Late Game Planetary Invasion and Other Constructive Thoughts

I can concede this point... they definitely should not have the ability to build. If the player wants a teleporter, they can send a fabber with the invading army (orbital fabber or one in the transport... its up to them).

I think this is also a good idea. Or a teleporter that can drop from orbit.

Wouldn't this be effectively what the unit cannon does except now with more STEEL REHN jokes?

no please no

It would be very similar, but very different.

Drop pods could be flown anywhere in the galaxy, unlike the Unit Cannon. And the Unit Cannon would have a one time up front cost with no cost per unit sent, while drop pods would cost X metal per unit sent.

I'd say don't give the transports themselves orbital to orbital weapons, but why not an artillery like weapon for firing at the ground ("artillery like" meaning highly inaccurate) to allow for clearance for large groups of hostiles &/or buildings? I'm thinking on the likes of an unguided rocket barrage.

Yes, some sort of orbital-to-ground artillery would be cool, although hopefully when we get the UC we will be able to load it with boom-bots, this would be a cool artillery, especially if they could be loaded 4 at a time.

But we don't know the final implementation of the unit cannon, do we? The cannon might just turn out to be a packaging facility putting units into one-time drop pods which you can normally move as orbital units until deployment.

Honestly, when I think of a unit cannon, my thoughts keep popping up with supreme commander 2's UEF unit cannon... Which had some issues, big one being that units that landed on a structure or similarly unpathfindable location simple self destructed...

If I see one issue right now with planetary invasions it is that it spends too little time in orbital space, way to much time in air space.
Zipping around in space, but loligagging in air.
It got so bad the anchors started being more usefull against air then orbital, just so they could fullfill the role of invasion blockers. Wich also meant they started to be effective for establishing an invasion beachhead.

Personally I think giving the Orbital layer a bit of "height" might help, while also icreasing astreus air speed.

There have been some discussion on how the unit-cannon could work/solve the issue, inlcuding:
The capsuels of the cannon are "one shoot". Hence they don't have to break and touch down carefully. A bit like the capsule the commander comes in, minus the FTL and explosion parts.
Hence they would be barely affected by Anti-Orbital and Anti Air (it just runs through those layers and ground breaks) and thus could get units even through hardened defenses.
It might be limited to only bot/only T1 units to make dropping them on the commander in the middle of the base less of an option (turrets can deal fast with bots).

Well, i don't think SupCom 2 is really a guideline how to do things.^^

Aside from getting sorian onboard. That was indeed a great thing to do.

I think any and all of you would find this : https://forums.uberent.com/threads/iterate-on-the-gate-teleporter.62599/ an interesting read.

I will only accept shields if it is a mod.

i still have pronlblems to understand the idea .. how do you want droppods to be made and function differently with what can and could be done with austreus multiunitttansports and unitcannon?

what does this have anything to do with transports... teleports are still static and stuck with 2 destinations only ... i also have no interest to have teleporters for every layer ... give one more to navy at best ...

This is a great idea because late game is severally lacking and is stunningly not fun. Its like if Supreme Commander only had T1 units, T2 defenses, and nukes. Essentially once you upgrade to T2 defenses, all the fun of playing with armies becomes nonexistent and it instead becomes a waiting game to build slow nukes. That's not fun. Hallys and death rays should be game-enders when games go on for so long, built during attrition kind of like the Mavor or nukes in SC.

As for the implementation of your idea, I would personally not place a limit on how many T1 or T2 units the transport could carry. I think that would add unnecessary complexity. Also, your idea of dropping units from orbit is a cool idea as well, in addition the cool-down to allow defenses to do there job is a good solution to commander snipping (issue with SXX).

However it is implemented whether it works with shields or it drops to the surface or has drop pods does not matter to me at the moment. We just need a multi-unit transport in game (as well as the Unit Cannon), than the community can mod it to have any of those things. Which ever mod everyone likes the most will be the one used by the community.

I came up with an idea for a multi-unit transporter that uses a teleporter (the technology not the building) to store units, travel to another planet and deposit, without ever leaving the relative safety of the orbital layer.

Benefit's over the teleporter, doesn't need a secure zone to offload.

Drawback, considerably longer travel time and units have to be moved in batches.

It's not that complicated.

Astraeus is a multi trip transport. It moves slowly, costs a lot, and has delays when moving in and out of the orbital layers.

Multi-unit transport would be along the same lines, although I don't really think multi-unit transports are needed at all.

Unit cannon can only fire units to planets that share orbits. Units cannot be sent to anywhere in the system. The unit cannon will also only be able to fire certain units. The unit cannon also has a high up front cost but can be reused.

Drop pods are cheap units that can move any unit anywhere in the galaxy. They drop down to the planet very quickly and have a one time usage cost.

actually it has everything to do with the space layer as I expose in my op. Space is (of course) intrinsically linked with the teleporter and all of the game's space mechanics are balanced around it. so it's actually the starting point.

Wait. Does this mean, multi-unit transports like in supcom - with visible units - are definitely NOT possible?? That'd be a massive downer for me.

Depends how complicated you want to implement them probably. SupCom's implementation is pretty expensive to get right.