Unit Cannon: Design Vision

Gate invasions should be basically impossible, it's a weird mechanic. Transports and UC should be for the early assaults. Teleporters should be for after you've already set up a front on the enemy planet.

disagreed ... transports are there to bring things from point
a to b and shouldn't rely on forward bases to be there ..
the telegates are already fragile enough in needing exitgates that can be easily dispatched .. were transports and the unitcannon doesn't ...

Expanding via gates is really really silly to begin with, thats what the orbital transports for.

And gate invasion can only realistically take place after a beach head has been established, rather then the micro apm lay right now of insta building gates on enemy worlds and bum rushing an army though.

And they should be a costly investment, they are stargates, not T1 radar.

Unit cannons serve as the vanguard force along with orbital transports to allow gates to be constructed after they have cleared the path.

Gates are hellishly powerful and absolutely should not be T1 let alone be cheap.

That's the point, they should be fragile; they shouldn't be for early attacks. Something that requires an exit gate and is so cumbersome makes no sense to use offensively anyway. They should be to rapidly move units across the solar system either for economic or militaristic uses after a set base has been brought up.

they are as powerfull as they are fragile and you need a frontlinefabber of any kind to build it in the first place anyway ... unitcannons can stay on your main were your enemy will have a hard time reaching them

@squishypon3

it totaly makes sense to use them offensively because of the ammount of time saved and units being brought in at a time ... the expense is high energy drain and being totaly static ...

If you insta-build one you can still get a hundred units out, that's just a dumb mechanic in my honest opinion.

and that is only IF you manage to instabuild it AND keeping your power up ... how many times does that happen?

A lot actually... It should be impossible. If you're now arguing that it's very difficult to do so then you now understand the failure in it's concept. It has a end gate, the fact it has that second gate makes it silly as an invasion tool.

The teleporter's mechanics are broken, anything that can jump from UP to OP easily is broken.

no it absolutly isn't ... otherwise you could say setting up proxypylons is silly or setting up proxynydus .. you want to close the gap your units need to get to the enemy frontline as small as nessesary ...

Wat? If that's something from Starcraft- I don't play Starcraft.

Teleporters as your first means of assault is a broken mechanic.

The fact transports aren't better than teleporter's as a first means of assault and or expansion is because of bad balance and missing mechanics. Again we need multi-unit transports for orbital so that teleporter's can actually fit into a proper role, same with the unit cannon.

of course we need multiunit transports because they provide flexibilty while being on the enemy planet .. again teleports are static units can only travel to two destinations ... the unitcannon while being able to go anywhere is only useable once ... however telegates are simply superior over any of them regarding time ... and time matters especialy a lot in a realtimestrategygame ...

And how is that a bad thing? That flexibility is out of proportion for the price.

You are also missing the main issue with planetary invasion, and that is that it is way too easy to turtle an entire planet, respectively that with the planet sizes currently feasible, the response times for air and alike are just way too low. It would be a different thing if you could just choose a remote location to build your beachhead / proxy base, but there are just no regions "remote enough" for that to work on the standard sized planets.

Feels pretty much like you got carried away with the idea of being able to deploy portals right on the front lines. Under that premise, a Unit Cannon is indeed entirely useless and obsolete.

By which the only way to attack a fortified planet is hundreds of single unit transports or be lucky enough to insta-build a teleporter and stream out one hundred units as quickly as possible, which is just bad and cumbersome design.

nope it is not .. the unitcannon itself can stay at home you can have a number of them launching units torwards a planet as such units once launched by the unitcannon will be ALWAYS transported no matter if they are shotdown in the process ... the telegates only deliver if they are online the whole way through once the exit is destroyed you cant send anything ... there are a number of things you can do with telegates that make it flexible the telegates themselfes however arent flexible at all .. they are totaly static ... a gate once build cant be corrected in its destination ...
the unitcannon can go to any direction but only one time and can not be changed midflight, transports can go anywhere and change direction midflight anywhere at anytime multiple times ...

I don't see why the teleporter needs to be changed for the unit canon.
Each has their own advantages and disadvantages.

If the teleporter is as bad as you imply why would you want it to be for offensive use anyway?

The teleporter can jump from OP to UP through changes in circumstances. It should be good at its role, not terrible or amazing depending on circumstances!

It should have a different role, a role that actually makes sense for its mechanics. It should be moderately expensive and have a good amount of health. It should be for bases previously set up. Nobody should have to use a teleporter, a building for moving a massive amounts of units quickly, for their very first assault or expansion. That's what transports and the unit cannon should be for.

Because the teleporter has been broken ever since it's first implementation; the unit cannon just solidifies that.

That's what you as a player want. But it's not what you want in the design of the game dynamics.

You don't want omnipresence of units to be possible, because that invalidates the principles of land control on a larger scale. And that's just what you get with the way Teleporters work right now, at least if you are smart in how you use them. (Are you?)

Not entirely true. Using a transport vs using a orbital/air fabber gives you the same flexibility. Given the negligible cost for Teleporters, placing them on demand with the intention of having spare ones on standby is actually the smarter choice. Teleporters only act as static as you depict them if you don't ever re-link them or try to keep them powered up permanently.

Is that a suggestion? Doesn't exactly work with the current numbers yet. It only requires you to deploy proxy fabbers to the location of pre-placed portals with the intention of establishing new bridges on the fly. Possible if you have good reflexes, actually ONLY possible if you are a fast clicker (since you need to have the new portal up before incoming forces can take down the fabber) which makes it a rather ugly mechanic. And only leads to a landscape paved with portals.

@exterminans

the difference between fabbers and transports however is that fabbers while building the teleporter are immobile and as such vulnerable a transport can be built at home and while limited in capacity can go anywhere and is mostly vulnerable in the landing/launching prozess
the unitcannon itself isnt vulnerable at all actualy for when you have it in your base only its capsules but those are easily replenishable ... transports too are fairly easily replenishable ... gates in comparison are not as you would to always get your builder to the destination first before you can built it ... also any gate that isnt actively used can be considered wasted metal by the time being ..
unitcannons can always be used, transports can always be used as their directions can be changed in destination
while gates can go only to 2 fixed destinations at any time and as such both destinations becoming redundand regarding the situation ...

@squishypon3

it can be both used for base logistics and offensive attacks .. if it wouldn't be usefull for offensive attacks then there would be not even a reason at all to have in higher tiers ..
the biggest reason to use it offensively again is because you want to save traveltime it is however riskier to built a proxygate than to build a unitcannon or transports which is a reason to have it in lower tiers ..

one note though i wonder if the pelican shouldnt be tier one again .. because seriously it doesn't get used at all ...
or does it?