Teleporters

Fair enough. I think it's promising too. Hopefully Uber tries it out if they agree.

This. It would sidestep microing gates altogether.

Well this could make it hard when trying to plan an attack... ... Is a good thought though and an option....

Also you could have a setting in the options, where you can set the portals to either auto set pathing or manual pairing. So it will do the pathing by itself for people who trust it... Or people can do the pairing by themselves....

Interesting pathing goal. Did Elijah's job get harder?

Path solved by calculus, not the other method?

Looks like an interesting idea. I'm not really sold at the initial draft. I like the idea that you just select a bunch of units and tell them to get to another planet and they commandeer transports or gates or whatever way will be the quickest.

What cost do you think it should cost and why? I'm going to go and say 7500 metal with a 50k energy per second usage.

Edit: probably should answer the why. I think if the unit costs much more they are too much of a risk in a hostile location and surely spotted before they are conpleted.

We considered auto-pathing through the gate network, but ultimately decided against because we'd rather spend that development time on something else, and because it would never actually be right because sometimes it would just do something surprising. For example, imagine you are in a 3v3 and your buddy at another base builds a teleporter. Your units might run off to that base to take a "short cut". What if there is an enemy base in between? It would just be confusing and it would be hard to know how many sub paths you needed to use to lead your units to go the direction you prefer.
The linking method we are doing is more simple to implement and use. You'll be able to give the outbound gate rally points just like a factory roll to simplify deployment at your destination.

I'd be most interested in how to link gates together. Do you have to do that manually by clicking on each gate or how will it work?

You pretty much stated what one of my possible concerns would have been with the whole auto pathing..... I mean really imagine you tell you units to attack an enemy base and you find out the system messed up and sent them another way" ...... and you loose the game because you we'e counting on that army..... or you just loose the army not the game.... but anyway, you see the point!!!!!!!!!

Was a good idea though!!!!!

I brought this up in my "Tactical uses of Stargates" thread a few days back. Manually linking gates may sound hard as you first have to select the gate A and then zoom out/switch planets. Then locate gate B before the process is complete. Which is a lot of micro and time, but the point i made there is that before too long we will have multi window support so linking gates is as simple as select gate A on window 1 and select gate B on window 2.


As I am writing this the thought comes up “How is this any simpler? finding the gates in both windows is just as much work". And I must admit it does at first but this is the first RTS game, that I am aware of, that will have window in window support. And as a draftsman, where I use it most of the day with the programs I work with you will find that not only do you get use to it. But you will come to wonder how you ever managed to get by without being able to track 2+ locations at once.


Hopefully both features will come in about the same time but I will say this is the feature I am most looking forward to.

This game would work really really nice with double window and screen options!!!!!! Just think about later in the game when you could have two screens, with 1 screen on 1 planet and the 2nd screen on another..... can't wait!!!!!!!!

Good point pairing gates won't be that hard as the game progresses... All you have to do is set a gate to a # and then go to the home gate click it then click the # you set the other one to...... then taking you back to that gate

Gate ,warpgate ,quantum gate, wormhole ...
Am i really the only one who is sad to not be able to say
"Beam us up scotty! " ... ...

I think maybe there should be two versions of the teleporter, one that is a teleporter pad ("beam me up scotty!"), and one that is the gate ("seventh chevron locked!").

The teleporter pad could beam groups of units with the energy-cost-per-use method, and the other could use the constant energy cost method. Maybe you could mix it around a bit, and for extra cost the teleporter pad could teleport units anywhere within range, whether or not it had a pad, at which point it would need to recharge for a bit or something.

Now both Star Trek and Stargate fans can shout something while using teleporters!

Freeform teleporters have some gameplay problems. Like enemy units just appearing in the middle of your army's formation, or in your base. Or next to an undefended mex. Being able to teleport anywhere out from a teleporter probably should not be possible as it would just destroy positional play.

However if such capability was extremely expensive and limited to recall only, instead of being able to teleport elsewhere from the teleporter, then it could work without breaking the game. It still needs to be expensive and limited, but because you must have a valuable teleporter nearby in order to recall units to it, it is harder to exploit.

A structure might be able to recall units to itself without needing a teleporter at the location of the unit being recalled. This might also be useful for a ship in orbit to be able to recall units from the surface, possibly to redeploy them again. This potentially allows you to drop a group of units (still difficult, but not as difficult as teleporting, and counterable), deal some damage, and then potentially recall those units. You then have to pay to deploy them again, which is counterable again.

That could work too, still works with the "beam me up scotty!" quote. Also, you could limit the number of units that can be teleported at the same time, making the effect much like that of a unit cannon, just more expensive, and not continuous if you make it require a cooldown. Better for raids or quick re-deployments.

A recall structure/unit should probably target exactly one unit, and have a considerable cooldown. If you want more bandwidth you should just build several. Giving it a very high energy drain would let you keep the unit price down.

As another possible implementation, limited-range recall capability could actually be somewhat inexpensive.

whaaa...?

Like the Mass Recall in Starcraft II?
I don't like it because it gives less meaning for army positioning and it can be too good to save a commander from large armies or nukes.

But that's what makes it interesting. I loved the arbiter from Starcraft 1. As long as you scouted it, you were fine. But unseen it could wreak havoc by porting an entire army in. It very much depends on your opponent's skill whether or not it succeeds.