The unit canon is a very impressive bulding however i think it is better suited as an orbital building for following reasons: 1.Realism. It is more logical these drop pods are fired from space rather then be launched from a planet. 2.possabilities. naval planets have a hard time getting an assault army together this would help them since unit canons are not buildable on water. -same goes for gas planets, they can become more interesting with this feature. 3.Less sudden assassination. this can be worth of discussions but unit cannons are quite capable of assasssinating enemy commanders with little awareness. If these structures are placed in space then you know what an enemy is planning and the intel wars experience greatly increases rather then now "oh damn i forgot about those" for the casual player.
1. realism is generally a bad argument in a pseudofuturistic game so let´s throw that one out of the window .. unitcannons being build on the ground limits their buildspace unitcannons like the legion starcannon (which has limited range and is not crossplanetary) means it is by default visible in the orbital layer .. 2. naval is generaly super limited, yes you could add some navalunits like the naval fabber and piranhas to it but anything else could be too powerfull .. like imagine a drop off 12 orcas into a pond close to an enemy base .. also launching something like a leviathan or typhoon would just be totaly redicoulous .. naval rather needs its own teleportgate .. but it wont ever change it being limited to other naval planets with the only exception being the kaiju ... 3. umbrella antiorbital defences are both quickly available even to the commander and cheap as well .. they deal with unitcannondrops extremely well unless redicoulously overwellmed .. casual player or not you have the answer to that .. and unitcannons are VERY expensive ..
You miss my second point tough. It is not the invasion to naval planets wich are the problem. It is more the invasion from naval planets wich is hard. Because you would lack the land to build unit canons to deploy a starting army to a planet. Can't agree more on naval would be needing their own teleporter but that would be a diffrent topic. I don't play the legion unofficial expansion so can't say anything about that.
which is the same issue you would have with a lavaplanet or a planet with a lot of cgi ... the only counterarguement to that is that with the unitcannon you have amphibius units to attack with but then as mentioned before defending against such a UC drop is fairly easy .. the general solution to this is that you have a system were players start under the same conditions .. how it then plays out is up to the players themselves .. if for instance in a teamgame one team choses to soley spawn at a waterheavy planet and the other team at a different one that isn´t heavy on unbuildable terrain despite both teams having the option on both .. well that´s their choice then .. and even then you still have the hellios ..
I think unit cannon should be cheaper. For planet invasion, if you want to constructs more than 3+ cannons, it is better to build Helios. For constructing extra colony, orbital fab with teleporter is much more cheap to obtain.
i´m still more for the implementation of multiunittransports for midgame invasions unlike any of the other options you are not reliant on a static structure but the factory that produces them .. the unitcannon is oneway use only, teleports are static and the helios still requires a static entry .. and is mostly used for one way trips as well ...
Yeah A tier 2 air transporter wich can just like fighter be interplanetary and have more health and are faster then the orbital transporters. perhaps even have some extra abilities like low level repairing or something.
and? the unit itself is indepenand .. the helios can be build by orbital fabricators yes, but it´s the only option, they are tied to a static factory aswell AND the helios relies on a static structure to function in the first place ..
The meaning of this would be to give players who have fortified themselfs on planets with alost no land or perhaps even gas giants and give them a better chance to launch an invasion. Perhaps the space unit canon should not replace the land based one but can be added. Perhaps somewhat more expensive but with no roll off time so it can produce units faster, or can store more units before it is full or perhaps fire faster. Alot of options there...
having unitcannons on gasgiants is unfair though, because that means whoever is controling it can attack land/snipe commanders from orbital with a lot of resources AND that area being heavily defended with orbital were the defender has no other choice but to attack with orbital ..
doesn´t matter if they are build on a gasgiant/orbital ... you don´t want just to defend against a threat, you want to preferably take it out .. if you don´t it becomes a matter of who builds more of the effective option to overpower the opponents option ..
