured in PA (and in TA/Supcom/Supcom2) that when factorys are built resources are delivered by some underground transport system that was hidden from the player just as an easy way to explain how the factory's got their materials. Flying factory's just don't seem plausible unless you imagine the materials are teleported to the flying factory. I guess there would be the same problem with the land based mobile factory too so maybe I'm just being silly.

I do still love the original idea you came up with, but because it wont work on oh so many planets there should be an alternative method of transporting your air units between planets.

Here's an idea for a bulk transport of any design or merit:

Just have it fly through space on its own. Fall down to the planet, deploy cargo, role successful. It'll be fine.

Anything that can be built on an asteroid is no problem to launch from the asteroid. Why launch something huge when all you care about is the cargo? Launch the cargo.