The possible future of Planetary Annihilation general gameplay ...

units teleport once they enter the portal of the gate ... one could say the same issue might happen with tanks like the vanguard .. i dont see too much an issue a speedincrease while entering the teleporter might help

Arbiter(recall), carrier(selfexplanitory), siege tank-- SCBW. monkeylord(super weapon), soul ripper(planet invader), CZAR(planet invader/super weapon basically just carrier)-- Supreme commander. All great unit concepts that should be considered in this game.
The devs should seriously consider adding unit specific upgrades to make units more interesting. As of right now the game is 'strategic', but not really fulfilling. The units that are currently in the game are very 1-dimensional. I don't see why you couldn't also drill your way through a plane (assuming you don't go straight through the core) and pop out the otherside (ie in your opponents base). It's pretty disappointing that a game that has such a large focus on space lacks any sort of space combat. I can't be the only one that finds it hilarious when two opponents are flying right past each other, pretty much on eachothers nuts, to the same planet...

You asume a lot about thier intentions and calling it a "clowncart" is a bit insulting actually.
I see it as a practical combination of teleportation tech and interplanetary mobility. It means your transporter only has to fly the distance once, instead of repeatedly (once per load), wich is highly affected by planetary distances.

The astreus does not show what it transports most of the time. It's just too big and you can't even zoom in on it while it is in orbital space. Only if it transports a commander is that visible, otherwise you never know what will drop on your planet (or where for that mater) until it is down on the ground.

I guess we won't agree wheter Orbital Invasions should be defended in Air or Orbital layer.

We can agree that the problem is getting non-orbital units into enemy orbital space for the insertion/support of the first wave, wich is there to establish the teleporter for the main ground force.
It can't be just a general orbital teleporter as it would screw up the orbital balance.
It also has to be mobile (unlike the anchors) or it cannot be used for an attack effectively. So I doubt a building is such a good idea. Buildings always are more usefull for the defender then the attacker and the weakness right now is the attacking side.
If it stays in orbit that means Artillery and air superiority cannot target it, while still being able to combat what it drops. So it also cut's out the main weakness of the land based teleporter, while still giving you some reinforcements.
Once deployed it cut's out the planetary distances entirely. So it would be as viable an option in very large/spaced systems as very small ones. Unit speed has to be balanced against the distances they have to travel. And the distance in orbital layer is very malleable.

Astreus is still the top early expension way. And the best way to drop a big initial wave for the beachead.
This "clowncar" is mostly there so you can get easy reinforcements during the dangerous "build up that teleprter" phase.

Happens with land units of mine all the time. They just drive through the telporter if they "miss" the event horizon due to power loss or similar stuff. Instead of continuing thier yourney on the other side, the just continue it on this side.
But naval units are a lot longer so thier center missing the event horizon would be more prounced.

Actually that gives me an idea:
What if the teleproter lifts the naval units out of the water and then moves the gate to down on them? If trying to get it the through on the long axis is not an option, just pick the shortest axis instead.
It is a very specialised teleporter so it can have a more specialised form.

Issues:
Planets cores tend to be filled with magma, wich is hot. As in "not even the commander should take a bath" - hot
Booring big holes into planets could cause an earthquake and the engine cannot handle that.
And there needs to be some defense against this assault. Nobody likes unblockable attacks without forewarning. Especially not in a strategy game.

C&C could do it because thier game was designed with a subteranian layer and they had a coutner (concrete).

Honestly what this game needs to improve it is a 3d orbital sphere, orbital unit's entering orbit and being able to immediately shoot or build on your planet is incredibly broken. Why bother building avengers when you can never intercept incoming threats, better to spam nukes and umbrellas and always better to be the attacker.

In sins of a solar empire (no im not trying to turn this game into that) they had an orbital sphere around planets where units moved slowly, in order to get in range of the planet you'd have to move from the edge of the sphere into a closer orbit. I'd like to see this in the game.

you have already a siegetank in the form of the sheller ...
basicly the stuff you ask for is rather modstuff
there might be a orbitalcarrier but more to a propper carrier, that needs to get in the airlayer before gathering or releasing aircraft, than the dronecarrier from starcraft ...
the focus isnt on space but on surfacebattles .. space is "just" a supportive part of it
drilling or borrowing goes too much torwards stealth which on this scale might be more difficult to take care of than in SupCom ...

how would a static teleporter screw ballance??? you would still need an exitpoint torwards enemy territory and the enemy would be able to use it against you like the groundversion and especialy in orbital that can bring quite a risk
that allone makes it somewhat ballanced as well as the a highmaintancecost
... the reason to built teleporters is to establish beachheads as such teleporters do only make sense when you gained a foothold on enemy teritory already ... that mott of yours would still need time to get anywere through the system ...
remember you want to get your reinforcments as fast as possible and teleporters are the fastest way there is
if the gate gets destroyed however doest mean that reinforcements cease to come but with normal multiunittransports it would simply take longer for your troops ..
also "clowncar" in this case merely reffers to a transport that by itself seems small but is able to carry
storytall units vanishing into it ...
the austreus like any other transport veterans from uber have worked on in past games like SupCom FA and TA
those truly carried the units beneath them and it isnt a assumtion that a multiunittransport will do the same it is fact ... why? because if it weren´t we had multiunittranports like in starcraft or supcom 2 right from the start ...
that´s why i say uber is not interested in transportideas like your mott ... that is fact as they stated it multiple time in the forums and livestreams ...
and yes the austreus is the initial option to get to other planets but good luck getting an army of 100 units with austeuses to a planet in a short ammount of time considering buildtime of the factories and units ... it simply is illsuited for that and by no means cost nor timeefficient ...

also the mott wouldnt be as vulnerable as you think ... generaly you don´t want to get near anything that can shoot it down ... as such even if it takes time to get units down it is the safest of the transports in orbital because at worst for the defender you have to fear avangers but austreus and mulitunittransports have to touch ground and that makes them far more vulnerable ... i don´t see it to be that much of use to not have static teleporters in fact it itself would rather benefit from orbital teleporters ... another reason i don´t like it is that i personaly want transports to thouch ground as letting units come down over hooks from the orbital layer would look silly ...

that would just look silly ...

The naval teleporter should float on the surface, pull boats up with conveyor belt before they pass through the teleporter and out the other side.

So what's the point of the conveyor belt exactly?

Nice to see at least somebody is not dismissing my ideas outright and thinks through the weakpoints/thinks out alternatives.

Just to be sure I understand you right:
The platform is entry way up floating above the water surface (enough to have some clearance below for ships to drive out the other end).
A conveyor/crane takes the ship out of the water and just drops it into the top field. It emerges on the other side splashing into the new sea.

If they fall through because the gate closes "just then" for lack of power, they can just moove out on that side.
It could also help a lot with throughput if the ships were somehow lifted through the gate with a crane. That way thier below-vehicle speeds would have no negative impact.

Another silly/simple idea could be to move them via land. Like we do already, just scaled to military sizes and with intergrated engines:
http://www.nonnenmacher-gmbh.de/index.php?y=11&x=20
Then that plus the ship could fit through the existing ground teleporter, and could be put back into water in the new planet.
Combining diving, and aphibitc tecniques would even allow some automation/let the whol thing work more the the astreus in that it can pick up the unit fully automatically.

This could also be adapted to transport air units through the gate. Unless of course there is a inherent balance problem that prevents air units from entering planets via teleporter (wich I asume there is; making them fly low enough to pass through should not be an issue).

god forbid people having opinions ...
but i like schuesseleds way better with the convey belt ... ship gets torwards the teleporter thouches the conveybelt that is magnetic or whatever (maybe instead of a conveybelt a magneticrail but still same priciple) and pulls it through the porter a bit faster then the ship itself might be ... simple and no timeconsuming animations needed
as for the gate itself ... it doesn´t need to float above water just have it be a bit in the water .. maybe make it bit broader but have those belts or rails on them ...

I made some drawings for the naval telepeorter idea, as a picture says more then 1k words.

The simplest solution is to just take a telporter, put him so he is slightly in the warter. That way ships can just drive through. (Image Naval TP 1).
The issues is that ships are exceedingly long compared to vehicles. So it would stand out on both ends of the event horizon when the telporter teleports (the short vehciles are fully covered from sight by even a thin teleporter). Also it relies on the ships very slow speed (wich is even slower then vehicles) to get into/through.


So the second idea is to place the gate horizontal, output side facing down (Image Naval TP2).
You drop ships in from above and comes out below.A simple crane, conveyor or whatever lifts it out of the water and then just drops it.

No need for a crane, a conveyor belt would be a ramp that drag's/pulls/magics the ships wanting to pass through the teleporters slightly out of the water through the teleporter and back down the other side.



^ With battleships

Make a longer teleporter derp.

Speed up ship movement and stop from accidentally emptying the ocean.

If all you do is say "silly idea" without any constructive criticism how to improove it it comes across as a attack against the person who posted the idea. As if you do not like people posting thier ideas on "your" thread. Could be I missinterpreted that, but that is how it came across on my end.


Anyway, here are the drawings for the orbital teleporter. Let's asume two planets, Alpha (you) and Omega (the enemy).
Both a quite a distance from another (opposite sides of the sun or the like), so having a way to get ground units there fast is paramount for a sucessfull invasion.


Your idea for orbital teleporter is to link both orbital spaces directly, so you can get Astreus with reinforcements to Omega's orbital space fast.

It would do that certainly. It would also allow all other orbital units through however - avengers, SXX, Spy Sattelites, more fabricators. It would not be "only reinforcements for my ground invasion" but "every orbital unit type". That would drastically change the entire orbital gameplay. Your goal was only to reinvent the ground invasions, not the entire orbital gameplay (at lesat that what I understood as your intention).
So effectively you end up creating a "orbital beachhead" before you start creating the normal ground beachhead, teleporter for orbital reinforcements and all. Not sure having another area to create a beachehad in is such an improovement.

Correct me if my udnerstanding is wrong regarding your teleporter idea, while I work on visualising my idea.

Sins is a pretty bad comparision because it is a "pseudo 3D" game. You control "orbital units" along a flat disk of a systems, with a unpassble area in the middle. Adding a third height dimension there is easy.
In PA you control orbital units along a layer that has the shape of a spheres surface. And so far the game has avoided needing "hight micromanagement", wich I consdier a good idea.

I agree that orbital units should need some time to get from "interplanetary space" into "fire/landing position". I just don't think adding a height dimension to the orbital layer is a good solution for it.

You just need a separate two dimensional layer (like the one in sins) surrounding the close orbital layer. No need for height micromanagement.

Imagine a circle drawn around each planet, units transfer between planets to and from the closest points on that circle, then you have to maneuver into range of the planet, once you get closer your units automatically adjust their height before entering range of umbrellas and anchors in close orbit.

This outer orbit layer will be the domain of the avenger and allow for actually interesting orbital gameplay.

as i said before having orbital domminance just is as important ... especialy with gas giants ... and on planets you will still have a presence on the enemy even if he has heavy defenses on his planet but he would be captured there
so bringing in everything faster is exactly the point of orbital gates ... on gas giants no transport would be of use, no ground no naval no air ...
and no my goal wasn´t "just" to improve ground .. but to make orbital and thus general multiplanet gameplay more flexible as well, more intresting and thus hopefully more fun ... as it is just sluggishly slow, borring and limited right now ... however without making surface redundand but be even more supported through orbital ... this way orbital and deepspace will have more importance of the role being the games trafficnetwork ... general traffic runs over space ... controlling space is the most strategic goal and advantage you can have and as such should have a propper emphasis be put on ... but not too much ... try battling on a system with only 2 small planets (like radius 400 or 300) each with its own player and 3 gasgiants ... how do you think this match will work out on the current state of the game ...

i wonder weither it is difficult to include additional layers to the engine or not .. apperently subs may need their on layer for being submergerged, maybe hovercraft as well in order to realy float above water and lava?

I imagine it's not super easy.

What we need right now are bigger planets (the biggest planet should be 2x bigger then the current limit). With that, many things like multiple transport units and experimental will make much more sense.
Asteroids belt. I see asteroids as bodies that we can't land, building on then from orbital units.

Mini halleys.

bigger planets is a question of hardware ... sooo not tooo much of an issue there ... but having experimantals doest have to do anything with big planets why shouldnt a experimental in itself not make sense to build on currently used planets ... however they dont realy do anything differently other existing units dont ... they are mostly just bigger have more and bigger weapons or a number of abilities ... but of that is already done by a series of units ... so other than that they are nothing more than a massiv time and moneysink that i rather question to be realy all that effective ...
i dont realy know bout asteroidbelts ... other than another smash and metaloption i dont think they bring too much new to the game but i think fabbers should definitively be able to land on them ... and if there are small asteroids those shall be reclaimable ... i think THAT would make sense

nah just the regular ones let asteroids be big enough for fabbers to land and be able to put at minimum one halley on it

Hmm I think OP is referencing this thread: https://forums.uberent.com/threads/more-orbital-units.63818/page-3#post-995440

In regards to the hover unit, I think it could replace the vehicle factories scout unit. I see that as a valid option, although intertwining it with the orbital layer might be a tad much, we can already build umbrellas over water. And having an amphibious raider on the vehicle factory side would validate opening up with a vehicle factory.

One of the issues with interplanetary assault is landing on the planet and creating a foothold, it's vital to get a strong beach head going and for that you need a good force that can punch a hole through your opponents orbital layer and then clear a spot on the ground layer to get your teleporter up for reinforcements. It doesn't matter to hold the orbital layer as you can eventually get your umbrellas up, it's getting the fabbers and supporting units on the ground that is the problem.

A competent player would be able to hold a planet that is uncontested even with launching several nukes at him. The orbital layer needs more units able to interact with it, the hovercraft idea is nice but I don't really see how it would work to solve the problem as you still need to smash through the orbital layer so you can get your teleporters up. If you have a unit that can either do some high rate of fire low DPS AoE damage with moderate health which would be able to clear avenger spam in most situations then have a long range high damage low DPS low rate of fire unit to take out any anchor blobs present. Of course avengers would be their natural predator with superior speed and damage application. For the burst unit I'd imagine giving them short range damage application would force them to close with the avenger blobs.