Invade Planets?

Allow me to give you the rundown on the community's general opinion of shields:

I'll give you my answer as soon as I achieve 3k posts

Kidding of course!

What I meant to say was shield bubbles for certain unit types not the whole squad. It doesn't even need to serve any real purpose could simply be a visual kink to add flavor.

Well I did make a joke in a PA game of a Water World superweapon.
It floods an enemy planet with water allowing you to invade with navy units.

As a side effect it also ruins several people's acting careers.

It wasn't that bad, Better than 2012, which was "Waterworld: Directed by Michael Bay".

Ugh, the early/original community thinking they speak for everyone again... this is what the early community thinks about shields. The wider community? We'll need another poll, but I do know there's a good lot of players who support the possibility of shields one day being a thing. What this has to do with cracking a planet is anyones guess though...

Oh I know orbital drop Mega-bots (yes the second heresy), but anything could work, even a...unit-cannon, as long as it's something an opponent cant ignore while you set up a base/teleporter etc.. on their planet, invasions suddenly become easier.

The problem with those bubble shield is, that they are an universal defense (meaning that they stop all damage regardless of the type) and they heavily promote turtling and purely defensive gameplay in general. And making it more of a buff just for certain units would probably turn out to be quite micro intensive and hard to grasp for newcomers.
I myself really like the Unit Cannon and hope that it would be eventually added. Also the orbital dropped Megabot sounds like an interesting idea, it would surely look nice and it could possibly work if balanced properly.

I wrote about space battleship and interplanetary transport cause I feel, like others, that the orbital units are just not enough, and also because I love planetary assaults but the game offers very few options for it.
A space battleship, if properly done, would not render ground forces pointless, also seems that you forget that we are talking about a game: the balance ALWAYS matters.
All the "weird additions" like interplanetary transport unarmed and space battleship strong against ground but vulnerable against cheaper orbital fighters were idea for adding something to fill the huge lack the orbital has without make everything else pointless.

I'd love to see a large orbital assault carrier: no weapons, just something to carry air and ground units to other planets for D-Day style invasions.

Just becalms something can be balanced, doesn't mean that there is a reason to include it.

A space battle ship, unless horrifically hamstrung and weirdly balanced removes the point of invading a planet, at all.

You don't need to land on a planet if you can bombard it from orbit, and this is a problem in PA already with the SXX laser.

A space battleship (Why on earth does it need to be a battleship?) serves no other purpose but to remove the need to move troops to another would to attack it.

Why use unit cannons, transports or risk your economy moons on attacking a enemy planet when you can roll up with space battleships and kill everything on the surface from orbit?

You wouldn't.

Balance does matter, especially when you include stuff that had no purpose existing in the first place.

This kind of stuff belongs in mods, not in the vanilla game.

I named battleship, cause was the first name that came in my mind and beacuse is a "ship made for combat" what's the problem on that?
Also it has purpose cause right now the orbital units have a very few impact in battles and in the game in general, what's the point on creating a game based on the possibility to bring the battle to other planets when players can easily neutralize that?
A space battleship, plus a transport, would give more impact to the orbit, an aspect of the game that seems very perfunctory, without obliterating the rest of the game. It gives you a new gear for the battle, balanced for being strong versus something and vulnerable to something else, the rock, scissors, paper system that is the key for games balance.
If you roll up with space battleships you make me happy cause I can easily counterattack you and annihilate your little fleet, cause you don't understand how to play theese games.

What is the word on these things I hear? Are they planned to be implemented in the game? :O

Asteroid belts are planned, drop pods are an unknown. I'm advocating for drop pods, but who knows if uber will implement them.

Haha, no offense, but we've known this for quite some time! I really hope they add the api so that you don't have to keep clicking over and over and instead have area load work with it.

Statera has a 10 unit transport.

You don't understand.. We have had many many pages worth of discussion on shields, many many threads for that matter. We've also talked to the devs about it. The general consensus is they'd encourage turtling, is that necassarily true? I won't say, I'd rather not discuss it honestly.

Anyway the real issue lies in this, maybe they're cool, maybe they'd break balance, but who knows... We do know however that:

1. It'd take a lot of dev time, time that could be spent else where more productively.
2. The devs don't have much of a stance on it, they could do either I suppose. (As far as I remember.)
3. If it doesn't work out... Then that'd have been an (almost) complete waste, the exception being that then modders would have the API to make their own shields.

How about the unit cannon?

That is also a planned addition that will make it into the game eventually.

I never said, add shields, just that the discussions and polls, one of which (bizarrely?) came in favor of shields [a poll], are old and sometime in the future more should be held because...larger community new opinions? The same goes for a lot of other things. That and I get a bit riled up when people presume to speak for a whole which includes me when I feel differently, or even if I don't.
AND.... turtling should be a thing, this is a time honored if self-shooting strat that practically every RTS ever caters to. Stop hating on turtles.

If you want good reasons for shields, go ask @tatsujb he has good ideas and I pretty much like the only one who I have spoken to who does.

We are not saying that turtling shouldn't be a viable strategy, it just shouldn't be the most used strategy because it is frankly quite boring to watch and play that way.

Well it's not even that, turtling as a strategy only works for the early game, because late game players have access to lots of siege weapons that can easily counter such tactics.

Turtling would need a lot more mechanics to make it a competitive tactic in multiplayer for the late game.

Well that, or play with a lot of metal worlds where you really can turtle to build the laser and win the game.