Unit Cannon please :(

link please.

In other words, soon after soon?

they'll add the unit cannon, but only when it ready

I hope not.

Why not?

I would sooner have it, well, sooner. We got so much stuff well before it was ready I see no point in singling out the Unit Cannon on that basis.

Oh I thought you were implying you didn't want it.

Lord almighty, no! I still have high hopes for the concept. I do not think Uber will implement and balance it in a way conducive to breaking multi-planet stalemates but since the advent of balance mods I just can't seem to care for vanilla balance anyways.

the unit cannon still doesn't function as intended, in the end, the unit cannon is not a big priority in mean time, but i will be eventually.

I don't understand the big deal about the unit cannon... what do you imagine it enabling you to do that you can't do already with 500 avengers and 30 SXX cannons?

When/where was this? I think I missed it somehow.

Things that require exactly those +500 Astraeus. Or Astraei. How I despise fake Latin not coming with fake yet complete grammar automatically.
Anyway, what I expect from the Unit Cannon is actually really simple: Automation. If all it does is packaging units into an Astraeus that it builds on-demand and issuing an 'Unload @'-command to said Astraeus to wherever you direct the Unit Cannon that would be perfectly fine for me.
Hell, it would not even have to be a unit cannon proper, for all that I care. Call it a Launch Pad, combine the Orbital Launcher and one of the factory models and you are golden.

A row of unit cannons blasting units at another planet would be so awesome!

And also really helpful against...certain situations:

Invading a fortified planet rather than just leaving you with a 1-3 hour stalemate. Remember, planet smash isn't always an option, because there might not be a planet to use for smashing.

When the enemy can fortify against orbital attacks, why shouldn't he be able to fortify against units? Anchors would fulfill both roles. I always wonder how the unit cannon is supposed to break these stalemates. If one unit after another is just fired onto the planet, they all get sniped by bombers or any other unit you can just swarm or not? Well it highly depends which units you are able to send through the cannon. But I don't think you would be able to fire vanguards on the head of the enemy commander, this would just make smashing pointless.

The picture above is breakable (not easy) with 50 or less avengers sent to one point, followed by 5-10 orbital fabricators. Timing is important here! These set up anchors (to kill the first bombers that fly by to destroy your teleporter) and teleporters in no time (before all the Avengers come to you) while the avengers tank the damage. Then swarm AA through and after that tanks. If the teleporter gets shot down, you cleaned up some bombers and the next attempt will be better. However you need more eco than your opponent to build up enough invading forces before he really fortifies that planet. How would the unit cannon change that problem?

tl;dr

I'm not saying the cannon isn't awesome, I'm just saying it might not be able to do the wonders some people expect.

Knub23's arguments are very solid. He also brings up a good point: Launching units from the Unit Cannon (building) would have to be carefully thought out due to the ease of just sending 5 vanguards directly on top of the enemy commanders.

And there is lots of tweaking that can be done to make sure things work out, maybe the pods can be shot own by AA, maybe there is a roll-off time before the unit fully activates after touching down, maybe we should fix the Vanguard ect ect.

None of those are "Black or White" type things either, each one has lots of potential implementations within and in the end it's probably going to be some combination of many different elements to achieve the best solution.

I talk about it a bit HERE along with my thoughts on interplanetary in general.

Mike

As we've discussed before, the Unit Cannon will take quite a bit of time to complete -- and it's not our highest priority at the moment. We know you want it. Heck, we want it. It's just not happening in the near future.

HOWEVER, we've got truly spectacular solutions for stalemates on deck. Prepare your eyeholes.

/hype