Suggestion: Starting with one teleporter as strategic point of interest

Maybe it would be a nice idea to put one gate on every planet (maybe only bigger planets or just some planets). This gate can be conquered by building enough energy in a radius around the gate or capture it with engineers. For balance the gate should always be placed evenly between all the player starting points. Now you have a strategic point of interest right at the start of the game that discourage Turtling. To conquer gates, you have to destroy all energy buildings of the other players and build your own energy within the radius. This would encourage some nice battling between multiple players early on in the game.
Maybe a mod or on option in the system builder for this idea would be nice!

This idea would discourage turtling and get they action going right from the start of the game! It could also be combined with building your own gates later on the game but should be more expensive than capturing a gate. Also these starting gates should not be easy or maybe impossible to destroy (like ancient stargates ).
Any suggestions on this topic are more than welcome.

dude where's the tier two orbital use in that?

Well if you don't capture the gate you can still travel by orbital to other planets right?
And who says these starting gates are easy to capture? This can be balanced.

can it? In this take on things I'd sell my soul trying to take one of the gates.

Why force players down this route. Part of what makes games like this fun are the various ways that you can play.

There still would be various ways to play and win (I think even more). But I think a point of interest on the map would not hurt for the game play and would make thinks more interesting. I'm a turtle master myself and i have no reason not to turtle cause it is a really good strategy at the moment (I win 8/10 FFA games). This idea of starting portals would give me a reason to try different tactics. Also you would get some really nice battles around the teleporter.

It would also draw focus TO the teleporters, focusing the game on that one aspect. This means less tactics will work as the path to success is no longer as open-ended.

This needs to be rethought entirely, once a player finds the teleporter they instantly have knowledge of a circle on which their opponent's base could be located.

I think its going to be very difficult to build a teleporter on a smaller planet that is already taken by another player. these ancient gates would still function with all other ancient gates in the system meaning: you can get to planets that are already taken by other players if you capture one gate that would otherwise would be nearly impossible.

My main focus right now is to build a orbital transporter as soon as possible get too a moon, make it impossible for other players to get to the moon, etc. What is wrong if you can choose between strategies? You don't have to capture the gate you can still turtle and use the same old tactic as before, but my idea would give you more choices.
My idea is meant to bring more variation to the game and more action on the start.

All this would do is force the player trying to turtle on the planet to build a massive amount of turrets around said teleporter. Also note that the teleporter isn't the only option for interplanetary travel planned - look up the unit cannon.

I know of the unit cannon. I just think my idea of implementing the gate bring more use gameplay value to the teleporters than the devs planned for it to work. Only time and a lot of playing will tell if the teleporters are of any real use. I think if i would send loads of T2 tankt true the gate i would still get true your defences and maybe your still not that long on the planet and haven't build so many defenses around it. With enough defences you can counter everything so i think that is not a good argument

We should also remember that this is in comparison to an orbital invasion system which, as has been noted in multiple places, is getting major changes soon as far as balance as well as new units and structures. Therefore it's unfair to compare the current teleportation ideas to the orbital system, since for the majority of the time the teleporter is out the orbital system will be very different from what it is now.

This could work as a special game mode, maybe. Particularly if the goal was to capture say, 3 put of 5 gates in the system. Don't think I'd like it in the vanilla game though...

I'm all for making the gate a point of interest (see my thread) but as liquidus put it, you wouldn't have a choice in your proposition. the gate is probably a better weapon than three hailleys with nuke launchers.
you choose not to fight for the portal on the map : you loose. plain and simple. no exception cases.

I'm sure that the gate would generate randomly as the world does, so this means that it will be closer to certain players at the start of the game. This would give the player who has the portal an unfair advantage over all other players, because they would have instant access to another planet and its resources. I think you should have included the option "No to strategic gates, I would prefer everyone to be able to build their own when their economy allows it."

Although, I actually do like the idea of a strategic gate that only activates when there is one commander on the planet. Now that sounds like a good idea. You would have to kill everyone else on your planet before you could use your gate to go get that guy in space, and since he has been the only one on his planet, he has been able to send units down to you because his gate is active.

This isn't civilization.....

It could be an option in the system builder, just like a no nukes option.