Unit Cannon Ideas/Questions; a picture too!

Assuming they do away with asteroid/moon atmospheres eventually (eliminating air-spam), it should make invasions of those planetary bodies easier. That idea, along with the unit cannon will hopefully make a moon base or enemy planet crackable. I like the concept as it will make some portions of the solar system better targets/bases than others further adding to the planet diversity.

I also find planetary invasions fun to plan & execute. There is a lot of strategy that can play out here. Unfortunately much of this is drown out to lag by the time we reach this battle.

The issue isn't necessarily that the unit cannon will be the angel to solve our stalemate problems. It's that we don't know what a stalemate will look like late in the game, because the unit cannon hasn't been added yet.

I personally hope stalemates CAN be solved without the use of a halley moon - I like more options - maybe using a Death Star. And this is slotted to be added. Regardless, it's necessary to evaluate end-game and mid-game orbital balance.

Both myself and quite a few other more.....experienced players are concerned with the disruption this might cause AFTER release, what with the obligatory 3-4 weeks of balancing it out. I'm ok with it being finished after release if you guys ARE SURE you have a plan of action covering this event.

a mega-halley that can move any planet would solve stalemates too. Just sayin

So would blowing up the sun. Just sayin'.

And then lightning our own!

Why are people so obsessed with the unit cannon, I for one am not looking forward to it at all and rather see it go byebye. There are way better way's to move units from point A to B not to mention a unit shot away at high speed is not going to survive impact.
Unless the primary use of this canon is to pile up undesired units so fabricators can reclaim the resources kinda like your own little scrapyard in PA?

No there isn't. Teleporters, transports and walking/driving are your only options.

Did you not watch the Kickstarter trailer? The units deployed via cannon had retro-rockets.

All right. So, let me get this straight.

As soon as we will be able to spawn on different planets, we will simply go for Asteroid impacts and Planet Annihilations?

How fun... I should have seen a trailer of a different project, and supported the wrong one, then. 'cos on the trailer I did see there was much more stuff going on.



I could accept and sympathize with a lot of reasons, even the lamest, where the budget isn't enough, or that there are technical complications, and so on.

But that what you sold to people isn't a priority any longer... no. It sounds very arrogant.

So, what's going on for real?

Indeed - though even if they didn't have them I'm ok with a little creative license allowing a Warhammer 40k - style terminal velocity drop. >:3

@mered4... death star? Is that gonna be a thing? That would be an interesting thing...

Well maybe they will start the development of the Unit cannon after the release, I think thats what's going on..

What's going on is that we're entering into a polish phase for our existing features (and a few upcoming ones). The Unit Cannon is low priority at the moment.

I really hope you check out our other invasion-type features / mechanics. Dropping teleporters and busting through orbital defenses forces a lot of cool and interesting decisions on your part. Same goes for deciding whether to force new orbits or shoot for a planet smash.

they have to prioritise something, and therefore neglect others, its simple project management. the game needs a good AI to allow single player. the game needs greater stability/optimisation to allow larger and longer games. it doesn't need a unit cannon as much as the first two. We have teleporters, astreus, orbital units, nukes, and asteroids (and getting there at the same time - think orbital radar) - would one more planet cracking option really solve the end game stalemate - or would a bit of spit and polish in various areas be more useful overall.

they got it this far, and they do this for a living... I'm content to wait.

Fair enough to me - not like what we have isn't fun on its own. ^^ I can wait as well.

I know everyone has probably said everything already, but here's my two cents.
The teleporter may allow a bigger flood of death, but it's impossible to build on a planet with air units, orbital defense, nukes *or* sufficient land units. Anything can shut it down before it even comes up, so you need to have an established defense for it, but you can't do that until it's built. Transporting units with a group of Astraeus is very pricey as well (too pricey to be used for mass transporting), and not particularly effective due to anti-orbital and anti-air fire both being able to take them down.
Basically, invasions right now aren't feasible.
You can move an asteroid into orbit and nuke the planet until you can invade, but you can't get rid of the air patrol that way unless you can nuke the heart of the player's base, but then you might as well just nuke it to bits anyway (chances are you won't be able to, because they will have plenty of anti-nukes).

The only option left is throwing an asteroid/planetoid/planet, which wipes the planet. You can then race to control it once more, but that means there are no large scale invasions in the game, ever.
In my opinion, the planet smash should be a trump-card; the final stage in a failed invasion attempt, and the teleporter is not a feasible method to start your invasion.

I'm in a rush so I haven't proofread this, and I might have written something that could be incorrect, but my main point is our current tools aren't good enough.

That's more or less the consensus here - too hard to return to land battles once it's down to two players totally entrenched on two different planets. So the only viable attacks are smashing and nuking.

I have faith that a creative solution can be found, whether or not it is shaped like a unit cannon. ^^

For forcing new orbits to be useful there needs to be a way to take advantage of that (unit cannon). Nukes are another possibility but they are getting a lot of (deserved) hate at the moment. Making nukes even more essential to game play (I didn't even know it was possible)? I'm starting to think you guys have some sort of secret mega backer who is vetoing the community in favor of turning this whole game into a nuke fest

Really it doesn't because I just nuke teleporters. Ever try to get an anti-nuke down after climbing through a teleporter before they have the chance to launch 1? Your opponent must have been sleeping if you did...

Based on comments I have seen, we really REALLY need to have asteroid belts in systems.

Seems like priorities = Polish to attract more game sales > mechanics and balance to improve game backers are playing more than superficially. Uber is a business guys, and actions speak louder than words. You probably should have held out longer is what this says, cause your opinion would matter more if you hadn't already bought the game.

Im not saying a total roid focus in the mechanics wouldn't be fun.

But is a little bizarre, as all asteroids are like planets, and require a surface presence, and thus a better way of getting onto them, and fighting on them.

If moving to new planets cold be made better, or if planets below a a set size became orbital only, or orbital target-able.

The we might see the asteroids becoming much more common.

(Also want to stress having asteroid size determine how much of a planet is destroyed, as a pebble shouldn't be the same as a continent)

I wonder if some kind of Tier 2 of orbital units might not be a possible solution.

Currently what's WAY too difficult is establishing a beachhead on an entrenched planet, right? But we already have two ways to crack that open, both of which are supposedly endgame-level attacks. So we look for something a little more accessible that can attack from orbit and drop units in large, but not unreasonable numbers.

This sounds like the role an orbital shipyard might take - something that could build cruisers and carriers and dropships that are hardened, but not immune, to counter-orbital attacks. Maybe one would even mount an orbit-to-air or orbit-to-surface weapon. They would not be invulnerable to umbrellas and avengers by any means, but they'd be tough enough that it would take more than just fire-and-forget patrolling to counter them.

Eh?