Unit Cannon Ideas/Questions; a picture too!

Alrighty so I've seen a lot of ideas on making a T1 and T2 version of the unit cannon but I thought maybe I'd throw out my two cents into this mixture of ideas. IF there would be a Basic and Advanced version I think it'd be reasonable to assume the Basic version would be to volley troops over on the same planet, the second being for lobbing them from a moon to a planet.

I also have a few questions, what exactly would be the way to defend against such an assault? Would AA be able to pick off the troops, or maybe anchors could be uses to take out the pods? Or umbrellas? Basically.. what's the counter? How do you prevent an assault into the heart of your base via unit cannon? Also- what is the range of the possible Advanced Unit cannon? Would it be solely from moon to host or could it be interplanetary? What about the possible Basic Unit cannon? What would it's range be?

I'm also curious as to the way the bots are.. let go. In the trailer we see a few pods that break away into about 4 - 6 bots, each. Another question is, would these bots be a special variant of bot? An Advanced bot? Exp: https://forums.uberent.com/threads/niche-unit-jetpack-bots.56493/page-3#post-871544 Or would it simply just be given to the bots while they're landing then, poof, disappear?

Also, to the picture, I've been messing around with the models for fun so have some Unit cannon compared to some other stuff! (Warning current iteration, subject to change)

All of your questions are answered by a "we don't know."

Uber hasn't really released any details about the Uber cannon.

So... we'll see.

I'd expect that anti air structures will be able to intercept bots.

One of the few things we do know is that the cannon won't be that accurate. So it's probable best usage will be to launch units next to your opponent's base and then run them in rather than send them into the middle of the base where all of the AA is.

Since we have air transports... I doubt we'll have two kinds of Unit Cannons.

Well I honestly believe it could be possible to have two separate reasons for having a Unit cannon on a smaller scale as well as transports, the most obvious being, transports are more precise. You said it yourself, this thing will most likely be highly inaccurate. A transport however, is not. Not saying this'll happen just brainstorming ideas. Also I realize we haven't gotten any information from Uber but I thought I'd still ask also, I'd like to see other peoples views on how it should work.

Guys, I know everyone is hot on the unit cannon but it's really not a priority for us at the moment.

I'm struggling to understand why there is so much community emphasis on the important of the unit cannon. What problem do you guys think this is going to solve?

Just to be clear I'm not saying we aren't doing it, but certainly it's going to be a while before it becomes a focus.

I think the main problem we have is a stalemate that occurs when we cannot invade planets and the only way is to break their orbital defenses, build a teleporter, have it survive long enough to send units in, have it survive long enough to build AA and antinukes and then send in the thousand units we have build in the past 30 minutes instead of just nuke spamming/moon slamming. The game becomes very anticlimatic when it's just, who has the most eco to nuke/antinuke spam the hardest.

We WANT to use those thousand units we've been building for the 30 minutes. We want to see hundreds of units land on land, half of them been taken out, while the other half have to fight a massive fortress of units and turrets. It's just not happening.

Ok, so that's a different issue. People think the unit cannon will break stalemates?

Part of the issue here is that people aren't playing with enough impact moons in the system.

It's one thing to break a stalemate, it's another thing to spend 30 minutes building a giant army and then having it be completely useless. Also, it allows us to protect against smashables without having to attempt to get into their orbital and attempt to build a teleporter.

I know part of the game is to essentially be everywhere at the same time and have the right strats. If the right strats in a 5 player FFA is to get the smashable and kill off everyone fine. But there is no counter to a well fortified moon. I believe that if I had a unit cannon, I would be able to use all my units, send them to the moon, and prevent myself from being annihilated and win the game. Sure I can just nuke spam as well but it's very unsatisfying.

The Deus Ex Machina of taking planets? I just don't like the idea that all of the eggs are in that basket. That problem needs to be solved outside of just adding more units IMHO. And I'm very certain it can be.

I'm sorry if it came off as desperate. I'm more into just looking at what the community wants.. but as Midspark said I do honestly feel that a Unit cannon could be very helpful with raids on another planet, I understand it's not your top priority and I'm sorry for seemingly shoving it in your face saying "DO IT NOW" I just was interested into seeing what you all at Uber thought and what other players thought.

I think that asides from the obvious invasion benefits of the unit cannon, it's a very Iconic structure for PA, as it was pretty obvious in the concept trailer, and pretty much everyone loves it. This despite people not knowing that much about it, and the stated drawbacks that a lot of people seem to ignore/not know about. In general, a lot of people talk about/want the unit cannon because it's

Not necessarily, a well defended moon will have 1) orbital fighters, 2) orbital defense satellites, 3) T2 Air and 4) Anti-Nukes (plus orbital radar and T2 radar) before starting to build any halleys. This can be easily achieved if I prioritize building an Aestreus and then spam building orbital fighters to deny anyone access to the moon. From there, I prioritize economy, T2 Air, antinukes and then orbital. By that time, I should have the entire planet covered in T2 mexs and enoug T2 energy to start building halleys. By the 20 minute mark, I'll have the moon ready to smash the planet. All I need to do now is get an aestreus, load my commander in it, set the moon to smash and sen the aestreus towards the planet. The moon will smash before my commander gets there and I win.

How to counter this? I can either prioritize going up to the moon, build orbital fighters to deny the enemy leaving the planet, spam build orbital defense satellites (assuming that the orbital fabbers don't glitch out and stop building) or nuke spam as hard as I can. This doesn't take account anyone else on the planet that I'll have to kill off.

Even with the orbital cannon, unless I manage to launch a bunch of T1 AA and it survives going through the orbital defense and not getting shot out of the air by fighters, the T2 bombers and gunships should be able to clean up any units I sent towards the moon. It's not a guaranteed counter, but it gives me a fighting chance of denying the smash besides a nuke snipe.

Well there's little reason to believe it couldn't be balanced well, a huge thing is well.. it can only shoot from a planet orbiting a planet (or vice versa) I'm assuming, which means that the enemy can unit cannon you back. What I could see it doing is you have multiple cannons, multiple factories, pumping out bots lobbing them straight towards the enemy, the bad accuracy means forces are scattered all over the place, peppered everywhere, half the units will most likely die the other half will land, another 25% gone from defenses.. but.. once you land guess what? You can have a foothold! Now you have a chance to send in possible interplanetary transports, fabbers, build a teleporter then that's when the direct forces come in, the tanks role out through there, armies clashing defenses and ultimately a more fair fight because at the moment.. if you turtle on a moon.. the game never ends, it goes on forever, no counter it becomes a game of "who can spam more anti-nukes/nukes, bombers, fighters, etc..." a horrible stalemate that leads most people to just give up.

People are craving for more ways of deploying ground units in late game, main problem with interplanetary stalemates is that both sides had hundreds of surface units that cannot be used in combat as there is no viable way to deliver them (teleporters don't work well for assaults), unit cannon is only known coming alternative to teleporters, so that why this is so intense topic.

Unit cannon could be redundant of course if we would had other ways to do this, like space-capable drop ship or just spaceship that carry dumb, disposable "container" that could be filled on ground and then picked up by spaceship and dropped in desired place.
Other solution would be more expensive orbital teleporter that could be build on orbit and then drop it (you can set connection before drop, so it open instantly after deployment) whenever you like .

Anyway, point is that interplanetary late game should still be waged by ground units, not nukes or fleets of orbital lasers.

Especially considering how much the game slows down past the 30+ minute mark due to the sheer number of units and patrol routes. At that point, it's essentially a tie and it's best to just stop playing and start a new game since you won't get anywhere.

meh, I think pending balance, the game has enough playable options barring any situation.

nonetheless, the unit cannon is a fun idea, it really adds additional and in between options so its not necesary, but it will eventually come and will be fun. I'm not to worried, modders can do anything.

background systems and teh engine helps modders. Release starts modding. Anything else, balance and diversity and badass mechanics, could be built by dev or modder, so these "worries" are over pretty safe bets right now.

I really think the Unit cannon should have a higher priority cause right now late games where players are on different planets are tedious. Most of the time it is not possible to build a portal cause it gets instantly destroyed by catapults or air. a lot of Umbrellas makes it impossible to use the orbital laser.

The only way to win in these situations is spamming nukes. I find it real boring to have one strategy to win the game.
I also find it weird that the kickstarter video is showing a lot of the unit cannon while its not one of the main features apparently.

Why focus on social interaction before getting all the main game play features in?

I find the social interactions way less important than a stable running game with all the main game play features in it!

Here here... do not understand the rush either!

I'd much rather you sorted out area commands for nukes so I can just drag a circle over an area and my bank of 10-20 nukes will spread out over said area when they attack.

I disagree. The Unit Cannon is intended to be like an experimental unit that would be an alternate way of ending the game in a certain situation where the teleporter is not viable. Its not meant to be a band-aid patch-fix to what you see is broken in the game ( which has now been fixed to a great extent ).

Try sending in a crap load of anchors and orbital fighters ahead of your radar and lasers, and/or orbital-fabs, works wonders, will work even better once there is orbital-aa. I was dubious until I actually tried it, but it does sort of work. Still want a unit cannon though.

I just think it's wrong to blame the game because you allowed the player to build a well fortified base on another planet without following him there ASAP or capitalising on it earlier. You should have the better Eco to overwhelm him.

If he transports/builds teleporters/umbrellas catapults and has Air superiority on the whole planet you are at least 10 minutes too late to the party.

Let's learn to play the game properly before we make assumptions.