Orbital layer should be tactical intelligence gathering.

I have been playing the game since Alpha just like many of you have. I have been thinking about orbital quite a bit since it was introduced and at this point I cannot help but think adding more stuff to the orbital layer, like factories, transports, etc., is going to be detrimental to the game. Here are a few reasons for my opinion.

1. There is no counter for the first player to reach orbital. The first player to get an orbital fighter in play can lock all other players out of the layer quite easily as long as he is paying a bit of attention.
2. Turtled planets are unassailable. These orbital fighters, combined with the insanely long travel time needed to attack a planet, make assaulting a turtled planet impossible. The defending player needs to be paying just the slightest bit of attention to his deep space radar, and he can easily pull together a defense before the attacking units arrive.
3. Too much clutter on the screen to sort through. An orbital layer complete with factories and other typical ground based structures could become just as crowded as the ground does already. Do you really think that much clutter will be manageable? Even with layer filtering, which I think is essential, it would be cumbersome to put it mildly.

My proposal:
I would suggest that the orbital layer be shifted into a purely tactical and intelligence gathering role. Basically remove orbital fighters from the orbital layer and make anti-orbital tech ground based. This can be managed, as it is now with umbrellas and some mobile units with anti-orbital utility. ECM and radar jamming to counter the intelligence gathering of radar. Limit orbital vision to one hemisphere of the planet but make it so that vision cannot be countered.

To address interplanetary travel, I would suggest that the unit cannon can fill this roll more effectively than the current orbital transport or the proposed gate. It would allow the movement of massive numbers of ground based units. Orbital units like radars, lasers and orbital nukes should be able to travel independently between planets.(now that the gate has been implemented and is awesome this is no longer relevant.)

Interplanetary travel must be faster. As cool as the gate sounds in concept. What do you expect would be required to establish a beachhead, on a defended world, that could hold out long enough to get the second gate built? With faster travel between worlds, the unit cannon is a far more viable option than a gate will ever be.

I expect this post will ruffle a few feathers so be kind in your retort.

Thanks for reading.

Watching units run realistic paths around the system is neat, but oh my god is the gameplay around it horrible. Giving another planet 5-10 minutes to defend an assault that you can not synchronize or take back basically means that attacking anyone with half a brain is impossible. Put warp drives on these things, for crying out loud.

Orbital fighters in their current implementation are stupid. They would have been just fine as a classic interceptor with the ability to hop between moons or worlds.

I think the only reason you'll be ruffling any feathers is your idea was suggested, discussed and shot down in the original orbital discussion thread we had started by neutrino.
Very few people want a bland support layer for orbital and many people want more unique units to give further strategic possibilities.

Orbital is far from perfect right now, but I personally believe your idea would be a huge step in the wrong direction.

I am unable to find that thread. I searched for a similar thread before posting.

That being said I don't see how it would be a move in the wrong direction.

You need it, you have it.
People always say "make a search", but it's far from being that easy to find something that you don't have a clue about...

I looked over that thread. It's focus is on the control scheme for orbital. Not the role of orbital. Additionally that thread is months old now. A lot of it has been implemented and we can now clearly see the flaws in orbital and how using it as a combat layer is proving to be ineffective.

Controls affect gameplay, that affect what kind of things you can do. So it's heavely about the role of Orbital.

Also, take note that most of your proposals have been covered in the topic, if you are patient enough to read the 33 pages.

No matter how you look at it this would be impossible.

Solar satelites are eco and with the comming addition of gas giant, orbital only it would be impossible to do only intel gathering.

I think your "retort"ed. Lul.

Jkjk, for real some of us have been talking about this. We thought in your direction, just not as extreme. We think orbital still needs to be able to do it's thing, but yes, something needs to be done to limit what orbital does to make it feel "tactical unique roles" instead of just "standard landcrap in space", as well as make balanced the layers interaction including one player locking out orbital entirely being impossible.

Some of our ideas are making some orbital units a narrower-powered yet specialized role, and the other is making t1 and t2 orbital with the same basis that it isn't an upgrade but a separation of role necessity, and generally the ideas we have are other units being able to combat the orbital layer and the orbital layer being able to very specifically be able to do certain attacking types that aren't "dominating", as well as diversifying their type of travel (multiple units in transports at once) compared to land interplanetary travel (pouring units rapidly steadily over, instead of all-in-bulk).

Basically, make orbital that thing that sometimes works exclusively and sometimes helps you but doesn't always work better than any other units and often times gets stomped on by non-orbital.

It is being discussed to make a mod if all else. That makes it guaranteed one way or another, and I am willing to believe in any form it exists in that the general population will "eat that **** up with both hands shoveling", as I know I would. That's why I'd back that.

I agree with the idea that orbital should be different from the other layers, acting as a tactical and intelligence layer rather than just another combat layer that isn't differentiated from the others. The main issue is fighters.

Fighters as it stands now are basically high-altitude air fighters, and are uninteresting as well as allowing easily locking down the orbital layer. Fighters should be replaced with a different unit capable of attacking orbital without behaving like an air fighter. I'm thinking something like a kinetic weapon that smashes itself into a satellite to bring it down. This would make orbital combat more tactical and interesting than just a fighter race, since the fighters can no longer lock down an enemy orbital factory indefinitely.

I see no harm then in starting an abridged thread with a tighter focus on the role of orbital.

Yes, there is a place for resource gathering in the orbital layer. Especially in the case of gas giants. With this in mind there is still no real need for orbital combat, as it stands now, unless it is proposed purely for the gimmick of orbital combat.

It really adds nothing to the playability or tactical options of the game. With orbital combat, orbital control is extremely binary. Either you control it or you don't. And the first person to get there should be able to hold it far too easily for it to add any depth to the game.

Yes it might be a gimmick, but multiple planets is the same it isn't really necessary. That doesn't mean it isn't fun.

Yes, orbital is very binary, it isn't finnished. I get the feeling that the current orbital is a bit like conquering planets, the one that gets there first has an advantage.

I fully agree Nullimus, control in the orbital level is problematic.

The "low acceleration, high speed" approach works perfectly fine for orbital weapon or intelligence systems since it provides an action delay without the usual penalty for traveling large distances, but fighters or interactions between orbital units just don't fit in.

Sure, umbrellas allow you to punch a hole in the orbit where enemy fighters can't deny control, but catching up is quite expensive when compared to the initial cost of going orbital. Given the cost of orbital units, it's also always an "all or nothing" approach since you can't fortify a position in the orbital layer.

"Hunting down" isn't a valid move in the orbital layer. The umbrella is a lot better in these terms, since it requires control in a different layer to attack orbital. A mobile, ground based SDI unit could also be acceptable, but always under the premise "Wait until the target comes to you".

The third point from the original post is also a valid one:
Even though neutrino doesn't like to hear it, but only very few units should be in orbit at the same time and they should not require frequent interaction. After all, units in orbit have to fit in the same screen as air and ground units and it's getting really distracting.

The orbital layer is supposed to be a glue layer between interplanetary and planetary gameplay. It was never supposed to be fully playable, hence also the sarcastic term "Air 2.0".

The current state is a result of a wrong decision on behalf of gas giants. What we currently have as "orbital fighters" would fit perfectly well onto gas giants and within the factory layer on such, but then again not in the actual orbital layer.
The issue is: The current design for gas giants pictures only a single layer. No separation of "low layer" with the production and generator facilities as well as a regular orbital layer, but only a single "all in one" layer.
(Which is IMHO bs. There's no point in putting a facility, which requires resources from the gas giant, into high and "safe" orbit, just the same way as a regular unit designed for space travel won't be able to survive in the athmosphere of an gas giant.)

It is nice to have someone address the post specifically instead of whether or not it should have been posted.

Did you read the second part discussing the unit cannon as the primary launching point for interplanetary travel of ground units? How do you feel about that portion of the post?

That it diversifies planet travel. You won't require orbital to travel. Ground alone, albeit limited and more expensive, offers a different type of travel between planets. While orbital offers its own solid kind that is different in use but effective in its own ways.

Actually, even with the unit canon you will need the orbital layer.

Slinging your units all around the solar system just from a unit canon? Forget about it. The simulation isn't accurate enough to ensure the accuracy for such small objects.

Possible way though, is to limit interplanetary travel to orbit-orbit transfers, and enforce players to get units into orbits with other terms. Vice verse, the transports would also never land on the planets surface, but instead drop droppods from orbit.

Going to another planet is truly one-way unless using "the egg" or similar low-gravity single-unit transporters.

Why to go this way? Because this enables you to introduce different methods of interplanetary transports. Transports with active steering as the basic ones, up to "mass portal" style, deployable, high orbit space stations which allow for streamlined unit transfer. Launch the unit into orbit, use maneuvering thrusters on the unit shell to steer it into the portal and there you go.

To your first point. I am not talking about eliminating the orbital layer. Just removing combat units from it.

Your suggestion does nothing for playability. It only adds complexity to the process of getting units from one planet to another. You also need to remember that this game is not a simulation, it's a game, and the more troublesome any given process is the less fun there is to be had. Units launched from the unit cannon do not have to start out on the correct trajectory. They just enter the orbital layer and automatically plot their course to the other planet like any other orbital unit.

There are no other games that run orbital layers. Everything about the functioning of the orbital layer has to be built up from scratch. So how do you do this?

You first start with what you NEED. The orbital layer needs to move units between worlds. This can start with a handful of constructors, and can scale up to a full planetary assault. Without that feature, the entire game design breaks. Then you get to move up to what is useful and finally things that are cool.

The ability to move units between worlds isn't quite there. That should be the #1 priority before worrying about anything else in orbit.

Actually, the game is a simulation or at least runs at top of a fully simulated environment. The celestial bodies in PA don't just move on tracks, they are fully simulated once they are known to leave a trivial circular orbit for any reason.

Hence you need for small units a medium of transport which is mostly unaffected by inaccuracies in the simulation. Using the unit canon to get from a moon to the planet below is perfectly possible, the path is simple and even without active steering, the unit will land right where intended. It even still works when the unit canon has any spread. This is not true for transfers to other bodies which share a similar orbit around the same celestial object, even smallest deviations multiply, even more so for any maneuver where you are passing another planet.
Just entering the parents planets sphere of influence is simple to compute and not very error prone. Navigating in the gravitational field spanned from several large celestial object is not that simple at all and very error prone.

You also need a way to access units available for interplanetary transport from the solar view. That's why the orbital layer was originally introduced, as a staging platform to interplanetary travel which is both accessible from the planet the units are orbiting as well as the solar view.
It's not very wise to have single task spread over multiple magnitudes of order, but that's actually what happens right now when you order an interplanetary transport to pick up a tiny unit on the surface of the planet, scroll out all the way to solar view, and to select a just as tiny landing spot on a different planet.
While this surely gives an impression of the size of the planet in relation to the individual unit, it also complicates management of units in an unnecessary way be enforcing far to many scope switches. This also makes streaming construction and replenishment lines overcomplicated and hard to oversee.