The Unit Cannon

Because UC can allow you to establish beacheads when a planet is locked down.
The amount of times you end up with two players on the final two planets of the game, which are both fortress is just too goddamn high.

1. You can't get any unit into the enemy orbit because it gets shot down by Umbrella's, anchors and avengers.
Even if you find some opening somewhere, there's air patrols all over the planet, so gl building that teleporter. And even if you manage to get a few anchors up, you can be damn sure avengers will soon be knocking on your door.
2. It's not just that, pretty much every system can easily end in stalemate. Eg.
2.1 A system with ONLY metal planets, all it takes is continues nuking of 1 catalyst spot on each other's worlds. It doesn't help that you can only build to one side of Cata spots.
2.2 A system with halleyable moons and deathstars. Well shove 1 moon down every metal planet, and they are all useless.
2.3 A system with no deathstars, classic fortressworlds that exchange nukespam.
2.4 A system with only halleyable moons, this is actually best, this can at least end in a draw instead of a protracted stalemate.
2.5 Ow and gas giants mean orbital warfare, which is the most BORING type of combat in the game. (lack of unit variety)
In all cases, sure eventually someone will find a comm and manage to snipe it, it just make take forever.
3. See 2. Addendum: nuke wars are not engaging endgame.
4. This is usually being done with air units. but you will never convince any RTS player to willingly give up something they can use to win (or at the very least prevent themselves from losing).
Nor should they be asked to, you should make the mechanics balance the game. The players shouldn't try to balance the game despite the mechanics.

UC would indeed bypass orbital, but seeing as most worlds are defended by anchors, orbital is still a factor.
but UC would offer new options in terms of gameplay.
1. Even with a locked down orbital layer, you can still get a wave in to clear umbrella's, allowing an orbital assault to take place.
2. You could drop in a complement of fabbers, allowing them to build umbrellas and a teleporter. How do you counter this? Have an ARMY.
3. Drop in small forces to clear strategic assests (anti-nukes, nuke launchers, teleporters, catalysts, factories, metal spots, etc). This makes the game more dynamic.

On the subject of commander sniping with UC. Well seeing as the units are air units before they manage to land, have AA shoot them.
I know we don't usually talk about this, but it worked for SupCom2, don't see why it shouldn't work here.

1. If you sit back and let your opponent turtle up to the kazooey, don't be surprised that you can suddenly no longer easily invade. If you let the game get to the super end game, then be prepared to use appropriately super end game weapons such as nukes, halleys, and death lasers. That is what they are there for.

This is like saying you waited and waited for your opponent to build up a huge number of t2 units, and now your t1 units can't beat them. It's not a fault with the game. Yes orbital could use with some changes maybe, but definitely not a unit cannon.

If i take x amount of metal and cover the entire planet with umbrellas and anchors and avengers, what is stopping my opponent from using that same stupendously huge amount of x metal from spamming a crap ton of nukes etc. instead?

2. Nope
2.1. Build an anti nuke. If the catalyst controls continuously get nuked, that's the players fault.
2.2. Obviously have more halleyable moons, and of bigger size if necessary. You can do this in the system editor.
2.3. If you dont have metal planets, halleyable moons, or an odd number of planets/metal spread in your system, you are asking for a stalemate. You need to map test your system.
2.4. If you only have a bunch of moons which are halleyable, it will be highly unlikely to end in a draw. It's hard enough to completely fortify one planet, and now you want to spend metal fortifying multiple planets while your opponent is sending moons at you with that same metal, or invading one of your less defended moons.
2.5. What does this have to do with unit cannon? Gas giants are there as the tipping variable to allow one player to overcome the macro of another player and push through.

3. You know you can use nukes to clear beach heads for teleporters right? You also don't need to nuke spam each other if you find it boring. You or your opponent could build on the death laser instead, or try to halley one of the planets.

You also didn't address the fundamental problem with the unit cannon that i described. Why do you need anchors if all i need to do is unit cannon past it? Why would i bother with a land invasion or fabbers if i can just teleport units anywhere onto the enemies planet instead? Why bother building an orbital launcher or teleporters at all when i can just shoot fabbers to other planets to colonize them?

And if aa can shoot unit cannon'd drop pods or some such, then you'll have to remind me again what the point of the unit cannon is. Now all you need to do is spam fighters and spinners all over the planet as well. How is this different from what we already have?

I don't get the people in this thread at all.
I don't understand why people are trying to defend Uber with not including the Unit cannon with this idiotic fallacy of "its just a concept tariler durh"
I mean seriously are you that stubborn and obtuse to not just go "huh, well I guess you are right, but I'm not making a fuss about it." You have to actively say "NO UNIT CANNONS ARE BAD BAD BAD THEY ARE VERY BAD SHUT UP SHUT UP I CAN'T HEAR YOU" like a toddler.

Grow up.

1. The unit cannon has been in plenty of promotional material. It has been more or less confirmed.
2. There are no balance issues with the unit cannon. Stating that there are issues is in itself, not an issue.
3. There is no way to efficiently counter a stalemate at this point in time. Teleporters nor the orbital transport are viable solutions to perform this action. The Unit cannon would fix this gap.

And if whoever came up with the idea that a "massive teleporter that used a fucktonne of energy and caused a nuclear explosion if used for too long" genuinely believed that that was a more balanced building than the unit cannon.. well.. I guess there's a reason you aren't involved in any game design. If you can't see that MASSIVE flaws in that, you really should not be speaking about this whatsoever.

People have a right to be pissed at Uber, personally I would be more pissed at the fact that PA's release was abysmal and have finished, but they are correct in saying that the unit cannon should've been included.

I think the release was nice and i have faith we get the unit canon in the future. I just hope it gets the priority it needs but im sure everyone would love to shoot units to other planets and use halleys for something else then smashing sometimes too.

I disagree; the presence of Anchors which can bombard the ground from orbit, SSX that can zap ground units, and the total lack of any mobile anti-orbital ground units means that you'd be facing potentially massive attrition rates when using a Unit Cannon unless you try to deal with the orbital sphere.

Make Unit Cannons as big and expensive as Catalysts and it'll even out, I think.

Uber stated several times that they will add the Unit Cannon to PA.

So, or they will keep their word, or they will not. It has to work in a way or an other. But still they have to prove that they can keep those words. So far it doesn't look like.

Listen, I really tried to find a sense in what you reply to people. But it gets too annoying.

You merely play people with a bunch of rock/paper/scissors bubbling non-sense.

First dude to go in ignore, for good.

Thanks for being a massive jerk about it

I do admit he's not being exactly diplomatic in his reply.

But he's not really wrong.

Don't misapprehend me, both sides of the argument are equally guilty of the 'CAN'T HEAR YOU OVER THE SOUND OF MY ARGUMENTS/RANTS' fallacy.

The unit cannon is essentially a feature that has often been alluded to and/or mentioned as a core feature. So it's not unreasonable for people to want/expect it.
Much the same can be said for offline mode. (although that was a feature that was planned for release, and still isn't in yet, so I can totally relate to people feeling Iffy about promised features.)

That still isn't a reason to be a jerk to someone else though. It's stuff like that that gets threads locked.

Be civil, don't bash

Was I in any way uncivil in my reply?

I believe I agreed with his point, not with his deliverance.

No no, he was talking about the post that you agreed with (point wise.)

Basically he said "Yeah you can have an opinion, but don't be a jerk or rude to people based on your opinion"

At least I think so, haha.

The unit cannon is the most effective solution to the orbital layer. Is it the only solution? No, not at all. Is it the one that will be most effective with minimal amount of tweaking and little micro from the player? Yes, definitely. Statera has multi-unit interplanetary transports. They help, but they're micro intensive and aren't particularly effective at establishing a beachhead. If we had the Unit Cannon turtles would be much easier to deal with.

Exactly

Thinking about how the unit cannon would work you have to realize that OH **** THAT MOON HAS AN ORBIT HOW THE F DO WE MAKE A GUN DEAL WITH THE ORBIT AND THE SPIN OF THE HOME PLANET
Well you wouldnt lol The unit cannon would only be able to fire in a certain area for short but re ocuring amounts of time ie you cant shoot at the planet from behind and suddenly the units are else where also, UCs wouldnt be able spamm an area together (no more than 3 UC fireing in a "blah blah" proximity of eachother) because units could crash automatically makeing a base invasion highly unlikely at the same time the UC wont be able to fire in the same area for long, It COULD ignore its Own plannets rotation due to atillery mechanics but wouldnt be able to ignore the invasion planets orbit the UC Should be able to rotate and move like a Holkins to give the asthetic feel that its at least shooting the units in the right direction, also the UC should Auto shoot units if it can in the chosen spot that way the player doesnt miss his window, The Drop pods should be vulnerable to AA at least to the point were 1-2 T1 AA turrents are in range 1/4 of the pods survive ie 1 sole dox
ALSO on the motion of It only shooting dox it should be able to shoot 2 tanks at a time and I mean T1 tanks and infernos, NO t2 crap because it would over power the UC, There could be a T2 UC that is much much slower than the T1 UC and would only shoot pods with 2 units or 1 for the t2 vehicles, The UC should ignore higer gravity and be buildable on any planet so long as it is IN orbit or has an orbiting body, I think the UC implemented like this is Highly balanced neither the home or orbiting planet has an advantage in using it compared to the other and bases are still mostly secure from UC spam, at the same time the UC is not a major form of invasion but in support of tele invasions ie invade with UC else where to draw attention and drop down a tele or Pre invade with UC and drop down a tele where the UC drop zone is, a UC implemented with these mechanics is fairly balanced and could not be Op It does not need a direct counter because it is not a game breaking mechanic, if you wanted to balance it even more as to prevent some one from making a latteral drop zone and basically spawn in a huge army across that span the UC could have a 3 shot cool down, Ive been thinking about these mechanics as a MUST need in the UC if it was implemented I feel like the UC would give the game an edge that most Rts do not have, The UC to me defines PA as much as planet smashing did when I saw the promo video, I highly believe the UC should be added

also the UC has been in the game as wreckage in the GW campain but I havent seen it recently, i felt proud to see it, it is Masive.

Alright, the fact is, it's absolutely TERRIBLE business practice to pitch a idea that you have absolutely NO means of implementing.

If they're just NOW realizing that it would be hard to implement a feature(which the unit cannon isn't at all) that just tells us that they obviously didn't plan this properly.

And that's the truth of it. Period. There is no IF,ANDS, and BUTTS about it.

If the human resources kickstarter WERE to succeed, which I highly doubt with all the flack being received from it you better hope to Jesus that every feature they're showing and "promising" in it, better flipping show up in the end product. Otherwise they failed on their promise and inevitably we deserve our money back.

Kickstarter literally has a policy against this kind of thing.

Just take a look at this. http://gizmodo.com/government-finally-holding-kickstarter-scammers-respons-1571946452

All be it a different product, it is essentially the same idea.

You're very welcome. Would kindly do it again. It's not as if you guys have outright ignored and acted ignorantly when replying to my previous posts.

Please please PLEASE, use paragraphs and punctuation. It helps improve legibility something fierce.

Your discourse might be very interesting or insightful, but no one will ever know, because no one reads a wall of text.

Granted there are more pressing issues with the game but the unit cannon is still very important, and was promised multiple times.
Balancing could be easily achieved with rate of fire and energy cost of fire per unit for example, and also how AA and anti-nukes interact with incoming units.
Also on the pitch video we saw nukes (?) reduce the size of an incoming asteroid which I thought was a great mechanic.

The endgame is pretty rubbish without these things to be honest. With them, and unit restrictions on certain biomes, could create some pretty deep strategy on planet-wide defense and offense.