Unit Cannon: Design Vision

Hey all,

I'd like to take this time to introduce @tvinita who has been making these new ranked maps as well as the balance changes you have been seeing. Tom took some time yesterday to type up the design vision for the Unit Cannon, as we had to make changes from the original vision (as the teleporter more or less filled that role). Feel free to ask questions here, and we hope to have this up and playable on PTE (along with some naval changes) in a very early state later this week/early next week.

Quote: @tvinita
"So what is the unit cannon? What does it actually do? A lot of people have some differing ideas on its role and how it's supposed to work. Well, here's what we've got right now:

The unit cannon is essentially a specialized tech 2 factory that can deploy its units anywhere in the solar system instead of just outside its doorway.

Build a salvo of up to 12 units that can be composed of a variety of t1 and some t2 land units, and then use the attack command fire them all off to a location somewhere in the solar system, making for interplanetary warfare that is much more dynamic.

Here's a few examples of what a single unit cannon is good for, and what it's not so good for.

A single Unit Cannon is good for...
Rapidly deploying small raiding parties anywhere in the solar system, especially undefended areas.
Conveniently sending a small force to establish a healthy expansion or forward base on your planet or another one.
Establishing a beachhead on a planet with a heavily dug-in enemy presence.
Making surgical strikes against key targets that aren't well defended in the immediate vicinity.

A single Unit Cannon is not so good for...
Launching an entire invasion army to brute force invade a planet.
Regularly reinforcing a far-away base with new units.
Sniping a well-defended and well-positioned commander.
Besieging and assaulting a well-fortified base.

You'll notice up there that I said this all applies to a single unit cannon.
This is because the unit cannon is balanced so that multiple unit cannons can be built in a large and late enough game, all flinging tanks and robots and death machines back and forth majestically through the cold void of space to rain death from the stars and skies.
As you may have guessed by now, the more unit cannons you build, the more units you can launch at one time, and the more effective your coordinated unit cannons become at performing tasks that a single unit cannon wouldn't be so good at."

How do the units that are fired interact with orbital and air layer defenses? Will AA provide some sort of counter to them?

What about landing mechanics?
Will units magically appear or will AA be able to prevent them from landing?

How will other (enemy) players notice the fired units? Will the fired units be visible in-transit between planets? Will there be alerts when orbiting units re-enter the target planet's atmosphere? Will there be splash damage when these re-entering units get to the ground?

Hehe, I beat ya'!

All I want now are coloured pictures of the unit cannon. Damnit man! Give me textures!

Video preview pls

if you queue the unit cannon on another planet to continuously build and launch, will it launch single units or wait until it has 12 before launching?

This seems to be exactly what the game needs. I just want to make sure that the unit cannon has the ability to prevent multi planet stalemates because a planet is heavily defended. It seems like it would be possible to send a lot of fabbers along with some support to quickly make a teleporter. This is so needed for the longer games.

I am also curious about how long it takes for the units from the cannon to arrive at the targeted planet? I assume it is possible to allow the units from my 5 unit cannons to arrive at the same time.

Could there be a fire mode select option? Say, volley (all 12) or immediate (1 at a time)?

How accurate are we talking here? Like fire 4 vgs on a unprotected commanders head and its gg? As cola mentioned before. Anti cannon defence? how expensive Is expensive .

note the "select t2 units"
I seriously doubt we'll be able to launch vanguards, and infernos can be decimated by a few advanced laser turrets quickly enough.

Eep anywhere in the solar system? :<

Is there a particular reason you went for the "factory" style of building units inside the cannon, rather than the "transporter" style where previously built units can enter and be loaded into it via a use command (perhaps similar to how units enter a teleporter)?

Good catch, there is not much a commander can do against any 12 t2 units.

I'm assuming air units cannot be fired from the unit cannon.

few advanced laser turrets, some scattered walls and advanced combat fabbers ought to keep the commander reasonably safe.

wonder if the unit cannon will have the "superweapon visibility" like halleys and catalysts

Imagine firing a group of air fighters out of it, the pod exploding in the air and they scramble, it'd be hilarious.

that would be pretty cool actually. I think it would be cool to have the ability to modify its range in mods, I hope that will be possible...