Transportation

Transports are used to rapidly move ground and sea forces around the battlefield. There are two transports: Charon and Hercules. Both are constructed at the Gunship Plant. This page is about their uses and abilities. See a different page for teleportation.

Basic Commands and Abilities

Mass and Capacity

Transports can pick up and carry a single unit at a time.

Charon can carry light units while Hercules can carry any transportable unit. Transports cannot carry air units or the ship Striders: Shogun and Reef. Light units are units below 330 mass. All Striders and Commanders are heavy, as are the following units: Jack, Minotaur, Crab, Jugglenaut, Grizzly and Cyclops. A unit's transportability and mass can be viewed in an information window by Space+Clicking on the unit.

Laden transports have a speed penalty depending on the mass of their cargo. Transports receive no speed penalty for transporting units up to their own mass, otherwise, they have a speed modifier of 2*selfMass / (selfMass + cargoMass).

Loading

Transports can pick up any valid stationary unit, including stunned enemies. Transports have to physically lower themselves onto a unit to pick it up. This process can take a few seconds, depending on the target. Here are two ways to load units:

• Issue the Load command (hotkey L) to a transport to load the target unit. This command is generally available as a right-click context command. Issue an area command with Click+Drag to tell multiple transports to load a group of units
• Select a mixed selection of transports and ground units and issue the Load Selected Units command (double tap L) to have the transports load the selected units. Idle units will be loaded into the transports while units with orders will be loaded and transported to the end of their order queue.

Unloading

Transports can either carefully place their cargo on the ground or they can eject it in-flight.

• Use the Unload command (hotkey U) to unload carefully. This command can be issued in an area with Click+Drag or along a line with Alt+Click+Drag.
• Use the Eject Cargo command (hotkey D) to drop transported units. This may damage the dropped units. Transports carrying bombs draw a target on the ground based on their velocity.

Transport AI

Transport AI can be toggled with the unit AI state toggle () on transports. It has a few different aspects:

• Transports can be set to guard a factory to automatically pick up newly created units and drop them off at the end of the rally queue.
• Two queueable commands: Embark and Disembark - these commands appear on transportable land units and factories when you build your first air transport. Embark — wait for transport to pick me up. Disembark — disembark from transport.

Possible uses

1. Give bot factory waypoints through safe area next to the current battlefield.
   • Result: Units walk along these waypoints and if there are idle transports they will pick them up and transport them to their destination.
2. Give factory waypoint to ally's base entrance followed by patrol.
   • Result: Units walk there and if transport nearby it will pick it up, drop it off and the unit will start patrolling.
3. Give factory a move order near your base, Embark, then move to an impassable mountain.
   • Result: Units will emerge from factory and enter Embark mode - they will stand there and wait for transport to get them to the mountain.
4. Select crawling bombs, click to move to enemy base then click Embark.
   • Result: Bombs will stop and wait for transports, transports will carry them to enemy base.
5. Select Dantes, give them move commands across air safe areas, followed by disembark from behind the base spot and move to enemy base. Then click Embark.
   • Result: Dantes will stop and wait for transports. Transport will carry them along the waypoints to back of enemy base, unload them. From there Dantes will continue on foot.

Notes and details

• Transported called by the Embark command will return to the spot where they took unit using the same path.
• Transports might skip some units because it finds it useless to transport them. It takes several things into account - distance of transport from unit, planned unit path, unit speed, transport speed, transport land times, terrain height differences - all of this is used to estimate the "benefit" of transporting given unit with air transport. Benefit = number of seconds saved by using transporter. It only transports units if benefit is higher than 5 seconds and in order of benefit (slowest units will be transported first, fast units might be ignored completely). Exception to this is the Embark command which serves as "priority" transport - units waiting with the Embark command will be served first.

Ferry routes

Ferry routes automate transports to travel units across a set path to a destination. The UI for creating ferry routes is (by default) in the upper left corner bar next to retreat and repair. The symbol is a red circle with a ray pointing out of it to the right (). To create a ferry route, first left click the ferry route button, next left click the start location of your ferry route, then left click the destination. A ferry route does not have to be just a straight line, the path to take can twist and turn all you like by holding shift and left clicking between setting the start and destination. Your ferry route will appear as a hard red circle indicating the start and a line directing out of that circle towards the end. You can even edit your ferry route, by clicking the ferry route button, hold shift and click on anyplace you placed a start, end, or corner to select it, and then click where you want that point to be. To remove a ferry route, click the ferry route button and left click a start location.

Now that you have your ferry route, it's time to put it to use! Assign transports to the ferry route by issuing a move command into the start circle. The transtports will now stay within a short distance of the start, even if you try and move them away, waiting for units. take a unit you want to ferry, and issue a move order into the circle. Once the unit is in the circle, it will wait for a transport to pick it up and move it to the end of the ferry route. you can shift queue commands for the unit and it will follow the commands after the transport.

Potential uses for ferry routes are to move a large army around static anti-air cover to far locations, as the transports will follow the route both to and from the location. You can set your factory's way-point to the ferry route start, and units will wait for transports to ferry them.

There are a few bugs with the system, such as if you assign a transport to a ferry route one time it may be unable to ever be assigned to a different ferry route, sometimes units won't seen to call for transports when they are in the start circle. if you have a gunship plant's rally point in a ferry route, the transports will wait for transport instead of being added to the ferry route, so you need to manually move them into the circle. There seem to be cases where there are both units and transports at the start location, but the units wait for a transport that is already off on it's ferry mission to come back and pick them up, which is undesired. Somehow, units seem to wait for a transport outside the circle, and thus never get a transport to pick them up.If a unit is waiting and not picked up, it will never get assigned a wait command when issuing a move command into the circle, and if you want it to be ferried, you must manually issue a wait command on the unit while it is inside the ferry circle. If the LZ is cluttered with units at the end of the ferry, transports will get stuck and not place units down, instead just holding them hostage over the end point. All in all, while automated, ferry routes require periodical check-ups.

Notes and details

• In all of these cases transports return to the spot where they took unit using the same path.