What is the ACTUAL problem with the unit canon?

The unit canon was postponed several times now, due to some "technical limitations".

But I was unable to find any clue what the actual issue could possibly be?

The engine appear to support:

• Using units as ammunition
• Loading units into other units (might not have been combined with previous feature yet)
• Load/unload commands

What the engine possibly lacks:

• "Ferry" syntax for repeatable load/unload operations (Actually partly supported, remember how portals work!)

And problems with the art style:

• There is no visible entry for the unit canon, since apparently the entire model is supposed to rotate.

From a naive point of view, the unit canon actually looks quite simple:

1. Load unit from entry point into unit canon to ammunition bone
   
2. Use loaded unit as ammunition
3. Pack loaded unit into "shell" unit with unit as cargo
4. Fire shell at target location
   
5. Unload unit on impact event

So what is actually causing the problems with unit canon? Any dev care to elaborate?

Oh boy... You had to ask. I might write up a lengthy post later but right now I'm too lazy.

I know that it isn't built in yet, but I don't see any hard technical limitations either. To me it only sounds like some of the systems haven't been properly unified yet. A tiny bit of scripting on top of it, and that seems to be about it.

Well I know of some things currently not in the engine that cause it to not be possible. Stuart tried to see how far he could get at some point.

The unit cannon is difficult because of many reasons, some off of the top of my head are:

1: Units cannot be loaded into the cannon.
1(b): The unit cannon may have to be used as a factory.
2: Units cannot be then put into a pod within the cannon.
2(b): Units from the factory creation must be loaded onto a pod. (This can be fixed by making the factory fabricate pods that are prematurely filled with units.
3: The unit cannon's pods must be able to be aimed somewhat correctly with the cannon to not need thrusters.
3(b): The pods on the unit cannon must have thrusters, meaning the unit "cannon" is no longer a cannon- but a rocket launching platorm.
4: These pods must have to know when to eject units.
4(b): The pod must self destruct once it hits the ground and eject units.
5: We need a unit capable of slowly descending down between layers and ultimately become a dox when on the ground.

Many fixes go against how the trailer portrayed it which a lot of people seem to be against. As they just love to cite the trailer.

That has never been the case. The issue was (and still is) that it would take a huge amount of time from some of the more experienced devs to implement. Uber made a choice between the unit cannon, or a host of fixes/improvements.

I'd suggest this sort of thing is best asked after release, whenever that might be. I'm doubtful as to whether Uber will be able to give you a proper response beforehand because they seem to be very much in crunch mode right now, which means the more technical members of the team are likely all hunched in front of text editors for extended periods of time while slurping on energy drinks.

I still dunno why y'all are so obsessed with it.

Honestly I don't know. Then again I'm not a professional games developer and I struggle to get more than 20 objects on a screen without my code causing the system to slow right down. I would dearly love the unit cannon to be implemented but you have to remember that it would also need a counter or you could shoot vanguards straight into an enemy base.
Also I guess I'll post this image again:

Because it's awesome. Also, Uber themselves have admitted that interplanetary can get a little stale, and the UC would be a great way to add some more variety.

We all know when it first gets implemented everyone's going to hate it and say it's done wrong. X3

I don't know about anyone else but at least for me, ever since I saw the trailer on kick-starter the number 1 thing I've been waiting for is the unit cannon ... I've been here since Alpha ... lol, figures. I gave up by Omega, now, I check in a few time a week to see if it is updated, but I mostly just play other games till this is done.

And that is the forum meta, new patch>discover new meta>call op on said new unit/change>repeat

I'm telling you this happens all the time, which is good because that means there is feedback to feed the devs with ideas.

I just want to know why people consistently keep saying the word "meta" when refering to certain things. I need some help. What the hell does "discover new meta" mean? We discover a second reality within our own?

Well, hooks for units entering a certain location do exist - portals are already using them.

Yes, this is a bit tricky. It requires the loaded unit to be attached as cargo to the projectile. Not impossible though.

It's going to need "thrusters" anyway, remember that the unit canon was supposed to fire interplanetary. Kinetic trajectory only works on-planet.

Guess how nukes etc. work? Events which are triggered on collision do exist already.

Who said anything about slow descent? A shell is basically the same as an transporter like the Astreus - except that it is not manually steerable, faster to drop and auto-unload and auto-destruct on touchdown.

Sort of. It's the thing within it. Like there's a point to the forums outside complaining about an OP feature but the meta of the forum is... complaining about an OP feature.

Example: Galactic war is a metagame, it's a roguelike game within the base of PA.

What squishy is trying to say is that there are multiple coding and animations the devs must do until they are happy with the Unit Cannon however, due to budget and time they simply need to focus on other important parts of the game which will help complete the game's promised features

Watch the trailer again, jetpack bots.

Also a nuke explodes when it hits the ground, if the ground drop pod is implemented then the explosion will need to trigger the creation of a unit. So far this isn't possible.

"meta" refers to certain aspects of the gameplay which implicitly defer from more basic features. E.g. eco management as a result of all the units using and producing resources, or hybrid army compositions with great synergy effetcs based on raw unit stats.

All the stuff which isn't directly obvious when looking at the raw stats, but which can be considered valuable knowledge when it comes to playing the game competitively.

It just seems an oddly small and specific thing to focus so much over-hype and burning, lustful desire for.

I agree with @exterminans most of these features are already in the game, why can't they combine things to make it work? I've modded well, pretty much every game I have in some way, sometimes in big ways, sometimes in smaller ways, and to me it seems that so many other games are more flexible than PA.