Drop Ships!

We have a unit cannon! Yay.

Next, would it be possible to get a "Drop ship" that could send 4 or 8 units at a time using orbital methods?

Drop ships would have orbital lasers to defend themselves from fighters and can be used as anti air too as well as a turret while on the ground.
Also, they would be very armored, possibly able to manufacture tier one fabricators as well.
It would be a tier 1 item

Oh, one more thing, it can not be used to transport a commander.


Anyone have comments, or ideas?

no use unit cannon. It doesn't have to come back, you just keep sending more

Unit cannon is a tier 2 item, this is for tier one.

Tier 1 would be the Astraeus (are there actually people that know how to spell this? ) though, wouldn't it? Cheap(ish), but very limited capacity.

Well then drop ship would be from t2 orbital factory

No, it would be tier 1 but a higher cost unit.

Eh, I think that it'd fit much better as a cheaper T2 unit. The Unit Cannon will likely be as expensive as any T2 factory, and that doesn't include the cost of whatever 12 units you build in it. Plus, to launch more than 12 at once, you'd need more than one Unit Cannon which will be extremely costly. It would make plenty of sense to keep a multi-unit transport in T2 (or just the basic orbital factory, but make it a bit pricey to create an aversion to using it early on) so that we can mount large scale invasions without the using a supporting factory as the primary method.

Then again, you seem to be looking towards a militarized drop-ship rather than a boring old multi-unit transport.

Correct, like a beachhead when orbital fabricators can't live long to build teleporters, or there is strong air power present in the desired landing spot. Just another tool to make orbital more interesting.

@jables

What has the team talked about this yet? We know it's semipossible in the engine, as mods have been creating dropships that can hold ten units before. The only issue is that dropships don't recognize that they have ten slots so they won't go filling up on units if you give them an area pickup command.

I think we simply need a large dropship that still uses the same mechanics to pickup and dropoff units, it'd hold them in one area just as they do now, except the dropship would APPEAR to hold more as it'd seem large enough to do so. Then after we can make it so all the strat icons of the units inside show up so you can tell what's within the ship, following WYSIWYG.

The unit cannon is actually 3 times the cost of a bot factory if I remember correctly.

multiunittransports and carriers yes but as t2 items
we saw long before what happens when people have too early access to airtransports for instance ....
vanguarddrops anyone? .... though with the current ballance it should actualy be much more difficult to pull that off ...

Yup, totally need these, combined with limiting the unit cannon to fire only between planets that orbit each other, this would work as the independent planet assault unit.

I think dropships could work. But they would have to be single use if they were going to be armed and should also only be armed to defend against ground/air threats not orbital. I like the idea of say t2 factory cost unit with 2-3 triple laser turrets and 1-2 flak cannons. Capacity of maybe 10-15 units. Would be space to send over some offensive units and some fabbers to build portals for a full invasion, or 4-5 would be enough for a fairly tough beachhead where you could build up a small proxy base with a raiding force available.

Earlier game astraeus or orbital fabber + tele is usually sufficient, though multi unit transports would fill a nice mid game space when you need more units on a planet but the enemies defences are not so hardened that you can't find somewhere reasonably safe to land.

Basic point, dropship is unnecessary at t1 because you only need the dropship if you have to drop in under heavy fire.

T1, no. Medium-cost T2, sure. We've already got the astraeus in T1, and having a dropship with weapons in T1 could end up being abused (dropping it on opponents expansions with no units in it to snipe fabbers and such).

Aestreus shouldn't count as t1 o.o

T1.5?

Please yes!

Well you can't have an 'anti-everything unit' or building that just upsets the balance of the game since spamming that leads to victory (which btw, is still my beef with the anchors, I'd like to see orbital to ground and orbital to orbital be two entirely different buildings, but that's a different discussion).

So I'd say give it some AA, sure, since aircraft patrol spam is a frequent way to lock down planets, but don't give it guns against ground or orbital, that's what you have your units inside for. And anti orbital while in transit is pretty much useless, as it wants to land as soon as it hits atmo (or orbit in the case of moons).

It should be a case of 'or' here. It either produces fabs or is armored, both means it's just too powerful a tool.
Personally I'd prefer to see it armored, since it can already transport fabbers, if you sacrifice a spot that would normally be taken with a combat unit.


But in all, yes please, I'd like to see multiunit-interplanetary transports.

I think that they'll drop the price down. (Though I may have read it as more expensive as a T2 bot factory. Bleh. Off to re-read!)

Edit: Yup, "equivalent to three advanced bot factories." Ouch. I really think they'll drop the price down.

Im not so sure, as late game that cost isn't prohibitive at all.

The issue is that it isn't cost effective at all. Even I know that it's better to build up 2 T2 bot factories and just teleport the slammers over rather than spend the extra cost on the UC. It might have the benefit of building nearly any unit and launching it, but I'm not so sure that the benefits out-weigh the cost. At least not currently-- depends on how Uber wants it to be used in-game.

Well I might have to disagree about it's cost effectiveness, due to it's utility ability.

But the unit has just come out so, I would get all balance happy with the cost of it until we understand when and where it should be in the game.


And really, teleported forces should be more cost efficient, that's the point (At least until the teleporter gets rebalanced.).