Is the orbital game too shallow?

My biggest qualm with orbital is that it is an unreasonable pain to use UI-wise.

I love the orbital layer for the multi-planet shenanigans it allows, but I don't love play in the layer itself.

1. The UI doesn't support it very well. It's a layer on top of two other layers, which means you often select different units in different layers which have no business being in the same selection box. It's also a pain from a viewing perspective.

2. It's really, really dull. You have what is in effect a really large naval layer, but worse because along with the lack of terrain comes a near minimal influence on other layers. You don't get the depth of shore bombardments or the interplay between ground AA, fighters and bombers. Moreover, I'm not sure I want that because it would require a really, really good solution to item 1.

3. Transit times are too long. Transit time is down time, absolutely nothing is happening during this period. There's a reason experienced players tend to keep everything in orbit around everything else, it's the only way to have decently manageable travel times.

The two thing I do like about orbital is that you cannot see where an attacker will arrive in orbit and multi-planet orbital intel allowing for some interesting bluffs in the positioning of your orbital units in relation to your presence on the planet.

With the arrival of Unit Cannons I have even less interest in seeing stuff in orbit.

@Quitch
if you add too much interaction between orbital and surface there will be the danger of orbital becomming too influantial ... like add orbital bombers and battleships that are spamable and you shift the focus from army vs army on surface to fleet vs fleet vs surface anti orbital defenses with the mere occasional armydrop ...
orbital imo should serve as superioritylayer and support ... it is more like a slower airlayer ... it cant become another main layer of battle unlike with gasgiants were it simply is the dominant layer ... as it is the only one ...

Orbital has so many opportunities to be an in-depth experience - unfortunately, it suffers from a unit balance so terrible and a roster so empty that, if you gave ground the same sort of dynamic, would give most RTS players cause to want their own personal samurai sword to fall on.

For example, if both sides agreed to a cap on Avenger production (max of one-two orbital factories producing them without assist) and stop silly invasion attempts with thousands of units, the orbital game stays smooth and requires SOME thought beyond spam Avengers and nuke their faces. Orbital lasers might see use, as well as orbital invasions (actual beachheads in orbit, not *HURRY GET THE TELE DOWN GET THE BOOMS OUT GO WE DID IT GG*).

Throw Jigs into the mess! Holy crap, Gas Giants are beyond important late game now. But we have this inadequate UI, relatively cheap attack units and incredibly underpowered defensive structures that are scaled to their ground counterparts. Defending those Jigs is a logistical, strategical, and finger nightmare. The god-like explosion helps this a little bit, but it treats a symptom. The problem is still there.

What the Overhaul attempts to do is simple - add more depth to the orbital layer. It does this very well. I still consider it a first pass at doing this momentous task, simply because the balance and flow of orbital itself is very difficult to pin down directly. Their are just so many opinions

However a most favored opinion would to have a proper UI. What's the point of balancing something you can barely use efficiently right? Honestly a toggle button to make the ground and air layer blurred out would make using orbital a lot easier since the main complaint is loosing your orbital units on top of your huge base.

P.S. I really liked the UI used in the KS trailer! Would absolutely love if that UI was in the game right now

any change helps the orbital game.

I think the best one possible would be to 3D the current 2D space in which orbital happens outside of the planet and let that plane dirrectly interact with that of the 3D planets themselves.

EG no despawn interplanetary units and respawn them in the planet's orbital layer when they arrive and vice-versa when they leave, as is currently the case.

(let orbital fights happen anywhere in space)

I'm not sure that'd be managable though... Players already complain about difficulties managing multiple planets as battlefields- but the entire area of space too? Im just saying it seems really difficult to deal with in my opinion. =/

these questions are anti-progressive.

Do you want to stay with what you know to be problematic or attempt a change?

as I said above I consider orbital to be so damn bad by now that ANYTHING, literally Anything would make it better, if only for the duration of the novelty.

I don't consider that there is anything to be salvaged from this spawn-despawn and two different engine mechanic.

You can pin how quirky Unit Cannons are on it, you can pin orbital pinpoint snipes on it, you can pin the terrible orbital unit balance overall on it.

All I'm saying is this aversion to space combat and "we're not going to do homeworld 3" mentality is unhealthy for PA, closed off and has led it into an impasse. Change the mentality before you can hope to fix the game.

I'm just worried it'd be impossible for the most people to hhandle such a hard wor load, as I said players already have trouble handling the current multiple battelfields.

I'd just be happy if orbiorbital became an actual unit group, with more thought put in (orbit warfare overhaul mod for example)

Heh, id still prefer that orbital stuff have no units at all, and be a complete building layer of support structures.

everybody agrees PA is too much work.

but it's not as if the PA community didn't propose a number of solutions to tone it all down and macromanage it better that UBER unilaterally turned down.

there's my idea for radar blips,

my idea for queue management, the various hud and ui ideas ....i'm lazy to make a list right now........

orbital however has nothing to do with how too hard to manage PA is. the micro and macro tools would apply just as easily to orbital as to normal units, why should they be treated any different?

anyways often one change implies another,

if you change the way orbital works, you need to addapt the UI and control tools concordingly.

I never suggested changing orbital but leaving the UI and control tools as is.

Uber hasn't really "unilaterally" turned everything you've suggested down, it's only that many uI tools we'd all love to have are well.. difficult and time consuming to add in.

Oh and I never really said this yet- glad to see you back Tatsu, you haven't been on really in a while, Im expectant and happily waiting for our future arguments and or agreements.

haha I'm not really entirely "back" as I'll never again be as active as I was before.

but thanks I do appreciate the word

and likewise I enjoy our arguments (agreements are for wussies : P /jk )

I lost faith in PA.

It's hardest for me as I was the one persuaded, no, dead certain, PA was going to be the heir to SC in the engine sense.

but even as an engine it's full of shortcomings that don't really seem like can be bent back.

bottom of the line is that I was persuaded I’d be able to have more units than in FAF.

results? PA can't handle one fith of what (then) FAF busts in unit numbers without breaking a sweat and since then FAF has bumped it up from 1000 to 1500 per person. (one could even theorise that in the near future we bump up player number from 12 to 14)

the fact remains that the FA engine is proprietary and we are hands and feet tied when it comes to removing some of the constraints that plague it : such as 32bit, single/two core only, windows only (despite FA being rated platinum on Wine and FAF having a linux port next release)

I feel my creed is my curse. I'll have to make this engine I want with my own hands, it seems I won't be lucky enough to stumble upon it.

I disagree on unit count, PA's engine most certainly can handle a million units, however the current server cannot. Besides when FAF released barely anyone could run it, you need to give some time. I'm sure if you're patient (you can even leave for a year or two, comeback and see how it is) you'll feel a bit happier.

Well hey, even if you won't be as active, nice seeing you.

If you want maximum units you really need to test out zervers MT engine (a fork of Spring RTS). It's the only RTS engine I'm aware of that has true *multi-threading of the simulation itself* and currently scales well up to about 8 threads.

wow neat tip, thanks very much, I will!

nice seeing you too ^v^

I know about the waiting.

however we have hit the stage (four months) where SC, in it's time managed to run fluid.

at that time the unit cap was 500 units per person with a player cap of 8 ergo 4000 units Grand maximum.

this is something that PA, developed 8 years later, can just barely do within the confines of "playable"

nowadays FAF clocks in at 18 000 units. for regular 1.0simspeed play

please show me a replay with that many units in PA. we don't even have that, the server crashes beforehand all playability thrown asside.

YES i am am elitist in the way I like to play. YES, I select playmates with 4Ghz cpus and very good ethernet.

YES i would like to STOP being an elitist but i need a server-client engine that can actually tank that kind of thing first.

The highest unit count ever recorded with pa stats was over 60,000 IIRC.

From PA Stats: with 75755 units in game #89528

The issue though is playable unit numbers. The engine can technically support that many provided their stationary, however actually active moving units? 5000 is probably the upper limit of being able to play imo.

@tatsujb

http://pastats.com/chart?gameId=89528

75755 units.

N-n-n-ninjaaaaa'd.

yeah ty both of you.