Orbital Dropship/ Factory?

I have seen a few posts now about what to do when the end game is reached and you now have to establish a beachhead on a new planet to assault it.

I propose having an orbital dropship unit, similar to the current astraeus, that picks up units from a planet but rather than enter the atmosphere of where it drops off it drops them down in 'drop pods' of sorts, similar to the unit cannon. The difference is that the dropship would be able to continue producing units like a factory and drop them all at once using the 'unload' command. This would reduce the travel time in space to reinforce your beachhead on the planet while you attempt to get up a teleporter. Im thinking it would be a high cost unit and inefficient and production being limited to a few teir 1 units.

Not sure if something like this is even needed in the game just throwing an idea around

Actually, yesterday i already started a post about this.
https://forums.uberent.com/threads/orbital-gameplay.56369/

it also covers other types of orbital units than just dropships and interestellar transports, to sum up:

1. Spacecraft (for fighting another spacecrafts/orbital units, what would lead to orbital battles similar to space battles)
   http://media.moddb.com/images/mods/1/12/11043/frigate4.jpg
   Dropship/Assault spacecraft (Transport multiple ground units from planet to planet)
   http://www.theforce.net/swtc/Pix/dvd/aotc/parade05.jpg
   aircraft spacecarrier (Transport and produce aircraft units from planet to planet. might be able to produce aircrafts and produce and use nuclear missiles.)
   http://fc08.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2011/294/2/d/spaceship_from_jap_anime_by_mobiustwo-d4dirfk.png

however i only thought about the aircraft carriers being able to produce units, not the dropships/transports, but thats an interesting idea too. however yes i would put many requirements and barriers so people wouldnt spawn those instead of building ground factories. Maybe some kind of supercarrier could build those units, and deploy them trough drop pods?

Or we could just change how the orbital lander works so we can automate it.

Thus creating the logistical system that the game actually needs.

Indeed, it is a recurrent theme.

If you look for Dropship on the forum you're gonna likely find several posts related to the topic.

I had the idea for an orbital factory than builds 10 terrestrial units at a time in a drop pod, costs 30 units plus a lot more energy than standard factory. The factory itself cannot leave orbit, the pods neither. The pods can be commanded to basically "drop off" the contents just like an astraeus, maybe self destruct afterwards. This way, you can flood a planet with units you build on site, not necesarily teleported at first. You use the first ton of units you can build and drop at once to land and assault initially, then build a teleporter during the fighting, then flood even more units in.

In alternative, another idea I just had, is what if teleporters were reworked? How about, teleporters are one way, they have to lock onto one of your own units for destination location, once locked you can't change the destination, just unpower the portal or self destruct it. Then, you can land units and then teleport more units there. Heck, for more balance, why not make teleporters last for a single minute and drain a large amount of energy while activated and on for that minute. That way, you get one chance to push enough units to capture enough planet to haggle for.

Just some thoughts.

Actually this might work.

Neutrino exposed the difficulty to attach units that already exist in-game to a Transporter, so that the whole moves together. He referred to the transported units dangling down and visible to the player. Likely shooting down as well.

But I don't see much technical difficulties in a drop pod that creates units ex-novo at landing. Well, speaking about the coding. Of course the whole pack would require time to be developed. So we should likely forget about for the moment.

Anyway, I still push the idea of a Dropship that's also a factory, and can be constructed by a huge factory on the surface, size of the T2 Naval Factory. This super unit should costs like crazy so that to absorb the income of a planet, and be able to build units while on Orbital travel as well.

Once on site, it could simply drop units non-stop.

I still say the unit should be built at an orbital factory larger than a T2 Naval factory, but thats a minor detail.

I've got no problem with orbital factories, interplanetary factories, dropship/factories, or even factories that are dropped whole from orbit and build the units on the ground. I think they are a great option if the costs and build rates are balanced to favor ground factories.

With ground units you could use your orbital factory to secure a beachhead on the ground and then build your teleporter. Once you're done clearing the planet you can retreat your army back through the gate and use it again on another planet.

Air and naval units don't have this option. I think any kind of interplanetary aircraft carrier needs an option to load up your existing units and transport them to a new planet. Without this your units are left behind with every invasion. Leaving a garrison force is one thing, but your rolling invasion might be several times larger than what you want to leave behind.

It's OK if we have different means for delivering and recovering each class of unit, it helps promote diversity, but we shouldn't overlook these needs when designing potential units.

I agree.

The reason why I see a Interplanetary Factory being on the surface is because Orbit so far sucks.

But there is an other reason. In order to build such a huge complex, the player has first to secure a good portion of a planet, likely the whole planet. Those Interplanetary Factories need to be huge, and it may be delicate where to build them.

They should heavily affect the eco of the player, so that their construction should be feasible only later in game, when the player has access to great amount of resources.

Also, keeping those big structure protected shouldn't be trivial. They are big targets.

All together, those factors would make Super Units very demanding, and quite risky. Also impracticable early-game. They should be balanced to be used to break a stalemate.

good points, but i think that ''big'' orbital units should be built in the orbit, not in the ground. you say you want a huge factory building on the ground.... anyone has considered a space elevator?
http://cdni.wired.co.uk/620x413/s_v/spacelevator.jpg
http://s.cghub.com/files/Image/402001-403000/402206/112_max.jpg

This way the building would be both in the ground and in orbit, and the big orbital units would be produced on the orbit, not in the ground. these are huge, so the conditions that you said needed to built those would be the same.

PD:
you have to consider that buildings cannot be too large in width, because the terrain is not flatt, is a sphere, thats why i considered more height than width.

in addition as how it is both a orbital and ground structure, both orbital and ground builders could help producing the units, thus making the factory even more productive (just like the other factories).

No, I didn't. Good point.

But I think there is still margin for having bigger Factories than now. Specially if the scale of units and building will be reduced a little, as many people asked for.

Yes to dropship that just loads and unloads units though i still prefer transports that have to get to the respective layers
Absolute no to mobile proxyfactories of any way shape or form

What ever happened to Neutrino's egg idea?

At the time of making this thread i already searched for the term dropship and didn't find anything significant on it. And definitely no mention of an interstellar factory. I realise this is venturing more into 'super unit' territory which was already been stated to not be included in the game. I was thinking it was more of a halley or unit cannon tier.

I feel like this would be better than an interplanetary unit cannon as it is more easily counterable. To stop a unit cannon you would have to breach the planets defenses or build your own one. However to counter a mobile factory in orbit you just need an anti-orbit turret, or orbital fighters, which would reinforce faster than theirs could.

It would both apply more pressure to a beachhead with a shorter reinforce time (which i think is the current problem with interplanetary assaults) and be more vulnerable to counters. Currently i blieve a lack of variety for effective beachhead establishing methods is whats killing multi planet warfare, we'll see what Uber implements, but again just throwing some ideas around.

Im also interested to hear some counter arguments why people don't think mobile factories are a good idea.

No objections what so ever to what thetrophysystem mentions. Would be a nightmare to defend against but that isn't necessarily a bad thing due to the costs he mentions etc. but possibly not needed depending on the unit cannons application.

Would this factory only be able to build certain units or just more specific planet siege units like flak units and attack fabbers?

It would be so cool to have drop-pods similar to those in warhammer. They're just so damn badass.