Let's discuss Asteroids as they are...

Not at all. I can imagine a balance where asteroids can make sense in 1vs1 but PA is a bit off from that so far. Needs balance changes to get more high tech play and bigger maps with asteroids on them I would say.
Would be epic, I'd love to actually use asteroids in the gamemode I play the most

So, 40k metal is too much to annihilate most if not all of what your opponent has? Sure it doesn't end with just spending that 40k but if it were asteroids would be ungodly OP anyway.

it just never gets there

I am both excited and concerned about asteroid. The look and feel of the asteroid seems fine to me. I am excited for the race aspect between asteroids with other asteroids or lasers. I am concerned by asteroid jumping at the end of games. And will this shift the balance of the game to orbital? Maybe. Will some games become a race to get an asteroid? Probably. We can always still host games without asteroids if these are issues. I am excited to play with them soon.

I don’t think asteroids will have any affect on 1v1 games. Seems to be too expensive and time consuming to go orbital in most matches.

Alright, well I certainly think we should get to pick the number of Halleys required to move an Asteroid around if Uber insists on not making them use the current cratering mechanic. In large games, one halley planet wipers are simply overpowered, and the sheer expendable power of Asteroids will simultenously make both using planets with Halleys and the annihilaser utterly useless.

I'm excited on the other hand, for Halley fodder that spawns often and I can see that Uber is trying to reinforce the idea that you drop huge chunks of rock in this planet as its signature move, which is nice; but the balance of that should at least be adjustable.

That said, this is probably going to be a very nice superweapon for 1v1s, where the effort/destruction is far superior to any other in the game.

I didn't think this was a balance discussion . I agree with you though.

... all i want for asteroids is partial destruction based on size/mass ( i don´t relay care about craters even though it would be cool to have them filled with lava) ...
being able to set when asteroids spawn adds a nice dynamic were it would also be cool to be able if and when to spawn an actual planetkiller ...

yea asteroid vs annihilaser is a tough thing something that rather speaks for having the partial destructmechanik back in ... otherwise it comes always down to systemgeneration and when to have asteroids spawned .. generaly i still say annihilasers beat asteroids as their use doesn´t destroy themselves and can kill multiple planets without much delay ... but the cost and timefactor for preperation is more in favor of asteroids right now ..

I still stand by my opinion that asteroids in their current form bring nothing to the game at all. Respawning planet killers are simply not needed since they end the game anyway. Now we have three forms of game enders which all do exactly the same.
We would have been better of with asteroids and the crater mechanics.
This way we would have at least two tiers of planetary annihilation.

This is a tough one, may be too early to tell. Under the current balance it should have no impact on 1v1, but it certainly changes FFAs and team games significantly. Playing on systems with an asteroid belt means you have to race for control of every asteroid or lose an entire planet.

This implies a necessity to go orbital before the first asteroid shows so you can get control over it, and then getting T2 up and running so you can smash the thing. That's an awful lot of eco, will you lose the ground wars because you went for the roid? If you don't, you run the risk of getting smashed. I'm guessing than given the current balance, you'll have more to gain by actively working at keeping your opponent on the ground with you (and poor) than getting into a space race with them.

I'll have to play and watch quite a few more games before I'm ready to say for sure how asteroids will change gameplay. It probably will have a lot to do with the maps Uber and the community cook up. Lots of parameters to play with, there's potential for some great fun.

Unrelated: Marshall i watched the cast and I sound like much more of a **** than I meant to be :O Sorry! Please don't throw rocks at me!

the cratermechanics however were still causing issues .. that is the thing ..
partial destruction would have been enough imo ..
so the general question would have been how difficult and timeintensive it realy is to propperly transform pathable to unpathable terrain without breaking pathfinding ..
we had floaty moving units over craters before ..

I think this isn't a question of map size alone. You can archive this by system design.
For example take 2 moons orbiting each other, or a stale planet but just something to keep orbital travel time to a minimum.
Both moons have the same size and same metal. Asteroids will spawn in about 12 min +/- 4mins. But here is the catch: Player can spawn on both moons for both players.
You will end up in 2 scenarios, where the first is a close up combat revolving around one moon, or the second one, where it first looks like a stalemate where both player will fortify their own planet until the asteroid spawns in and the thing transforms into a king of the hill style battle.

I'm not sure if such a system is would be well received currently as 1v1 map, since most player think that orbital is lame, but maybe in some distant future, when orbital gets a bit more of a rock paper scissor feeling.
From a game mechanics point this is an interesting constellation, since there are two different play styles that emerge, depending on where both player spawn. If you then make both moons differentiable, (like turning one moon in the mars biome, but without CGSs), mind games will start to evolve, because players will choose their starting point depending on what style they want to play and they think their opponent does.

We had such a map in the PA Stats ladder pool month ago. Back then it played out to be orbital rush for teleporter attacks.

I like them.

Really nice.
There is an lever that can be pulled to tune the balance between rush and defend: Increasing the travel time between the planets will give an defender more time to prepare and discourage rushes. And the knowledge that asteroids will pop up will lower the pressure to win a rush.
It would be interesting if one can balance this concept to a point where you can see all three strategies in an fairly equal amount in the long run.

I don't see what there is to discuss tbh.

They are just halleyable moons that now destroy entire planets instead of leaving crater. Gameplay won't change as there isn't any new mechanic being added. (Infact, it seems very likely that mechanics will be removed and simplified i.e. halleyable planets only leaving craters if their radius is smaller than the target). Only the players perception of it will.

The spawn timers for these things arn't adding anything either. Just an easy way for people to design systems with halleyable moons without having to add the moons. Repeat timers are not going to be a big thing either since targets are destroyed in their entirety and quite honestly if you are constantly missing the planet that the enemy commander is on, then you're doing something wrong.

It will still revolve around the 'balance' question of how many halleys to activate - something that has been dealt with by map makers since forever. Too little requirement has always obsoleted anihilaser - you just had to smash it into where the laser comes out of to disable it. Too much halley requirement makes it unviable.

No it really doesn't change anything.

A system with asteroids activated is the same as a system having been properly designed with the correct number of halleyable moons to begin with. Only now the halleyable moons are hidden behind a timer activation. Like i said, only the players perception changes.

Well, that alone will change game play.

I've said it before and I say it now. Asteroids will change nothing gameplay wise and at the moment it only make sure Uber has to do more balance changes to balance out asteroids vs Laser. Elodea said it spot on.