Teleporter Alternative: The Man Canon

The canon is shaped like a standing U so you can walk onto it and there are walls on either side of you. Once you walk onto it, you get propelled in that direction. It is upgradeable like the teleporters. Level 1 shoots you so far and a level 3 shoots you the farthest. It is at a 30 degree angle, due to the fact that the sky is not endless in-game.

Advantages:
Only 1 needs to be build to transport instead of 2 like the teleporters.
No recharge time, simply step on and fly away.
Because there is only 1, less metal is needed overall. (125 to build)
Because it won't have to have part of it closer to the enemy, like regular teleporters, they are in less danger of being blown up or sapped.
There is no particle trail behind you, so enemies will not know if you recently used one.


Disadvantages:
Not as precise as a normal teleporter.
Cannon shoot people through walls or indoors (unless shot through a window or something) unlike teleporters than can be placed anywhere.
You are more vulnerable when in mid-air for obvious reasons.
They are easier to track down, due to seeing players flying across the map.
There is a possibility of fall damage.

Quote:
Do you mean it can shoot people through obstacles, or did you mean to say "Cannot"?

If it's not supposed to go through obstacles, how effective would that be? A straight shot across many maps would likely involve travelling above/through buildings. And what happens if you were to land on a roof that was previously inaccessible? The code is probably there already to make those roofs inaccessible, and it would require updates to all maps to allow that functionality, unless Valve still wanted to keep them off limits. And then that brings up the feasibility of traveling over the tall buildings again.

I think it's a cool idea and a bit different, but it would need definite tweaking in order to be feasible.

Great idea. But after the visual style of TF2... it should be an actual cannon. That you get into. Then it fires you.

When I first read the title, I thought this was an implementation of the gun trainRiderJ described in that demoman grenade-launcher alternative forum.

Now, THAT would be sweet.

nice idea, but unless the map is straight and open, you would run into more obstacles and geography of the map than its worth

As far as the spelling mistake, I meant that it cannot travel through walls.

I mentioned wide-open spaces would be better for the man-canon, but not so much places dustbowl 3rd cap. I just thought of something else to add.

The teleporter takes up 2 spaces in the build menu, so the man-cannon should too. One choice is a man canon that shoots you at about a 30 degree angle. The other choice is a man canon that shoots you at a 80 degree angle.

The level one 80 degree man canon would shoot you a little higher than a scout can double jump. A level two 80 degree man canon would shoot you a little higher than a crouch-rocket jump. A level three 80 degree canon shoots you a little less than twice the height of a regular rocket jump.

The level one 30 degree canon shoots you about the maximum lateral distance of a sticky jump. Level two 30 degree canon shoots you at about twice that much, level three shoots you at about three times that much.

Both would be viable. Mobility challenged classes such as the heavy would greatly benifit from this. The 80 degree man-canon would sort of give all clases a sort of rocket jump, while a 30 degree man-canon would give the slower classes a way to hit and run. Granted that you would move by too fast to make any real damage, a well placed lateral man-canon would enable the heavy to shoot his minigun while moving down a long hall or small space rather quickly. This would not be unfair to scouts, soldiers and demomen because they can jump those heights at any place they want, where the man canon is stationary.

For an idea, 80 degrees is nearly straight up, so not much distance is given, but height is. 30 degrees is just enough to clear random obstacles, though not much height is gained. In other words, you could get to the top of Gravel Pit B with a verticle man-canon, but you could only go through the window of B with a lateral man-canon.

Since there are two canons, you can build both if you want to. This could be very interesting if used right. For instance, last cap, stage three dustbowl. Build a lateral to shoot you down the hall before the bridge at last cap. At the end of that hallway, build a verticle. Send a demoman and a soldier in to literally, rain down the explosives. In fact, because there is no recharge time, all of the team could go soldier or demo, and all be propelled into the air at the same time. This tactic would blot out the sun with explosives, and be a great way to break up stale mates. Plus it would be funny as hell.

 Yes a good idea, and I like it a lot. But it would seriously unbalance classes like soldier and demos, who rely on getting to places that are inaccessible to the other classes.

well, i know your mom enjoys MY man-cannon

HA! but seriously, instead of having 2 cannons, how about you just have one, and once you're inside you can aim that cannon, and launch yourself wherever you want.

On one of the newer versions of the Convoy map (I think thats what it's called)
there are some quake style launch ramps that do the same thaing as this man cannon does.
they work quite well just run over them and they launch you over the gap.