will the Unit Cannon be added in Gamma?

Hum sending units with a canon from point A to point B on the same planet, looks like basically sending nukes no ?

No, not really.

Mike

Or perhaps it means that people believed that the poll was pointless, because they had faith in the game being complete (including the Unit Cannon) at release?

Don't be stubborn. It's pretty much exactly the same thing. The difference is that you tell your units to jump into the transport first.

But then why is it so hard at all? By that kind of logic we already have units that go between planets, how would a Unit Cannon be any more difficult? We can't make calls like that because we don't have all the contextual information, we have only glimpses of what's going on and only Uber have the big picture they can reference, if they say it'll take weeks of dedicated work to get the Unit Cannon in properly(assuming everything goes well) then I don't think we really have any right to say it should be easy because there are units that we think work the same way we think the Unit Cannon might work.

It's like a puzzle, we can see JUST the picture of what it's supposed to look like, and it might look like an easy enough puzzle to put together because it's a square with 4 solid blocks of color, the catch is that we don't know how many pieces the puzzle is!It might be simple if it's only 100 pieces but if each color is made of of 1000 pieces of solid color with no way to tell how it goes together other than trial and error it's still going to be damn hard.

Mike

The unit cannon needs to

Have units added to it.

Fire those units into orbit.

Have the units travel to a destination.

Deploy units at the destination.



We already have that in the game. All the unit cannon is is a teleporter, which turns units into nukes, which spawns units when the missile dies.

So why do you think the Unit Cannon has been delayed? I'm more keen to believe to what the Devs said. That it would require some custom code in order to function properly. Also, I can't blame them when they say that they like things well done, and prefer to postpone a feature, instead of rush it into some sort of simplified version.

But of course, I am also a bit puzzled by the entire Unit Cannon topic. So, what's your pick on the matter?

That's a pretty nerfed nuke.

Hum, in that case, transport units should have been delayed also ... a transport unit transporting a single unit .... Better have a transformer robotech. I'm still surprised the engine has such limitations (by not being able to manage a single unit transporting a bunch of units), unless i misunderstood something.

Yes, I get that, but you have to realize that you are basing that on an ASSUMPTION that the unit cannon works like those other things. Seeing as the Devs say it wont be easy and require lots of time spent specifically on the unit cannon clearly the situation must be more complex than your assumption, wouldn't you agree?

Mike

I think that assumption is pretty solid. All the uber cannon has to do is transport units from ground layer to orbital and back to ground somewhere else. Functionally, thats all it does. We already have a unit that despawns units at one location. We have a unit that spawns units that have been despawned. We have a mechanic to choose the location that this spawning is occurring. And we have a unit that flies from ground layer to orbital layer to ground layer.


The only thing we don't have already is the animations to polish that system. And I don't believe it would take Uber a couple of weeks of full time coding time to implement those animations, given the quality of their software engineers

Then how do you explain the Dev responce to this? They say it'll take weeks, why should we believe you over them when their he ones actually make the game?

Mike

Actually, this makes sense.

Units do not have to be visible through the entire the orbital journey. The issue with Nukes in fact is that they leave the starting planet *at some point* and they insert the destination planet *somewhere*, for then traveling in the air layer for a while, until they reach the target. All the Anti-Nukes they cross on they path can take them down. And they do, in fact.

The Unit Cannon could just shot units into the Orbital layer where they can simply disappear, for being re-spawned on the top of the Target location, where they have to glide and touch ground. Thus avoiding really a tons of technical obstacles.

Which is what the Teleporter does.

Please, do not let me think about, or I will be back to my discomfort where I see all those balancing *experiments* as a way to invalidate the very reason of the Unit Cannon to exist, so that Uber will be entitled to tell us "you see? we do not need it".

I want to dream that one day we will have it, instead

Things in the software world are NEVER as simple as they appear. I program industrial systems and something simple like getting 2 different conveyors to move at the same speed is WAY more complicated than just telling them both to go at X speed.

If Uber says it's complicated, then its complicated. You can say "All they have to do is X." till you're blue in the face, but that doesn't change this fact. The big picture might look simple, but it's very often that the devil is in the details. I can't tell you how many times I've said "Oh this will be simple to program." but then when you're neck deep in it you realize "Man... what the hell was I thinking saying this was simple!?!?"

I think the problem with the spawn/despawn stuff is that you're pretty much crafting a mod trick to do what should be done normally in-engine.

In a game about interplanetary combat, units need to be able to jump from layer to layer pretty smoothly. If the unit cannon isn't an actual transport, and instead Uber uses some oncreate trick to insta-build a unit, the major underlying transport issues won't get fixed. The insta-create method is a hack workaround. Ideally (I think, anyway) the unit cannon should be a real inter-layer transport of some kind where the unit actually moves just like anywhere else. Space --> ground/seafloor/whatever. If the foundation isn't done well here, as their current round of polish is hopefully accomplishing, there will be nothing to build upon in the future. If they settle for modding their own engine, what would compel them to improve the feature in the future?

And agreed with Krakanu - if I had a do-over for every time I thought "if I just do A+B, I'll have C in the bag! 6 weeks MAX! LET'S GO! Oh ... wait.

You just talked about a real world scenario, not a software world.

I just did exactly this scenario in an engineering robotics lab. I programmed a robot to move two wheels at 90% speed, to go in a straight line. The reason that the robot veered to the left and fell off the table wasn't because of my code, my code was perfect. The reason was because there were two non-identical motors, and 90% speed on one equated to <90% speed on the other.

I agree with the basic premise about coding being more complex, but actually, the pseudocode for this problem is really that simple.

How is it a mod trick? You're practising good programming practices. You're not writing a whole load of complex functions to achieve specific tasks, but you're combining simple functions you've already written to build compound functions in the engine to achieve complex tasks. Why would you waste time programming redundant stuff, when you can combine functions that already exist and achieve the same result for the end user?

You realise that the destruction of units is probably handled exactly the same way, right? The live unit despawns. The wreckage spawns. Uber cover that transition with an explosion that looks pretty and distracts you. You can see that happening in chronocam reviews.

If you've considered that what I say isn't giving you the full picture, you've considered that what the devs say isn't giving you the full picture.

Have you considered that the devs may have other motivations, such as focussing on more fundamental problems with the rest of the game?

Personally I think the fact orbital fabs can build teleports completely negates the need for an orbital unit cannon. It's difficult to build them at end game but that increases the importance of planetary expansion earlier than later.

The more I play PA, the more I find it balanced. Unfortunately it is becoming more formulaic for me but it's very enjoyable finding out the ways in which to avoid the stalemate we see at the end of some games.

I tend to avoid systems with multiple orbiting bodies as nukes are rendered useless. Nukes can be quite annoying if you are on the receiving end but if you can't counter then unfortunately your opponent has picked a better strategy.

I think the only thing an orbital unit cannon will result in, is mass unit/turret spam on other planets to counter, similar to what we see with Avenger spam to counter fabs building teleports.

I enjoy watching matches between skilled players as you don't

Edit: haha my boring rant got cut short. Never mind. Unit cannon seems pointless to me

I take the Unit Cannon as being something you use when you can't get a teleporter on the planet. There are always going to be times when you cannot contest a system early, be it due to a FFA where you're under attack and they weren't, or a large system where you can only expand so fast, or even a planet where you got kicked off and need some means to contest it later.

Bah, perhaps... but I started coding when I was 12, and I've soon learned that coding problems are usually due to an overcomplicated code, not to the impossibility to do stuffs.

Keep things simple. It always pays off.

Regarding the Unit Cannon, it sounds weird that the Devs can't implement a core fundamental unit, one that has such a big impact on the gameplay, and that should have been planned since the Kickstarter Campaign and still showed in the gameplay trailer. It's even more bizzarre that they will release the game without it, at risk of getting smashed by reviewers.

Have you ever thought that the reasons why Uber cannot implement the Unit Cannon at the moment may not necessarily be related to the complexity of the code, but instead to copyrights infringements?

Of course I'm just putting on the table speculations, I've zero data to affirm anything. But a quick search on Google gave me this page as result:

http://supcom2.wikia.com/wiki/Noah_Experimental_Unit_Cannon

I don't think the concept of shooting units is unique enough for them to have to worry about copyright (and even then...this game uses so many other concepts from previous games...they even advertize it as being the spiritual successor to SupCom and TA).

I agree that a unit that works like you would imagine the unit cannon to work could be implemented without weeks of work. But I guess Uber does have bigger plans for PA and for more units that use similar concepts so they might build a more elaborate system instead of using this slightly "hacky" way of doing it to build a solid foundation to expand upon.