Teleporter Cost (tldr: the Teleporter is way too cheap)

+299792458

The answer: one way drop pod.

I have been saying this is what the Asteaeus should be, all along.

Yupp. I'd love to see two ortibal transport units though.

A one way drop pod and a more expensive multi trip drop pod.

People getting upset about others being upset that the (arguably) most iconic/anticipated piece of the announcement trailer (aside from throwing halleys on an asteroid) isn't in the game after almost 1.5 years all the while it was supposed to be released "soon".
git gud

Perhaps one answer to the teleporter being too cheap might be to increase its cost to something in the 2K - 4K range, but to increase its HP to 20K or 30K? This solves the cost problem, while improving the viability of heavy planetary invasions.

I would actually like to see more teleporter usage in mid game and not just only when people get into the orbital layer. Teleporter is far from 'cheap' and could instead use a buff.

It is infact quite expensive. You need 1 fabber, 2 pgens to support it, 2 teleporters, then another 2 pgens to support the fabber if you want to keep building with it. That's 200+900+800+900=2800 metal which is alot, and that's not even counting the opportunity cost of not expanding mex with that fabber instead. 2800 is either 4 factories, or an orbital. So yea, woopdido, you have a teleporter now, but not enough relative units to do anything with it.

Radar is hidden. That is, you cannot see what the radar coverage 0f your opponent is, and have no feedback whether you are in their radar range or not. Your fabber is prone to being sniped, and if you send enough force to protect it on defender's advantage, why build the teleporter in the first place then?

You take both of these into account and you realise that people don't build teleporters because it's generally not worth the risk.

I would like to see the energy requirement for teleporters reduced to something like 300/300 so you only need a single pgen. Don't mind if it doesn't see any change, but it certainly should not be 'nerfed'

you can't use the cost of the stuff needed to build it and the cost needed to build the stuff needed to support it.

Because that argument can be very, very easily abused to get all kind of crazy things buffed all because of the cost of building fabbers and powerplants you would have built anyway.

Um, they're not?

*You build me all the structures and units necessary to get a teleporter up. I'll use that same metal and fabber time to build factories and expand metal. Then let's see how big the unit difference becomes as time goes on.

That is terrible reasoning.

Teleporters are never built until after you have the infrastructure.

As for factoring in the cost to build the teleporter, you'll already have all of that stuff. You already have factories. You already have fabbers. Then all you need is 800 metal. The cost of 800 metal (less than 6 T1 tanks) is well worth instantly having your army on the other side of the world.

He's talking about competitive 1v1 games. You don't already have the infrastructure because there is no reason to build those extra pgens unless you intend to use them. you can also spend that metal on units instead of on two teleporters. 800 metal is a decently large dox force that you can't have (and now your opponent does have) because you spent it on teleporters. You also have to factor in the time it takes to walk your fabbers there - or the risk or sending an air fabber - and whatever units you need to send to defend it that could otherwise be raiding to slow down their economy growth.

Teleporters are pretty expensive in a single-planet 1v1.

I really don't know if we should balance the game just for the pro players, feels pretty inconsiderate to the vast majority of regular old players.

And there's more to PA than top level 1v1s.

So you're saying you never have positive energy? I know even the top players run with excess energy.

You underestimate the value of instantly moving units from one side of the planet to another.

Yupp. It is a risk. With a very high payout.

Risk vs reward and all that.

And there's more to PA than single planet 1v1s.

You cannot balance the game exclusively for top level 1v1s on single planets. I would venture to say that the majority of PA play is multi planet.

Even then. The ability to instantly move units from one side of a planet to the other or to a completely different planet is very valuable. It should be expensive.

Theres a massive trick/trap in pricing there, in general, as long as a factory is alive, it should be building stuff, until you reach a point where getting more metal is REALLY difficult. Because the "upkeep" from building units is veeery small compared to the cost of the factory itself, the 800 metal would not be directly spent on units, rather, it would be put towards another factory, thus the lead of units is not as great as imagined.

You were just talking about how you though teleporters would be useful in single-planet 1v1 games in your response to clopse. That's really all I'm responding to here because I don't find FFAs all that interesting and can't really comment on those.

Yeah time is usually your most valuable resource in PA.

And they are useful in 1v1s. Not every 1v1, particularly on small planets. But teleporters can be very useful in 1v1s.

Yes system size does affect the game balance.

a late T1 expensive building (in building, not running mind you) im all for it
however we first need another way to crack a planet besides throwing planets at it (situational) or nuking the crap out of it (expensive, boring....and WAY slow)
*Unit Cannon*
*multi-interplanetary transports*

It is hard to use in small planet 1v1s, but it does "funnel dps" since units that use it bottle up tighter than they would if they normally moved.

Hard to really balance this though. You need really cheap really micro-less travel.

I think the teleporter should cost 2x more than a factory because with a reasonable amount of fabbers it can be built fast still, isn't that still half an orbital launcher? It should have health remain in ratio to keep it's repair speed and ability to survive being built against a defender for an invasion. It should probably consume maybe 3 pgens of power because it adds too much micro if it was significantly high.

On top of that, the astraeus would technically cost less, considering it is the cost of an astraeus per unit, compared to the same launcher, plus cost of a fabber and teleporter, and the fact that the teleporter need be complete to work while the astraeus just lands.

Move teleporter to advanced? (And have it reasonably cheap for an advanced building, like a 1000 metal, upkeep 2000 energy)

And have cheap basic one-way transports from the orbital launcher, multi-trip transports from the orbital factory?


To me, teleporting sounds like an advanced technology. While drop-pods don't. It would make logically sense to have it in the advanced tier. That's what I thought they would be like when they were first introduced. But they had it in the basic tier, because there weren't enough basic ways of transporting. Remember the teleporter having an advanced strategic icon (double edge lines)? I believe Uber was considering it at first. So I thought having it in basic tier was temporary, but nothing confirms that.

He is just trying to wind you up mate.. Alot of people on here tend to do that