Thoughts on interplanetary, a constant 'end-game' ?

I was wondering, perhaps others have thought this as well, about how interplanetary will work in terms of keeping the battle 'fresh' rather than a constant end-game.

Given the scale of the battles, assume everyone spawns on their own planet, and within 15 minutes or so have expanded across it un-opposed and have acquired the resources to finally go interplanetary. At this point every player is at tech 2, and will end up assaulting planets be it by moving around moons/asteroids, or waiting for orbit intersections / close approaches.

At this point, the only reasonable way to assault another planet is by overwhelming force as that's an established base. It'll almost be exclusively limited to orbital bombardment, and cross planet unit launching via transports.

I feel as if the need for ground or air combat will be limited, as players will end up using orbital, orbital launched, and orbital defenses at this point, and many of the ground/sea/air/bot units will end up only as fodder against the orbitally dropped units. Landing an FOB will be difficult as anything small will immediately be under nuclear silo threat so I feel that much of the ground/air/sea combat that we're doing now will be moot. It'll be go orbital then just have enough to fend off invasions.

Now if two armies land within the same time interval on another world, it'll feel like the tech/build races that we have now, but with the higher tech tiers, I'm almost certain that both will have the world fully radar'd with satellites prior to a landing making fog of war only a challenge on the initial starting world or a messy landing on a large world. The losing party being the one that losses their orbital radar coverage, built radar towers will be a rock to their boulder.

Unit transports may be in giving rise to factory worlds but I feel as if that mystery of 'ok where is my enemy now?' may essentially vanish during expansion. Once you survey a world, you know it's clean and you're grabbing territory by the fist folds rather than like TA or now where we're fighting over mass points, and edging for map control in small chunks. If you come across a world that's even remotely occupied, it'll be hard going to establish yourself unless they were truely negligent on their defenses.

In summary, I feel as if it'll be big guns vs big guns in the end making localized ground combat paltry, with a heavy focus on orbital/space units. How else are you going to destroy that asteroid?

no because you could still totally wage war from the planet you started on and you don't want to llose that planet to the opponent, what if the start planet was bigger than the new planet? ...more ressources for him and ultimately his victory, plus you can shoot units over and transport them over but those are ground units. thay won't fare well versus nukes, you have a nuke defense? ok he bombs it, ok then you need air. and the whole rock paper cisors cycle of single planet combat is back. really you won't be able to neglect one aspect or the other or that's imediately the breach you opponent should fit through.

also we don't yet have the full roster of orbital units, some of wich may include ground-fire units, forcing your opponent to strive for orbital too and establishing a battlefield between each planet. (I imagine cross planetary transport interception will be a good strategy also).

I disagree with your assumptions on scale. If it takes 15 minutes to expand around your planet and reach orbital units then you've spent 15 minutes not interacting with any other player. That time is wasted. I think interplanetary travel should be available quite early so if you start on your own planet there is less time before you start actually playing a multiplayer game.

Keep the majority of game resources on the ground. On the planets. Where they should be.

Bam. Orbital play is now a supporting role.

Bbb

Yes, this is especially true with gas giants /sarcasm

Tell me why should all the resources be kept on the ground? Why should orbital be only supporting layer?

How are you harvesting Metal... you know... the thing that units actually cost, from space?

Since Metal Makers have been axed, having a surplus of energy is worthless, useless and unharnessable. Gas Giant Fusion Reactors don't make your economy or your army larger... they just let it run in the first place.

Metal is the restricting factor here, and Metal can only be found on planets. Your energy levels are more a measurement of your efficiency of metal usage, not directly increasing it.

Yes I didn't mean you shouldn't need land units at all, what I meant was that orbital doesn't have to be strict support, I think it should have game defining units/battles as well.

MOONS.

Players fight where the money is. The game is built around ground combat. Therefore most money belongs on the ground, and orbit needs to get players to their next battle. It's really that simple.

Any orbital fighting that happens along the way is purely incidental, as its major purpose is to turn the tide of the next ground war. That sounds like a supporting role to me.

Ehh what? You mean a gas planets moon? What of it?

...Seriously? Go look at a map of your own solar system for a minute. I'll get you started.

You have water worlds, lava worlds, asteroids, dead worlds and even potential life worlds, all within spitting distance of each other. It's an orbital wet dream.

If anything I always saw moving to different planets as a constant return to basics. We'll have to see how it works first, of course.

Yes but I fail to see what your argument is. So gas planets may or may not have varied moons. How does that make the orbital layer combat on a gas planet any less important for the control of that planet since you can't land units ON THE GAS PLANET. Obviously it's easier to launch orbital units into the gas planets orbital layer from an orbiting moon, is that what you meant? Or something else entirely?

Because controlling the Orbital Layer alone does not allow you to mine anything of worth, it merely supplements the forces on the ground.

Hence, it is a 'support' layer.

Clearly we have a different definition for support. To me it's something that can't win wars however provides a huge help for other layers. I hope my laser satellite can destroy enemy comm if I have "orbital superiority". I never meant orbital to be able to extract metal.

Then you are indeed just arguing semantics.

Also, if your enemy just 'lets' you get orbital superiority and then doesn't build as many anti-sat ground defences as he can, then I suppose he deserves to die to an orbital laser.

Just sayin' it's not very likely to happen without units on the ground assaulting the front gate, so to speak.

So interplanetary radar and hauling a thousand tanks to another world doesn't count?

Sure, same thing as with all the other layers. If your enemy doesn't build AA, he deserves to die to bombers. If he doesn't build enough land forces, he deserves to die to your army. Do you consider air a supportive layer because it can't have resource structures on it?

I don't think I'd call unit cannon an orbital unit but yes, that would make a decisive difference. However if you use unit cannon to shoot your army straight to your enemies base then I would call it a little more than a supportive structure. I'd call it a possible game ender which proves that orbital (if we want to call unit cannon that) fills more than just a supportive role. Again with the semantics.

Of course.

Then we clearly have different opinions on the meaning of the term, which is fine of course.

Fortunately opinions don't matter for terminology, only facts.

A unit cannon does not deal direct damage. It supports a ground force by throwing it to the target. Fighter craft support a main force by reducing damage from bombers, which support a force by doing hit&runs to pick off key targets (though they are currently way more destructive than that, because for some reason bombers have more sustained DPS than heavy assault tanks).

Pretty much everything else is made to directly engage the enemy, or to defend against a direct engagement.