Orbital: The tech 3 layer

Why shouldn't orbital be a viable part of the game on small planets? There is simply no reason not to have them early game.
The rest of your post I don't understand....

Totally agree here. Early orbital/interplanetary should be a gamble that pays off rather than something everybody has to do or lose.

Well, on a small enough planetoid they aren't really 'viable'. Why would I build a satellite to hover around an asteroid when I can cross the sum distance of its surface with a Tank in less than thirty seconds?

I wouldn't; but it shouldn't preclude me from doing so, if I wanted to.

If orbital units had enough diversity from air and ground units - ability or weaponry wise - they might even be viable enough on small planetoids.

Exactly. It depends what they're good at, what they're bad at and what they bring to the war effort that isn't covered by other unit types.

I still probably wouldn't want to build one to orbit an asteroid... but then that's my choice to do so, not the game telling me that a Satellite (for some reason) costs as much as a Nuke... because it's apparently 'only supposed to be used in the late game'.

NB to a couple of the posters above - orbital has been deliberately overpriced initially to prevent the use of this highly unfinished mechanic in normal games. The intention was that only those who want to experiment with orbital would do so.

Well aware of that, but in many of Neutrino's posts in the 'Orbital - 2 Directions' thread, he indicated that he had (for the time being) abandoned Basic cheap Satellites in favor of more of a late-game focused unit set; that 'T1' Orbital was scrapped.

Latest word was that he was considering early orbital units. Considering; nothing more.
We have no confirmation that Orbital Units will be available as an early-game option at this point in time.

I was more directing it at the chap who said he could build 5 nukes rather than orbital I agree that some early orbital would be nice.

I remember neutrino saying he wants orbital and interplanetary being mid to late game thing so the high price at least for the launch pad, will propably stay.

@WrongCat: Then you should direct it at him rather than saying "to a couple of the posters above".

Eh, others fed off it, so I directed it at them too.

And Kruptos, Garat has basically said the price will come down - check the patch notes!

How far will the Metal cost drop though? and where will the launcher sit within the Tech Tree?
Those are the questions that beg answers.

Yes i know that, however neutrino said he didn't want early orbital and only way to regulate that is with high price of the launchpad or confining it to adv. Fabbers, propably both. Unless he changed his mind I dont think the launchpad will see a huge pricedrop. Cost of orbital units will propably come down though.

And WHY is a full map hack a good thing? All it does is eliminate options for surprising the enemy.

The T2 space radar doesn't need an INCH more range than the ground version. The ability to move automatically makes it an order of magnitude superior to its ground based counterpart.

Basically ^ this. I wouldn't necessarily say:

But there ARE roles in space which have an advantage over ground by default. Namely artillery, transport, and support options are vastly improved by the need to cover vast distances in orbit. Direct fire weapons and tanky units not so much.

No. Neutrino said "cost differentiated". That means they're deliberately priced as though they were T3 and experimental units. Even the most cursory ballparking shows that orbital stats are planned to be "ground x 10", just as air attributes are working out to be "ground / 10". It is quite frankly an awful decision and ignores a vast majority of good design options to achieve the same goal without using "TEH HUEG NUMBRZ".

Oh don't get me started on the air numbers... Who thought it was a good idea to make them so flimsy and thus the AA weapons so puny that they're practically useless?

We'd at least have another unit on the ground level instead of only tanks or drox'.

That would be Scathis I think.

I don't personally have much of a problem with it, since AA in Total annihilation was pretty weak against ground forces too. Samson spam really didn't get you anywhere and you needed a lot of Stumpys and Flash tanks to push on a location. Samsons were supportive, rather than direct firepower.

Then again in Total Annihilation, Stumpys and Flash Tanks didn't just take out a wave of bombers without a casualty.

There's a difference between being supportive (Samson could kill quite well when massed) and doing 2 damage per shot!

4 dps against 125 hp tanks. Thats not even scratching factory new paintjob.

Air units in TA had roughly 1/3 - 1/2 the health of equivalent ground forces. Even the dreaded brawler didn't differ from a comparable Fido by much more than 20%. Despite this, air vs. ground worked out pretty well (admittedly, bombers were pretty awful AI-wise and didn't fight properly so they don't really count).

Actually, other games have done fairly well with the 1/2-1/4 angle for aircraft, so it does seem to be a sweet spot in general. PA can err towards the low end for high speed craft and use the high end(or more!) for slower heavy things. The overall scale goes up and down depending on how many movement alternatives ground has to compensate.

So yeah. TA basically proved that it doesn't take much for one thing to beat another per cost. It wasn't broken, so why was it "fixed" so brutally and haphazardly? FYI: Combat power is based on the square of the stats involved, so a 1/10th force scales up to be 1/100th as good.

*shrug*
Ask Scathis, not me. I don't know why he's fixing things that weren't really broken.
Though it is still Alpha. I'm willing to cut him some slack until mid Beta. If we still have a problem at that point... I'll start asking questions myself.

I only lightly skimmed this thread; I just wanted to point out that you can't really call orbital "T3" when it at the same time has a pretty unique function. Yes it overlaps in radar, but that is still subject to iterations and balance.

I, for one, think it's good the way it is. It adds pacing and progression to the game, and it does it without saying "100 T1 = 10 T2 = 1 T3". Asking players to play a 15 minute early game before they expand into orbital sounds reasonable to me. You see this kind of early/mid/late game strat separation in SC2 and MOBAs; I don't see what's wrong with it in PA.

Random aside: it would be neat if ground radars had a radius that scaled with planet size. That's semi realistic too, yeah?