OMG Uber Cannon is so OP. Fix now!

I think it comes down if you want mass/weight to be a factor in the game.
It does complicate a lot of things but weight is something that is usually pretty intuitive for the player as it can usually be discerned from the metal cost of the unit and the size of the unit.
On the Spring engine and in the game Zero-K, the weight of the unit is used for a lot of things. It is used to determine how easily units push each other. Many weapons give impulse to the unit it hits so light units might be thrown in the air by an explosion. Some weapons also only give impulse which can send light units flying and when they hit the ground, weight is also used to determine how much damage they take when they land.
Specifically to prevent Megabots(or Striders as they are called in Zero-K) to zip around on the map in a transport, the weight of the unit affects the rate at which the transport moves when it is loaded. It doesn't really make a difference for light units but superheavy units in transports move really slowly.

No.

Longer version- It's needless complexity to have people work out how fast each group of transports will get somewhere based on what they are carrying, which presumably will be very hard to distinguish in the middle of a game.

If you want heavier units to be transported more slowly it is definitely not needless complexity. Units being transported at different speeds could be seen as added depth to the game but it is mostly a question about if you want it or if the balance requires it.

huh? i havnt tried area commands yet, but i dont understand what area commands have in relation to pelicans and that situation.

Moving pelicans to T2 invalidates the whole reason for transports. I havnt checked the new patch but i hope to god they are still 90 metal otherwise the transport is being screwed over. Its bad enough having to pay 90 metal to transport 1 unit at a time, but to make it T2 and cost even more is overkill. What wrong with just leaving pelicans at T1, and just prevent them from picking commanders up?

It was way too easy to snipe coms and defend all parts of your base from attacks that take a lot of time to clean up. Was real bad for the early game in my opinion.

Also: Area transport commands make it so the micromanagement of moving large groups of units with large groups of transports is negated.

I must admit, I want to make babies with the area commands.

But you can't do a rush build. Other than the commander march. Or rather, the only rush build you can do depends on the commander march, because OMG Uber Cannon is so OP.

You can do a rush build. It just has an actual cost in time and potential downside now, unlike with the previous T1 Pelican rush (yes there was a small chance you could die, but any good player was successful 90%+ of the time). You can either do the commander walk (if they're close) or rush T2 air to get a transport. Why bother with an economy build or unit rush build, when you can just rush in a comparatively super powered unit off the bat?

This is what happens when the pelican is left at T1: . It would be a short amount of time before a few people were trolling public games with this and driving people nuts. And if this is really the type of gameplay you want, that's what MOBAs are for. I'd prefer if this game remained focused on rewarding RTS style play with lots of units and strategy, and allowed these tactics only with huge risks inherent in the design. I am confident Scathis/Uberland/the community will get us there.

Alas, the Uber cannon can still be augmented via your economy, but I hope at some point that will not be the case. It would force people to concentrate on the metagame instead of focusing on buffing and microing a super unit, which I feel is not really the point of an RTS like this. Although, a mod that did that would be cool. @zaphodx's video IS pretty hilarious to watch (Killer, you monster!), although playing against that would probably put me off PA for awhile...

Delaying a "rush" until you have t2 doesn't constitute a rush. That's an econ/tech boom. Which is the polar opposite of a rush.

It's econ boom/tech boom, and requires building up into the midgame. That's not the point of a rush. You get an early, decisive advantage before the midgame occurs. Harassment =/= rush. Rush means you pour most resources into military, because you cripple the opponent's econ booming after the rush, and so you leap frog ahead. Harassment is what a failed rush transitions into - the opponent effectively countered your rush, so you have to use your units to provide pressure on your opponent.

Note that when I'm talking about rushing, I'm talking about a unit based rush. The commander rush is always going to be present in some form. Note that I said "Other than the commander march". You can't do a unit based rush. The commander's new uber cannon can take on about 20 units at a time with minimal damage taken. You don't have to build military at all. You can focus entirely on intel and econ booming, build a bunch of factories/assisting fabbers, and then very quickly catch up to your opponent. OMG Uber Cannon is OP enforces a no-unit-rush rule. And marching a commander into your base is ludicrously easy to counter if you catch it early.

I object to unit uber cannon no-rush rule because it means "no commander attack with anything less than x number of units", so attrition damage that you take in a normal attack means that the game doesn't end in a victory, but drags on and on and on unnecessarily, even if one player gained a decisive strategic advantage over the other. You have to disassemble their base after a successful attack, and can't go straight for the comm-kill. Previously the commander protected against small numbers of attacking units.Now he defends against large numbers of attacking units.

Ah, misunderstood your post. I actually completely agree with this. If you notice in the last paragraph in the post of mine you quoted, I mentioned how I don't like that the Uber cannon can be buffed to fire incessantly. I've also said in a bunch of posts that I think it should fire at a fixed frequency and strength, making it less strong than it is now.

I like that the pelican has been moved to T2; I agree that it had no place in T1 because it gave too much mobility too early.
With that said, I hope we still get more transport options, perhaps a more expensive multi-unit transport, a transport with a large health pool for invasions, etc. It might be a bit cluttered if more than 2 types of transports are in the same factory though.

Also, right now it seems a transport has to be moved and then the unload command has to be issued once it's in the area, instead of just clicking unload on a point somewhere. Maybe that was changed recently, but I would always forget to do it in the last patch. Had the same issue with the astraeus as well.

I was never talking about moving huge amounts of units by the pelican. Yes, i have seen the area commands in awesome, and yes they make it super easy to move large amounts of units with single unit transports, but that does not mean moving the single unit transports to T2 merely because the commander has some rapid fire uber cannon which can be abused early game is a good idea. Its all about balancing the ability to transport units with how difficult it is to get them, not because one unit breaks the game. Leave transporting commanders to astreaus and move pelicans back to T1 air. I dont see what the difficulty behind that is? Are there any problems that people can percieve other than thinking an arbitrary restriction is something they dont like?

Did you read my response? That's not why they were moved. My response has nothing to do with specifically the commander or his Uber Cannon. It has to do with the rapid expansion it allows you whether you transported your commander or even vehicle or bot fabbers.

But how is moving fabbers by pelican any different from using air fabbers? The only reason people werent expanding to faraway places by air fabber was because there was already too much going on, but it was do-able, i was starting to do it before i stopped playing. Now with a buffed air fabber, its even easier. Moving the pelican to T2 because units can be transported early is silly in my opinion, and just prevents the ability to rush. Its already a huge pain to rush in this game, almost impossible without using your commander, why not make it easier?

If you make this change, and consider it 'Permanent', you need to nerf the air fabbers to worse than they were originally.

Edit: I dont particularly mind you going about slowing down the rate of expansion to other parts of the planet, but if you ARE going to do it, it needs doing properly. I just hope that in the process of doing so, you dont invalidate possible rushing ideas.

Pelicans still cost 90 metal in the t2 factory. I honestly think everything is in it's right place now. The pelican should always be able to carry the commander, now and in the future. What I'm hoping for is load/unload internal cargo style multi-unit transports.

I don't think multi-unit transports are the way to go. Just make a swarm of pelicans and do area load/unload. Some could get shot down in a contested area but still some will land, with multi it's all or nothing. But mainly it would provide an 'oh ****' moment when they are spotted on the horizon (bonus points if they come in from all directions simultaneously).

Why would multi-unit transports be a bad thing exactly? So they would incur more collateral damage when destroyed, that doesn't mean they shouldn't be an option to players who would like to take that risk. I don't see any reasons pertaining to balance or gameplay progression that would definitively disallow them from the game.

I didn't say multi-unit transports are bad, I said I don't think they're the way to go. Unless the multi-unit transport provided substantial benefits (like 20x capacity for 2x cost, or they tank damage like a wall), I'd do pelican swarm every time, because swarm is swarmy

I do agree.