unit cannon?

it would be cool if the unit cannon sort of had a life of its own and fired the units we loaded at a nearby facing planet automaticly without needing annoying micro to work it, and have the units enter WAY SPREAD OUT so you can like find a beachhead to go after

Instead of a Unit cannon can we not just have an orbital teleport? Plonk it in orbit and let units run in from a normal teleport and then rain down on the planet below the orbital teleport?

Also if air craft could go through teleports as well that would make me a happy camper!

The biggest glaring issue with interplanetary gameplay is the time it takes, the number of things I need to build and clicks required to activate and accomplish an interplanetary invasion.

who cares if you don't need it its still fun to have.
I don't don't want to hear I don't need it put it in.
Unit cannon can be used for bombarding a planet with units instead of a teleporter.
or another way to move units

Any time you ask a questions, "when will X" – the answer is "soon" – always.

I think the Unit cannon can be essential in long games and are way more fun than just building nukes anti nukes and Umbrellas. Too bad the DEVs have an other opinion on that but I respect that.

We have so many new viable options for invasion now, what with massed astreus drops, anchor bombardment, teleporters, unlimited range nukes, the speed of travel between planets. The unit cannon certainly isn't 'essential' at this point.

Only because all those things you listed ended up being designed in such a way to compensate for the lack of a unit cannon, and really, none of them truly compare to the potential the unit cannon had IMO.

Mike

I allways imagine the late game would be filled with endless asteroid smashing and moveabel deathstars.
"A planet" "A Fortress" and u can fill that Planet with whatever you want!

So my question: Why do we even need a thing that shoots units

I'm surprised it's seen as "not a priority" because it was one of the features I was extremely excited for.

Me too it looked really cool.

I feel like teleporters are the easy way out.

It is still very much a thing. The reason for it being low priority is that...

1: the coding work required is complex, yet the features it adds aren't shared with any other roles so it's high work for low gain.

2: things like single player are more critical to get the game to an official release state.

3: there are lots of other cool things in the game that are fun, however theses, as well as stability and performance all need more love at this stage.

Point is I think in practical terms they're not in a good position to deal with it yet. It is something on the hit list and something I am looking forward to though

It's not really a fair claim, Teleporters might be easier to implement but I still feel they would be a valuable tool even if we DID have the unit cannon. The thing is that trying to make any single thing do all related elements of it's job isn't great in terms of gameplay. Unit Cannons would be great to have but if it was ALL we had they'd be just as "awkward" as teleporters are now, just in different ciurcumstances.

Ideally they would complement each other, the Unit cannons are great for establishing footholds on enemy works and as a "quick reaction force" while teleporters would be great for moving units around your own controlled worlds, even helping to supply units to Unit Cannons in addition to factories on the Asteroid and such.

Mike

"i take control of a moon...make it where nothing can even enter its orbit! i spam Unit cannons all over it put thrustres on the planet then i line up my shot...*Commander destroyed*"

One thing that concerns me is if, upon release, there's backlash from people going 'where's that cannon I saw?'. Though it might be coming post-release, that matters little to average people who are going to give a game a brief window to impress them and then move on.

I think a prudent measure would be to push hard to get at least one 'post 1.0' feature done and then hold it for a post-release content update very shortly after launch (one or two weeks) to cement the idea that there's more coming. Or have a 'News' section on the menu that details what's coming down the pipeline in an eye-catching and exciting fashion.

You can say 'it's coming soon!' but to most people, talk like that is cheap and we can all regale tales of times we've been told by other developers that something is coming and yet it never does...

So what's the point in investing so much time in making the Unit Cannon useless, if it has to be added later on, with more work to re-balance the whole game, once again?

Just asking...

...it seems to me that the impossible has been done to find the way to avoid the Unit Cannon altogether, and still planetary invasions are broken. But is wasn't that difficult to imagine that it would have come this way.

Invasions are really easy, easier then they have ever been.

What needs to change is the way we treat and use the orbital transport, from being a unit, to being a function of the orbital launcher to unit-rocket to enemy planets.