Planet-Smashing Animation (Confusion) & The Shock Wave Effect! GAMMA.

Teleport half a commander? Sounds safe.

it would be interesting to see planet-smashing being turned into a phase, rather than the endgame it is now.

As such, it would need pro and counter-mechanics, and probably defensive mechanics supporting both.

An entirely different option I'd like to see, with multi-planet spawns being live now, would be the ability to aim at building halleys on your enemy's planet, and crash it (and everything on it) into the sun.

BORING!

Build halleys everywhere so that when they fire the planet implodes.

Just noticed that in curretn version atleast there is a destruction shockwave already present. If you follow the disappearance of strategic icons it starts near the impact site and flushes over the planet.

lol Geert, would love to see that - not sure how effective it would be from a strategic standpoint, but the idea is beautiful... The way to go about that concept might be some sort of weaponized particle accellerator - CERN on speed... Make a black hole on the enemy's planet - woop-ti-do, no more enemy...

No particle accelerator is ever going to make a black hole worth worrying about. Best off just saying "Spacetime Displacement Device" or "Gravitational Singularity Generator".

When I heard that teleporters were coming out. I kinda knew that it would release it's own bag of cats. I believe that there will be bugs with "partial teleportation" but I believe Uber will make it so that It is either an all or nothing situation.

Just to clarify something here. People seem to expect "anti-asteroid" missiles to be put in the game at some point, as were present in the kickstarter video. Jon has repeatedly stated that the point of the anti-asteroid missiles in the kickstarter video was to show that there is no effective way to defend against an inbound asteroid. If the asteroid is already on your doorstep, then that planet is dead.

However, this does not necessarily mean asteroids become an instant "I win" button. Firstly, asteroid mechanics are going to be expanded upon. Personally, I would like to see three different levels of damage:

1. Local destruction on par with a more powerful nuke.
2. Planet wide destruction.
3. The planet is entirely removed as a usable location from the game. E.g. it becomes a molten ball of rock in space.

I could also envisage a fourth option of the planet being split into chunks which forms it's own asteroid belt. I don't know how asteroid belts are going to turn out, but I'm working on the assumption that they will be belts containing a large number of purely aesthetic small bodies which cannot be landed upon plus a number of obviously larger bodies which can be landed upon and moved as possible now. It may be possible for belts to be created on the fly, but I don't know if the engine can do this.

Secondly, the ways that players can counter asteroids can be expanded upon as well, mostly just by tweaking and balancing existing mechanics. At the moment, the most likely options for not being asteroided are as follows:

1. Don't be on the planet.
2. Invade the asteroid before it launches.
3. Nuke the asteroid before it launches.
4. Asteroid the asteroid before it launches.

Either way, it is important that players are communicated to on just what their asteroid impact will do. I would be tempted to link this to the number of Halleys required for move the asteroid for a given size. For example, 1 Halley asteroids do limited damage, 4 halley asteroids wipe the planet, 9 Halleys annihilate the planet and 16 cause an new asteroid belt (if possible). If this were coupled with a re-balance of the cost of Halleys and a prevalence of asteroid belts in common system set-ups, then I think that asteroid mechanics would have reached their potential.

Exactly. The point of PA is not to make an invincible base, nuke everyone off the planet, make the planet an invincible planet, then overrun everyone with lasers and anchors and lag.

The point is to WIN. All you other people need to stop finding counters to stuff. There's no point and it will drag out gameplay in the long run.

A prototype I posted from another discussion long ago...

(Actually pretty close to what the teleporter shader on units already does.)

This looks allot like how the warp gate effect works in Homeworld...

Isn't the literally what the game is right now because planetary invasion is nigh impossible?