Orbital Lasers are lol

I must have won 5 games today by making a single orbital laser, scouting to see where the enemy commander was, and killing him instantly

Are Orbital lasers balenced? They kill a commander in like two seconds

Seems like we'll have new wave of "My commander blown up without reason!" bugreports.

My laser satellite wouldn't work...

Oooh, I'm a rather big fan of space-lazer-death-fun-times. If it does a large amount of damage though, that does seem a bit over powered. At least, if there is not a way to defend against it.

The entire balance of Orbital is out of whack IMO, this is nothing more than a continuation of that theme.

Mike

one or two avengers fixes those pesky BLoD satellites, just patrol them over your base. then get a few more and patrol them over the enemies orbital launcher.

Orbital is neat but needs help. Imagine playing rock paper scissors, now add another choice to that game and make it a fair but imaginative balance between the other 3.

At the moment, Orbital seems to be very much the endgame choice; And is rather nasty, at that. The only things that defend against Orbital at all are equally high-level; So you need to be thinking about Orbital as you go along; I was 36 minutes into a game, admittedly as a noob against three other complete noobs, and took out all of my enemies with the laser satellites. Sure as hell going to make sure I build some ion defenses by the time I get my economy up and running...

In this setup, Orbital is in some ways no different from Nucks in SupCom, they're almost perfectly binary.

I build Orbital units

Did Enemy Build Anti-Orbital stuff?

If Yes, I wasted resources(a lot of resources)

If No, I win.

Mike

... Neither nukes in Supcom/PA or orbital in PA works in a binary way...

A anti nuke covers a small location of the map, nukes can still be used against enemy armys easily (and that can sway the struggle quite a bit), so they arent "wasted resources".

Orbital in PA are more simular to aircraft then nukes, there is 2 ways to fight orbital: a anti orbital structure and anti orbital fighters, simular too the aircraft layer (off course the air layer has 3 ways, structure, air unit, land unit).

The structure's never cover a whole map therefore nukes/orbital can be used on the rest of the map. = Its not binary.

The units can be keept away with either your own structures to create a kill zone or your own anti orbital units, making orbital anti ground usefull in the killzone area or if escorted outside it = Its not binary.

The thing is that if the Anti-_____ covers all the stuff you'd use it against it doesn't matter how much of the map it covers.

If I can't launch Nucks at my opponent's base, and his units can dodge or stay under Anti-Nuck coverage it's the exact same effect.

It's binary because there either IS Anti-Nuck, in which case teh Nuck is countered, or there ISN'T anti-Nuck and it's fully effective.

It's not like a Tank blob where I have options and degrees of success within those options vary.

Mike

Allright i see your point for nukes, however orbital works more like a tank blob then a nuke in your example.

Sure it will die against anti orbital, but you still "have options and degrees of success within those options vary". You might still get a shot off before your unit dies for example.

Based on the information I've seen, that is not the intent, Orbital "needs" to be powerful for some reason so the Defenses need to be similarly Powerful, and when you focus that much power into single units, you make things more binary by design.

Looking at the example that spawned this thread, If the Laser satellite remains being able to kill commanders in what hit, you need a defense that if present, will kill the Satellite immediately otherwise it'll be too late to save the commander, at that point it's binary, the Anti-Sat either works and your commander is forever safe or it doesn't work and your commander is dead. There is no middle ground and that is the root of the problem.

It's not to sat that ANY system for Nucks for satellites is binary but that the current implementations are.

Mike

I agree that the Orbital Laser is extremely OP at this time.

Satellite Radar + Orbital Laser = Instant Win

You can combat this with the Orbital Defense system but the AI doesn't use it and it can be a bit before you can build it. Really depends on the play style.

Cant realy answer that since i havent tryed the orbital defense structure yet (it costs aloot, four times more then a nuke launcher if im not mistaken).

I might send you a message to continue the discussion (in private) when i have more experience with the orbital layer (either agree'ing or disagree'ing with you), but for now lets just drop the discussion.

Catapults shoot down orbital units, fyi.

But orbital lasers cant leave the planet, right? (Not yet anyway)
so just send your commander to the moon or whatever

Most orbital units can leave the planet, im not 100% certain if the death laser is one of them since i havent tryed it myself, but i have been told that they can.

I'd prefer it couldn't.
I like that maybe some satellite and orbital fighters can, that way it could be the start of an invasion of a planet to kind of clear out the orbital layer for your landers to arrive, but to directly send a death ray to an other planet sounds boring. But what do I know, I haven't tested it yet.

Every time I check out the PADB I get utterly surprised at how awful the chosen numbers are. It's as though a 5 year old flunked out of pre math, and uses ZEROS as some kind of tally mark to measure a unit's power. Unfortunately, something with four zeroes is not one mark better than something with three zeroes, nor is it two marks better than two zeroes.

Oh well. I tried.