Is the astraeus completely pointless now?

And get nuked in the process.

if you are not shoot down by an avenger, umbrella or a peregrine etc. before ...

Yes, as it is now. I laugh when I see a commander in space! So many times has my space luncher been half built when I have seen a commander in space, and I have been able to finish it, build a orbital fabber, send that fabber to the planet the enemy commader is going to, build a gate, sent in a attack force, all before the enemy commander gets to his destination!

Really the astrus needs to be faster than the orbital fabber.

Just played in a free for all - it was announced that one player was building halleys on a nearby moon, and everyone started panicking and getting their commanders the hell off that planet.

It was great. It definitely still has a place.

have you ever tried assisting an orbital fabber with a tank or bot fabber then?
and you talk about strange...

with all fabbers including the comm ... i called it fabberdance ...
tanks headbanging planes spinning and bots armwaving it was awesome ...

Did they really have halleys? I think that would be a wonderful ruse in a FFA.

They may or may not have been streaming and I may or may not have been gaining additional intelligence on my tablet screen...

I may have missed it, but has anyone considered the idea of changing the astraeus to a one time use transport? increase the speed to at least match the orbital fabber. This would make it both more like a panic button and much more like a drop pod than a single unit transport.

Crazy idea time, activate!

what if the Astraeus came with a built in commander/support commander? sounds crazy, and it'll get weirder before it gets better.

In the original TA, establishing bases on other planets was the whole point of the commander as a unit. Drop a single, powerful combat unit capable of colonizing/weaponizing an entire planet. from a lore standpoint, this makes the most sense.

If the Astraeus was not just a transport, but a commander drop-pod, it would allow for the use of commanders as they were intended, colonization, and would eliminate the potential late-game vulnerability of having just one commander to lose. The consequence of course would be that games would become much longer, but there are a few ways around this as well:

• in standard matches, Astraeus commanders could be support commanders, with the commander you get at the start being the important one. lose him, and it's all over.
• Uber has talked about the idea of long ongoing battles where you can spawn in halfway through or leave and the game continues persistently, for this game mode, Astraeus commanders would be controlled by real people, functioning as completely normal commanders. game ends when all commanders are lost

You might say "but what does this add to the concept of breaking turtle planets?" well, commanders are pretty darn tough to kill, and when they do die they tend to take entire armies/bases with them. this would make defending against commander incursions extremely difficult, and expensive. While most of us love our turtle planets, it doesn't do much for the game play and a cost-effective way of breaking said planets would be extremely useful.

Aside from giving the Astraeus another reason to live, this could be really nifty. No unit posses such a combination of firepower and build capacity as the commander, and there is a reason for that. Commanders were born to fabricate vast armies and crack mighty defenses, yet late game they are forced to cower in vulnerability behind inadequate defenses. Imagine the possibilities...

/crazy idea rant

back to reality, this is basically an idea for a completely different game, and kinda off-topic, however it is still cool IMHO, so no harm in sharing I guess.

you may or may not have been cheating...

Yet another reason as to why streaming is EVIL.

Indeed. There was no conclusive statement or evidence either way. Stream delays are important, however.

I believe the astraeus is okay as it is. You can build it relatively quickly and either evac or expand earlier than if you were to build an orbital fabricator. That said the astraeus is going to be your go to evacuation plan if you are under heavy siege as all it needs to do is swoop in, pick up your commander and be on its merry way. With the teleporter you first have to build the orbital frabricator, send it to the desired planet, build the teleporter on that planet (make sure of course that you built one on yours as well). Once those steps are done you have to ensure your power is in the green or you have sufficient energy stored otherwise the teleporter will shut down until you restore power. If all these things are done, then you may send your commander on her merry way through the teleporter.

So one way you have a cheap faster constructed interplanetary transport unit for evac and expansion.

On the other hand you can take the time to build the orbital fabricator, a teleporter on the main world and one on the desired world, keep your power green or at least have a surplus of energy to deplete.

Personally, I want to get out of there sooner with my astraeus and since my commander can also build the teleport gate might as well just do it anyway. Also, if I lose power due to being sieged to no end, well, I can always leave with the astraeus. That is unless my opponent has overwhelming orbital presence in which case I either get lucky and get away, or I'm just screwed anyway and GG.

I think they both need work.

the astraeus is a nonsensical magic floating unit built for the purpose of alpha gameplay orbital.

the orbital fabber, likewise, is built of necesity to test the complete orbital rework

the astraeus is a magic carpet, it needs worked into a few function and rebalanced accordingly, and I wouldn't mind it be replaced or removed.

the orbital fabber is a magic build projector. It needs smaller adjustments like simply performing the astraeus s move and having its turn radius nerfed to appear logical for an orbital "spaceplane".

The astreaus is perfect the way it is. You can take construction bots to other planets instead of risking your commander.

Well I think astraeus needs to become somewhat cheaper and a bit faster ad currently it is a lot less viable than a stargate and where they shold be used (to establish a beachead) they are too slow to build and too slow to land (I dont mind if their takeoff is slow). I believe we can make them cheaper without worrying that the same will happen to them as it did to air transports mainly because they require you to build an orbital beforehand and thats T1,5. Additionally they don't need to be cheaper than air, they just need to be cheap enough to be mass produced.

Merge the astreus and the orbital faber.

OR you can send an orbital fabber, establish a teleporter on your planet and the moon or whatever and send 50 construction bots, a small army and your commander in the span of a few seconds.

An idea some friends and I have been discussing for the astraeus, is for it to be more of a rocket like in the original concept trailer. Perhaps have only one astraues at a time per orbital factory, have is like a rocket ready to launch, then the commander or another unit can get into it, it launches to it destination, it cannot be shot down, it lands and cannot be reused.