Unit Cannon: Design Vision

Time division multiplexing isn't a term you ever heard of, is it? While it is technically true that only two portals can be linked together at a time, you will often only need the link for mere seconds to transfer an entire army. So you can switch to the next source portal right away and gain a virtually constant stream at the target portal (respectively the source portal if you are switching target portals instead).

Now also realize that all your portals form a fully meshed network. You don't actually need a central hub (even though I have seen many players making that mistake), but you can effectively treat every single portal as if it were linked to every other portal at the same time, meaning that all locations which have a portal converge in a common point in terms of deployment.

Also, both the Unit Cannon and transports are vulnerable in the same way since they pass through the air layer for a decent while. Not a total loss of the base structure (air factory, orbital launcher, orbital factory, Unit Cannon), but you are still having the risk of loosing the cargo before it reaches its destination.
In some way, the portal is even more flexible than both the Unit Cannon AND transports together, since the initial approach, selecting the final destination, and the actual deployment are not tied together. You can easily send fabbers to more than one location, deploy more than one portal, and even postpone construction / gathering of the units to send until long after launch, plus you get the ability to choose the actual target until right before actually deploying the units.

you may have the risk of losing the cargo but at least you got the chance of sending it .. with gates depending on the situation you may have no chance to send them anywere at all ..
and no you cant threat portals as if they were all always linked because they arent and you have to relink them in order to change destination between multiple portals ...

when and exactly were you deploy your gates doesnt matter .. the point is once it IS deployed it is deployed .. as such you have to be carefull with that ...

You can, because their capacity is several magnitudes higher than what you would need in any non-artificial scenario, so you can apply multiplexing principles and thereby abstract them into a single, star shaped graph with homogeneous flow capacities on all edges. Relinking is required, but when planing your movement you can treat portals as if they were always linked to every other portal at the same time, you only need to deal respect to the hard flow capacities of more frequented portals.

Yeah I love the fact enemies can use your own teleporter against you by sending their units through !

It is actually kinda stupid as it is. I mean a player should just always disable the teleporter or relink it if that happens.
It might actually be more interesting if teleporters would be "fixed". As in you build them, link them once and from there on you can't disable them or relink them.

if you are the one who has control and the power to run that gateway you should also be able to turn it off ...
so no to your suggestion ...

Uber: promote this everywhere. Steam, Kickstarter, Facebook, everything. Heck, make an entire Unit Cannon trailer. This is a feature a ton of people have been waiting for and they need to know about it.

Video content is the best way to promote stuff like this, indeed! Everybody scrolls past static stuff

They are NOT fragile. they have 9750 HP for 400 metal! You can build them in a matter of seconds, and all you need to do is assign a command group to the teleporter in your base making relinking take half a second. Now, when they destroy your first teleporter after you streamed 50 units through and blew up a bunch of their defenders you can quickly build another one and immediately link it, streaming more units through, because they have less defenders!

Thiiiis!

They're under powered if you can't get one up and overpowered if you can. :l

The only thing broken about teleports to my knowledge is not being able to link up to allied teleports
And if I have to choose between teleports or a unit canon its teleport all the way

Which shouldn't be the case, it has broken mechanics at the moment. It's either UP or OP depending on rapid clicking ability (to speed build)

The fact it's more viable as an assault tool than transports is just.. backwards.

Thats an interesting idea. It would certainly force youto think about what you're doing with teleporters.

I'm interested in seeing this in the PTE WITH teleporters available. I'm sure that if Uber sees that nobody uses it, after they put so much effort into it, they'll change something. Personally, I think that teleporters are very wonky, but it's hard to call something OP that doesn't even always work when it's the only reasonable option.

Then if you destroy one, the other end should also blow up ;P

Nuke sized. On both ends.

then buff the transports? because one sure cant invade planets with singleunittransports ...

I'm seeing a lot of people already talking about unit cannon balance but I think it was clear back on page 1 that the unit cannons wouldn't really have a place in 1v1s. It would be better to consider balance and unit role in larger team games. I saw some impressive math complete with spreadsheets earlier in the thread, but calculating all that for a 1v1 will obviously tell you not to build a unit cannon. What about a 3v3 with lots of little moons?

As to the teleporter: this balance discussion really belongs in its own thread. The teleporter hasn't changed at all with the announcement of the unit cannon. If you have a problem with it now, it is probably not related to this announcement.

There is a place for the UC. Comparing it on cost efectiveness against a gate is missing the point entirely. There is a *real strategic advantage* to being able to deploy ground forces anywhere you like. The tele requires a gate both ends- so you have to be able to get an orbital fabber (or ground based sent via transport) in orbit, keep it alive long enough to get the gate up, and keep the gate alive long enough to get stuff through. Now anyone who knows what they're doing does 2 things when they get control of a whole planet:

1: Put bombers on patrol over the whole planet.

2: Put Avengers on patrol over the whole planet.

As things stand your 'OP' gate is only possible if you have control over the orbital layer (and the 3 sec cool-down on orbital transfers makes that a problem). Then you still have air to deal with so you probably have to build anchors first (giving more time to defend / counter).

The gate is good early game, but gets harder and harder the longer the game goes on. THIS is where the UC will shine. Want to invade that moon that's crawling with bombers? Send a UC full of AA units and a t2 fabber to get your gate. It's much much less micro than building an orbital fabber, + fighter escort + transports for the AA units and then trying to build a gate. Clear the area first with the UC THEN gate in.

I really find it hard to fathom why everyone hates gates so much. They are a cornerstone of PA's excellent team play as it allows players to spawn across a solar system and support each other. They brake down the barriers between planets and make the pace of the orbital stage of the game quick and fun imo. I kinda get the 'theory' of why people think gate should be t2 and UC t1- but I actually think your going to make the game a lot less fun in the process.