Is the astraeus completely pointless now?

Not to mention, the orbital fabbers will reach the destination way ahead of the Astraeus.
A slow space transporter is ok if it could carry more than one unit, but right now it is less risky and faster just to build teleporters and send the ACU through...

I like the idea making the Astraeus more like a fast one way rocket... cheap, fast... done.

for expanding? maybe but everything else is totaly situational ... the austreus may always be your last escapeoption ...

Sure, thats why it should be a cheap one way trip rocket.
I already played games where the ACU escaped my units via the Astraeus and fled to another planet...

The problem is, even though the enemy ACU was halfway there, I send an orbital fabber after the ACU, it reached the planet first, I had time to build a teleporter and send fabbers and units through...

not opposed to oneway transportrockets but i´m still for having a standalone transportpod/capsule ... because stuff like teleporters or orbital launchers are useally the first to be destroyed when spotted ...

I am not against the Aestraeus, it just needs to get faster, better.

If I remember correctly, one of the suggestions for changes to the orbital systems from before mutiplanet was even implemented was one-way landers that, once they reached their target, ran out of fuel and could not be relaunched. The Kickstarter Lander appeared to be only launch-capable from moons and other low-mass celestial bodies, and as far as the viewer can tell, only carries Air Fabbers. A similar buildable could take the place of the Astreus, because all things considered, the need for a reusable interplanetary transport isn't very significant.

I mean yeah, it sounds cool in practice, being able to fly an army into orbit, drop a bunch of units, have the units wreck things and then whirl them off to go wreak more havoc on some other planet... But the Astreus just costs too much to transport anything more than the Commander and a small escort, maybe containing an Advanced Fabber and a few bodyguards.

Additionally, wasn't it hinted that the Astreus would be reworked into the Egg unit from the Kickstarter video? I know the Egg had a somewhat finicky function that would be dubious in actual gameplay, but it still stands as a valid unit concept with some tweaks. Since the Astreus really is only used to transport the Commander and/or Advanced Fabbers anyways, the transition is natural. So, I guess what I'm suggesting is that the Astreus be turned into the Egg, meaning a personal transport for the Commander that can be orbital-enabled by an Orbital Launchpad, and interplanetary travel by standard units is reconstituted as Teleporters, Landers and the ever-anticipated Unit Cannon. The Commander is a win condition after all, as well as a very powerful unit, which somewhat justifies this change.

Well the astreaus used to have alot more health and let me tell you the way the astreaus is now is alot better. Everyone rushed astreaus to other planets before in beta. Now its risky to send comm through astreaus because it gets one shot kill. Making for better planet battles. Instead of sending all ur apples in a astreaus you should send a fab. make a small base then make teleporter and teleport your commander.

Sounds like your getting killed in games and want it as a escape. I love seeing guys try to escape in a astreaus after I plowed there base then BOOM.

Maybe make the astreaus cheaper? If it cost significantly less, could be used as a army transport I think it would be an improvement. Focused the balance on making it better at transporting units.

Maybe let it drop units from orbit and completely avoid the Air level.
I think it would be fun seeing 100 odd units being dropped on top of a moonbase, instead of trying to build a teleporter that gets sniped by catapults or bombers flying around.

Pretty sure my idea has been said a lot before hand, its not original.

unit dropping will happen with unitcannons ....
making propper invasions shouldnt be too easy

Who here has used orbital fabbers to assist ground building and repairing?

Did anyone even know that was possible?

I tried using the Astraeus similar to the air transport. Build a bunch, pick up units, order them to the destination, drop.

It could be a nice interplanetary transport for whole armies, and honestly, with area commands, we don't really need multi-unit transports either, as it's simple to order a whole group around. And if one gets shot down, you only lose 1 unit of cargo, so you can attempt assaults with it more-or-less.

In it's current state it does need a bit of smoothing though to make this viable, I found it to be a bit quirky, and balancing needs to be modified to accommodate this as well.

Currently it's the only way to attempt wiping out bomber clouds stopping me from building teleporters. Which the AI does seem to like to do when left alone on a planet.

one thing this needs for sure are ferrycommands ...
it is still not enough to quickly be able to send an invasionforce over ...
aside from your standart 20 bot or vehicle factories you need to build like 30 orbital launchers to get those austreusnumbers and god knows how much time and energy that requiers ... but still you have nothing to protect your surfaceunits from air nukesbombardmend aside and your transports are very vulnerable all the way down ...
i think i am gonna test that in a sandbox and against an easy ai ...

Yeah, there is a fair bit that makes it difficult, but until we have some sort of way to attack air from orbit, or drop units in, it's the only way to drop in a reasonable amount of AA to kill a bomber cloud, and give the orbital fabs time for a teleporter so reinforcements can come through.

And then there is still the problem of nukes as you mentioned. But I believe this would still be the best first step for a beachhead in cases where you don't have a base on an orbiting body of a planet, or if there is no orbiting body at all, to give you a launch platform for a nuke or a unit cannon. Or just simply another tactical choice.

I dunno if I would do that since they use alot of energy .

@popededi i just made a sandboxtest rushing bot rushing orbital rushing austreus all with a buttload of energy and metal ...
the system i used was one with 2 planets that dont orbit each other

obviously my build was not optimal so the stuff here is pretty rough ...
i build like 15 bot factories with 300 bots which is pretty quickly done in like say 10 minutes...
then 7 orbital launchers with roughly 60 austreus .... which took roughly 20 minutes in itself give or take
uploading traveling and unloading to the other planet took like 7 or 8 minutes ... this one is a bit problematic since the time the austreus´s need to trave between planets varries on the systemsetup and the current possition of the destination planet ...
while even with this rough estimate it took me over half an our to get just 60 of my 300 bots to the other planet ...
if this were a mulitplanet start there would have been no way this attemp would have worked because my enemy would have enough time to build a sizeable surfacearmy aswell as a decend orbital defense ...
some transports may have been shot down in orbit, most during transitioning to ground ... and the sad rest by everything else my enemy could throw at them ...
anyone else wants to try that? against an ai?