A comprehensive Example of Orbital Combat

... And building rockets to move asteroids is, of course, perfectly logical.

in your theory the engie sounded better. in this game a nuke isn't the end. far from it. your enemy owning more planets than you is.

It kinda is isn't it?

It would be incredibly overpowered and game breaking? There's no counter to teleporting any sort of explosive inside the commanders chassis. That would be game over.

Pretty sure they said that teleporting requires a receiver building as well as the transmitter. I doubt the enemy will let you build one in his base just to teleport a nuke in. Maybe if you ask nicely...

And you are making many assumptions about the implementation of teleportation, we know it is being implemented, not much more. Lets wait and see, they can always remove it if it causes too many problems.

I'd like it if there were two kinds of teleporters

one that's a "stargate" that functions as a portal which remains open. You must construct the end point, and it consumes power for each unit that passes through it. The gate should be unstable, so it's easy to kill and has explodes killing most of it's surroundings, like a commander death. Units can go both ways. Ideal use - providing an entrance point on a newly invaded planet, so that the masses of ground troops from your base planet can pour through.

A second that's a "teleporter" than can send a small number of units to anywhere in the system, one way! Good for plunking a few commandos in a delicate area of the opponent's base, or getting fabbers past orbital defenses

The Stargate type teleporter is a good idea imo; requiring a receiving gate eliminates the problem that I was talking about in a neat manner.

Did you read how Neutrino actually suggested teleportation may work?

The way I read this:
1. Players build teleporters on different planets.
2. Players build units.
3. Players give units a "walk into this teleporter" command, in the same way they would give a move order.
4. Players give the teleporter a "Move over here" command.
5. Units Appear out of the nearest teleporter station they have built to the destination, and walk the rest of the way.

Presumably the whole process can be set up using shift queues, so factories on one planet can automatically be supplying troops to the front line on another.

Thus, there will be no teleporting a nuke into their base. A station is require upon both ends.[/quote]

It just so happens that it isn't.

realism vs awesome.
if the above doesn't work :

Code:

http://youtu.be/G01NoaTM46o?t=4m10s

So Neutrino, I'd like a quick clarification if you don't mind; do you think it's feasible for Uber to put hooks in the orbital layer code for modders to make the orbital model proposed by MadScientist possible?

And if you are able to, would you please?

There is some confusion going on here (as is standard practice for any online forum). Overpowered does not mean "does a lot of damage". Overpowered means "has no solution". Teleporters and Commanders are solved from many angles:
- Cloak. Cannot target the Comm, therefore problem solved.
- Comm Decoys. Targeting the Comm is now a matter of luck, one that becomes very expensive and risky to try.
- D-gun the interlopers. Problem solved. (Note: This means having an ubergun that doesn't suck!)
- Use technobabble to render OHKO weapons ineffective, such as with a personal shield of some type.
- Blow the teleporter up.
- Kill the enemy entirely before it is finished.

Commander specific problems should be addressed directly by the Commander. There is no point crippling a fun mechanic just because it has one outlier in its use.

...Your point? If your opponent manages to create, power, and activate such a monumental device, they kind of deserve to win.

Also, keep in mind that you are ripping a whole in space-time directly into the focal point of a massive explosion. Please collect your Darwin award.

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Chances are you won't get very far with a 1-way teleporter. It is well suited for explaining the nature of the PA war, but moving a handful of units at the most extreme cost isn't a sound way to win wars. Maybe you can do a lot of damage if the right guys get into an undefended location, but there are tons of easier and more satisfying ways to do the same thing.

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Best of luck trying to get good orbit mechanics in the game, Uber! It's tough trying to squeeze in realism with good, non derpy gameplay.

So let's be clear you want a 100,000 metal 1,000,000 energy I win button? For when you can't beat your opponent on the battlefield because he is better than you.

That's dumb

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_capture#Human_capture_of_an_asteroid

No it is, we are even planning on doing it.

huh,

...well then, on with TP nukes, I've run out of ideas why not and frankly I can see this being fun. the anti-space warp field could become even more important than the anti-nuke.

even if TP required gates on each side it would be easy to find an inocupied corner of the world and build the other gate there and fire the nuke through the warp.

Planning to do something, and actually being able to do it are two different things igncom1 We don't possess the technology to just pluck a rock out of the asteroid belt and just plop it into whatever orbit we want. We'd rely on slightly altering a close encounter asteroid to skim through our atmosphere, thus aerobraking it into an orbit.

Also Nasa is planning on moving an asteroid less than 30 foot across into a lunar orbit... a substantially easier task than getting one to orbit Earth.

Now, I'm sure that moving a 30 foot asteroid into a lunar orbit is impressive, don't get me wrong. But that's not a planetkiller... it's not even close.

Teleporting nukes sounds almost as horrendously OP as the teleporting Necron Monolith.

Except more OP. I like it.

I, would be willing to bet that we do.

And even small asteroids have the potential to do massive amounts of damage that is comparable to standard nuclear weapons.

At least I want to believe that it'll happen in my lifetime.

And such asteroids would be exponentially more expensive to utilise than just using a nuke.


The thousands of tonnes of fuel, just to get up there, let alone put engines on it and then the hundreds of thousands of tonnes of fuel to de-orbit it and slingshot it using the sun... Then there's the time factor, waiting to get just the right orbital intersect...

Really igncom1, you're not fooling anyone. "Asteroids as weapons" isn't practical and is so over the top considering you could just use a Rod-From-God to create as much damage as you would really require at a fraction of the cost.

Or, you know, nukes.

If we are talking real-life then theres a reason that governments have spent billions on nuclear weapons, and next to nothing on kinetic space-based bombardment systems. There are just too costly for what they provide. To equal the energy released by a 50 kT nuclear warhead, something traveling at orbital velocities (say about 7 km/s) an object would need a mass of about 8538 metric tonnes. I'd estimate that at probably about twice the entire mass of stuff lifted to orbit since the dawn of the space age. Rods from gods sound cool, but they are a not really a practical weapon.

Asteroids would actually fair better, as the mass is already up there. They are also often on orbital paths which would give them a greater relative velocity with respect to earth. However without knowing the delta-v requirements to put an asteroid on collision course with earth, I'm unable to calculate the necessary amount of fuel. I would be surprised if it wasn't exceptionally large. The Tsiolkovsky rocket equation is not kind.

In real life, nuclear technology still remains the most cost effective candidate for mass destruction. Good thing this is a game, and real-world economic considerations can be taken with a grain of salt..