Planetary Invasions

But it's not a Supcom experimental unit, it's a TA experimental unit.

Invading is going to be hard. That is pretty much unavoidable. No matter what you send or how you send it, the enemy is going to have a defensive advantage merely by being entrenched on their planet. The TA Krogoth directly addresses this. The purpose is not to walk around causing chaos. It'll never be cost effective for the role. It's meant to hit the planet like a KEW, fire some guns to force an enemy engagement(otherwise they'll just ignore it like a superdick), and then explode. It is a nuclear weapon first and foremost, and its role is to clear a reasonable beachhead for real combat units to stream in.

Whether or not the enemy overpowers the unit is irrelevant. It will ALWAYS explode, thus it will always clear a landing area for your invasion.

The Krogoth also does this. Since its primary payload is a nuke, the best way to protect yourself from the blast is to RUN AWAY. Structures can not run away.

A token weapon arsenal forces enemy units to engage, thus drawing more units into the explosion.

The heavy assault tank provides the most direct combat power for the lowest price. It only follows that they will naturally destroy Commanders for the least cost. The D-gun's role is to ruin heavy assault units, for this very exact reason. The Ubercannon does not meet this requirement.

Gigantic orbital carriers have been suggested before. However, your direction is really bad. Don't make them endgame units. They may require endgame factories, but the overall cost should be CHEAP. Gotta encourage invasion, remember? Anything that brings in tanks to shoot other tanks should be highly encouraged.

If the Astraeus were made to be a one time use unit, what would that mean for the balance of orbital?
I think it would mean that the whole first-person-to-orbital wins would end because the player couldn't go on a planet seeding frenzy.

Exactly. Right now, first one to orbit can easily colonize all planets. That's OP and makes PA all about being the first one to build an Astreus.

First i am new to this discussion, so forgive me to just jump in here Brianpurkiss.

i had look through the thread and i find mostly we can agree on two things:

Number one: A "Egg" ( aka long range large assault Carrier larger (48-54?) Number of troops)
that Brianpurkiss talk about.

>It should be expensive to build, and slower to deploy all it's payload. it would be like a
long and large container that open in layer and layer ,each time some of the shell fall
away 16 units would be drop. It would take say 15 to 20 seconds to deployed all unit it
carry that it don't drop all at once, which should allow you to try to destroy them

before they drop all of the payload.

Number two: A fast Drop pod that carry say 1-3 unit that is less expense to build but drop all it's cargo
on arrival.

Finally I would also give my two cent on the cargo ship idea:

>I believe it can be implemented in a way that game should treated similar to the current
commander transporter.

>It should need to be landed on the surface to Load and unload unit. this will give it a large different
to the " the egg "and "the pod" so that it can be use to reinforce contested planet and secured breach
heads.

>Should be very very expensive and move slower than other and be lightly armored.

>It should carry A LOT of unit (200+)

>It should be Large

> And Should be it feel unbalance, we could and in that it need a cheaper building( Cheaper that warp
gate) like a Starport to land and load and unload.

Okay, this one is a two unit idea, so bear with me.

Unit 1: An orbital elevator.
Half satellite and half structure, its role is to move huge numbers of ground units from a planet, to a loading platform in orbit. Fills up surfboards.

Unit 2: Surfboard.
A cheap hunk of metal, with engines strapped to it. Units walk on the board (capacity 6-12'ish), latch down, and fly wherever. It may also directly load up units from asteroids, thanks to no-gravity.

The board is a direct invasion transport. Its only use is to fly to a world, crash down* , and the units are immediately ready to fight. While landing, air units and AA may attempt to engage**. The board can not be reused, but it leaves wreckage that can be reclaimed.

* (Maybe deal some splash damage too? Ground units require a chance to avoid direct hits.)
** It's fairly durable, being a giant hunk of armor for the most part. Should it allow soft landings for cargo if destroyed?

Merry Christmas.

i like both of your idea bobucles. Couple of thing through.

I think there must be quite through give to how many unit the one use crashable transport cost and how fast it travel and how fast it deployed , i give the large "egg" a time drop system instead all at once for same reason (prevent the "Drop on you commander and win the game" and "oh you can't stop it because it take about 4 second from you see it come in to drop all of its unit thing")



This is For Brianpurkiss, i hope he can take up with the other Developers. i would really like if possible for them to give my idea some through (and i hope it make into the question and answer shotcast)

A bit off topic here:

>I hoping for some through of starship combat even if just limit to Ships that can stay in space for limit to amount of time for fuel and limit to the same obit path as current unit that could go.

>This way you could interdict planets to Planets troops ship movement and give more a strategic reason to take some of the PLANET/ MOON/ROCK that before player have no reason for to take.

>E.g say Planet A and Planet B were control by different team, you would have no need to take some rock(C) that is out the way of the A and B but Close to the middle point but it's out of the obit path( rock and moon with in A and B would still be fight over of course)

>If a starship system with a fuel limit (AKA range limit) is put in. the Rock (C) would became useful again as you have to build a base of operation for the ships to be in range and can use it to Interdict Supply and Troop (ship and pod) movements.

>I think by Make sure the starship Travel with the same obit mechanism would have Stop this thing turn in to the "starwar" as feared by many oh the Dev Team and forms.

Thanks for you time (and you like too ) Brainpurkiss.

Merry Christmas, happy new year to Brainpurkiss and all other Dev.

he isn't a dev... wtf.
now everyone's a dev!

I guess I was promoted.

I was a dev once..... those were the days.

I will promoted you in some other time. don't worries

I propose a simple interplanetary carrier. It's only one unit, not part of some panoply of space ships.

So the idea is that fighters and orbital lasers - even astreus's - are basically orbital units. They are meant to fight in the orbit of a planet, sort of like a t1 space unit. This means it takes a long time for these units to arrive at other planets, which slows endgame immeasurably, but it makes sense.

I say we should be able to build carriers, which become minor planetoids - i.e.: you can send orbital units there. This means the enemy can fight your carrier, or two carriers can fight each other. Most likely, if well defended, players will keep carriers away in order to preserve them since they're expensive. This also means carriers are vulnerable to umbrellas, so any planetary invasion much be well planned.

Carriers will be a little faster than sending orbital units between planets. And they can - wait for it - carry a certain amount of fighters and lasers. They can also hold ground units which are 'beamed' aboard and then 'beamed' to the surface. This can only be accomplished from the building that builds the carrier, which projects a shield around it during construction to avoid having it get blown up 80% through construction (unless there's a ground attack).

Let's call this building a t2 orbital launcher basically. It uses teleportation and shield technology and basically only builds/protects/loads/unloads carriers.

Finally, they'll have a certain number of slots - like 5 - which can construct planet penetrators. These can either carry troops from the onboard hold, or be nukes, or be pre-fabbed turrets.

Carriers will be the staple of planetary invasions in large systems where planets are not moons of each other.

For moons, I love the unit cannon. Shooting units at moons seems obvious and is sort of awesome. That, and nukes, makes moons sort of like hard-to-get-to extensions of the planet territory itself.

Can't wait to see what uber has planned for orbital. Atm it's very boring & not fun once things are about orbital..I hope they have sum cooler ideas than the portal, unit canon etc

personally the drop pod idea seens great and it also looks a lot with the normandy style we all are searching for it also makes you plan your invasion to minimize losses and hit the weakest spot

I think it has to be very expensive (whether we call it a megabot or not) because we don't want it to be something that's used casually. That is, I don't think it should be something I build routinely, just because it's a great way of busting up defenses, to the point that it makes defenses in general largely useless.

It should really be a special-case weapon, where there's simply no other feasible way to break your defenses. It should be a costlier option than nukes, Holkin spam or T2 bomber spam, for example, because we don't want it to end up replacing those options.

It should be a last resort for breaking into a fortified planet. The best way I can think of to make that pan out is to make it very expensive and specialized.

No. I would hit the strongest spot. On your Commander's head.

I will only like the drop pod idea when someone can explain to me why I can't simply use it to assassinate your commander.

That's easy. It wouldn't do enough damage, and the Commander would simply walk away from a direct hit.

And walk away from the doxen in the drop pod?

What stormingkiwi said. If the drop pod contains 10 Levelers, that will kill your Commander in literally 4 seconds even if the drop pod itself did zero damage.

Let's back up and re-define the parameters of a planetary invasion system:

MUST
* Be able to destroy enough Catapults, Holkins and Umbrellas to establish a beachhead without an unreasonable amount of micromanagement
* Be cost-effective against nukes (if nukes are much cheaper, metal-for-hitpoints, we'll never build enough of the things to out-pace defensive nuke production)

MUST NOT
* Be able to drop or deploy in such a way as to be a Commander assassination device
* Be utterly superior to conventional weapons (that is, once we have a beachhead we should prefer to switch to conventional weapons rather than more and more of whatever this invasion item is)

I still think that a cost-inefficient, dumb-fire rocket megabot is the best answer. It fits all parameters. The only argument I've seen against it is "we don't want megabots because wibble wibble."

It's not that I don't want drop-pods, it's that it fails to meet the necessary parameters. They would be Commander assassination devices rather than beachhead makers.

Technically, so would shielded drop pods that take fifteen seconds to deploy. Those are also not megabots.

I am just saying there are plenty of ways to do it. I wouldn't mind it being what it is really, transports and gates and unit cannons. Really, it avoids becoming a commander assassination weapon as long as the commander can avoid it.

If the drop pods had 5 levelers, infinite health, and took fifteen seconds to deploy once landed, the commander would be able to retreat, and the levelers would still be guaranteed deployment to do damage before destruction.

I can't wait to see how orbital and planetary invasion ends up looking like.

why cant you send drop pods to your enemys commander head? easy! because first you dont know were he is second if you know the place were he is would be too heavily defended to try something like that, we are not talking about an invincible wave of drop pods we are talking about vunerable metal cans that with enought defences can be easily destroyed even in vast numbers if you try to invade a planet with droppods you obviously target his weak spot not the strongest one because if you do that you only end up with dozens of burning metal pieces

Happy new year everyne