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

One way to prevent this is if the speed difference between satellites and interceptors is high enough (making moving them out of the way infeasible). Having said that, I'm not a fan of fighters in orbit. I'd prefer most of the combat up there (and between orbital and ground) take place with missiles.

I agree with you on the first two points, but I don't agree on the third. I don't think that space has to be SUPER special or anything. Take bots and tanks for example. Tanks have their niche and bots have their own. However, they both take up the same space (land) and function very similarly. So, why not have orbital units behave like air units or naval or even a combanation of the two of us? As long as there are certain distinctions or specialties just for orbital units then I think we can all be happy.

You could phrase the last point in a different, less absolute way:
The orbital layer should not require the same amount of attendance as the other 3 layers (air, surface, sub) do. This does not prevent the usage of the same mechanics for movement and alike, but it induces restrictions upon direct unit interactions in that layer.

To try and clarify I've never seen orbital units as being in the same class as land/air/sea. The goal isn't to make the game playable with only orbital.

Yes, why wouldn't there be direct interactions of orbital units?

I suppose we could cut orbital down to just satellites you can ground launch that never interact with each other. However, if you have any weapons you need a way to shoot it down.

Don't we already have weapons which would be perfectly suited for that task?

Catapults and nukes, just to name two. Although that's just a suggestion. I just want to avoid that the battle inside the orbital layer gets separated from the surface based warfare, especially when it comes to countering the counters.

Nukes already have a system of counter and counters for counters (in the form of killing the anti nuke with arty), so this system could be possibly extended to interact with the corresponding counterparts in the orbital layers too, in both directions.

Also turning the orbital layer into a type of global playground where distances and locations only really matter for deployment, but counters against the orbital layers use mechanics which are not bound to the small weapon radius any fighter like unit would have.

Cool, do you have any idea how your going to represent Mass spots or the equivalent on Gas giants? If not I think it'd be kinda cool to have them as "upwellings" or storms in the planet that are pulling up heavier elements from deeper in the planet. Would allow you to have some very pretty an interesting visual features on the gas planet, similar to the coloured eyes and patterns one sees on Jupiter (they could even be animated if it's not to much work, spinning around slowly).

I don't want to derail the topic, but;
neutrino, when you say satellites will be in a fake geosync shell, do you mean they will launch and go into this shell normally (ie take off, raise apopapsis to geosync orbit and then circularize) or will they launch like now (take off straight up, stop in mid-place and 'float' in space)?

Also, will it be like a real geosync in that it will be matched to the planet's rotation speed?

Orbital is merely a extension of air/sea/land into space. If we are going to be loosing realistic orbits like in KSP, then we need to have distinct similarities and differences that keep orbital game play fun, non-disrupting ,and yet easy. The easiest way to keep the control for satellites, space fighters, etc is to use a similar system that is already in the game. What ever you do in the end will be fine with me, I just wanted to state my opinion

Of course! As the Devs have repeatedly mentioned, the main focus of the game will be planetside and not pew-pew battles in space.

I guess it is

It's a fake geosync that can't exist in reality. Orbital units will live on this shell and can move around on it. It's not real orbital mechanics.

I agree nukes can be extended to interact with orbital and that could make sense.

There is no current plan to have mass spots on gas giants.

That should make things interesting, I'll look forward to a build where they turn up then! It'll be very interesting to see how you implement the gas giants.

I'm late to this discussion, and this is something that's probably already been said, but I would like it to be similar to the system editor, where you can adjust the orbits of planets around the star.

You can adjust the orbital height of a satellite, as well as the eccentricity as easily as you can for a planet in the system editor. There will be 2 additional sliders to adjust rotation around the x and y axis.

Is that final and simply on your say so? Because the poll suggests that the majority of backers would be unhappy with that. Are you happy that the backers are not getting what they may have thought they were backing?

Edited to reduce the quote to it's pertinent phrase

Nothing is final, it's just the current design direction. And yes I do reserve the right to design the game. Let me be absolutely clear, this is not game design by committee.

No, they've suggested then are unhappy with the current implementation. So am I, it's not finished yet. As for the rest of it there isn't enough information to compare moving orbital vs fixed orbital to make this anything other than a strawman poll.

Polls are useless for these issues. As a collective, people care for what is pretty and "cool" and don't consider the gameplay and/or other effects these things have on the game. The vote for "orbiting around a planet" is also comprised of many individual ideas and not a single, coherent suggestion. That's why polls are only useful when there are finite, discrete options to choose from, not open-ended options with many more possibilities than poll options.

As for not getting what they thought they were backing, you'd have to show where it was said they were specifically getting orbital units done in a certain way for that to be valid.

No the poll suggests of the ~45,000 backers and the thousands of people with forum accounts only ~90 of the people people who cared enough to vote 75 people are unhappy. That is not a statically significant number and you can draw no real conclusions from it. Not to mention the other reasons while the poll is meaningless as described by raevn.

I don't want to come across aggressive, I'll admit I'm disappointed. But I would point out that it's not just unhappy with the current implementation, 85% have voted for 'orbits around the planet'.

85% of a tiny fraction of backers. And those are split between multiple, different, implementations.