Planetary Invasions

It's especially more difficult when you consider how interconnected everything actually is in a game like this. There is no single mechanic that will solve all the problems with something as multifaceted as planetary invasion.

Mike

Simply taking the battle to the enemy means you get to deal permanent planetary damage. That counts as a permanent gain by default.

You want to invade planets? Guess what. The whole game has to be built around letting players invade planets. This does not happen by magic in an RTS, and for PA it is clear that a single option won't cut it.

Much fun can be had by incorporating reclaim tactics, energy vulnerabilities, astroids, orbital units, and a dozen other offensive biases to keep players wanting to attack each other to gain that pivotal edge. There's no shortage of ways to make it happen, and there's certainly no single path to making it work. In fact you NEED lots of ways because that's how you make the assortment of options that players use for their strategery.

If you want to make ANY use of the options, you have to know what they are. To discover NEW options, you need to know what the core working parts are. There are a LOT of core working parts, because an RTS is one of the most complex game types there is. Nearly anything can work in any way, and when something changes it ALL changes.

The goal of an RTS is to find the most direct route to victory. It is in many ways a puzzle waiting to be solved. The biggest part of building the RTS is making that puzzle. If it is solved too easily, interest dies quickly. If the answer fails to match the intent, the game breaks. Properly done, you won't know what the solution is going to be. That's the challenge that keeps players coming back for more, to try something different, to play a little bit better next time. It feeds the drive to "master" the game. Every time neutrino says "thing X is supposed to do Y" it breaks my heart, because it means the game is already solved and the exciting part is gone.

There are a retarded number of moving parts involved for an RTS, I'll admit. If you don't know what half of them are, the best you can do is make pot shots in the dark hoping for a lucky hit. It turns out I'm kinda sorta good functionally autistic at this sort of thing. There were even a few pieces that got included or at least experimented with in certain unnamed titles. I... like to do it. It's why I get mad when someone hands cheap, boring solutions to game problems that won't even work half the time.

I might just know what I'm doing (but honestly, it's more fun when I don't).

I understand everything you're saying.

The whole point of this post was to point out that there wasn't enough diversity and there were lots of issues regarding invasions. There were too many situations where there is no valid way to invade.

The point of this post is to get discussion going on invasion options.

Creating invasion options is great, but I must reiterate that in order to make the surface war the focus of gameplay, you have to have limitations on how orbital units/fleets can attack the surface, and on how fleets can invade.

The invasion itself is a Normandy-style assault to obtain a beachhead in enemy territory, and that assault should primarily consist of surface units and planes. A purely orbital attack would enable the player to just fly in with a bunch of orbital units and passively glass the surface. Once the initial invasion establishes a beachhead, that player can use it as a safe location to send in reinforcements, and begin to transfer over to building units on the hostile planet.

Are we in agreement that a planetary invasion should primarily be a prelude to a ground war on the planet's surface? If so then any options we create for planetary invasions need to be strongly controlled, and made to be much less appealing than fighting on the surface of the planet itself.

A "hot" invasion into hostile territory might use orbital insertion drop pods, which should be made to be highly undesirable, either by being inefficient or by limiting the types of units a player can use. Once some territory is secured, the player might switch over to using aircraft (dropships) to ferry units down from orbit, which is unavailable in hostile territory because enemy anti-air will destroy the dropships. And then the player should build factories on the planet and begin pushing to gain control of more territory.

I've read everything on this thread and pretty much everyone wants the normandy style invasion rather than glassing from above.

And that's the issue, right now invasions pretty much require glassing from above via nukes and/or laser sats.

The thing is that right now so many elements/mechanics related to planetary invasions are are either incomplete, unrefined or just flat out missing, it's impossible to know yet whether the problem is that orbital is just too good or that orbital isn't good enough.

Mike

I am well aware of the issues due to unfinished Orbital.

I'd go far as to say that we can most definitely say that Orbital isn't good enough from what Uber has released publicaly.

This thread is to get the creative juices flowing, provide Uber ideas, and maybe even point out things they haven't thought about.

Just because something isn't complete doesn't mean we can't discuss it. Especially since Uber is slowly telling us more and more and from what we do know, it isn't enough.

Just because we don't know everything, doesn't mean we can't talk about it.

There's some good debate going on here but let's keep away from personal comments.

This is the most accurate description of an RTS I've ever heard. It is a giant chess match. Changing anyone of those pieces makes a huge difference. You can argue chess is the most balanced game out there. Why do we still play it?

This really comes done to game theory. The more ways you can win the bigger the puzzle and the more wrinkles you're going to see in the game. You're going to see more player tactics that each player will need to counter or they'll be stomped.

The biggest challenge in balancing this game is the number of players. Chess dealt with two. This one will eventually allow 40. The real trick in this is making all units still relevant throughout the entire match. In chess, pawns are still just as powerful late game as they are early.

Which is not what I was proposing. Please actually read the post before shooting it down.

It's not a "game ending" unit. It's more of a siege unit, meant to break built-up static defenses.

Frankly it's either a megabot, nukes, or an ability to launch large numbers of regular units and land them reliably anywhere we want on any planet. That is, I need to be able to land 20+ Levelers around the enemy planet, preferably close enough to their defenses that they can deal damage before they all get killed.

Of those three options, I think the speciality "siege megabot" is going to cause the least number of secondary problems.

Ideas like "the egg" won't work unless they let us drop a lot of firepower anywhere we want. Otherwise defenses like Holkins will blow you up before you can accomplish anything.

I personally like the idea of mass unit drops. The transport system (ferrying) from SupCom would need only minor fixes to allow this to easily happen. Mega units that are combat related actually have a large number of gameplay implications (refer to the megabot thread), whereas using existing units is less likely to disrupt the balance.

I think the best approach is to be able to use large numbers of land (and air) units in a planetary invasion. A single massively expensive unit sounds cool, until you realize how nothing happens for the ridiculous amount of time and resources needed to construct one.

Smaller units create more activity because they can do useful work when completed while you wait for more to finish. Whereas a megabot is 100% useless until it is completely finished, which is extremely boring if it has a ridiculously high price tag. Which it would need to have in order to qualify as a legitimate "megabot."

Having a high price tag associated with more powerful delivery methods for normal units is more interesting. Such as having drop pods that let you slam units from space down to the planet almost immediately, but you had to spend metal for the pod. As you get more units, you have to build more pods and more drop capability in order to drop them all at once.

These mechanics are more dynamic and active than sitting around waiting for a megabot to finish, and then using it to single-handedly crack open an enemy planet. And battles featuring exactly one significant unit are also extremely dull. And it gets far worse if both sides have such units.

Except it is game ending if you drop it right next to your opponent's commander.

Totally agree. And I suspect Uber intends to make that possible. So how?

I have the impression that massive space transports packed with units isn't on the table. But for it to work, a big space "ark" should be able to hold a ton of units and get them down to the surface from orbit rapidly. This ark should probably have massive HP so it doesn't just die shortly after coming in range of an entrenched planet's defenses. Also, since travel between major-orbit planetoids takes so long (yes, that could change, but stay with me) why not have this ark capable of constructing some additional units en-route to the target planet?

So what exists (or been announced) that could, perhaps in combination, fill these roles? An asteroid (or small moon). Loaded with an appropriate-to-the situation mix of factories, pre-produced units, unit cannons and engines. Or several rocks, if the situation calls for it.

The way that Halley-fired objects swing around the sun has generally made sense to me. The way that they also seem to make one last [at least partial] swing around a target planet has not. I suspect that was put in place for an eventual expected tactic of unit cannon spamming the target planet from the accelerated one. [note: accelerated - Halley's don't necessarily need to send their payload on a collision course]. Also, full destruction upon impact of any size KEW on any size target planet always seemed like a placeholder.

To get to the point, I think we'll find that most or possibly all of the pieces of the puzzle are in play or already announced. They just aren't working together in concert yet, and a few of those announced-but-not-yet-revealed pieces are key, particularly in combination with capabilities of the game engine that current solar systems and orbital mechanics don't yet expose. I'd venture a guess that asteroid belts will commonly circle the entire sun, and be composed of so many asteroids of so many varying sizes, that there's no realistic danger of running out of KEWs and/or unit-cannon firing platforms to be a problem. We'll all quickly learn to avoid joining uncommonly-engineered systems that stand out as potential stalemate material.

At least, that's my impression of what Uber may have been shooting for. The new camera sure seems like it'd support asteroid belts well.

I addressed that, rather specifically.

Again, please refrain from commenting on a post if you aren't going to read it.

I did read your post. Your "rockets that can only hit stationary targets" does not fully address the killing of the Commander.

Scenario, Team 1 has its Commander assisting its factory, which is the proper move to do for late game. Giant mega machine lands in the middle of the base, rocket barrage, boom Commander dead.

And what if this mega machine lands directly on top of the Commander?

I am still opposed to single mega game ending units.

What you are proposing has no counter, since nothing can intercept and destroy things that are hopping orbit. So now this giant unit lands in the middle of the base, destroying a large portion of your base without any possible counter. Lands on your Commander, killing it, or severely wounding it, and then if landing on the Commander doesn't kill the Commander, finishes off the Commander with a rocket barrage.

I am opposed to any type of unit that is along those lines.

Just my personal opinion.

This is not the proper late game move.

The proper late game move is to have your commander assisting a unit that's on patrol in a safe area. This ensures he never stops to repair anything. Late game, his build power isn't worth the risk of losing him to a surprise orbital laser strike or T2 bomb run. Keeping him moving, even in a small area, prevents both of those snipe attacks.

Plus if we assume the damage done is 2000 per shot with a shot every 3 seconds, it will take 21 seconds to kill a commander but most defenses will die in 1 hit. They would have to send 7 megabots at the same time to kill you instantly, assuming you're not moving.

Yes.

I'm not sure you're grasping the scenario we're discussing in this thread.

I have a small planet. There is no part of its surface that lacks coverage by umbrellas, holkins, catapults, pelters and multiple missile turrets. The smaller the world, the easier this is to do.

You COULD give me a way to land a bunch of Levelers. Being able to land 25 Levelers anywhere I want would make it trivially easy to kill your commander. That's the real advantage of this specialized megabot: he can be good at killing defensive structures but terrible at killing commanders. It's okay to let him land anywhere. It's not okay to just drop 25 Levelers anywhere.

We HAVE to be able to drop some kind of killer unit into the middle of a bunch of defenses and have it live long enough to destroy a good number of those defenses.

The only real alternative is to make nukes truly interplanetary, without limit, but that means we don't need to invade at all.


So what do you like best:
* Specialized anti-structural megabot
* The ability to drop 25 Levelers and kill your commander instantly
* The ability to deliver multiple nukes to any target I want, on any planet with no restrictions

Pick your poison.

I think the megabot solution is far superior to the other ideas. It's far more restricted in use. It's cool. It requires a real invasion to follow it in.

And it's countered by units. Levelers would tear it up (but not before its had time to kill a few big defensive structures).

And on a single planet, you'd get a lot more bang-for-your-buck by just sending in bombers to do the same job. It's really only practical in a planet invasion beachhead scenario.

Just to reiterate, this would be an exceedingly bad idea. We really can't allow players to just drop 25 Levelers anywhere they feel like.

Because either:
* You make it so that the transports can get shot down, in which case the entire idea of invading a bunkered up planet is already ruined and this is a non-solution
or
* You make it so that the transports can survive any defense long enough to drop their load, in which case I'll just drop the load on your Commander's head

This is why we have to have some kind of specialized "bunker busting" interplanetary unit that's good against structures but not commanders.

Why would making it possible to shoot down transports make an invasion a non-starter? Practically every invasion in history has had to take a beachhead by force.

The reason it will work is because the attacker can bring their entire offensive force to bear in a target area which the attacker selects. The defender has to defend everywhere, which is impossible to do given the same investment in defensive assets and attacking assets.

Drop pods would be an excellent specialized tool for getting ground units down to the planet's surface almost immediately. They could still be shot down, but the enemy's anti-air has much less time to destroy pods crashing down hard than it does to shoot down aircraft transporting units down to the surface gently, like dropships.

As a result, crashdown orbital insertions by pod would be very useful for a direct assault on the surface of the planet, launched from orbit. You could even use them for quick reinforcements from any reserves you have waiting in orbit. However you have to pay for each single-use pod, where a dropship is more efficient, higher capacity, more flexible, reusable, and can also be used as an air transport around the surface.

Thanks ledarsi. You said it for me.

Invasions are much more valid and balanced with lots of units, rather than one mega unit.

For the same reason land combat involves lots of units, not one mega unit.