DrNick has been kind enough to take up development on this mod! You can follow his versions here.

Quantum Gate Teleporters V1.0

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Description:
Inspired by Neruz's Quantum Gate Teleporter mod, here is my version, coded from the ground up for FA. I know his works with FA, but I wasn't aware of that when I wrote mine. Neruz gave me his permission to release this mod.
The premise of this mod is to make Quantum Gates usable as teleporters. To use them, set the gate's rallypoint to a location near one of your gates or an ally's gate, move units into range of the gate (indicated by the purple ring when the gate is selected), and then select the gate and hit the teleport button. All of your units and any allied units within range of the gate should be instantly teleported to the rallypoint if it was close enough to the destination gate.

Installation instructions:
Extract the QuantumGateTeleport folder from the archive to your mods folder. Activate it in the mod manager.

Conflicts:
Anything that modifies the quantum gates.

To other modders:
To make it so that these gates can teleport units to your structure, add 'GATE' to its category list. This will not allow units to teleport from your structure, but will allow the gates to teleport units to it.

Credits:
Ghaleon, for helping me get my code working.

Changes in the next version: (V1.1)
-Updated Quantum Gate descriptions to describe their new ability.
-Streamlined the teleport code to make changing/hooking it easier for me and other modders.

Quantum Gate Terminals V0.5

Download

Description:
Increases the base cost of Quantum Gates and adds in a new structure: The Quantum Gate Terminal. The terminal can receive units from a gate, but cannot send them anywhere.

Requirements:
Quantum Gate Teleporters (above)

Installation instructions:
Extract the QuantumGateTerminals folder from the archive to your mods folder. Activate it in the mod manager.

Conflicts:
Anything that modifies the quantum gates.

Known Issues:
-Because of sloppy coding on my part, the file download is bigger than it needs to be. Also, any mods that adjust the cost, build rate, or build time of quantum gates might have issues. Mods that adjust what gates can build may have issues.
-There are no build icons for the terminals.
-Terminals use the T2 power generator model of their respective faction.

Changes in the next version: (V0.6)
-Cleaner code to improve compatibility with other mods.
-Fix for terminal collision box and selection box size.
-Minor cosmetic fix for the Seraphim Terminal's lifebar.

Sounds interesting, but does it work with experimentals, and how much does transportation cost? If the answers are yes and not much, respectively, I could see someone using this to gate three Colossi on top of someone's head. They'd just have to cause a diversion on one side of their base while teleporting an SCU a little ways out on the opposite side.

Except that you can't teleport to anywhere, just to your other Gate(s) or an ally's Gate(s).

Mike

But nothing stops someone from building a gate anywhere they want, that's what the SCU in my poorly described example is for. I don't know offhand how quickly two SCUs with rapid fab could put down a t2 shield and a gateway, but I bet it's pretty fast.

I looked at the old mod though, and that sort of thing sounds incredibly risky if this new version incorporates things such as destruction of the network when one gate dies, destruction of anything in transit when the network dies, and similar energy costs,

If someone puts a gateway down in your base, you've already lost.

Yes, but if you teleport two rapidfab subcommanders to the far side of their base, outside pd range, they can build a gateway in a bit over 16 seconds. If you put up a good distraction elsewhere and they don't have planes handy, it could work. It would be incredibly risky, but it could work

Theorizing aside, I just want to know the details of how this works (such as energy cost, time to transport, what happens when a gate dies).

Ah, you posted at the same time I edited. Gotcha.

If they get that to work they deserve to win.

Anyways, experimentals can be transported, and there is no teleportation cost.

Personally, I like the other mod better where units have to actually walk into the gate to be teleported and it's pretty much 1 at a time if I recall correctly. I will give yours a try though.

I think there should be a teleportation cost... something like 1000 energy for each T1 unit, 2500 for each T2, 5000 for T3, and 10,000 for experimentals.

Play with BlackOps and use our Anti-teleport Towers.

EDIT: Actually now I'm curious, Moolio woud a BlackOps AT tower stop Gates from Teleporting too?

Mike

i agree that there should be SOME sort of teleport cost, but what going for is a bit much. if anything it should be about half of what your suggesting.


edit: only 1 way to find out about that mike ;p

Couldn't the Teleport cost be based on the unit's E cost? So it takes half the units Base E cost to teleport it or something like that?

Mike

I guess I could add an energy cost. I don't really see the need, though, because by the time you get to the stage where you are using gates, you already have a ton of power.

And the Blackops scripts shouldn't affect this unless they modified the Warp(unit, location, orientation) function.

As best as I can tell, this works fine with BO. AT fields don't seem to affect the gates at all, I transported a Scorpion (custom unit) and it went through, and the gateway still works as a factory.

Good to know.

Anyways, how would everyone feel about a unit that functioned as a mobile receiver for teleported units? As in, you could teleport to it, but you couldn't teleport from it.

could work, but then i foresee problems of this gettin abused and it becoming OP(somewhat)

Any kind of speedy movement will be abused, balancing is a pain, too.
make it too expensive and noone will use it, though with just energy costs, Aeon probably could.

If you've fun doing such a unit I'd go for it, in the end it is about having fun doing this kind of thing.

Well, yeah, balancing would be hard, but it always is. I think I'll try the concept out.

Instead of balancing primarily costs, try through how it is used.

Something that can't be transported (this prevents drops in someone's base), fairly slow moving and low to medium HPs (makes it harder to rush them in unsupported), and perhaps some kind of a cool down on the receiving time (so multiple gates can't be set up to transmit almost simultaneously to it).

Just some thoughts/ideas.

One aspect could be to add some sort of penalty for using it; The benefit of teleporting units would be that you move them great distances at speed, but they take slight damage from doing so.

Just pitching in with an idea.

Seems pointless- it would be faster to put an engineer in a transport and fly it to where you needed a gate.



That could work if it turns out to be overpowered.

One idea I am considering is allowing for your enemies to gate to your mobile gates as well, so if you scout properly you can just send a force directly to the enemy army. A surprise attack of 20 strat bombers teleporting inside of your army would be pretty funny.

The only problem I see with this is the enemy might constantly teleport to your factories, but that could be solved by requiring that the unit be activated manually before you could teleport to it.

Indeed, so perhaps you'd want a new building type as well. Like a teleport blocker. While you can't teleport out of the area of influence no one else could teleport in either. Could be fun.

Another thing I was wondering, is it possible to make buildings garrisonable? If so it would make an excellent teleporting structure where you simply teleport the units inside it. If it's possible, that is.

You could probably abuse the transport system with some scripting to make a sort of "garrisonable" structure, but I'm not all that interested in doing that.

BlackOps currently has a teleport blocker, and I could probably release a mod dependent on this one and BlackOps that allowed their AT Towers to affect QGates and mobile receivers. I don't plan on releasing my own AT Towers, though, because I think the the activation method is a better alternative since I like how QGates can get around those pesky BlackOps AT Towers.

Alright, an idea just popped into my head. I think it could be balanced, interesting, and help make this mod more different from the older QGate teleport mod.

Quantum Gates become a lot more expensive- 10,000 mass/200,000 energy. That's less than a Monkeylord (16,000 mass/200,000 energy) but is still quite a bit. Here's where it gets interesting: while Quantum Gates can still teleport to each other, the main in-the-field receiver for teleported units would be a new unit called a Terminal. Terminals would only be able to receive units, but not send units, much like the mobile receivers I was talking about earlier. Terminals would not be very expensive, because QGates are a moderately expensive initial investment.

Naturally, if you had two bases, it might be a good idea to build a gate in each to send things back and forth, but for a forward artillery outpost or something similar, a cheaper, weaker Terminal might suffice. You wouldn't be able to have your units flee from the base, but you could always send more stuff there.

Mobile Terminals might be included, but I think for balance reasons having only structure versions of Terminals would be better. What do you guys think?

Just from a BlackOps perspective, I don't like the sounds of the suggested QGate prices mainly do to how we've got them setup ourselves, maybe if you just made new Qgates instead? I dunno.

From a Non-BlackOps perspective I don't mind the changes, Normally QGates aren't used for much if anything normally so I'd be nice for it to have a good use.

Mike

Making a new structure to be the sending gate sounds good. That wouldn't mess with any mods, and it wouldn't force someone to spend an extra 6k if they want a second gate to bring in subcommanders.

The proposed node cost would keep the system from being "abused" too much, but what do you have in mind for the terminal's buildtime and cost?

Not sure what I think about a mobile terminal though. It seems it would be waaay too easy for someone to send ten Continentals at someone's base, each with a terminal in it. Having thirty Perceivals and a Goliath in the middle of my base because I can only shoot down 9 Continentals at a time would be pretty irritating.