when will asteroid belts be ingame?

not to mention the small radius bug

If it wasn't asteroids would be entirely pointless. Just imagine the hassle if you had a dozen tiny asteroids in an steroid field, each barely big enough for 1-2 structures, and then imagine having the regular separation of planets with the regular interplanetary transfer system. That is not feeling right, not at all.

reggarding people struggling with giving up planetoids f.e. it is ... they just need to create systems with propper purpose ...

as to whatever asteroidbelts we be like what matters to me is that they are someting different that is not just a statdifference to existing biomes
i suggested that asteroidbelts should f.e example consist of reclaimable rocks for orbital fabricators ...

That's another option, but reclaiming would have to be fixed so it doesn't take energy.

if it doesn't take energy it will be easily abuseable for reclaiming units .. no it needs a fair energyuseage

I disagree, virtually all the units that can reclaim are fairly weak, I don't see how reclaiming units would be any better than just killing them. You should get a portion of the unit's cost back when reclaiming, this includes energy. That's how TA did it (actually TA might have been energy or metal, but it didn't cost anything to reclaim), and it wasn't an issue.

Asteroid belts would be pretty cool, perhaps an idea to make mining units, let them deliver the asteroid bits to the Asteroid cannon, and let it unleash his wreath over your opponent.

Perhaps they could make Ice belts aswell, where there will be artifacts hidden inside, to construct Tier3 units!!
Just real hard to obtain, hard skins to crack. Just gonna be like " Dont worry, i got dis!"

My vague memory/interpretation of what asteroids were pitched as, are respawning rocks you could build a halley on and throw at a planet; for a nuke-sized explosion that cannot be countered beyond not allowing an opponent to build one in the first place. It seems like a good way to make KEWs more valid. An implementation I'd agree with is:

• No inter-asteroid mechanics, seems way too complicated to implement and play
• 5-10 asteroids in a belt that respawn once used
• No redirection of the KEW, once fired that's that
• The asteroid has an asteroid layer only. No land, no air, no orbital, just the asteroid layer
• Special fabbers that only live on the asteroid layer (insert low gravity explanations, and cool grippy spider fabber ), and can only build a halley
• The special fabber doubles as the offense/defense capability on asteroids, with an automatic boom bot style explosion that kills all fabbers on an asteroid
  
• The special fabber is shot from the unit cannon (the unit cannon will detect which layer is being targeted, firing only units in the queue that can be on that layer)

This implementation would differ from nuke/anti-nuke play in multiple ways:

• The counter to it is active not passive, requiring the defensive player to do something when or before the KEW is under construction
• It's no secret when a KEW is being constructed, making it hard to stock up on KEWs
• The offensive player has the option of sending one fabber for a slower, easily countered but more efficient construction, or many fabbers for a faster, inefficient but harder to counter construction
• It can be balanced mainly through the cost and rate of build of the fabbers. My 2 cents would be to balance it such that with a single fabber it costs a little more than a nuke, but takes much longer to build. With 12 fabbers it would cost serious change, but still be counterable if the defender is on the ball

I think it would work best if it was orbital and an asteroid layer that way you could use orbital fabs for all the construction and for the asteroid layer there would be

1. Asteroid engines
2. Asteroid mines

That would save work having to make an additional type of fabber in addition to the other asteroid layer units, and it would allow assault using normal orbital units (fighters, SSX, etc)

Though the unit cannon idea to get the fabber there is kinda interesting. I think it would be pretty funny if you could fire any type of unit, but non asteroid layer units just tumbled past the asteroid into space when they were unable to latch on.

I'd probably guess at the rate uber goes with adding new features 3+ years. Maybe a bit more.

Wait, was this confirmed by Uber or are you just saying that?

@jables

Here's my take on how Asteroids could implemented in a functional way that would add to gameplay...

Similar to how the Annihilazer and a Halleys work, they would simply exist as something you can harness as a super weapon. You wouldn't land on them, or build anything on them.

Asteroids would fly around the system (http://www.qrg.northwestern.edu/projects/vss/docs/space-environment/2-how-asteroids-orbit.html) and you would build an Asteroid Slingshot on the planet of your choice (it would probably make sense that it be built in the orbital layer). Once the Asteroid Slingshot is built you select a planet to attack and everytime an Asteroid flies past your planet the Asteroid Slingshot catches it and slingshots into the planet you have targeted. You wouldn't be able to pinpoint the exact location on the planet you are attacking (this would be random, maybe related to the rotation of the planet and current orbit location). Asteroid impacts would be larger than nuke explosions, but smaller than planet smashes. The Asteroid Slingshot would be about the same price as a Nuke Lancher and two nukes. Benefits from larger explosions but ammo is limited to how many asteroids are flying around the system (there could be lots, there could be few) and if others are building Asteroid Slingshots then the ammo could be even more limited. It also has a more random aspect to it when compared to the nuke (you cannot pinpoint the hit location on a planet).

Not allowing orbital to assault asteroids is the point, because if they can assault they can also defend, breaking the mechanic by easily denying a quick counter. Plus orbiting a rock would probably look dumb. I don't know, but assume that the work to make a new fabber and halley would be minimal relative to everything else they would need to do to implement asteroids.

Orbiting an asteroid could look kind of weird, but something that could orbit a gas giant or a planet could also keep itself near an asteroid.

Personally I'd like to see jigs be re-geared towards energy with a much smaller metal output, while using asteroids as something like gas giants for metal and smashing.

matter of citical mass i say ... compared to Pa many ta engineers were ineffective in areas ..vehicles were slow in movement air fabbers were the slowest in building so they only got used when air was needed .. PAfabbers are all fairly effective and are not far off statwise ... i can easily see bot or airfabbergroups being used for raiding

True you can get more of PA engineers in an area better, especially with vehicles where TA's were clunky and slow, but PA's units die much quicker. Off the top of my head most weapons will kill a fab bot in 1-2 hits, air fabbers are even weaker, I don't think any of the AA units need more than a single hit to kill one.

Other than that, I can't even see a reason for this being a problem, if I bring in a bunch of bombers on an unguarded structure, it's going down, if I bring in air fabs instead, why would that be a problem? Sure the fabbers are cheaper, but they are better spent expanding your own eco, than taking time to reclaim offensively.

easy ... you have part fabbers that are effectively used for ecoing up and part of those you can use to aggresivley push your metalgain while destroying units ... win win

Except they still aren't that good against anything that has any sort of defence, they die in droves to anything defended. I've had so many games where my giant swarm of air fabbers get completely wiped out in seconds by a teleport spewing out a clump of spinners, or a handful of fighters flying in. I've also done this to others countless times before. If you are at a point where you can swarm reclaim any significant portion of an opponents units, you've likely already won the game.

The entire point of reclaiming is to be able to provide an eco boost. This is part of the reason to why some people are upset that wreckage got removed. It gives the defender a chance to get a boost to his eco and bounce back from an attack. By attaching an energy penalty to it, your negating that boost. The metal you get isn't much help if getting it kills your energy income.

reason because unitwreckage got removed is because of pathing issues ... i can see it added back in the future

Like I said, it was part of the reason.

I've seen kind 3 big views on wreckage

1. Bring it back where it blocks pathing
2. Bring it back, but use rubble that doesn't block pathing.
3. Leave it as is (buildings only)

Option 1 lets you boost your eco, while gaining a temporary wall.
The only reason (other than aesthetic) to go with option 2, is to use it as a boost to your eco.

Personally I'm torn between 1 and 2. I like the idea of wreckage blocking units, but I'm worried about the number of units PA sees in a normal game. That's a lot of wreckage. If the overall health is low enough on option 1 before wrecks turn to rubble, it might not be so bad.