Do the space dance! Unvoluntary "save haven" for a commander...

Hi all folks out there...

I am playing PA quite a few weeks now (not too often though). But I have built a few systems. All of them have their own "funfactor".
Now it occured to me that I have built a system which is kind of a "save haven" for my commander. It´s fun to watch but it´s also kind of tragic for my adversaries.
The thing is, that once I send my commander to one special planet near to the sun he will not eventually land there. He keeps on floating in space practically forever... (well forever I don´t know because the games I played were 2 hours max jet). Since no one can harm him on the flight it is a pat-situation once I have sent him away. It´s not that I complain because I never "obused" this fact. In all the few times I played this system I won the maches... but in the last mach one particular adversary made a comment about cheating which wasn´t in my intention when building the system.
Now 2 questions about it:
1. Can I correct the fact that the commander is floating around for ever by testing something prior to building it or by watching that the planets nearer to the sun don´t become to fast or too heavy.

or even better

2. Can I destruct a commander on its way to another planet while he is hovering around. Because that would solve my problems that I have if someone would have to complain about this fact...

For any solution on this "unvoluntary" cheat system I would be very happy. ;O)

So aside, are some updates comming up in the next days? It has been already a month without anything developing..

Greetings from Germany

Daniel

Needs to be moved to the beta forum.

I had this happen a few weeks back on a 30 player game which, to the extent of my knowledge, ended in server crash.

I had it happen in a 6-man, which didn't end in a crash. two teams ended up with commanders orbiting the sun (trying to get to a planet close to the sun). I think everybody just left in the end.

With the new teleporters coming, I think they should just remove the ability to move Commanders by Astraeus. Make Commanders move through teleporters. This would solve all sorts of stalemate / drag-out conditions.

It's an old bug where units couldn't reach planets too close to the sun.
Eventually it'll be fixed, no worries

..."Make Commanders move through teleporters. " Is this just an opinion, or does Uber actually thisk about this? It would really ease up things, but also by second thought. I could close a portal right by setting some 1st. level weapons right in front of the exit... so far it would "close" a portal permanently unless Uber would think of a random exit spawn. This would make more sense as well as some time to pass it, so it wouldn´t be just a planet extention to use...

What do you think?...

The second queston wasn´t touched... Can I attack a "floating" commander in space with anything? Because this would pretty much solve the whole equation. You wouldn´t be save anymor by exiting the planet... and reexiting another one until eternity...

Greetings Daniel

Even if you don't do the sun glitch, you can still continue to send your commander between two planets, rendering him almost completely invincible as long as you can manage to catch him on the other side and send him back. So in the even the sun glitched is fixed, this still remains and issue. Some solutions to this are:

1. Make the Astraeus have a cool down between planets. This means you can't run the commander back and forth in a timely manner. It's not pretty and requires UI to show the cool down somehow but it gets the job done.
2. Make the Astraeus require one time use rockets that are attached by the up coming orbital fabricators. This means that planet hoping is not free anymore once you own an Astraeus and that it requires a rebuild to its thrusters each time you want to move your commander again.
3. Make inter-planetary time faster. This doesn't solve the problem precisely but it makes the window of invincibility shorter, requiring more work to do this two planet juggle.

Alternatively, being able to intercept things moving between planets would alleviate the need for any of these solutions and more, but I can't imagine any easy way to implement it.

I´m with you. Keeping in mind all the different possible solutions there has to be one to at least solve to problem which exists now. So while Uber is thinking about fixing this "backdoor" maybe it can implement a "short cut" which allowes the script to calculate any time scales from one planet to another one (let´s say anything to >=20 mins. and just cut it to a feesible time scale... that would solve at least those involuntary excapes that can happen when building a new system and it would take away immediately the issue if there would be travel time scale touching infinity by mistake... I should be worth a look and at least consider a between patch until a more inteligent solution is found...

Greetings

I like the idea of the Astraeus being a one time use rocket. It should be cheaper than it currently is, but non-reusable. This would also make people think twice before leading off an invasion with their commander instead of a collection of fabbers.

We could have an orbital defense platform similar to the anti-nuke, but it targets units moving from a solar orbit to your planetary orbit. I think interlunar travel should be short enough that it's safe from intercept. You would spend most of your time vulnerable to the avengers in orbit around either the moon or the main planet and would have very little of the space dance protection.

"War Of The Worlds"-esque cylinders.

In H.G.Wells War of the Worlds, the martians come by way of what are essentially big artillery shells...

I think this could be the way forward, you basically load up these cylinders, and shoot them at another planet, they'll cause some damage depending on where they land, in fact most of them will probably be shot down by missle-defenses, but those that don't will be able to deliver forces.

If you get it, props to you.

Wrong thread?

Almost like some kind of......Unit Cannon! ;p

Mike

Well the "units" in HG wells were already here. The cannon just sent in the pilots.

wait; I think you're referring to the 2005 movie, the original had the war machines coming onboard the cylinders, no lightning, or anything of that sort, the cylinders literally open up and out come giant robots.

I think this is different from a unit cannon, because it shoots groups, and causes an impact crater of sorts.