Unit Cannon please :(

AFAIK the Unit cannon is firing dumb projectiles, if I'm wrong on that then I retract that argument.
Hell, even in the Kickstarter video the projectiles shot by the unit cannon are square that are fired directly at the planet.

*sigh*...
Okay, I've said this before and I'll say it again, I seriously don't see the Unit Cannon being this huge game-changer that'll make us rethink our outlook on life itself everyone else sees it as.

You guys see an orbital invasion tool when you look at the unit cannon, I see an orbital assistance tool. And for a couple reasons.

One: They're big.

SOOOOOO goddamn big.
They aren't the sort of things you can load 50 of on a small moon orbiting a planet because they're way too freaking big, you get a few on a planet, load it up with ammo, let's say enough to fire 250-ish units on a fully armed planet, you'll do some damage but not enough to mount a full-scale invasion on an enemy planet.
Once proportional smashing gets in, then they can be used to gain a foothold. You smash the opponent and while they attempt to get their bearings you send in a few hundred units, get a teleporter down some defenses and really start hitting them hard but as a standalone invasive weapon? I don't see it.

Two: We know practically nothing about it.

In the kickstarter trailer, the only thing we saw was it firing a few shots, which turned into 5 dox units each.
Is that all they can do? Can they only fire doxen or can they fire other bots? Can they fire vehicles too? Planes? Will there be a special naval U.C.? If not, how will naval invasions be handled?
We just don't know and I'm tired of hearing people always jump to the conclusion of "IT WILL FIX EVERYTHING FOREVER!!!!!!" when we don't even know how they're gonna work.

I am talking about dumb projectiles. They still follow the laws of physics, and thus gravity applies to projectiles just like anything else. Dumb projectiles (ex. asteroids) still orbit large bodies of mass, so the most effective way to fire a projectile at, say, Jupiter, would be to gravitationally slingshot it around other planets first. Firing directly would be like Hollywood style silly.

If we had the resources, with the right angle and power we could make a cannon that fired a projectile to the dark side of the moon, by orbiting slightly around the side.

That aside, I don't know if unit cannons specifically will solve every problem.

Forget about the cannon entirely for a moment.

What we really do need that really will solve a lot of problems is a method to deliver a standing army from one planet to another with no middle man.
Astreauses are too vulnerable, and teleporter gates even more so, there isn't even a guarantee the gate will fit on the planet you're invading. Anchors can be shot down, and nukes can be countered by anti-nukes.
In a game that focuses on land battles and has rejected the notion of space battles (which I understand the reasoning behind), there needs to be a surefire way to engage the enemy in a land battle and nothing else.
The unit cannon is just a concept that represents the ability to do just that. I don't really care if its actually a cannon, a teleporting satellite as mentioned before, or perhaps the new stalemate breaker Brad mentioned in this thread, but we need something that fulfills this role.

I just hope that whenever the unit-cannon is added that the teleporter will move to it's proper place, t2 and expensive.

Haha, nice one, Garat. I may try to build a copy of this little cute catapult at home myself. Or on my desk in studio, and fire paper balls to my coworkers

Anyhow. Yes, I do development. I starter programming when I was 12. Not as cool as you guys probably are, but still I might have a glimpse of what you have to deal with on a daily base.

First, my apologize for the word "lie". In fact, you guys never "technically" lied. But we can see how you guys keep avoiding to address some specific questions (for political reasons?). And give misleading answers to very few others. In fact, some technical obstacles do sound like an excuse more than a real explanation. Specially at this point of development.

You presented the game on Kickstarter with the Unit Cannon as major feature. I can't believe that you didn't consider its implications since the very beginning. Both in coding and game-play.

Anyway, naturally implementing the Unit Cannon will represent a technical challenge. However, you guys could work an entire month or two exclusively on that, and releasing an update with *only* the addiction of the Unit Cannon, and you know how people will consider this one of the most important update ever.

So you risk nothing. Which brings me to doubting about the *technical* reasons.

On the other hand, despite the fact that the Unit Cannon would not make perhaps a huge difference in game, you still promised it. Damn, you pledged money showing it off! And your customers base expects it at some point (I'm for one in no rush. What annoys me is the fooling around).

What I'm saying here is, stop being so ambiguous about it. Give us a more a understandable roadmap to the key features of the game (soon is NOT enough). Keep in mind that you launched the game on Kickstarter, and you risk to be harshly punished could things look bad at release. I know you know it. I honestly don't think releasing the game without the Unit Cannon is an option you have (if releasing it's still an option you have).

Sadly, so far it starts to feel that you will keep this game in alpha stage forever, and that your real business model at the present is turtling up into the Early Access model. It isn't wrong per se, but you promised differently.

Keeping up with the *soon* mantra protects you from reviewers, and grants the game an ever green status. Plus saves you from taking what you promised on Kickstarter too seriously. What not to like?

So, let's cut it. Will you implement the Unit Cannon at some point? Yes/No. Pick one, and stick with it

they have said 'yes' - just not a timeframe.
a roadmap would be nice though. Doubtless things would slip still as complex projects often do but an outline of plans would allay many fears or at least give us something concrete to discuss.

What if the community IS willing to wait that long? Obviously there would need to be an official pool to really see, but I get the feeling that people might be ready to sacrifice a month or two to get it. On the other hand if we knew what is coming that would fix the issues with stalemates that doesn't require you to have a specific object in that solar system that isn't even guaranteed to be there every time, maybe not having a unit cannon wouldn't be such a problem.

Could you elaborate on how you will implement it?
Because there are quite a few difficulties, that i'm not sure how i would solve them.

How about this, there is obviously an active community with plenty of talented people running around on the forums. Why not present the community with the challenge? Outsource? I'm sure there are several people who would have the skills and passion to jump at the opportunity to volunteer for Uber ... to show off what they can do. Than once all of the heavy lifting is done, Uber can polish it.

All Uber would need to do is give a little bit of direction to those individuals and I'm sure they will come up with something interesting. And if it doesn't work out, well they volunteered, so it would have almost no effect on the production budget (other than explaining to those individuals Uber's conceptual ideas on the matter).

Even if you think that the skill level of the community is not up to par with the task of Unit Cannon, maybe you can outsource other, smaller, tasks that could free-up labor resources to work on higher level projects. Personally, I don't think this idea is a good idea because people are generally unreliable and if labor resources are needed to be relocated back to their original projects, well that would be inefficient and costly to the budget. But I do concede to the fact that it all depends on the reliability of the individual. Regardless, the first idea at least doesn't do any harm.

Quoting myself to provide a solution making use of stuff already present and working!

To make it even simpler: Let that thing build units bundled with an Astraeus instead of loading existing ones. Since all the components are already in place and, lo!, working I fail to see the technical difficulties behind this. Plus, balance work would not increase by much, since Astraeus drops already have to be accounted for, and 'unit cannon' drops using my modus operandi are even easier to tweak, still, due to the ability to easily limit the units eligible for dropping..

We cannot, Stuart has already made an attempt, we made the factory part working, but there's not enough hooks in the engine. It's impossible until the engine has more hooks.

I see your points on that, but I'm mostly going off of the Kickstarter trailer here.
And from what we see in that, it looks like the units are fired directly, maybe that changed I dunno.

Also

This game isn't exactly super serious

I do understand what you are saying but I have to disagree that the unit canon is soo important when there are quite some important bugs left that need fixing to make the overall game experience even better...

You still lose units in between buildings or on the way to the enemy, sometimes building placement does not work 100%, the lobby is bugged sometimes... more net code optimizations, more players, bigger planets, bigger systems, less lag and so on... I would rather see these things fixes before they spent serious amounts of time on the unit cannon and yes, I want it too.

Also, keep in mind, Uber made some changes, for example switching from a 2D flowfield to 3D, I can only imagine how much more trouble this might generate... and time needed to figure everything out.

So far Uber delivered every single time, so I am patient.

What about certain individuals being able to have access to an off-shoot engine build? Under non-disclosure contract and security layers of course.

Well that's probably one of the big parts of the unit cannon, if they finish that off. (The hooks for the UC) they might as well make it.

agreed, i don if it could give the unit cannon a niche but if tele porters could let your enemy (maybe with reduced health) pass the unit canon has the home advg on small gaps

Man i want one. When will this be in the game???

All the problems with current orbital invasions and the problems with a proposed unit cannon are clear and out there.

What about a orbital say "capital ship or carrier" orbits and builds/drop pods like say t1 bots and maybe drops t1 air from orbit etc. Easier then figuring out cannon round flight and the whole sphere orbiting sphere thing. Plus it can be countered in simple rts rock paper scissors