I have not really got the time to sit and read through the mass of threads. But my question as follow's. Will the units fired from the cannon be immune to damage from orbital and ground based anti orbital fire, and will the range of the cannon be unlimited? The reason i asked this is because i recently had a game where my enemy was out on a little rock far out in space but had so much defense on the rock it was impossible to land anything on the planet. He had built a massive orbital fighter army that covered ALL of the orbital space, as soon as anything of mine entered his space it was blown to bits. And nukes where out the question since limited range on them right? There was just no way i could touch him, since there where no rocks i was able to build hallys on to. To his credit it was a good job defending, but you need to add something to the game to be able to break a planets defense that does not require smashing a rock into it.
the range will not be unlimited, reason being otherwise you wouldn't need to be on a low gravity body to send units into space and second no they won't be immune otherwise we wouldn't be playing a simulated projectile game.
Actually, we honestly don't know anything about the unit cannon yet other than the fact that it's a Unit Cannon. I talked about a general theory on Unit Cannons here, but the end result that Uber ends up going with is still unknown, and a Lot of the factors you mentioned are really dependent on exactly what kind of role they want the Unit Cannon to fill. Mike
I would certainly hope so, and I'm fairly sure Uber would ensure this was the case. Otherwise they'd be hideously OP. Nope. Neutrino has said that the range of the unit cannon will be limited by the strength of the gravity well that it finds itself in. I.e. if you're playing on a piddly little planet, it'll fire across to the polar opposite, whereas if you're playing on a monster of a planet, the units will just drip out of the end. There will be mechanics in place to address the concerns you mentioned. Orbital has been stated to be in line for a 'complete overhaul' to make it engaging and less stand-offish.
In a recent live stream they mentioned while the unit cannon was planned, it's not high priority right now and not much is being done on it at the moment (I think...). So the role it will fill may not yet be fully known by Uber even, and may evolve as things get added to the game. Also, I could totally be off base, which wouldn't be a total surprise...
I think it was more so that the Unit Cannon is much more difficult to implement compared to the Teleporter, to it makes more sense to get the teleporter functional first so that more effort can be focused on the Unit Cannon. Mike
Definitely this. A unit cannon has to load units, launch them and land them, potentially deal with AA, and maybe even move across a database or two. A teleporter merely has to POOF. It's much simpler on the back end.
Even though that makes me sad, it makes me happy because it means even more important and more awesome things are being worked on. Keep up the great work Uber!
Well, of course you know your stuffs at Uber, I do trust that. But I hope you also consider that when you launched the game on Kickstarter you did using a trailer that demonstrated a concept. The Unit Cannon seemed to be an important part of that concept. People who pledged your project, loved that concept. So it would be fair if at some point we would know what you will do with that.
