Welcome ! I had noticed lately discussion about unit cannon and dropships was very intense lately and it won't appear in game any time soon (if never). I created this thread to discuss one (and already existing) possibility of units mass transportation - using larger volumes of Astreus. Astreus had potential to be useful for transporting multiple units at a time (we had area command for loading units) but from other hand it's largely underused and I found it as the most annoying unit in the game because of it's price, very slow speed and potentially buggy (it often refuse to load/unload units... trying to drop fabricator for one minute can be annoying) mechanics, I would like to suggest making them cheaper (orbital fabricators could be more expensive, but fabricate faster so it's price/performance would be the same) and move much faster when unloaded, so moving units would be much smoother. I would be delighted to hear users suggestions that could made using Astreus a viable way of unit transportation.
The astraus almost works if it could always carry the combat power equivalency of a commander. I don't know about it's mass cost but it's build power requiremetns are quite high. I know that the astralus gets beaten by teleporters pretty bad. The current orbital transfer delays are almost a cost enough initself in that while in transit the unt is not shooting either at the planet it left or at the one it's arriving very much so given that you can bypass it with the teleporter. There has been talk that it could include a one way portion where it would quickly drop down from orbit consuming the astralus maybe bypassing the air layer. I guess it's a question wether astraluses are supposed to be defended in the orbital or air layers. This kind of ability could make it have a role in intraplanetary fighting too separate from the pelican. I have in my mind an analogy how spawn beacons work in plantside 2.
