[WIP][Server] Orbital Warfare Overhaul

And I'm on my phone with autocorrect galore atm. #argumentinvalidated. Come on Stuart pick up your game

It is workin now, thanks

I don't know if it is within your guy's realm of ability to affect, but I would love to see an select all orbital combat units hotkey

@emraldis
and orbital overhaul dev group Hi! As much as I'm a fan of your mod, and I genuinely am.
I feel like you should give the orbital fabbers access to teleporters again.
Or some other inbetween astreus and unit cannon.

I'll give a bit of reasoning behind it, because my experience might not be the general whole.

Basically, I feel like it's too easy once you have control of a planet to get 1-2 air factories dedicated to global patrol and pick off anything entering the air layer, and if fighters don't kill it, they spots it.

Granted, this only applies to people who are turtling up, but this is the lategame stage that everyone will get to.
I dont' mind if it's not orbital fabricator, maybe something else from the orbital factory. I don't know.
But I feel the sheer distance between astreus and unit cannon is big enough to warrant an inbetween measure for planet invasion.

Thank you for your time

Thank you!
Been complaining about this to our coder as I am not a fan of the change either. I've been waiting for someone else to bring it up. Completely agree with everything you've brought up there.

Sorry @emraldis but this is one change that I have been vehemently against. Would really like if you allowed orbital fabbers to build tele's again as there is a fair difference in the function of a tele and a unit cannon.

Heh....
If you put it like that, I feel a bit bad I didn't bring it up sooner.
I'm similar to nicb1 in that I'm fairly passive and don't bring things up even when I think of them.
Maybe I should change that...
I'll let you know after I sit and watch everyone else chat it out before I make any more decisions

While allowing the orbital fabbers to build the teleporter again would help in the regard of being an intermediary between the ground built teleporter and the unit cannon, it still wouldn't work against a planet locked down with air. They would still be destroyed extremely quickly, at least imo.

In that case we provide for example the hailfire missile barge (which can fire at ground and air) and the guardian orbital missile platform which also directly targets air quite well.

That's true, I mostly play against AI with friends and they don't use the units sadly.

Yea, that is basically what the Hailfire is for. Just keep them away from umbrellas.

When the pte balance goes live we are going to have to do another balance update to our mod. We can add back in the ability of orbital fabbers to build teleporters.

Right, but you can do the same thing using a fabber in an astreus... I just think letting the orbital fabber build teleporters makes unit cannons pointless...

What about the cost difference? Also with the unit cannon as it is now, you need to spam them in order to get an army up and create a beachhead. The reasoning and example I gave above is most importantly in situations of a turtle planet, where a few units dropped in would be annihilated quickly.

Being able to build a teleporter from orbit at least lets you get anti air vehicles in quickly, as well as a way to defend anti air vehicles.

Granted, an army through a teleporter does make the unit cannon feel needless. I think part of that is the way the unit cannon works is inefficient and too restricted by it's storage limit. But there should definitely be a big cost and performance difference from building a teleporter from orbit, and launching an advanced fabricator with an army escort from unit cannons.

Edit: In short, as my original post went. Even if it's not orbital fabricators. At the very least I and ncib1 are in agreement we wants something inbetween astreus and unit cannon for way to build teleporters/interplanetary transport.

If I put it that way, orbital transport that carries many units might be a solution that suits emraldis. But for now I think orbital fabricators building teleporters is the easiest solution.

Yes, I also believe unit cannons should be cheaper, however, untill we get the balance sorted, we'll probably just let the orbital fabber build teleporters again, but just increase their cost for now. Now that unit cannon spread is a thing, we're also going to increase that a bit, I believe it's a bit too small so far.

As a side note, have you tried using orbital fabricators to build AA sattelites, and then just dropping an astreus down? Before I make any changes to the teleporter balance, I want to make sure that the options we left open are not useful in most cases.

UPDATE: decreased UC cost by 2900, rate of fire by .5, and increased the spread by 30 meters. Also fixed the umbrella-not-targeting UC drop pods.

Hey, I've written a very basic copy of a help file for use with wondible's Server Mod Help chatbot (https://forums.uberent.com/threads/wip-server-mod-help-chat.66822/), I was wondering if you could look it over to see if all my facts are right, and, well, if it could have been made better. Here's the json;

Spoiler: mod_help

Code:

    {
      "topics": {
        "Orbital Warfare Basic Changes": "Hello! You're playing on a server with the Orbital Warfare Overhaul mod installed. This mod changes several things, all related to the "orbital" aspect of the game. Don't worry, most ground/air/naval units are completely unaffected!",
        "New units": "Excalibur: Long-range orbital sniper unit. Great against larger ships, and smaller amounts of High-HP targets.
Hailfire: Medium-range anti-surface/air ship. Good for besieging enemy bases from orbit or defending a beachhead.
Hammerhead: Medium-range anti-swarm ship. Good for protecting your fleet against swarms of avengers and wraiths.
Wraith: Advanced scout/support ship. Good for scouting enemy planets with it's radar stealth, also shoots down incoming tactical missiles.",
        "New structures": "Sentinel: Advanced scout/support ship. Good for scouting enemy planets with it's radar stealth, also shoots down incoming tactical missiles.
Guardian: Anti-air defence satellite. Shoots missiles at air units, good for defending beacheads.
Orbital Mine: Anti-orbital mine. Good for defending areas from orbital transfers.
Lancer: High-powered anti-orbital railgun. Good for defending against larger orbital units, or shooting orbital structures out of the sky.",
    "Unit changes:": "Bluehawk & Stingray: Can now shoot orbital units.
Advanced Radar Satellite & Solar Panels: Is now an orbital structure
SXX: Fires a laser that creates a nuke sized explosian. Very fun. Have to manually target your target. Also helluva expensive.
Teleporter: Lower HP, higher cost to maintain. Protect it!
Anchor: Can only shoot orbital units. No surface vision.
Catapult: Can shoot orbital units
Umbrella: Minor cost and ROF changes
Deepspace Radar: Now an advanced structure
Halley: Half as much HP, 1/4 the cost, areabuilds in a circle, needs 4 engines per engine slot.
Catalyst: Constantly drains 10k energy, costs 5000 extra.
Jigs: Don't explode on death (effect is still there), don't provide energy or energy storage, costs 2k energy to run.",
    "What to expect with this mod": "Orbital will take longer to become a stalemate, and combat in the orbital layer will be much more interesting. Planet smashes will hopefully be a bit more frequent, and look better, while metal planets will be harder to activate. The new orbital content will be hard to ignore in multi-planet matches, but in 1v1 games will be used just as much as it is now. IE not that much.",
      }
    }

I used a few(read: most) copy/pastings from the original post for unit descriptions.

EDIT: Would appear I either misunderstood how that mod is supposed to function, or my paths are wrong. Back to testing, I guess.

Noticed a new update, I'd love to read a changelog if you guys had one.

The last string in an array in a json should not be followed by a comma, that's your mistake.

Yeah sorry about that, bit lazy when it comes to providing change logs on a regular basis. Anyway here's whats changed in the latest build.

Quote from Private mod team conversation:
(Emraldis)
"Just pushing a build now that fixes the umbrella not being able to shoot down UC pods, makes the UC 2900 metal cheaper, (14400 to 11500), reduces the firerate of the UC by .5, (3.0 to 2.5), and increases the spread by 30 (30 meters to 60 meteres). Also compatible with PTE"