Unit Cannon: Design Vision

Me too, I only want planet to moon, or visa-versa.

By variety do you mean only a select choice of t1 and t2 units will be able to be built and launched through the unit cannon? If so, can you elaborate on which units will be allowed, or is this still being determined?

probably to be determined (why its hitting PTE before stable) but I think the exclusion of the vanguard is a good guess. Maybe even all t2 vehicles (bots only). 12 levellers could still be serious trouble for a commander in a short period of time. will have to wait and see.

Sniper snipe (?) for the win!

maybe they'll have an arrival cooldown (undloading or something) sort of like orbital units have now.

Sweeet unit cannon goodness.

More awesome toy's to play with.

Today was a good day.

Just chiming in, I am personally very happy they scrapped the idea of restricting range only to moons as I think this would have totally defeated the purpose. This is basically the jump-jet unit dispenser I've been asking for all along! Very excited!

Well why even make it a cannon if it works like that? I'd be hard pressed to call that a cannon, more like a rocket launch platform.

It's a unit rocket pod cannon launcher

I like the think of it as long range strategic artillery

aka UEF Mavor

Prettymuch this. A cannon provides propulsion for the item being shot. If it fires something that has it's own propulsion, it's not a cannon. It's simply a launch platform at that point. Could be a railgun-style launcher, but it's still a launcher, not a cannon.

Nonetheless, still excited to see this. Hoping to see different mechanics based on planet atmosphere.

Hey guys! Okay, lemme' try and answer these in the order they come in.

Right now, units that aren't on the ground and aren't in orbit are considered to be in the air layer. Therefore, anti-air weaponry can fire on a unit while in transit from the unit cannon. However, they fly at a much higher altitude that's out of any AA unit's range until they're reaching their destination, at which point they come crashing down and all the missiles come loose. This has the side-effect of creating these really cool scenes where you'll have flak and missiles flying at slammers and slammers returning fire while falling from the sky. You have a very limited window to hit incoming units with AA before they hit the ground, so don't neglect your ground defenses where you expect to get hit by unit cannon drops.

Right now, while a unit is in transit between planets, they'll show up on orbital radar. While they're travelling over a planet, however, they'll show up on regular radar and you'll be able to see them flying overhead if you have vision on where they're flying.

You can only queue a unit cannon to continuously build units. It will build units until there are 12 in its queue and then wait for your order to fire, much like nukes. When you tell the unit cannon to fire, it will fire all of the units it has available in one volley.

The units are effectively riding on rockets, so they will have pinpoint accuracy. However, Vanguards cannot be built and launched by the unit cannon. For dropping vanguards on heads, I recommend Pelicans.

Currently, the unit cannon has a metal cost of 14,400, the equivalent of three advanced bot factories, and its build arm has an economy draw of 4,050 energy and 120 metal, the equivalent of two advanced bot factories.

Anywhere in the solar system. Be afraid.

We explicitly didn't want the unit cannon to work like a transporter because the teleporter already does that, and we want the unit cannon to fulfill a distinctly different role from the teleporter.

You are correct. As of right now the unit cannon can build and fire...
Dox, Slammers, Boom Bots, Grenadiers, Bolos, Spinners, and all t1 and t2 land fabbers, including combat fabbers.

The unit cannon does not currently have full visibility to everyone like halleys and catalysts.

Any reason you chose to go full solar system rather than from planet to moon and visa versa?

Will we get a silly lore explanation for how that's possible?

First post is best post.

At the cost of three advanced factories, I don't expect to ever see this in 1v1 games. I'm not complaining about that, but is this intended?

Considering this is created for multi-planet game play I'd say we wouldn't see it in 1v1 games either way, unless we get larger 1v1 maps.

Hmm, not sure about the cost and the pinpoint accuracy. However, it's the freaking Unit Cannon, so all possible complaints I have are invalid.

Can I fire a unit cannon from one planet to the SAME planet?

Another question

From this image:

Spoiler: Unit Cannon Image

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1108094/UnitCannon.jpg

In this image I see multiple unit pods (if those are in fact unit pods). Does this mean that I will be able to build up unit pods and fire them subsequently in a form of rapid fire?