Orbital: The tech 3 layer

You can pace the game without invoking extra zeroes. It's really not that hard. Keep orbital resources sparce, and it automatically makes fighting over orbits high cost and low gain. Moderate cost infrastructure and limited ground access automatically makes them unfeasible as early game tech. You'd simply get rolled by tanks and bots. Ground wreckage automatically makes early ground battle more important than early space battle. Failing to gather the best resources means you die to the player who has more stuff.

Instead, we have the mistakes of Supcom being recreated all over again. "Bigger things cost more so that they are better". Orbital light fighters costing more than nukes and having more strength than heavy destroyers. A THOUSAND bombers having comparable health to a SINGLE wall piece. No. That's fucked up.

If I was alone in my opinion you might have a case. I am not alone in my opinion, therefore you are incorrect. You fixed nothing.

The very definition of opinion is that it is your's. It is also your opinion that there is a significant number of others who have the exact same opinion as you and for the same reasons. And you also seem to think that this number is so significant that you assert your opinions as the undeniably best opinions over anyone else's who might disagree.

From what I've seen of your posts, you don't come across like you want to find out what would be best or most fun. Rather, you act like you already know the best game, that the devs should agree with you, and that you have a majority in agreement with you. You don't strike me as a team player for the development of this game.

Whew. I'm glad that's just your opinion, and that... apparently, you can't share those.

depending on how many unit types will be available for basic and advanced orbital
making it accessible to early could make other unitsets redundant ... i would be careful with that
however interplanetary warfafare is yet not there for testing so lets wait first and eventualy make a poll later ...
...
and for gods sake please don´t come always with the " WE CAN MOD IT " card ... so annoying ...


addendum:
i do actualy agree that the spysat f.e. should be somewhat less effective in range
then a t2 groundradar ... considering it´s rather save in orbit and that you could actualy park it over a enemy base ... how many threads other then orbital fighters and smd´s (i assume) would be there to it?

Only if you give them abilities that overlap. Simple solution; don't just lazily give them abilities that overlap with Air, Land or Naval. If you do, at least give them a significant downside... probably several, so they are not the default choice.

agreed
though i wouldn´t neccesarily say lazy ... imo there NEEDS to be some overlap between the layers ..
i think that some of the naval units for instance such as missile launchers should be able to fire at orbital
especialy on a water planet otherwise you would need a special unit for that certain purpose every time
and making TOO many units like that would make the unitpool not just complex but too complicated

one question: does ground radar cover orbital as well? because imo it should aswell as wise versa ... which iirc was the case?

i´m all for making units with propper pros and cons ... the thing is though we are still yet not in the beta phase
to actualy do that ...

you guys don't get it, before having the orbital radar, we were screwed on 100radius planets. might i remind you you still need 2 of those to cover the whole 100radius planet , 1 can be sufficient if you're fighting 1 enemy, so 1 versus 80 t2 radars. Sounds to me like there was a dire need for something much more performant. Stop trying to nerf the orbital radar.

I bet you on release we'll be seeing 150radius planets as the stock maximum instead of 100.

Instead of building one orbital factory, I could probably build around 5 nuke silos. Anyone else feel like that's an issue?

what do you want with those nukes when your enemy is on another planet on the opposide of were your planet is
... so yes i actualy would consider that an issue

... The orbital units are still realy early in development, i think your overeacting by worrying this early. However it wouldent hurt to discuss the orbital layer a bit more (so long as we dont turn into a repetition of one of the other slightly older threads).


My suggestion: Keep the orbital radar as it is but make it a "tier 2 orbital factory" unit, add some cheap weak tier 1 orbital units for use early game.


My motivation for that is the following: On huge worlds the spy satelites will be needed as is, even if they are "tier 3" units (Well "needed" might have been too strong a word, but they would be nice to have on large worlds, spamming 100 radar towers and/or 1000 scout units would get old realy quickly).

However making them tier 1 and/or cheap in the current form would completely remove any reason to use scouts or ground based radar (the spy satellite would become a must have unit, i dislike those).


Other related thoughts: Uber has said from the begining that while there likely wont be experimental units like in supcom, there will still be some "experimental like" units/structures (the unit cannon was used as a example). The spy satellite falls under this category in my humble opinion.

While my suggestion is one possible solution for those that want early game orbital units, i admit thats its likely not the only one, i assume that someone that took the time could instead make up some drawback to the spy satellite while still allowing it to the remain usefull for the larger worlds.

I'm saying that the cost is a little ridiculous. If I'm on the same planet as my opponent, why would I spend over 50000 mass to get radar coverage when I could build 50000 mass worth of offensive units and structures? It's just way too expensive to be useful.

I agree with @Nanolathe on this one, orbital right now is so obscene that by the time you made orbital, it would be a better investment to make a bunch of advanced factories and raid the enemy base.

Orbital needs to be something you actually see in normal-sized games. And as a result, it needs to be cheaper. Thus, the cost of orbital needs to be reduced, and to balance it, the effectiveness of orbital should also be reduced.

Orbital radar CAN be nerfed. Even if it had the capacity of an advanced radar (or a default radar even), it still maintains its special ability -- that it can be moved. It can be mass-produced, moved around, stuck above a battlefield, sent over the enemy base to get scouting info, set up in a ring around your base, and moved when your base borders change. To me, that's an important distinction that already makes it powerful enough. Having it 10 times the radius of an advanced radar just makes it even more ridiculous.

Considering that multi-planets hasent been implemented yet, we cant even play a "normal sized game" yet.

(i image a "normal sized" game will be a medium planet, a small moon and some astroids, while a large game will be a solar system and a small game be a single world even a "big" one).

So i dont realy see that argument working until we can test it out.

Orbital should be something you can actually see in 'small sized' games then.

I would like to see access to orbital earlier or you run a risk that a game is already decided before it is used. Not all orbital needs to be cheap, but there should be some different and economically plausible strategies, with Orbital as one of them. Orbital should allow, alternative solutions for defeating your opponents that are not simple mirror images of ground/air based tactics.

I feel like the ability to get into the orbital layer in the first place should be relavtivly cheap, but also not be particularly useful. Spending additional time and/or resources on it can make it more and more useful at a greater and greater cost. For example, using an upgradeable space station as a basis for orbital expansion could be used for this. For more details on this idea, see this post: https://forums.uberent.com/threads/a-vision-of-orbital.51282/

Tier 1

Sensor Sat. radar only no vision. no overlap with scout planes as you can use them to locate the enemy and use scout planes to gain vision intel.

Defense Sat. armed with small guns to shoot down enemy sats and rockets.

Rocket Sat. armed with small fast firing rocket launcher to shoot down enemy sats and aircraft. beaten by defense sats.

Tier 2

Adv. Sensor Sat. more expensive wide range Radar (like current) but also has small ground vision radius directly below. good for covering large planets with mobile radar in the late game. is vulnerable when used for vision intel as it has to pass directly over an enemy base and his probably anti orbital weapons but can still give good radar intel on the enemy from a relatively safe distance.

Adv. Defense Sat. armed with slower firing laser. good at taking out dropships and can fire in a small radius at the surface. due to slow fire rate it is vulnerable to T1 defense Sats

Adv. Missile Sat. armed with a long range Missile Launcher reloads slowly can target ground targets. beaten by point defense.

no it shouldn't if by small size you mean a match with same start planet on a radius 10 and under planet then no.

It's been like this from time immemorial : bid f*** units in big games. small matches, intense skill fest.

I like the idea of T1 orbital, particularly once interplanetary is in it can make for quite varied and interesting opening strategies. Though it might end up as an even worse noob trap to replace t2 land rushing.

Then don't let it become that trap? Hows about you make it viable?


The utility of the Orbital Layer and interplanetary operations should be second to none.
Expanding quickly and cheaply to multiple planets should be an option... one that leaves you open to a focused counterattack, yes... But then you have five other planets that you've already got a foothold on. A focused counterattack has only hit you in one place. An unfocused attack is just harassent.

'Going Somewhere Else' should be a viable tactic until there is nowhere else to go.