Mass Drivers and Resource Transport

Prepare for a monster post.

Saw some people have some support for this idea, and wanted to make a thread about it.
So...

There could be mass drivers that are used to transport materials from a moon to a planet, or any low-gravity object to another (i.e Asteroid). They would be caught by some sort of 'magnetic catcher' as some have suggested.

This way, materials could be transferred quickly from a moon/asteroid used specifically for resources to a place (e.g planet/moon/asteroid) that needs them .
For example, a planet may have recently been conquered and might need supplies in order to being construction. Or, a moon that has recently been under attack might need supplies desperately before another wave arrives.

Alternatively, if the mass drivers were orbital (a la Shattered Horizion's map Slingshot), they could be used to create the orbital layer of the map.

To reduce micro, they could be 2 builds (mass driver and catcher). All that is needed to be done is linking the resource-collecting machines (RCM) to the mass driver. To reduce micro again, an option could be set in-game so that any new and/or existing RCMs would automatically be sent to the mass driver (or, if the user wants to, only selected RCMs).
The transfer would only be one way, and would not be able to stop once it had been fired (until it reached its destination)

This leaves the game open to more tactics. Players could destroy the mass drivers on asteroids or moons in order to stop resource flow, or destroy a catcher and place one of their own.

What do you guys think? Is it a good idea, or is it crap?

Re: Mass Drivers

This is quite similar to the galactic gates.

Not saying that it would be bad idea, on the opposite, local economies are required for several reasons and yet there must be a way to transport resources between planets, especially close by celestial bodies like moons, BEFORE establishing a energy consuming portal network.

Re: Mass Drivers

I'm down with it. I like the current approach so far, where super high-energy tech like teleporters and quantam whatsits aren't the focus of gameplay.

The immediate question, however, is whether or not they can be weaponized - or might deal damage to your own units if the reciever misses the catch.

Re: Mass Drivers

I can see why it sounds similar to galactic gates.
However, these are still different. Unlike galactic gates, the mass drivers cannot transport units, meaning that other forms of transportation are still non-obsolete.

Whether mass drivers could be weaponized is an interesting question.
It's possible that the system might not start if there is no catcher, but any material that ends where a catcher was could just be lost.

If the mass drivers were orbital, the catchers would be needed as otherwise the material would either break upon ground impact or burn up in the atmosphere.

Re: Mass Drivers

EDIT: No need to post about a bad idea. I noticed that there are people who don't like having to post about poll ideas all the time, considering so many are 'bad' in their eyes.

Overall im (violently) opposed to micro/multiple economies. One thing I did like though was the idea that you had to build a collector on a planet/moon before you could mine it's asteroids. That collector would (at least visually) receive mass from mass extractors on asteroids, which would be high-tech catapaults.


Quick pro's and con's:

Pro - Adds a point of vulnerability to off-planet economy. Allows land/naval/air units to damage part of the economy that would otherwise be space vs space only.

Pro - Should shut up the people crying about the realism of a singular economy.

Pro - Looks cool.

Con - One more building to build

Con - Micromanagement (personally i would negate this by making the asteroid extractors just automatically shoot to a collector if you have one, no config required)

Agreed! and I have voted for this idea...

I like the concept of a mass driver that transfers mass between planets, and as for storage one thing to consider is that in TA you always began a map with your commander, which had their own storage. Extending this concept to the Engineers at a smaller storage value would be a natural way to take care of that initially. After or while establishing a base, mass storage could be built.

A refinement to the idea of using a cannon and orbital unit to catch the slugs from a mass launcher could be in the form of several features of a mass cannon:

1) Build menu, with several mass "options", and an infinite queue toggle.
2) Included in the build menu is the catcher which will be fired to a target planet
3) This catcher is still an orbital unit, but now it is part of a binary setup
4) Alignment laser from the cannon lets people visually identify a mass trajectory lane
5) Catcher deconstructs the slugs in a metal reclaim process and into storage if available
6) Unit captures apply here, so if an enemy captures the catcher, they get the spoils
7) Initial and Return alignment / guidance lasers are faction color coded.
8) Uncaught mass could be weaponized or at least turned into reclaimable surface wreckage

Having multiple Mass economies needn't necessarily mean more micro management, if automation were set up via infinite queue, and if I hear correctly, players will only be worrying about one solar system at a time.

What about the possibility of managing at least several systems at once (Why not managing regions of several solar systems)? If the scale of the galaxy is what we saw, that's alot of solar systems to take over one by one (and having to come up with a cool entry / exit method between them).