Gameplay, Units & Balance

ehh, it would be hard to do without it looking a little weird across a solar system.

how so?

Well the planets are round, moving and rotating, and can be shooting to other planets that are round, moving and rotating.

It'll look like a big old snake across the screen.

Of unit icons you mean?

Yeah.

D

Depending on how many units are going around, yeah you would see that.

But i don't think that that's any worse than seeing that on the surface of the planet. And you'd probably make it so that it is only visible with an orbital radar.

And would be incredibly annoying to someone trying to track orbital transfers.

Imagine switching to orbital view and seeing a massive beam of red tanks shooting across the system.

COMPLETELY blocking out the movement of the enemy's orbital units.

You could change the transfer mechanic slightly for teleporters so they take slightly different routes.

Only jsut saw the thread, oh boy oh boy oh boy pretty much every thing we want to see!

Pretty excited

Since this seems to be the topic about balance: I'll throw my thoughts I had here:

I was thinking - since we will have Sub fabbers at some point, how about allowing sub fabbers to build while submerged. This would differentiate then from boat fabbers, but the downside would be that sub fabbers can't build land/air factories - only stuff that can be placed on water. Also while on the topic of subs how about giving the frigate a sonar and either torpedoes or depth charges (and thus making the frigate an all around vessel -air, boat and sub -, while the bluebottle is a naval supperiority one), so we have a way to counter subs with boats. Aslo while talking about subs I'd like to see the T2 Nuclear sub be able to build it's nuke underwater, but not be able to move while it is doing so (and if it moves the nuke production stops). the nuke it'self while just as powerful as strategic nuke sould cost 2-3x as much be suceptirble to antinukes (duh) and have 1/3 to 1/4 as range as nukes had in alpha (do you must really think about cheaper and longer range interplanetary (trategic) nukes vs. stealthy, but planetbound, costlier and shorther ranged tactical nukes)

The other thing is having gunships T1 since they specialise in hunting ground units, while T1 bombers are good against structures. I believe that T2 Bombers feel great power wose (We just don't have a way to counter them effectively, yet, so they should pergaps be costlier and slower to build) and that by the time we get to t2 air T2 bombers are going to be vastly more usefuly since we will be dealing with large blobs of units rather than single ones.

The third thing is assault guns, wich I have already covered in some prior post in this topic.

Ths final thing is orbital - I already talked about orbitla structures in the other thread thet Biranpurkiss made, but I'd like to see all satelite units and the Avanger be buildable by Orbital launcher, while the orbital space station/dry dock (should we ever get one this would be your T2 orbital factory) builds orbital units that look a bit more like space ships and less like satellites (would be awesome if these T2 orbital units had the same ability as the astreus - they could enter air space to fight other air and ground targets, but the downside would be that they would be vastly less effecient and slower to build than air fighters, this would make T2 fighters more viable as well as not add more options for planetary invasion).

P.S. This would lower the skill cealing a bit, but I believe that since a lot of games are team games (and I believe that the point of PA are team games rather then 1v1 like starcraft) that the T1 power generator should provide around 1000 to 1200 power rather than 800. The reason is that it is really hard for a large team not to stall on power at some point (mainly becuse commanders produce less pwoer then they draibn and large amounts of bot fabbers that are quickly present in team games) and curretny "macroing up" (as it is called in Starcraft) is a bit less viable than building a factroy, 3-5 fabbers then spamming Scampers Dox, becuse if you produce T1 fabbers with impunity you will not only get shut down by enemy Scampers Dox (which makes sense), but also by your power (or lack of there of).

Construct additional pylons.

I see Teleporters and remote factories going hand in hand to win over any area worth taking. In other words, you would need a teleporter to gain a foothold in an area, so that you would have time to build the air power and the other support structures that you would need to take someone out at one of their strong points. If taking out someone is so easy that your force would crush them, then chances are, that would eventually happen anyway, but it would take longer without the use of the teleporter. So, I don't see teleporters replacing the need to build factories everywhere. I see them as facilitators to your expansion effort, to reduce the amount of time it takes to build everywhere, and that is a good thing.

Also, to address the point about not being able to take out a planet that is entrenched with enemy units with a teleporter, I think that is the intended effect. Teleporters are a supplemental effort to use in a multi-pronged beachhead type of offensive. In other words, unit cannons, orbital, and potentially nukes represent the initial wave of creating space on the entrenched enemy planet. Once you punch that initial hole in their defenses (would also obviously need to take out enemy nukes and artillery), you would need to quickly throw up a teleporter to get your ground forces out and finish the job. Personally, I like this mechanic.

As with anything else, balance obviously plays a role here to get things right. However, I like the idea of the underdog being able to fiercely protect a small planet smashing moon let's say, as a means to pull off a game ending multi-Com snipe, or to throw the balance of power on its head in the later stages of the game by taking out the enemies overpowering economy on the main planet.

PS - I also think that making them capturable and potentially usable against the person who built them (in other words, they can't be turned off) would make everyone think twice about using them anywhere and everywhere.

So I realised that I went off a tangent with orbital yesterday and I forgot to tell you the point. Basically every orbital unti consttructed by the orbital fabber should count as a space station which means it cannot break orbit. The offset is that this would allow certain units like the orbital laser satellite to have their cost reduced. But the orbital fabber itself could break orbit allowing you to build in any planetary orbit.

And another thing comes to mind when talking orbital: radar satellites. I believe that rbasic radar sat should be renamed spy satellite abd given a fov rather than radar (like he curent adv radar sat, but extremely limited) while the advaned radar satellite should basically work as the current standard radar sattelite (with the exception that it is a build by a fabber - thus a space station) . The reason why to do this is that the curent adv radar sat nullifys any sneaky tactics and makes scouring obsolete. It laso makes setting up hidden bases on other planets harder as they are imidately revealed. On the other hand having a mobile radar that is safe from veing destroyed (the basic radar satellite) would negate the need to set up ground radars and without the ability to see from orbit the orbital lasers become next to useless. A spy sat done this way would basically functionas your orbital skitter for scouting other planets.

Transitioning away from a teleporter and onto local production should definitely be expected because it should be very advantageous. A beachhead that begins with a teleporter should transition into an entirely local surface war.

The way to do this is to make the teleporter itself fairly accessible, but make actually teleporting each unit be very expensive. The teleporter allows a player to extend the reach of production from somewhere else, which is critical for attacking an area which is already controlled in force. Such as the surface of a hostile planet. But the cost to use a teleporter should be so high that you don't want to use it if you can build factories on the other side of the teleporter.

A factory on the opposite side of a teleporter has obvious disadvantages compared to a factory on the "safe" side. The factory itself costs resources and can be destroyed (exposure), the teleporter potentially lets you teleport elsewhere if you choose (strategic flexibility), and you can hold units on the safe side and quickly deliver on demand (reserves). Also, a centralized factory base and extensive teleporter network allows you to use a smaller force in many different places, creating a vastly superior economy of force through "teleport mobility" instead of just high speed, especially for slow units. So building units using factories needs to be much cheaper than teleporting units in order to be preferable.

Therefore, the build cost of the teleporter isn't really as important as giving it a high cost to actually use. A cheap teleporter can be used for relatively expendable beachhead attempts, can be made quickly when needed, and is available relatively early. However because it has a high energy cost to use, you want to use the teleporter to establish a base and then transition to local production that does not need teleportation.

I can't wait till the unit cannon, would just like to watch my units fly. I imagine galatics gates will be more practical but having a way to launch units is more fun. Don't like the idea of having orbital at tier 1, especially transports, to easy for people to just fly away and escape with their commander, but if it costs enough, takes enough time to build and adds more units to the build menu then it could add to the joojoo of the game.

Galactic gates? How would that work? Considering galactic war is just a metagame...

I have one question about the teleporter : Do units will automaticaly pass trought when the path is better or we'll have to click on it ?

You're missing a the fact the a factory on the "safe" side of a teleporter has obvious disadvantages as well even in the current play test build, including:
- harder to kill streams (kill 10 + buildings vs 1)
- may be needed else where ( if your invading them, whats to stop them doing the same thing?)
- dependent on positive power (making power farms a juicer target)
- standing defense vs waves of defense ( a dribble of units forming into a ball vs a ball that doesn't hang around)
- air support

I see them both been used together, with the factories left behind the front still been useful thanks to the ability to teleport them forwards faster and more front line factories been build as you capture more metal.

I would think that depends on how they implement the cost of teleportation. If there is a cost associated with teleporting each unit, then obviously it is a decision that you would have to make manually. If there is no unit cost for teleportation, then the decision should be made automatically by the pathing AI.

Please let there be no unit cost...........I would love for teleporters to be a regular thing.