so after much discussion with knight and krakanu ive been slightly swayed to their side and have come to a possible solution to the cost of orbital and such....... again all specualtion and lofty ideas as who knows what those crafty uber guys will give us next. SO.......... breaking orbital into tiers as i have come to the realization that mike might be right, so my thoughts are keep te current orbital launcher, but make it a tier one orbital factory. Reduce said cost slightly, i personally think it should be about double the cost of other T1 factories, all units from this factory shall be strictly orbital units (stratosphere) with no interplanetary travel whatsoever. T1 orbital fab- right now all i can think of its purpose would be to construct the T2 orbital factory, possibly the booster platform or launch pad for the T2 units space travel, i feel this unit shouldnt be able to build anything on planets surface. Avengers- or rather the little brother of one, slightly cheaper and weaker radar sat- take the current regular sat and make it a T1 sat, just for you mike laser/ missile launcher- one or the other with much weaker firepower maybe even like a honey bee that dies after it stings once, to keep it from being an early game ender Now the T2 the factory itself- im at qualms as to whether or not it should be some form of orbiting space station or perhaps another ground based factory. all units from this factory have space travel ability, and said units require boosters to do so????? acquiring boosters- idk either ground based or orbital based. the T2 will contain all the units the current orbital launcher contains now minus the simple sat that has been relocated to T1. the mighty orbital laser platform shall remain..... and of course all the new and exciting orbital units that may be awaiting us, transports etc...... now counters to the T1 early orbital units, some form of land based and possibly air based unit, that can shoot the stratosphere but not beyond it unable to strike the T2 units, The umbrella should remain the T2 defense (yes it needs work now) I came to the realization that this setup adds an entirely new fun layer of tactics to gameplay, as mike and krakanu were trying to get at i imagine just didnt click until a little speculation, and prevents the rush straight to off planet turtleville..... so thoughts unit suggestions please!!!!
The goal of adding T1 orbital was to make early game where players are on different planets not be boring for the first 15 minutes. If T1 orbital is still locked behind T2 engineers, and if T1 orbital can't even travel to another planet, then this doesn't help. IMO, T1 orbital should be buildable by T1 engineers. At the very least there should be some kind of T1 recon and harass satellite that could traverse to other planets (solar panels have no business hiding on other planets). Imagine a radar satellite with about the same radar range as T1 ground radar and an EMP satellite that fires a jolt of electricity that temporarily stuns whatever it hits on the ground. This would be enough to make early game interesting when two players start out apart, without making orbital dominate early game. You could stun the enemies engineers or p-gens to mess up his early econ. Obviously there should be some cheap early anti-orbital added to counter this (T1 LRM tank? super low dmg, but can hit orbital and has medium ground range). The COST (not strength) hierarchy should be something like this: normal T1 < orbital T1 < normal T2 < orbital T2 A T1 satellite should be just as useful as any other T1 unit, but cost more because of its extreme mobility, ditto for T2. I agree that transporting land units to other worlds should be strictly T2. Edit: I won't bother commenting on orbital fabbers until Uber shows us what they will be building in space.
I think the Orbital should be organized in three layers: 1- Orbit around a planet/moon/asteroid 2- Orbits between a planet and its moons 3- Interplanetary space *(in the following, please imagine that T1 = basic and T2 = advanced. Making this remark is pointless) To me, the logical situation is the following: For T1 orbital units: - From a large planet, only the Orbital Launcher (T1 or T2) can lift things to layer 1 or 2 - From any planet, the same orbital launcher can, at a cost, go into interplanetary space BUT its destination MUST be another planet's orbit. The UI for this must look like the KS trailer: calculating a trajectory for the rocket. The more distant the target orbit, the more is the cost. - When on a small planet/asteroid, a simple lander can lift things to orbit - From any planet's orbit, a special unit "Interplanetary Drive" acts as a transport for orbital units, exactly like a rocket, except it only works from orbit to orbit. For transport of land units: - They can be loaded on a lander, which then can take off (from a moon/asteroid) or be launched by orbital launcher (on a large planet) - The lander once in orbit, can either: land to the nearest planet. Or be carried by interplanetary drive. For "T2" orbital units: - Some orbital units may move into interplanetary space, but they must stand on orbits and be easily detected with an interplanetary radar. - Some space battle may occur, but, as a general rule, the interplanetary space is the home of "rocket trajectories", not dogfighting. Maybe a space missile station or orbital laser may hunt down enemy units. - I don't like the idea of orbital interceptor. It's silly and detracts with the rest of the orbital tier. Radar, scanner: - A planet's exact metal location may not be seen unless it has been scanned by a probe (unless it is your starting planet, which is assumed already scanned). Before the start of the game, only the average metal density is known (rare, medium, rich etc.). Same for enemy presence. - Interplanetary space must be scanned with a special radar. Only this allows to see traveling rockets, orbital units and asteroids etc. from a distance. - Interplanetary radar must have super high range. It does not reveal units on planets though ! - A consequence is that unless under radar coverage, other planets are assumed to stay on their orbit. Incoming asteroid are not seen until they enter the radar space of a planet, or the view space of units on the planet (which is somewhat far compared to unit sight range on land). There is "fog of war" in space. This avoids confusion and units stranded in outer space, out of reach of enemies. Now, how to avoid boredom when starting on different planets: - One idea would be to separate the orbital factory in two: * launching pad (launching rockets) and orbital unit factory. * orbital units in "lander form" would be able to take off by themselves from a small planet or asteroid, therefore players on a small moon could conquer their orbital space very fast, but not go into interplanetary travel straight away * orbital units in "lander form" would only be able to hop on a large planet, and could be launched in space by loading them on the launching pad, where a rocket has been carefully build with the right amount of fuel to reach its destination (plus the amount necessary to lift off the planet) - Orbital launcher can load a lander/transport full of a sh*tload of units (land or orbital) and deliver it to another planet. If you're alone on a planet, chances are a good strategy is to rush Orbital and load an army of bots to go annoy the other player. - If orbital launcher is T1 while orbital satellite factory is T2, it allows to balance by having true orbital battles come later. - Maybe catapult could be a specialized unit as in the KS trailer, delivery bots/vehicles to another planet at high speed. The draw back would be that it is not able to load orbital satellites and conquer orbital space, and a careful orbital missile defense would destroy all incoming units. - Nuke build at nuke factory could be launched from orbital launcher. So it would be INTERPLANETARY. Also, you can rearrange the above in as many tiers as necessary to balance it: T1 launching pad, T2 satellite factory, T2 space missile station, T2 space factory... T2 space fabber... whatever... Also: I have a lots of unit ideas, but it's not really the point here.
I disagree. In this case, cost = utility. Imagine a T1 solar sat, for instance. If it makes as much power as a T1 gen but is up in space where it's harder to hit and can be moved, it makes sense to make it cost more even if it only generates the same power because it has other advantages. Same goes for other units.
I would prefer if: T1 engineers make a T1 orbital launcher, which can launch weak orbital units like a small missile satelite (as a sat-killer), a radar sat (but less range than the current T1 radar sat so it forces you to build more than 1 see-all), and a small orbital laser (firepower comparable to a tank). It can also shoot T1 engineers to an orbiting moon. T2 make a T2 orbital launcher which can shoot up a T2 radar sat (the current T1 radar sat), a Hyperion Sat (vision), the inter-planetary transport, the laser satellite and the solar array.
yes I meant that t1 would build t1 orbital, and t1 builds t2' orbital. Nothing but orbital can build orbital just like all other units
these are a lot of good ideas, I agree with the planets staying in place without proper Intel. I have a thread on an interplanetary sat. I think range should be large but not to large, requiring multiples to reveal a system. This call s for some form of assault unit so you can remove the enemies vision, this unit shouldn't be able to intercept units traveling to other planets tho ( how would it know exactly where enemy units are headed???) Interplanetary I think should just be a t2 asset just seems like a lot of extra tiers. Which I don't mind I LOVE escalation and it's four tiers I just know uber said they wanted to stay out of the too many tiers area
I really don't see why an orbital unit should be more expensive or any better then say a ground unit? If it has more mobility and is harder to hit, then make the unit able to do less to compensate. Why is it that a basic radar satellite is suddenly so much better then static ones just because it's in space? Orbital units need to conform to the stats that a present for other units in their tier range, other wise we DO just get the escalation of supcom.
Utility is strength, too. There is a LOT of strength in a unit that can't be engaged by 90% of everything else in the game. Unfortunately, those limitations also cripple any strategy you might want to make. I never really worried much about orbital stuff because with such limited access to the key theaters of the game, most unit options are a dead end. It's better off trying to support the layers that matter rather than dominating over them, or even worse, trying to make a new separate game of its own.
This is basically why I think Satellites should be locked to the planets they are placed on, with the option of launching Satellites directly to a different planet. This also helps in other areas as well such as providing ways to keep an eye of sorts on other planets late game or whatever. I do agree that Orbital should cost more than the other factories, to a point. I don't think 'Orbital First' should really be a 'thing', but I do feel that you should be able to Focus on Orbital early on and goes back to a way old concept I had, keep in mind that post is from OVER a year ago now, but it is somewhat relevant here. The problem then comes down to the Satellite type units themselves, especially in the current Magikal Air2.0 system it's more difficult to make the units work in the smaller scale the lower cost requires. But there are certainly ways to achieve this like really slowing down the speed and maneuverability of the Satellites, in particular all/some Anti-gound based satellites should not be able to fully keep up with the average Ground force, so they you have a Blast Sat that shoots shots that do AOE, so they're really good watching over the main routes to your base(especially if you have limited routes, this is harder to work with on a sphere admittedly) and narrow paths where units bunch up in particular, but they can't roam and blast down an army constantly until they're all dead. Also the Irony of the Air2.0 satellite being limited in use based on terrain is a delicious concept to me. Maybe I'll try and do a write up while I'm house sitting(and now that I've run out of episodes of Parks and Recreation) to cover everything more effectively. Mike
I think all of this is part of a much larger conversation about how orbital should fit in with the rest of the game. If we want to pull it down to T1, then it has to be much more closely tied to combat on the ground. This would necessitate T1 anti-orbital weaponry and T1 orbit to land weaponry. Imagine a combined arms attack on a base that combines orbital platforms and T1 tanks which happens around the 7 min mark. On the other hand, we can turn orbital into a T2.5, which is pretty much where it is right now. In this scenario, the first side to get orbital superiority can be almost assured of keeping it and locking other players out of getting units in orbit. Obviously, I'm not in favor of this scenario at all. In all things, I want to see the potential for a smart underdog to be able to make a comeback through superior tactics and strategy.
Id rather have basic orbital stuff be utility stuff, and then have advanced orbital stuff be in line with anti-orbital counters from the other layers.
Maybe Maybe not, the nice thing about Orbital being cheaper and designing them to not completely outclass the other layers is that you can build those 'counters' right into the Set of Orbital units and not need to worry too much if it's all handled right. I think Orbital as it stands currently is more so a T3 or Experimental level, they're expensive and powerful. Mike
I did suggest an effective ground counter at t1 units, also the t1 orbital attack platform should be a one time shot or limited rounds like a bomber. Perhaps reloaded or simply die after firing. Also the only reason you can kind of lock out other players on the orbital level now is due to the umbrella being bugged
