A comprehensive Example of Orbital Combat

The lack of discussion. The perceived lack of impact that we have on the game. The loss of control and the debacle of "Shitstorms get attention. Quiet well thought out suggestions get ignored."

The Devs aren't not giving us information... that's not the issue (or at least not the main driving force behind this explosion). It's that they don't talk to us.

They simply refuse to talk to us. To share the creative process.

People are realising that Uber just used them for the funding, and now, don't want to involve them in the development of the game that they helped make possible.

"The backers are to be tolerated, rather than embraced."

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But orbital DOES have the risk of diverting the attention from the planets surface to the orbital layer if the current plans are followed (or at least what one must assume what the plans are). That orbital and interplanetary stuff is not supposed to be a full game of its own, it's supposed to be as efficient as possible to not distract from the action on the planets surface.

Yes, but that doesn't change the fact that things will feel different between having 1 planet with orbitals and having 5 planets with Orbitals, how they 'feel' with be based on a Planet by planet basis and have to be experience individually. The Gameplay for Orbitals across planets, just like every other layer, is very segregated, even for land units you only ever deal with one planet at a time, you'll never zoom out to systems scale to setup attacks across multiple planets at the same time. The saving grace of this in terms of land and Naval units(and indirectly Air units) is that terrain is a huge factor so 2 planets can actually feel very different when one has huge oceans and the other has winding forest paths but you don't get that in the Orbital layer.

Mike

Careful, interplanetary transports might be placed in the orbital layer too, so it already has a possible role in the interplanetary system which makes it a lot more complicated.

Reading between the lines of all the Dev comments, I don't feel** this to be the case, I feel like for the most part, units built on planets will be locked to that planet, moving armies won't be viable unless you can do it via Unit cannon, and the idea for those seems to be as a means of planetary assault from a Moon or asteroid, which already have limited surface area and couldn't really support the 'full' army sizes of multiple players and act as a way of giving players the means to carry out those battles in places where there is sufficient area.

**Of course at this stage anything is possible, but not in the good way of "Imagine the possibilities" and more so because we don't have any clue what Uber thinks in this regard.

Mike

Someone managed to find a quote of neutrino, where he said that there will be 3 (4) different methods to travel between planets:

• Teleporters (two connected portals)
  
• Unit canon (moon <-> planet, reinforcements)
• Engineer pod (Called "Landing pod" in the game files, orbital unit, maybe usable as transport)

There also appear to be plans for a construction unit in the orbital layer, so it is likely that there had been such a plan at a point in time.

However, those plans might have been revised in the meantime, who knows.

Edit:
Here it is.

The so far most (and only) informative post on that topic.

But for all the information it gives it is not a post that invites discussion. It is not a post that asks
"What do you think of these ideas?";
it is a post that simply states the facts of what Uber is doing, nothing more.

The information Neutrino provides does not give a sense of inclusion in the process for any of the backers who are interested in the subject. He is coldly spelling out what will be done... and that's the end of it. There is no invitation for criticism, nor a request for us to flesh out those 'fuzzy' parts.

"This how it is" he says. End of story.

Yeah but as I said, if you read between the lines, it doesn't seem likely you'll have a 'Factory' planet that is just covered in factories rallied to a teleporter.

Armies as an entity will be 'planet-locked' so it seems.

Mike

You seem to be overlooking the fact that the entire game will feel different once multiple bodies are put into play, and those bodies can interact with each other under different circumstances.

Lets say for example you are player A1 and you are fighting player A2 on Planet A, now this fellow seems to be a complete noob, your air scouts reveal that he has not even built any air factories, you toy with him for a while sure that he's no threat.....

But player B1 and player B2 on the other hand are fighting an epic war over on Planet B, using all manner of craft from Land to Orbital units, where as you, never seeing the point haven't built much orbital units, the planets swing closer together following there orbits, player b2 enjoying an advantage over his opponent uses his excess mass to build the unit cannon and uses it to hurl engineers onto your moon as the planets pass each other.

Now he sends units into the orbit of your planet and you are under constant bombardment, and you lose, horribly for assuming everything is segregated and end up feeling mighty silly.

This is almost the exact opposite to the impression I get from the post.

That is separate. Your situation is one where the player makes a poor choice, it has nothing to do with the gameplay at all, in short as much as player A2 is a noob, Player A1 is an idiot for ignoring players B1 and B2. What A1 should have done is contained A@ to some degree, and Focused on claiming his own Planet/Moon/Asteroids because it's a known conclusion that you'll either be attacked by either B1 or B2 OR you'll need to attack them.

What I'm talking about is akin to have 5 cars, they are all the same make and model, but each is a different color, you might 'feel' different when you look at them all lined up in the garage, but once you pick one and take it for a drive, they don't drive differently at all.

That is how Orbital is, on a planet by planet basis it is the same as any other planet.

Mike

My example is of how much different the game will become. In my example he probably already had claimed his own moon, but with no competition for control of the moon would you honestly tell me you would have invested in factories and orbital units to protect your unchallenged mexes? I've seen enough gameplay from pro players on PA to know that they don't do this. Only turtle protect, most players tend to go on the offensive. Anyway i digress.

My point was that the two planets interact through proximity, hence are not segregated completely. Yes not every unit can be transported by the lander or other methods due to sheer size, but your orbital units will be necessary when such clashes happen, to protect from and to attack other planets.

So you can't as you previously declared treat each other planets as irrelevant and segregated.

Whelp, I'm not making any progress here, so I'm not going to keep pushing on something that clearly wont give.

Mike

I think I've been pretty clear that what people write in the forum does effect my thinking but that ultimately I'm the vision holder for the game. In fact on multiple occasions people have made me reconsider things. Ultimately though someone has to make a decision and in this case it happens to be me. I understand you aren't happy with that process but I'm not really sure what the proposed alternative is.

I'm sorry I'm not living up to your lofty expectations. Who does give you this feeling and on what game so I can learn from them?

I don't need to invite criticism, that's already implied and expected. There are also multiple places where I directly as for feedback on something.

I don't see why you couldn't have a factory planet and/or resource gen planets as well. It is going to be expensive to move stuff between planets but not impossible. In some ways a resource generation planet is more the direction I've been thinking because you can build an army anywhere you can get a decent beachhead.

A resource generation planet can be dangerous, as the resource flow from the other planet would suddenly disable most of the economical barriers which leads to an scenario where you could even produce more units on site than you could ever have transported by regular transports or even teleporters.

That is, IF you are actually able to get a beachhead at all, since you are dealing with enemy forces and the number of units for the initial assault is rather limited, even if there were full scale interplanetary transports. (A consequence from this, by the way, if orbital transports were to move in the orbital layer, then they would need to remain mostly invulnerable, or it would turn out almost impossible to drop units onto the planet at all.)

I don't really think, another player would ever allow you to fully power up your "private" resource gen planet. But if this were possible (due to the lack of EASY interplanetary assault methods), then the whole "tiered economy" concept would have to be revised. (That is your concept, isn't it? Hard to to tell what is just a placeholder for testing, and what is "final".)

That, is using very limited kerbal technology. Second, that is assuming you couldn't even fabricate the thrusters on moon, which in this game your "metal and energy" technically exist everywhere at once without need for transportation.

That already right there ends any further parallels for kerbal and this game. This game lets you deorbit asteroids. Asteroids mind you are smaller than moons too. Either way, I am sure some technology humans currently know about could in fact make a much higher force output with a much smaller fuel cost. Antimatter for instance.

Sounds like a valid argument against any type of orbit and pro "orbital hover units", like we have them right now. That would only require the art style for "satellites" to include the required engines in order to maintain that "orbit".
Also opens the possibility for "real" interplanetary transport which are actually able to fly from surface to surface.

I think it's less about the community making the decision for you(That is your job, you have all the context where as we only have limited perception of all that) and more so just involved at more levels and/or having more of the process being transparent.

Mike

Don't let these guys get you down Neutrino. I for one fully support any decision you make and believe you are the best one to make that decision. No matter what you do you will always have people who love you for it and people who hate you for it and it's always the later of the two groups who are more vocal. We all backed knowing you are at the helm and that you were finally making the game you envisioned. Just don't forget that for every one of those vocal haters there are an equal or greater amount of people who silently approve of your decisions and processes and in the end everyone here will play and enjoy your game regardless.