What I would actually like to see is a response from the devs about this. I know they are working on the game, but I would like to know whether it is still up to change.
It's been the weekend - I'm sure they'll read through this when they are back on it. That's why they release on Fridays - to gather some feedback for the coming week.
Oh is that all? For a moment there I thought you were going to order Uber to implement something technically complex that may require new game systems to be developed and which falls outside the scope of the current game design (per Neutrino). Edits: Revised choice of vocabulary in second sentence and added comment in parenthesis.
If you go to page 9 of this thread you can see comments about orbital unit mechanics made by Neutrino and Garat that I quoted.
I have already seen those. What I'm talking about is a message from the devs now that it has been a few days after the patch's release. I understand that they are in a weekend day right now though (different time zones represent!)
This situation is a bit awkward.. The "Air 2.0" scenario is bad since it draws attention from the warfare on the surface on the planet while using the same mechanics and therefor requiring the same amount of attention. Good if you want to draw attention from the lacking mechanics, bad if you want to improve the game. "Real orbital mechanics" however isn't that much better, as it takes a lot of micro and knowledge to handle orbits well so that units show the desired characteristics. Will also either be exploitable if ecliptic and inclined orbits are allowed (they provide gigantic advantages if you know how they work), or dumbed down into insignificance if neutrino goes with his plan and only allows primitive geosynchronous or geostationary orbits, thus introducing additional limitations like the incapability to get proper coverage on the poles. To me, there is only one practical solution: Do away with orbits or "satellite positions" as a game play feature and let that be purely cosmetic. Keep focus on the planets surface and keep controls for anything above as simple and abstract as possible, this includes treating orbital stuff as a kind of "cloud thing", thus providing attack, intercept and such commands, but hiding all the movement stuff behind meaningless visualizations and provide abstract ETAs only instead. That's what the original plans were like, and I don't get why they were abandoned in the first place, there was never supposed to be any type of interactive "space warfare", and this does include the orbit. I'm perfectly aware that this doesn't play well with the plans to only allow orbital units for gas giants, but who again said that the original air layer couldn't be used for gas planets instead?
My weigh in on this: - orbital units should orbit - this orbit should be chosen/be the action that launches an orbital unit, much like how nuke launchers work now, but not automatic after the first orbit selection - orbital units should consume energy all the time. It's why they don't fall - orbital units should use more energy to change to a different orbit - why not have a ground structure that reduces what a sat can see (for radar units)? Maybe reduce the range. But also let you know a sat had just passed over - shooting an orbital from the ground should be like hitting a bullet with a smaller bullet while riding a horse and wearing a blindfold - an orbital unit that kills any orbital units it encounters. Maybe make the ammo so that being in to much of a perpendicular orbit from its target means a lot of missed shots. Expansion/critiques welcome
And what do orbital units DO, infuscoletum? Arguing the niceties and the little details is all well and good, but what are the Orbital Units actually doing for you while they're up there?
Ya know that's definitely around the wrong way, makes more sense (for a limited amount of sense) that they produce Energy not use it, being nice and high up getting lots of unfiltered sunlight for solar power. And if the orbitals have to orbit I'll just choose a Geosynchronous orbit or possibly a Molniya orbit over the area I want my Sat sitting, and laugh at every one else with standard orbits . As their Sat spends at least half the game not where it's needed, or being shot down when it passes over any of the AntiSat defenses I've build somewhere on the Lat or Longitude they've chosen to overfly after all there's little chance they'll manage to control the complete Lat or Longitude of there chosen orbit. And if they all decide to use geosynchronous orbits as well then they're a pack of hypocrites who wanted something modeled in the game they never used! Question On a more serious note why would you choose a non-geosynchronous orbit if your going to support full orbital mechanics, it strategically and tactically doesn't make sense alot of the time. If I want orbital coverage over an area I want it full time not every now and then...
Provide always moving radar coverage, interplanetary transport (beam me up), warning of those transports, a way to deal with the transports and scout type orbitals. Utilitarian stuff.
except for transporting things off-world, that all sounds like the stuff that Air does/did in previous games. Are we trading out Aircraft diversity for just "upgrading" it into the orbital Air 2.0 layer?
Kind of seems like... Also looks like this is going to be abused to introduce interactive space battles anyway, despite the original arguments against it, like the distraction this causes. Or what else are the orbital fighters supposed to do?
Static radar coverage over a large area is far more useful that moving coverage over a large area that moves especially seeing radar isn't persistent. If there was a war today between the Russia & the USA the first things they'rd do is wipe out any Sats the other controlled that passed over there territory while keeping the ones above the areas of the earth they controlled alive to provide forewarning against attacks. Sats are only strategically useful over an enemy location if they lack the Tech to do anything to them ie Iraq war etc. Thus most orbits are only useful in peacetime or when the enemy is so technological inferior that they can't challenge your Sats. @Nanolathe well that is kinda of the reality, what things to Satellites do that you can't do with enough Blimps or Aircraft, apart from assist with moving to other planets? Gas planets are admittedly a little different, aircraft would be torn to shreds in them so you need something tougher or in near planetary orbits.
And so, we reach the discovery that, with the exception of moving between planets and overpowered radar coverage, orbital units around "normal" planets are almost entirely redundant.
This would appear to be fairly true in realistic setting, in geosync orbit over or near your base, or over uncontrolled territory they have some additional value as hard to target defense/offense units & intel platforms. The one thing where I think they would have considerable value is in an anti-asteroid role, to track asteroids and make sure no ones try to collide them into your planet/base and provide a launch platform for Anti-Asteroid defenses... However seeing the goal for the game is 'Awesome/fun' not realism I'm sure something interesting can be done with them, with a fair bit of balance work it's just unlikely to be realistic. And thus a push for devoting a lot of time to developing realistic & full simulation seems miss guided. And they're certainly need for gas planets.
Doubt that. Unless you are capable of shooting down the satellite by laser (which is very unlikely, at that distance), you would have to intercept it. The satellites themselves are cheap and mass producible, even nowadays. What is costly, is the initial development and to get them up there in the first place. But that goes for counter weapons as well. That's why you would usually leave those satellites alone (physically) and go for classic jamming instead, denying your enemy the use of the satellite is much more cost efficient than attempting to take it down. Especially since your enemy can deploy them in batches of dozens at a time while you have to intercept them individually. Both "orbital fighters" and "T3 satellites" are misconceptions.
You are aware that the US & China have all shot down Sats (~100miles from a Ship, 300 miles from an Aircraft launched sat, & ~ 500miles) & the USSR had a ASAT program during the cold war using Nuke warheads to take down Sats? Not to mention rumors of Laser interference of some Sats? Sure they may not shoot down all of them but they'd disable or kill them via some means or another. The technology exists and sticking a missile carrying a 10,000 ball bearings into an intercept orbit for a satellite over your territory is alot cheaper than sticking a full satellite in the same place. Though there may well be stealth Sats in existence that you can't spot and shoot down...
Yes, with missiles which would also have been sufficient to carry another batch of satellites into a similar orbit. Sure, you can just pollute civil standard orbits with ball bearings and alike, making them unusable, but with sufficient budget (and if you don't need geostationary orbit) it is easy enough to choose a different, safe orbit. Taking a satellite down, is a lot harder than putting another one up.
I'm sorry, but this just isn't true. See in reality, in order to put a satellite up, you need several Km/s of delta-v in order to achieve orbit. This requires multistaging rockets and all kinds of complexities, as I'm sure you are familiar. However, an ASAT weapon doesn't need to make orbit. It needs to get to the correct altitude, but that's actually pretty easy. In fact all ASAT weapons to date are thoroughly suborbital. They just need to be in the same space at the same time. The fact that they are sub orbital means that the satellite is ramming into the ASAT weapon at several Km/s, which is pretty nasty, as i'm sure you can imagine. Thats why an ASAT weapon can be launched from a fighter jet, while a satellite requires much larger rockets with expendable boosters, and the suchlike.
Exactly and that's the fairly expensive way to do it, if you really want to kill a range of orbits you use a Starfish Prime ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starfish_Prime ) style trick, 1 Hydrogen bomb at 400KM above sea level & 1/3rd of all Satellites in LEO are disabled over a short time period and they weren't even trying to target satellites in that example. It wouldn't be too hard to design something similar specifically designed to target specific orbitals or satellites and with foreknowledge one could set it up to have lesser impact on ones own Sats, or to shift there orbit to reduce the effect just before it occurred while leaving the enemy sats to take the full effect.
