Can we make "metal spots" for jigs on Gas Giants?

Spots for jig placement would help to balance jigs immensely I'd imagine.

I was thinking more of an "Area build" type thing. Maybe a specific couple of areas, like a gas lakes kinda thing?

That would kinda make jigs = mex in space with an attached energy generator though.

It'd be better than alpha metal with an energy generator attached imho.

I think the idea of reducing the area for placing jigs to some gas rich "lakes" or "nebulas" would be quite a good idea to give the gas giants at least some strategic element to fight for.

Ehhhhhhhhhhhh...... It would feel pretty contrived... Unless maybe they added storms like Jupiter's Great Red Spot.... Maybe...

Nebulae are big clouds of space dust that don't go anywhere near planets.

BUT....SCIENCE! (fiction)

is certainly not about building scenarios that are outright ignoring known real science definitions

Actually I think jigs are fine as they are. Yes, they can be built anywhere, and you can get a f**kton of eco out of them if you're left unmolested - but the emphasis here is heavily on the 'left inmolested'. Even a small-ish force of orbital fighters can land on top of some jigs, clear out 5-10 of them, and then just bounce back to their home planet before the defence can react. They are so incredibly vulnerable to raiding that building them in large numbers needs you to completely dominate the orbital game.

If you can create and maintain large numbers of jigs uncontested, you should win anyway. Likewise, if you see your opponent throwing up jigs, just queue up some orbital fighters to land on them, make a short attack move, and then go home. Most of the time I can kill an enemy's jigs before they've paid for themselves.

I've never played a game for gas giant dominance, but I'd imagine it is rather ... dull "spam more orbital fighters". Isn't that an issue as well?

I'm aware of that. That's why I used "". I did not saw any metal planet with a giant laser floating around on the sky, yet either. Just liked the idea of reducing the amount of place where you allowed to place jigs.

Thats also not only a problem of gas giants but the entire orbital system we currently have

There is a weird synergy, because avengers are rather slow. If they get caught out of position, a much smaller force could deal serious damage.

I'd rather gas giants be something more than an "I win" button or something you can counter by throwing a handful of avengers at, or nukes.

In my experience - not exactly. Yes, orbital fighter production is a key factor, but I tend to play on systems with quite short orbital travel times - usually 2-5 planets/moons orbiting a central gas giant. This makes orbital play actually pretty exciting, as even if you're behind in fighter production you can do cool things like bait your enemy into attacking over a prepared field of Umbrellas, or bounce avenger squads around the place trying to hit your enemy where (s)he appears weakest. Controlling a gas giant is often an extremely tense and difficult part of play against an experienced and skilful opponent. When you consider that there's always a ground/eco war to be fought as well, I honestly doubt I'd be able to handle any extra unit types!

Also, as mered points out, positioning and micro can be crucial in winning large orbital engagements. Yes, there's only one unit, but there's quite a lot of tactical control needed to ensure that you use your avengers properly, and there's also quite a few other units (umbrellas, anchors, orbital factories, even nukes) that can impact on orbital play. Frankly I'm getting a heart attack thinking about some of the orbital dominance games I've played...

Edit - Iron, it's not that simple. Giants are easy to harass, but you can still defend small segments of them with strong blobs of fighters. You can even have two separate teams holding on to sectors of a GG planet, and scrambling to contain/limit each others' attempts to expand their control.

I was talking about gas giants specifically. Where you have no ground stuff to mix it up.

What silenceoftheclams said.

Originally I thought gas giants were the key to winning but the more I play, the more I think that while keeping the enemy out of there is important, YOU are much better off claiming metal elsewhere if at all possible. If you have a choice between going to the gas giant and going to any other planet with metal, take the planet. It's a hell of a lot easier to secure.

I really only aim for the gas giant if there's literally nowhere else to expand my economy into. With precise orbital insertion and those jigs being so fragile, a gas based economy is very easy to wreck.

@cola_colin

Yeah, I totally take your point there. I think I was just trying to point out that there's no such thing as an orbital-only game - though it's currently a bit too easy to fortify small planets to the point where players only have an orbital game to focus on.

jigs.....so overpowered with 36 and 9000 power + storage for such a cheap price of 3000
i remember in the old database that there was an orbital mex fabricater that had like a stat of 54 metal, oh and solar arrays doing like 20,000 power that solved so many power problems (god i loved those things) and are now worse then T2 generators in every way (health, cost, output.....although it is orbital and can move, but thats no advantage compared to what a T2 generator can do)
cant we just have an orbital metal fabricater and powerful solar arrays for SOME variety over the jig?
also i am all for features added to gas giants because right now they feel quite pointless from a gameplay perspective, you can build anywhere with just orbital tech (which is the least fleshed out(and maybe most boring) of the units) and you can build anywhere, theres no specific strategic advantage to landing on any area of the gas planet, its quite repetitive really...

I feel like the one thing missing from "pure" orbital play on gas giants is a proper feeling of positional engagement.

What if we had minefields in orbit? There's a hell of a way to make your opponent dance. A cheaper alternative to anchors, and one that doesn't directly affect the ground game - or hard turtling on the ground, as they'd be as immobile and easily avoidable as Umbrellas. You could call them... Kesslers.