Planetary Invasions

Yeah I agree it is just a visualization, but my point kind of was that it is a good idea nevertheless.

If you had played Total Annihilation, you would realize that your problems do not apply to that type of cloak. Yes it is hard to zero in on cloak, but that's the point. After tagging the position it's very easy to break by just about anything in the game.

Laughing so hard right now.

All right. I'll take that as a "no".

I agree with you and also just because you have a commander it dosent mean you need to place it on a planet that is ready to be invaded, my point is that if you only have a planet that is going to be invaded as a hiding place for your commander then you lost the war anyways else any kind of orbital defences can easily kill the drop pods before they even try to land

I love it when this thread gets revitalized. Lots of great ideas here.

what if you could drop a teleport down to a planet from orbit - don't know if it's been mentioned before.

To be fair yes but it´s good to remember this idea the only problem is that teleporters are a bit op since you cant shoot it down and it will tp loads of units.

If you can shoot it down you would have all the planetary defences shooting that single teleporter and it would be destroyed in seconds

Happy New Year

Yeah, people missed my post, but I think this is a great idea to be able to build orbital factories that could create units (spacecraft.. hint, hint). Still keep the fight in the orbital dimension of combat, but it might bring a whole new dynamic to the game and solve the interplanetary invasion problem.

Plannetary invasions shouldn't be easy, but they should be possible. We are all seeing it from the out side perspective. If you have that situation it should be possible with stratergy to win. A lot of these scenarios require a person to be in space and bunkered down. But when I've played matches and gone orbital, many times unless the person is killing other players they figure out what I did and counter it. This means while I'm trying to start again and build up fast, that person has an entire planet under their control and is building weapons at powerful speeds. So, something to think about.

Now, if we think about every time a place was invaded from the air. The enemy is bunkered, what happens? The attacking force sends an overwhelming force and uses the few units that get through to destroy the defenses. It's costly, but it is usually the only way.

Also, something we all seem to forget. The entire goal of the game is to destroy enemy commanders. So actually right now taking a planet is easy. I just build to nukes, fire them directly at the enemy commander and I win. Unless he has anti-nukes or moves very fast. And if he does, well I'll just launch more then 2 nukes. Because if you own a planet you can build nukes very fast.

Well, the main issue that this thread is intended to tackle is the process of invading planets that you don't share orbits with – because if that's the case you can't send nukes.

So some form of drop pod would be critical.

I was actually just thinking about all of this, having recently finished a 4v4 game.
What I keep running into is that there's just not enough time to really get going beyond the planet you start on. With all players starting on the same planet, it quickly becomes a land war and ends before we get a chance to expand to other planets. However, if we started on separate planets we'd build unopposed; by the time we discovered each other we'd be at a stalemate. Having never seen an Anti-Nuke work properly and actually stop a nuclear strike, I don't really see any reason to build anything else mid-to-late-game. Nukes can fire to other planets, so even if the enemy squirrels their commander away, you can just track them on interplanetary radar and surgically strike it.

Maybe other, better players can stretch this game into the orbital and interplanetary stages, but I'm just not seeing it. First, you have to play a regular strategy game: building a base and defending against land and air units. Then, you have to worry about nukes, radar and anti-nukes while still defending that same base. Finally, if you've still managed to survive (somehow), you can fly a couple units to a nearby moon and hope to hold out long enough to bring the moon down on your enemy. I had a factory pumping out advanced fabricators to build Halleys on a nearby moon, we held the game at a stalemate for at least 5 minutes waiting for the damn things to build. We got as far as one, before the game ended. I don't know how often I'm really going to be crashing planets into each other, when it's much easier and much more effective to focus on overpowering your opponent's half of the starting planet, or instead using the captured orbital bodies as giant untouchable resource farms to fund your activities on the homeworld.

I really like this idea, it reminds me a bit of Star Wars: Empire at War. In that game, you'd have to take out the enemy fleet and/or space station in order to begin your land invasion. You'd end up with scenarios in which you could cut off supply lines by blockading a planet. In this game, that could translate into flying your fleet in, having a huge battle (supported by ground-based anti-orbital weapons), in order to destroy all their orbital factories and anti-orbital guns. You could then use carrier ships or your own orbital factories to drop units onto the planet below, supported this time by your orbital weaponry. You've half-captured the planet. From the other side of a seige, no units are getting past the enemy blockade, so you've got to quickly scramble a fleet from a different planet to come and re-take the beseiged planet. What I'd like to see alongside orbital factories are underground factories that can't be attacked from orbit and can only be targeted by land-based units. These would essentially be giant trapdoors underneath a stretch of land, able to build large orbital craft. When construction completes, the land splits to reveal the cavern underneath and the unit emerges. That way, you have a method of taking the fight to orbital units once you've lost orbital superiority, and you'd have a way of getting units onto a planet once you'd captured its orbit.


EDIT: I should mention that these anti-siege units should be able to take quite a bit of punishment (considering they will likely be horribly outnumbered), and take a long time to build. That way, the initial orbital invasion will be difficult since it is opposed by both orbital and land forces, then once a player has a foothold in orbit, the land battle shifts in their favor as orbital units support the invading force. If the besieged player can hold out long enough to build the siegebreaker, then the invading force will be driven off and the player can begin bouncing back. After the siege is broken, or if it is built before an invasion occurs, the siegebreaker can act as a deterrent. I suggest that the siegebreaker should be unable to perform interplanetary movement or attacks, and be vulnerable to interplanetary weaponry. It's meant as a way of driving off a force that has defeated your orbital defenses but can't break your planetside defenses in a timely manner. By the time the siegebreaker is built, the invading player should have had ample time to attempt their invasion, with a clear advantage. Even assuming that the siegebreaker destroys the entire invasion fleet, the invading player would still have had the entire duration of the invasion to prepare another invasion or otherwise fortify their planets. The hope of a siegebreaker is to drive off and hold off orbital units long enough for an orbital factory and lost units to be rebuilt.
And on the subject of Orbital and Underground Factories, I think they should be exempt from interplanetary combat. Orbital factories would only be targetable by ground-based weaponry and orbital weaponry, while the siegebreaker's factory can only be destroyed from ground level. That way, no long-range bombardment can completely prevent you from eventually retaking your orbit, and even if your base is hit by a nuke, you can still drop units into the land battle from your orbital factory, assuming you have control of the orbital space but not the land space.

Right now the main issue with Interplanetary Combat is Orbital is so under developed. We currently have very few methods to actually invade a planet.

Btw, anti-nukes do work. I watch them shoot down incoming nukes all the time. And it does help that they come pre-loaded with a missile when they used to have to build a missile after the fact.

However, they require intel to work to their full effectiveness.

If we are going with the drop pod idea we need now to think how it would work, it would deployed by a ship?, a planet? A cannon? How many units can it transport? 3-4? 10-20? Can it transport tanks? Ships? Air?

sort of, but there's two major issues, one if you're trying to do this to someone holding the primary they can almost always out spam you and drive out your orbital fighters, even if you have better econ across multiple celestials they probably have a better concentration and can do this to one of your scattered holdings easier than you can do to them.

If that wasn't bad enough, by the time you're talking about spamming orbital lasers/fighters nukes will be easier, faster, and far more effective, and a planetary drop will be unstoppable if you get a solid contain.

The issue is that it it's current state the game basically revolves around control of the primary, winning there generally means winning everywhere, with only a couple of counters which while interesting are basically all or nothing plays. The meta needs more routs and counters in the orbital/interplanetary game in order for games beyond a single planet with moons to be interesting and fun, and thereby for longer games in bigger systems to be interesting and fun.

My mental image was a capsule or rocket that you load units into, it launches to the other planet, lands, and then its use is done.

So players could have 20 of these drop pods sitting on the ground near their base while units are being loaded into them and then they're launched to the other planet.

I like this idea really but we would need a buttom to mass launch then soo they can all hit the target at the same time soo you program the planet and the exact location were you want to land and a big red buttom apear writed "Are you f*cking crazy?"

For the landing idea i´m thinking more about the naza idea like before hitting the ground 2 rockests fire backwards and slow down the pod

http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/mars-rover-curiosity-final-descent.jpg

But instead of flying away it just crashes and instead of a crane it drops the units what do you think?