Shameless Self-Advertising (Orbital Warfare Overhaul Mod)

Have you ever been bored to death by the stalemate that happens late in multi-planet games? Have you ever hated the avengers and anchors only state of orbital combat? Are you consistently frustrated by the lack of ways to crack open a planet?

If you answered yes to any of these, then BOY do I have a MOD FOR YOU!

It's the ORBITAL WARFARE OVERHAUL MOD!!!1!



But is it balanced in a way that there is no overpowered units? Is a question you might ask...

And in response, I give you a resounding NOPE!

We just released our first ALPHA build, and we're looking to YOU the community to tell is where we dun goofed. So not only do you get to play an AMAZING new mod, but you get to help us balance it as well!

So get the PA Mod Manager, this lovely program here: https://forums.uberent.com/threads/rel-pa-mod-manager-cross-platform.59992/

Download our mod (It's under server mods, and if It doesn't automatically download our client mod, download that one too!)

And play it with your friends! Destroy each other! Find shamelessly unbalanced strategies! Ruin friendships! Just remember tell us about it afterwards!

Have fun!

CURRENTLY ONLY WORKS 100% in PTE. if you want to avoid crashes, don't build unit cannons.

Video anytime soon?

Yesss...

@ZaphodX can we please get a special series of casts showcasing the new mods? Orbital overhaul, bomb-bot wars, and energy wars would all be great as they showcase the new rescaling and other features in the mod scene. This could revive a lot of interest I think.

Also can we get a screenshot of these orbiting a planet, fighting on a gas planet, etc

Not from me. My laptop doesn't like the recording software...

I'll see what I can do.

Everyone needs to try this out. It's awesome.

Add a metal planet in your system with the annihilazer and no more boring end game stalemates!
If the planet is blown into tiny bits technically you have "cracked open a planet"

shush you.

Orbital interaction from the land layer is sort of important. Got any land/air to orbital units?

We do indeed. The bluehawk, stingray and the catapult can both shoot orbital. The hornet used to as well, but we took that out because it looked weird. I might end up adding it back temporarily as a balance measure, but ultimately we want to add the peregrine back as an atmospheric/orbital fighter that cannot travel between planets.

How does the AI fare?

Do they join in on the space warz?

A bit, still working on figuring out how to let the build the new units. We'll get it eventually if we have to kidnap stuart to do it!

Not a bad idea. And neat.

Also the umbrella is still very good. Just not as OP as in vanilla.
A group of tactical missile bots is the quickest way to take down an orbital unit. If they can get into range.

Gave it a go against some AI opponents, just to try the new stuff out. First impressions:

1) This is fun. I definitely hope to see continued work on this, and / or something similar ending up in vanilla.

2) Jigs provide metal storage, which is nice. It would be equally nice if solar arrays provided energy storage, so as to make gas giant bases a little more independent. Alternatively, metal storage could be removed from the jig, and a new omni-storage satellite could be introduced.

3) The sentinel is very strong, between its long range, high accuracy, and decent splash. The guardian on the other hand, feel comparably pretty weak. Other than the relative safety offered by being in space, it felt like I was just better off building t1 ground-based AA. I'm not really sure what I'd suggest doing to it, because I could quickly see them just shutting down air too much if buffed. Shorter range, higher damage + splash (space flak)? Longer range, higher damage, much lower RoF? Something to soften up incoming blobs, but to slow to necessarily finish them off on its own.

4) It's a little awkward that there is no spaced-based orbital radar. For kicks, I tried a gas-giant-only base approach. (Just abandoned the planet asap, and let the AI build up for a while) I found the only way to do it intelligently was to send an arkyd and several hammerheads as escort, then send in some fabricators to build an advanced radar satellite. It works, but as I said, is awkward.

5) Missile barges feel a little strange. The seem to almost have some sort of ammunition system with their recharge, and it feels a little clunky. I would suggest taking another look at the way they attack, and see if you can adjust the mechanics to be a little more obvious / consistent with other units and structures in the game.

6) SSX is really strong. If its AoE is going to be that large, its damage should probably be toned down a bit. That, or it should at least be feathered from the center. I suppose lowering its RoF could help, too. I don't know... something. It's brutal.

Overall, I'm quite impressed with what has been done so far. This really feels like what orbital "should have been", and I'm glad you've taken the time to put this together.

Perhaps one of the orbital units should act as deepspace radar? I had actually started work, on putting the energy storage, the antinuke, and the deepspace radar, as orbital structures using the same model as ground one. Just a thought.

Perhaps the advanced radar satellite could be given deep-space radar capabilities.

We're looking into this, but we want to limit the capabilities of Deepspace radar first, considering at the moment, "Deepspace" means Orbital and deepspace" and not just "deepspace". However, we can't do this until Uber fixes it on their end...

I believe you are in fact unable to seperate it's ability to see all celestial orbital shells and not see it's own entire orbital shell.

However, you can in fact remove it's ability to see orbital shells and just see orbital transitions IIRC. Then again, you can do any number of things to give those seperate abilities to seperate or same things. Up to you.

Makes me so happy that the feedback for our mod has been this positive so far. We will continue to add more things to the mod in the future (we already have a few plans) and will take any given feedback into consideration.

So keep an eye out on some more additions in the future as we are far from done (hence the alpha title).

Edit:
Also here's hoping that someone casts a match utilising the mod (hint hint)