Transportation

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Transports are used to rapidly move ground and sea forces around the battlefield. There are two transports, Charon and Hercules, and 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

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

Mass and Capacity

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 those with at most 330 mass. All Striders and Commanders are heavy, as are the following units: Jack, Minotaur, Crab, Jugglenaut, Grizzly and Cyclopse. A units transportability and mass can be viewed in an information window by Space+Clicking 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 enemies. Move your units around if enemy transports are swooping in to steal them. 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 (hotkey U) command 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 (hotkey D) command to drop transported units. This may damage the dropped units. Transports carrying bombs draw a target on the ground based on their velocity.

Routes and Assist