What do you think about the workings of the current orbital units?

Indeed, thats just you.

"High cost" and "unattainable" are not the same, as long as a unit can make up for the cost under certain conditions. As long it is affordable after all, it might still become the best solution once all other solutions are renderer useless by other terms.

There is no reason why you should enforce a certain build path upon every player as this inevitably produces a very limited meta gameplay.

You only need some mechanics which regulate the "time for a comeback" for the underdog in order to make the defensive position not too easy, respectively not to prolong games too much if the skill level differs too much.

You see, if I went around saying "that's just you and nobody else agrees with you", I'm pretty sure others would regard it as douchey behaviour. Get over yourself, your opinion is not fact, nor are you an absolute authority.

I am tired of being polite to smug, superior asshats who think their opinion is the only one that matters.

1. High cost is not unattainable. High cost may be unattainable with regards to the specific stage of economic development compared to any other alternative.

2. I'm not forcing anything on anyone.

There is no reason for options for option's sake. Just because you can add it as an option, doesn't mean it is a good thing. You just consider it to be.

3. What are these mechanics? You got any idea, or are these vague, abstract concepts beyond mortal ken? The problem with dismissing other peoples' posts is that yours need to be perfect by comparison. Yours aren't.

One of these mechanics is "upkeep" for those "last effort" units.
They give you a certain base line in the relative strength in a certain field between you and your superior opponent, but you can use upkeep (indirectly tied to ground control via mass -> energy -> upkeep), to ensure that at some point, the superior player can still overcome you by sheer numbers.

In the case of cheap T1 recon satellites: To take the satellites down for good, even if doing so costs you 3-4 times of what it costs to deploy one in the first place.

I would like to see orbits work in concentric rings. There is an optimal distance for achieving geosynchronous orbit... A little closer and you orbit faster than rotation. A little farther and you go the other way, relative to the surface. You choose the distance on launch and the tilt is based on the location of the launch tower.

So like this.

1. When you select the launch tower to build, it's blueprint shows three orbits projected on the planet. One orbit has the same period as the planet, one shorter (by a multiple would be good so that the unit), and one is longer. This way you can see the orbits possible from that launch tower before building.

2. Once built, you can tell it which of the three orbit's to send it's units. (orbits shown when the tower is selected). When a unit is launched it goes straight up to the orbital layer the tower was set for.

3. Once in orbits (Note that the orbits should be pretty slow, not much faster than land units at most) the units might could switch between the orbiting layers.

Alternatives include limiting the amount of tilts for planets. This could be based on size so that the smallest planets only have one or a few. Also, you could not allow orbital jumping for the sake of simplicity.

I'm going to try to program a little example to test this idea and I'll let ya'll try it if it goes well.

What about the poles or any target location which isn't on the equator?

Geosynchronous orbit as well as the slightly higher and lower orbits phasing orbits are not that complicated, that's true. But they only cover regions close to the equators, so the effect of the satellite would have to be offset from the effect by up to 1/4 of the planets perimeter in order to leave no blind spots.

And even then units could just "hop" over the pole, while the satellite had to travel half around the planet to "follow" them.

What I'm trying to say: Be the attempt of simplifying the orbits, you would also imply an oversized action radius for satellites - which then again makes the positioning irrelevant, except for the sake of simulation, while still leaving blind spot or areas which are only very hard to cover.

Thats the difficulty with any type of simulated orbit so far, anything except for geostationary orbit has non-trivial limitations/consequences in terms of projected movement, and geostationary orbits alone are also quite limited due to fact that they are limited to the equator.

And tanks can't go in water ( anymore ). Maybe a limitation like this is what makes orbital not Air 2.0. Honestly, at this point extra talk is not going to prove anything. That's why I want to try it myself and see if it even makes sense.

I'm still in favor of addressing the other issue with "Air 2.0" first:
The choice of units.
Especially the "orbital fighters" and the fact that they contradict the "no space combat" guideline, as well as the placement of orbital units in the tech tree which makes them more a "T3" endtime unit than meaningful add-on to the main phases of the game.

Maybe it will turn out, that we don't actually need "real" orbits to differentiate it from the "Air 2.0" scenario once the actual orbital units no longer feel like you would need to "push them around".

(And as for gas giants... there is still one thing I don't get, and that is why they shouldn't have their own sets of units in a regular low "Air" layer which comes as an ADDITION to the actual, high orbit layer. That way, gas giants could provide the whole combat experience, without polluting the the actual orbital layer which is used on other planets.)

Eh... just give them momentum and collision physics so that it's like marbles in the orbital layer

Not really. There is a pretty clear distinction between orbit and space (deep space), at least on planetary terms. Besides the point though. The idea of the orbital fighter doesn't make a lot of sense right now, when there's only a radar, but with gas giants and large offensive orbital installations, the idea was to provide a way to take those out if you have say a lot of orbital infrastructure, but not necessarily the other options (lots of nukes, a bunch of delta-v engines being built on asteroids, etc). There was also thought that they would be one of the few fairly responsive units in the orbital layer - i.e. one that doesn't take a crazy amount of time to move around to respond to new threats.

Will it work? Dunno till we try it. It just happened to be one of the first units I got working because it used existing verbs (game systems).

These kinds of comments make me think we're in for a round 2 of all this once we find out the plan for Gas Giants.

Mike

In that case, I would say discussions about possible units for Gas Giants should start right now. It looks like there are only rough ideas, but nothing has been worked out in detail so far.

I used Gas Giants as an example because the idea as stated is that they will be orbital only (At least on that specific planet).. That, combined with the intent they be big economic goals, trying to flesh out a little the types of units and intended interactions is certainly not wasted time.

Jon already commented on the general idea behind them (what we have so far). So keeping in mind "all orbital, all the time" when it comes to the gas giants themselves hopefully frames that part of the discussion a bit more.

Can you shed any light on the vision for those units however? any direction as to the general purpose of orbital units beyond the obvious?

Do they have a specific purpose, or are they more of a "everything and the kitchen sink"?
Are they a hodgepodge of "air" and "wet-navy" units, but in space, or are we expecting more realistic units?
Are we talking space stations and satellites or "Space Fighters" and "Space AA"?
Are we talking "Space Fusion Reactors" or Solar Gatherers that actually need line of sight to the sun?

How "deep" are we allowed to go? How realistic vs "cartoony" is the vision?
Yes I know that the vision is "what's fun and good for gameplay", but what kind of gameplay are you envisaging in the first place?

If I remember things right, then the only final thing which was ever said about Gas Giants, is that there won't be any ground or naval units. Which is rather obvious, considering that the pressure would crash/melt (or both) you before you could reach the liquid or even solid phase.

Orbital units appear to be the general plan, but regular aircraft like units have neither been confirmed nor explicitly crossed out. So working out possible unit constellations for the Gas Giants, should provide an impression whether these units are suited for orbit on regular planets or not.

So far there are specific plans for one unit only: "vacuum cleaners" which suck the H/He from the atmosphere of the Gas Giant to produce massive amounts of resources.

(Ah come on... When I made the Mega Maid joke, I totally forgot that we are actually going to get something similar.)

I think overall right now guys, the game besides the quirky unit, which air does not have its nerf features programmed into engine code yet, and hopefully orbital doesn't use any of it's currently existing units at all in the final build and all are scrapped for better orbitally based combat.

I understand the orbital layer needs full function that all layers will have.

1) Orbital is not self-expanding like the other trees. It needs self sustaining structures. Land has fabs, pgens, mexes, and turrets. Air technically has the same ones but it still accesses them and it does so with different limit and ability, most costly but faster across wider land. Should orbital have the units that will make it sustainable and self-sufficient as an first-choice tree, maybe the game needs the same sort of tree where you launch an orbital "fabricator", which either builds a unit-structure-mixed unit that functions as a structure but can be "hovered" after being produced giving it really slow unit movement, or builds a factory that builds other units while the fabricator builds structures. I AM NOT SAYING ANY TREE SHOULD BE BALANCED SOLO, but most other trees can be heavily leaned on currently because they are self sufficient.

2) Orbital is not properly themed. It borrows currently off of a limited high-powered air. I might have a unique opinion but I hear this one around a lot, but my opinion is that orbitals should not directly fight with every other layer, it should be way the hell up there, maybe even expand out the planetary view or show a different "view" between planetary and in-planet where you see the orbital layer, but definitely make them fly out of "effect" of everything else, and then have it's theme being "out of reach" where you can relatively distantly do passive things like collect and monitor a planet while the enemy has only a handful of things he can do against you. Offensive units should be limited, to where it isn't expedient to even destroy another orbital unit with an orbital unit, and yet costly or difficult to launch an assault on orbitals with non-orbitals using missiles or catapults. This way orbitals naturally utilize it's space from anything that can reach it.

3) Orbital should have it's own balance, its own trade-off that makes it useable early-game yet pros-and-cons throughout the game against other layers. I think orbitals should be and already sort of are harder to expand on independently, and with less access to the other layers from the orbital layer, it's speed to build against how fast you can cover area with it, and it's effectiveness against other layers for it's volume, would make it the more cost-ineffective and volume-ineffective choice with neat utility. I mean it would be a lot more interesting to have a choice of the current great designs, ground "never-ending-quick-self-replication-across-great-surface-area", naval "patch of area dominance and parimeter harassment and focused firepower with limited in-planet accessibility" which isn't up to par but hopefully becomes that, air "single costly focused attacks that stab acutely into enemy territory causing deep wounds at deep cost", along with the new orbital "hard to reach by enemies, slow to expand across surface area, whole airborne structures with slow mobility, but only utility abilities while lacking direct influence firepower"

I know Uber probably gags at each post made in an orbital discussion topic, and they are probably puking their brains out if so, but I aim to give nothing but opinion. As long as it functions it is fine, my main drawbacks are that it "should be able to do the basic building blocks of life", "shouldn't be tier 3", "shouldn't be a similar function to another layer", and in fact "my opinion is they should be more solar-panels and one-directional-arrays themed". All useful I think, not too much exaggeration. I understand this is a rough placeholder that doesn't even function like planned orbitals will.

My opinion on the theme is to be casted to the side if gameplay works for what they have in mind, it is just what I had imagined, but too many people's imagination is getting the best of them. I just hope we can use them early and late game, and that we don't regret having them. We won't as long as they aren't balanced around you requiring them as no other tree should be required either yet a mixture of all should be best, you using them exclusively once you can as replacement because they are stronger thus making them expensive tier 3, them stomping on other things due to power being balanced in overpowered, them being catastrophically cripping to lose one being too overly required to win, them not being useless compared to doing the same thing that you rather go to air/ground/naval to do it with as having a unique role and reason to use.

The bottom line is, like the whole game really, everything should be a tool you can use or not, and winning should require tactical intelligence and execution in using the right tool for the right job, and the right tool against the right tool, and every tool having a way to win and every tool having a way to lose.

That touches on a whole different issue; one that deserves its own thread.

I th

First off orbital fighters are not in for sure. Just to be clear. Secondly they don't violate the no space combat guideline because we aren't talking about the same thing. Orbital combat is not the same as space combat.

Orbital units sit in a fake geosync and then can move around on the shell as directed. They aren't forced to be always moving.

I don't know where you got that from but it's not correct. Gas giants are like any other planet but they only have an orbital layer. The units are the same. That's not to say there won't be the occasional special unit like a special fusion reactor for them but in general it's the same units and the same orbital layer.

Tech levels are a complete red herring issue. I've never said the words T3 to anyone in the office. People like to name stuff for organizational reasons but it means nothing.

Thats not what I meant, I'm aware that they can occupy any location they want. What I meant that they are currently forced to move if fighters are coming their way, so what I meant was the need to manage them for survivability, induced by the possibility of direct interactions between orbital units.

Saying that is a red herring in and of itself.