Orbital: The tech 3 layer

if the orbital platform is as accessible from a fab as say a t1 shipyard it´s not a problem
if neccesary make it 3 or 4 times more expensive then the shipyard something along those lines ..

I wish it was that simple, but a good start is fixing the light orbital interceptor to stop being more powerful AND more cost effective than a frickin' battleship. That's kiiiiiind of a red flag.

its even more simple : if you want fast player contacts use a smaller "map", if you want them later use a bigger one. maybe there could be an option to start all players on a single planet for fast encounters and a total random allowing player placement on every planet for possible later encounters.

Well, obviously you need to rebalance things to account for the new cheap orbital units. But that's a good thing. Orbital units just don't need to be an upgrade over other units.

There is no need to do it... so why do it?

Since they have no interaction I don't see why that matters.

i wouldn´t want to encounter my oponent just after 30 minutes because i started on another planet ... i´m also not intrested to have him next door i want to have the option to engage him on say the 5 to 8 min mark even though i am on another planetoid ... why shall i have to wait longer ? because the techtree and paywall dictates so? that would be BS

5-8min....thats very fast, but ok how you ecspect this would work?
traveling from one planet to another is no teleportation, so it will allways take some time. now lets say we have 10 planets, every one has only 1 moon, and if someone could start randomly on asteroids we even have more scouting targets. to only scout someone asap you have to build 20 scouts (or more see asteroids) to get one to another planet and then scout the whole thing to find the enemy. your really expect this to be possible in the first 8 minutes of the game? this would only be possible if the orbital scouts are WAY more powerfull than the other scouts. if we dont want them to be useless there has to be some balance in...well cost is no option since its early game...i dunno how.

and we are even not talking about getting some units there via..unit cannon or whatever.

no idea ..
maybe built your standart bot- or vehiclefac with mexess and powergenerators aswell as some constructors to collect metal on the planet to further support your econ (this generaly doesn´t take long ... at least what i remember in supcom or TA) then build t1 orbital with the transportunit/s send the transports close to were you think the enemy on his planet is while continuing expanding on your planet and scout ... shouldn´t take THAT much
i know easier said then done ...

true if there is only few other locations where the enemy can be....but if i remember correct there could be up to 40 planets. on maps this large i dont expect fast encounters, and i dont see the need of them. if you want it play smaler maps or have some kind of restrictions for starting locations. but especially with the map size you can control the time between encounters very well.

says who? it could as well happen that you get atacked/ by 4 players at same time early on if they went the route i stated ... and don´t forget there will be air tranports in game as well ... so the time you encounter a enemy on another planet later might just be a couple minutes compared to when he would be on the same planet ..
and there also can be up to 40 players in a match ..
you assume things that have yet not been tested and with stuff still missing ...
i imagine the devs to make the unitpool the way so scouting and engaging enemies not to become a grind for the first quarter or third of a match

as do you even more with air transports and so on, i dont get your argument there
and i never said it has to be the first quarter or third of a match since i dont expect games to last only 30-40 minutes on multiplanet maps. i expect them to last way more than 1 hour, so the lets quess 15 minutes or so you need to find&encounter your enemy would only be a very small amount of time from the whole game.

a game can be as long as whatever it wants ... it could take three+ hours on a multiplanetsystem with 12 to 18 players
i would still not be intrested to wait 25+ minutes to engage an enemy on a different planet ...
5 or 6 to 10 (at max) minutes should do because you want to harass as early as possible you don´t want your enemy to build up and expand while you build up your main attackforce .. this is why you want early encounters ... no matter from where ... because if you don´t do it your enemy will if he has the options ...

if you can reach any point of the map (refering to random start position) in less than 5 or 6 to 10 minutes including the time neccesarry to produce the units (and it have to be beginning units) you want to move, it does mean nothing else than the map being small. and i think we get BIG maps, not only small ones.

how quick you can travel between and on planets isn´t only a matter of planetsize but also how quick
the units are you built ... just a very rough depiction as example:
heavy tank slow, airscout quick, transport slower then airscout maybe but still quick ,t2 spy plane extremly fast, orbital for the way it traverses likely fast, unit cannon rather fast
and teleport almost instand i would assume ... an asteroid with full engines on a side shouldn´t take like half an hour
probaly not even 20 to 15 minutes until it smashes into a planet assuming it´s not on the other end of the solarsystem lighyears away ...

yes, any kind of adv transport (adv air/orbital or even teleport) we might get will be fast so we can get our units to every edge of the map to fight but we are talking about the beginning of the game. its not only basic/t1/whateveryoucallit units, its also the time to start from scratch building first eco and factories and the units we want to send. if you take a guess and find the spot where the enemy is on the planet immediately you can encounter him in the first 5 minutes without problems, but thats pure luck since we have mostly random generatet planets not comparable to maps from example supcom where you know every starting position.

btw. the asteroid should need some time, since i expect the counter to an asteroid is mostly to invade it and alter its direction. in the kickstarter vids we see some ground to orbital anti asteroid weapons that may be able to reduce the asteroid dmg (in the vid they mostly fail) by splitting 1 big dangerous object into multiple smaller ones that still do serious dmg but that is no complete counter and should not be because else someone could complete turtle a planet even save from asteroids.

Wow sounds like children crying over stolen candy, Orbital WILL come, as it is pretty much basegame and will be false advertising. Not one Mod/Admin/Dev has commented on removing Orbital.

Did you even read the thread? No one here is worried about Orbital not being in the game.

What we're concerned about is how orbital is going to be balanced with regards to its place in the game; as an early game option for scouting, expansion and harassment across multiple planets, or forced to be a late-game only strategy.

yes..the basic question we discuss at the moment is if early orbital is needed since we get faster encounters with it or if encounter-times are better scaled by mapsize/starting-position-restrictions and therefore there is no strict need for early orbital. noone is questioning orbital in general o.o

depends on were you start though ... it might be an option with opponents on a single planet .. it yet IS a nessecity for multiple planets ... and imo most players may want to play and battle on and over multiple planets instead of just brawling it out on one because this is what the game will actualy be about ...

for normal multiple planet warfare it can very good be t2/adv to get to another planet (meaning for example 5k metal/orbital launcher not the actual 30k). interesting would maybe the access to the moon in t1/basic, but some things like all the asteroid stuff (building engines and whatever is needed to fly around with asteroids) should clearly be some kind of "t3" regarding for example to its cost since its too powerful and therefore is clearly lategame.