A comprehensive Example of Orbital Combat

Any body else think that satellites and other orbitals would be cooler if they had to be constantly orbiting the planet in order to stay up there?

Like instead of moment commands you just change the direction of their orbit?

That could be cool, where players try to orchestrate the orbits of their satellites in order to cover the most space while avoiding static ground defences?

That's precisely what Uber have said they're not going to do. To quote Neutrino:

Ow well, fair enough.

I think mad scientists second idea of having the orbital units have a large top speed but awful acceleration and deceleration, makes sense on a number of levels.

I'm guessing you didn't read the original post.

Indeed, if this is representative of the direction in which orbital gameplay is going, then I too would be somewhat concerned. Excruciatingly somewhat concerned.

However, I hope instead that uber are simply throwing in what they have, as there has been a lot of talk about orbital units, and uber perhaps wish to show the stuff they have working, and let us get a look at the orbital artwork (at least for the satellite and launcher). If that's the case, then I'm thankful that they've put them in, and I look forward to seeing the orbital aspects of this game fleshed out a bit more.

Till that point, there is still plenty of discussion to be had.

Uber have not made a single sweeping change to anything they've implemented so far. Also, consider Garat's recent response on the latest livestream, where he said that your economic power is indicative of the "stage" of the game.

There's some mighty bad juju going on here.

There hasn't been a need for sweeping changes yet. Most of the allready implemented mechanisms work pretty well even if they're sometimes still a bit wonky and not very polished (alpha, I'm okey with that) and I'm happy with the general directions those features point to.

And they're pretty busy with other stuff so I expect an overhaul of units, etc. in later beta when they get around to adding new units.

(I'm not happy at all with the direction orbital seems to go though.)

There are plenty of other systems that are heading in entirely the wrong direction. For example the T2 > T1 thing that apparently got carried over from SupCom.

I'm not expecting that to remain forever, especially once they get to chance to concentrate on units and unit mechanisms. The way it is atm is just the easiest way to implement it so that t2 gets built at all. T2 units which are more specialised sidegrades instead of being just better as it is now requires more mechanisms for units then just balancing some numbers.

For example the proposed air-superiority fighters with one having guns and the other missiles. It needs quite a bit of work to make those. The current t2 basically is the same as t1 with some number changes, thats easy to add. I still fully expect a more diverse set of t2 at the end of developement.

I must have been mistaken then. Garat's response about T1 and T2 just being arbitrary labels to define what stage of the game you're at (Just like SupCom did), rather than sticking to a T1 - General Use, T2 - Specialised theme had me worried there.

I am in agreement that the current orbital set up is badly done.

But what would be the best way to fix it?

Wait, I haven't gotten a chance to play the new version but do orbital units SERIOUSLY just hover in place above the planet?

That's just about my worst fear when it came to space, esp considering we already have a system for ACTUAL orbital mechanics in the system editor.

Yeah they sit where you send them, not totally bad but quite underwhelming.

Mainly because they've been busy implementing new things. Let's be fair now. Complaining unconstructively about these things is like complaining to a builder that you don't like how the roof looks like it will turn out when they haven't even finished the ground floor.

I'm personally of the opinion that the best way would of be the orbital mechanics I have discussed earlier. However, I am slightly surprised how many people have recently taken a look at the way orbital is coming along (early though it may be), and have come to the same conclusion as me that orbital units that actually orbit would be a positive thing. To me it seems a very natural consequence.

Now, my understanding of why Neutrino doesn't think this is a good idea goes as follows (based upon one sentence, which i'm trying to expand here).

We all agree that true orbital mechanics offer a lot of depth. Players will need to consider their orbits, and select them with care. However, how does the depth in this theater compare with the depth in others? Neutrino believes that the depth offered is significantly greater than land, sea or air. An out come of this could be that players would spend more of their time speculating over satellites than building bots, sinking ships or annihilating airplanes.

I can understand this viewpoint, but I don't necessarily agree with it. To me, selecting an orbit is no different to selecting a path to an enemies base. The complexity of the physics (which is actually quite intuitive once you've spent more than 5 minutes playing with it), is balanced by the simplicity of the playing field. There are no canyons in space, no shorelines to storm or rocks to hide behind. The only high ground is a higher orbit, and this has a very simple an obvious trade off in terms of speed relative to the surface. There is no need for players to plot individual maneuvers ala kerbal space program. That is the computers job. The player just needs to have a feel for how the units will move once an order is given, in the same way they don't need to understand the complexity of A* algorithms and flowfields, they just need a broad grasp on what to expect from the pathfinding when they give an order to ground units. To me, it's an excellent level of depth to add to the game, without overwhelming the player, or unbalancing how they spend their time amongst the different theaters.

I was playing around with orbital mechanics long before KSP came along. As a result, i've been itching for an RTS which makes full use of them. This is something that no RTS has tried before, possibly because of the fear that it would be too complex to grasp. I think the explosion of interest in KSP is really showing that orbital mechanics have a place as a unique system in games that's new, unexplored and a lot more accessible than many people ever thought it would be..

I suspect that we are going to be seeing a few new games coming out soon that make use of these systems, and I think it would be a wasted opportunity if PA didn't make use of them too.

But if this isn't going to happen, then we need something else. Hence the suggestion I put forwards more recently.

But it's not, you already have a system in place for orbital mechanics. If making satellites orbit the planet is out of depth, then moving asteroids is DEFINATELY out of depth.

If you put satellites on the space layer that you see when you zoom out, or mess around with in the system editor, you could have orbital units that follow an abstraction of physics, while at the same time keeping everything within the same UI tools.

The only consolation would be that orbital units would always have to be orbiting in the same plane, but that's an acceptable compromise considering how complicated it could get otherwise.

Yup, I've already expressed my concern, but haven't had a chance to try it yet(stupid flesh needing sleep) but yeah, concerns abound.

Mike

What's wrong with taking time? I'd honestly rather wait a while for a game with proper orbital units than have a game where orbit is just air2.0 now. If anything I'd say development has been going too fast.

In regards to MadSci's idea on high speed low acceleration, that could be potentially, well, unbalanced. If any radar/vision sat could do that, you could set it to patrol route the planet so that it will reach its max speed and all of a sudden you have rapid sweeps of vision/radar across swathes of the planet.

Taht sounds about right to me. I would love to see that intermitent information of the strip of surface the radar covers.

You know it doesn't necessarily have to stay this way. Like Neutrino says himself, they work iterative, they just release what they have pretty fast without there being some rule that it needs to be finished in any way.