Unit Cannon Ideas/Questions; a picture too!

I understand and do need to play systems with more smashables in. However I feel like (currently) it is too easy to make an impenetrable planet. Umbrellas, t2 air and antinukes and a planet is basically uncrackable for a cheap price and in a short time. Yes planets can be smashed but unless you get in really early before people get settled your only viable option is asteroid smashing. I don't like that.

For me planetary invasions are super exciting and I don't want to have to resort to planet smashing every time I don't get on the planet in the short window before in it unassailable. I see the unit cannon as the keystone to a viable planetary invasion in simultaneous combination with nukes, orbital assaults, teleporters, astraeus drops etc.

In 1vs1 2 planet games your right, but you probably never play 4-10 player FFA games?
Sometimes your being attacked on multiple fronts by multiple players. In that case my priority is surviving and after that dominating the planet. Just surviving can take a big toll on your eco and can send you back 15 minutes in the game. In case you do survive and get a strong eco an other player that turtled a long and was not being disturbed for a long time had enough time to build a lot of defense on the other planet.

I'm just saying its not alway as simple to prioritize in a way you suggest.

What if the two commanders in play ninja past the impact moon?


Now what?

No I don't play FFA games but doesn't mean I never have. A simple solution is to call a truce with all the guys on your planet and try kill the guy that left before he kills all of you 30 minutes later.

You should always play FFA's by trying to not step on anyone's feet when possible. The guy that left prob stayed quiet and ran. Well played to him, now it's your move to make people realise this threat and what he has done. If you don't you guys killing each other deserve to lose.

^Which is why I'm so keen for proper diplomacy options.

As stated earlier, we want an anti-stalemate. We need a way to invade a planet, not just punch it in the face with the fist of god (although that is a much-appreciated feature and always will be).

We aren't all ultra-low mass particles that pass through matter without so much as a "how-do-you-do?", we can be spotted, and detected, and shot. D:
Yes, I just wanted to make a particle physics joke.

Even with the current build there are other ways.

Find a weak spot or well pick a spot. Drop several nukes around it. Build teleporter and send in everything you have been building the last 30 mins. T2 aa and anti nuke units will make this easier.

Fifty thousand T2 bomber patrols will make it harder.

So would 50,000 nukes.

Just my 50 cents: by kickstarter trailer, unit cannon is one of pillars of the game. I agree that planet smashing solves almost everything, but definetly, there will be an countermeasure to it. Unit cannon sometimes can be the only option. And, by the way, it just epic!

Well what can you send in a unit cannon that fifty thousNd patrolling t2 bombers can't kill?

Any kind of suicidal units? Also, if I send enormous amounts of units right into the base, they'll do their work... may be. By the way, do bombers have any kind of AoE damage?

Engineers to build flak, or new mobile flak units. Something that would never make it to the ground with teleporters or an astreaus.

Mobile flak?

EDIT: Damn ninjas.

Going further (and crazier): we can imagine sending pods with air units that blowup in atmosphere, releasing anti-air to clear the skies.

I think the appeal of a Unit Cannon here is that it fits so nicely with a game that, while set 'in space', puts so much emphasis on 'boots on the ground.' It's not that there's absolutely no way to crack open an entrenched planet (nuking and smashing do pretty well) but when the game has reached that stage, the CONSTANT pressure of conventional attacks has usually gone completely away. IMHO that pressure is what makes the rest of the game work so well, and a unit cannon allows it to carry into the late game.

Granted, I'd also be a fan of some kind of heavily fortified dropship, to be countered by some kind of battlecruiser, built at an orbital shipyard... but I realize this isn't Sins of a Solar Empire. =P

I remember once I took over a moon and a nuke hit me in the back, taking out a bunch of extractors and nothing else. I wasn't the least bit bothered AT ALL. Maybe it was my opponent's fault for not scouting but the thing is, he hit me with a nuke and his chances of capture increased by exactly 0.

Nice signature.

I second this notion.

Stalemates? You've played a game with 2 non-movable objects right...? Those situations need to be possible without inducing stalemates :S