cheaper orbital : good or bad???

I like your idea btw. Make it to where it starts in a "mobile" unarmed state, and when you click it's special button (like the lander has), it turns into a "geosyncronized static" armed state, where it has 1.5x the range of a regular turret and generally AOE shells the area. With proper abilities to take down a satellite, it could be balanced. It basically becomes a limited area "hyperion satellite". Give it a nonlethal harassment amount of damage and you are set.

The 2 are not related like you think they are, a Satellite weapon might be able to be placed anywhere but that is NOT the same as having long range.

Eh, I wasn't even thinking about stuff like that, I'd worry that it requires too much hand-holding to be effective like that and it could cause players some issues when in a hurry or such. I see it more so functioning like the current laser satellite in some ways.

Mike

The laser satellite is sort of clunky in it's current state.

Well that's why I specified 'some ways'. I don't want something you specifically have to lock down manually or anything.

Mike

The problem with PA now is the scale. I know thats why many have purchased the game, but the majority of us dont want to have a 2 hour game been the average. Cheaper orbital means that the potential for games to last longer just happens quicker.

The only way I see the space layer of making a better game is to make it sea 2.0. Even then the scale is so big games will last many hours. The more popular team maps in TA consist of several islands. These are real fun to play and the average game is about 40 minutes. A typical solar system with several planets will just take too much time and most likely end in a commander snipe of some sort.

I love the idea of multi planet battles, and I can see this happening with smaller planets and much better units. But I havnt heard any talk on units that can bridge the gap to bring us a more flowing game like the 1 planet battle we have now.

I think I understand what you mean by the 3rd sentence but I'm not sure, care to take a second crack at it?

In the end thought I don't see how Orbital directly contributes to long games, to me in terms of capturing territory and such the other layers like Land, Air and Naval have much more to do with the overall length of a game than orbital would. I've always wanted to see orbital play more of a support role to enhance the other layers via direct and in-direct support as opposed to more stand-alone. Frankly I'm not sure it's really fair to blame anything other than the players themselves for longer or shorter games in a fundamental fashion at least. In the evenly matched players will be even until mistakes start to happen. While it's true that maybe the orbital layer is better at at exploiting a specific mistake better than other layers but it's not really orbitals fault you know?

Mike

How is it not long range??? Spam a bunch and place on patrol outside your effective artillery range and you have effectively created a no man's land. They may not be strong but look at the mighty dox .....

Long range implies the unit can reach out and do something, My satellite doesn't have long range, it has to be more or less directly over a target to attack and as I've already explained twice now it is a slow satellite so there is no way it can chase down units. Putting where you suggest is actually pretty bad really when you think about how the enemy will react, he'll just charge on past the satellites, they can't chase effectively so they'll only get a limited number of shots off before you units are out of range, then they act as you normally would for dealing with artillery.

You'd be far better putting them near the edge of the base itself, probably somewhere within the range of laser defense turrets because it's areas like that where the enemy is more likely to stop or get slowed down, making them more vulnerable to the Satellite.

Mike

Yeah I would be all for orbital to be a support role. But making it easy for a commander to leave the planet just leads to retreating. The idea of the game is to kill the commander by whatever means possible. If the commander escapes the planet you need to locate him again and kill him. This is usually 20 mins into the game when the commander is extremely vulnerable. Move him to another planet and he is even harder to kill. Which takes much more time. Bearing in mind that at the minute it costs just 8 levellers to get a commander off the planet.

Unit cannon and gates and pretty much anything you throw at him will and do have their counters. There needs to be a space battle for all the middle ground, not an orbital battle. If we treat the space as kind of a sea layer it will be worth going orbital and fighting for other planets . Not just going orbital so you can catch a coward.

I think if orbital becomes more accessible but you want to keep the game speed, you'd simply play on smaller planets than we do now. After all, those planet sizes are chosen because they're the sole battleground. Each planet becomes an island, as it were.

I think your mixing up problems and causes. The way commanders can currently move around planets is certainly a big potential problem, but orbital should be held at fault for that and given that we are still missing some key interplanetary tools it doesn't feel like we should be laying blame anywhere for it yet until we can get a better idea of how things will actually play out. It could turn out that with the implementation of the Unit cannon or Teleporters that moving the commander around easily is needed actually.

Also it cost at last 12 Levelers worth of metal, 12500 for the Lander and 6500 for Orbital Launcher plus all the other things you indirectly need as well like economy and fabbers.

In the end thought, these things are all interconnected so it's hard to guess what will end up being the case with any kind of accuracy right now.

Mike

@KNight I understand your reasoning with they would be better directly over your base. I still see it as a preliminary line of defense coupled with the amazing five pelters it takes to stop an army in the hundreds.........

Just to clarify though I'm not trying to attack your idea out right. It does sound useful and intriguing,I just don't think it belongs at a basic level.....

The sad thing is the only complaint against orbital is people using a tactic that almost guarantees their loss.

Because you can't immediately bail planet and have a better economy, you can't bail planet and establish a better army, you can't bail planet that early and be a threat of any kind after.

All they are doing is turning a short game long and guaranteeing their defeat and wasting even more time in doing so.

Cheaper orbital just lets you largescale invade earlier. The guy who throws away foothold on the wealthiest planet, is going to lose cheaper orbital or not.

^ this is true.... very true

And yet I just explained hoe that is the WORST use for the example I gave so I really think you're just being stubborn to be honest, forming your own assumptions and applying those to other people's ideas despite them being based on assumptions different from your own.

To add to my example, think about how many satellite weapons you'd need to protect your base if you tried to ring the outer edge of your artillery range, you'd need a massive amount of them, next time your in game, build an artillery peice, then ring it's range with some regular laser turrets, see how many that takes then double(at least) the cost for those, then you might get a better idea of just how inefficient your worst case scenario actually is.

Mike

^ talk about assumptions then make your own.....hmm.... well...... ahem........
You are free to see my utilization as you wish and i mine. The only way to ever know would be to have it in game.

I'm not saying that creates an impenetrable wall to your base but would definitely go far in softening any approaching force, which would then fall to God artillery and lasers..........

Forgive me for looking at angles other than your own, but someone has to calculate further possibilities than simply it does this over your base and that's it!!!



P.s. play a tower defense and place seemingly weak turrets out of your core tower area..... does a lot....

Also lasers wouldn't be an efficient representation as you stated it to have an aoe weapon






And Costs!!?? Aren't you on that whole side of less orbital cost????

Just because people want cheaper orbital doesn't mean it should be super cheap. It should have a cost equivalent to its usefulness + a bit of extra since it has the bonus of being orbital. Current orbital units are in a league all their own, both in terms of power and cost. We just want cheaper orbital units that are also less powerful. Not every space weapon has to be a god weapon that can glass planets, or an omniscient radar.

But there are no God weapons at the orbital level.......


If a first tier is brought to orbital correctly then well.....I guess I've made a big fuss over nothing......

Currently, the advanced radar and Laser Satellite are god weapons with the only defenses being orbital fighters and the Ion cannon. With no other unit being able to attack those units.

I think you might be reading into Knight's example a little to much which was just a unit example, not a completely defined suggestion with no balance issues. Of course by itself it looks over powered but a lot of things in this game are over powered. He was using the example as a potential theory of how a Satellite might exist in the game with some cons to its nature.

You do bring up a point about first tier orbital units being overtly powerful due to their limited counters. I feel this can be alleviated with a power change to those units and a few more interesting additions to the orbital layer that would make it easier for space exploration at the same time as land exploration starts.

To bring it back to your initial argument of 1v1's taking to long with commander's leaving planets. At least with an early orbital you can figure out if a commander is jumping ship and chase him down with your own orbital units or stay on the planet and launch inter orbital nukes at the planet they are on. I think 1v1's of that nature would be rather interesting.