Orbital units - 2 directions

I would think yes on the efficiency question.

High value asset for later in the game.

well I'm no rocket scientist, but I'm pretty sure you'd run out of fuel pretty fast trying to Geosync up by the north pole. Besides, isn't the point to find ways to make the orbital layer notably different than just Air 2.0? Limiting the area of possible stationary structure would accomplish that

And about getting to other planets as well.

/agree.

There isn't a single fuel mechanic in the entire game.

true, it would mean you wouldn't be able to park a bombardment sat over top of the base, but you could still send orbiting platforms past for bombing runs

I could accept this for orbital units, even if it would result in hilarious situations where satellites slingshot back and forth around a target point trying to decelerate.

So what would you allow in the way of ground defenses? Using a real orbit you would cover a lot of the ground on the planet which means it's likely you would go over defenses.

This is the future. why have limitations that are based in current day?

I'm confused by the "there's no sense in building sats if you're only going to build a few"

You could say the same thing about building nukes.

If there's a tactical advantage to building orbital units, people will build them once their economy can support them.

Alright, so then really talking about gas giants apart from other planet types doesn't make sense as that will not be the first place they will be deployed. Whatever gas giant engagements will be like, they will only be an extension of what is going on elsewhere.

I'd really like to understand how interplanetary deployment has changed since the pitch. Are we really going to be doing this from orbit? Not sure how I feel about that.

I know, I meant in real life. The purpose of my compromise suggestion is to create a visual similarity to real life, not to introduce fuel consumption clutter, so considering how an actual spacecraft would move in orbit and then painting broad strokes of how that translates into the actual in game orbital shell

because; gameplay variety for the orbital layer?

Interplanetary deployment hasn't changed at all. See the landers in the video? That's how you move stuff between planets along with the unit cannon (also in the video). Teleporters are an obvious extension for late game.

Gas giants are certainly just an extension of the gameplay elsewhere. They are basically big balls of gas you can't land on but can build orbital units around, similar to the real solar system. The idea behind the orbital gas mine comes right out of Live Free or Die, and yes it's built on orbit.

Scale is a primary core philosophy of the game.

Also nukes are a single unit, not an entire type of unit that has to have it's cost spread across multiple units to make sense.

Is it really necessary that an orbital unit passes over the location of a defense, just to pick it of?

Shooting projectiles at an orbital unit isn't going to work. The chances of hitting, are just like shooting a dime at a distance of 2-3 kilometers (this example IS to scale, depending on the size of the spacecraft), even lasers are futile at that distance since you can't aim.

So whatever is used as a defense already needs to use homing missile mechanics anyway, even if it was not to get into the orbit of the target, it would still have to set for a course with a realistic chance of intercepting the target.

Flying half around the planet in addition is an easy job for any rocket which fulfills these requirements.

I think this is how I envisioned orbital:

After you're done building an orbital unit, but before it's launched, you pick a circular path for it to travel on around the planet. I could imagine a line that is drawn that can be seen and then that being moved by the cursor to the location you want - after you confirm that is the orbit you want the satellite will launch and then essentially travel along that path for the duration of the game at a prescribed height (same height for everything).

I just see these types of units need to travel around the globe in an orbit. I'm not going to kid you, when I'm playing and I'm slightly zoomed out and the sun or moon that is on a planet is orbiting past in the background; I get the biggest kick out of it. I think that seeing something I launched do the same thing seems so bad$@#.

If certain sats are able to link up in orbit, have an option pop up to show what current sats are orbiting and then select that unit, and have it launch and then have the first one "power" over to the second one and stay on the second's path that was pre-selected.

I'm not sure what type of units are planned to become orbital units but one scenario is a laser sat that only fires on an enemy base when it is traveling above it. It's not meant to be the be-all-end-all just another way to hinder your adversary.

There is so much potential on what orbital could be - and yet I hope it has that feel in the end (which I believe it will) that will leave me saying "oh man I want to build that again" I'm not too sure if my expectations are grounded in programming or engineering reality or not; and I hope they are not set to high. I just figure if you're orbiting moons/asteroids, etc. then that same concept could be scaled down for satellites.

This right here.

Just because smashing lots of tanks together is a fine and dandy thing, doesn't mean that smashing lots of everything together is too.

I'm just trying to make sure we're not talking past each other.

In the pitch video, interplanetary landers are launched from the ground. Not from some in-orbit factory.

I like what I saw in the pitch video. I'm kinda uncomfortable with the idea of an in-orbit factory, sans equally capable land-based launchers.

I'm fine with an orbital unit built and launched from the ground, deployed to a gas-giant similarly to interplanetary landers, which can be used to build harvesters, other satellites, other interplanetary landers, and air support.

But here again, I don't see the number of orbital units, per planet, being that significantly large due to their expense.

If you want to harvest a gas giant, that should be really damn expensive. If you want to just get a fabber to another planet or asteroid, that shouldn't anywhere near as expensive.

I'm just worried the less exotic you make units that are in the orbital layer, the cheaper you make them, the more on-par with units from other tiers, the more they will become just another air layer.

Blargh - double

But neutrino somehow has a point.

There is a lot of possible uses for the orbital layer, regular satellites being just ONE. Satellites are nothing you should pump into space like bullets, since only few of them provide already a decent coverage for the passive ones (like spy satellites), and it is needless to say that nuke grade satellites shouldn't be spamable in any way.

But you also have the components for the interplanetary transport system up there, and they could occur in quite decent numbers if you were to launch an initial assault in order to establish an beachhead.
Even if there are no actual factories, you would still have the transports flying around, waiting up there.
(Which shouldn't really land IMHO, just fly the unit into orbit and drop it.)