The Depressing Orbital War

I really do want one shot transport rockets that can move like 5 units at once.

And then to build 30 launchers to fire 150 units at a time.

There are two different siege prospects here, I think. The first is a properly entrenched planet - the sort you'll either send endless units to crack, or be tempted to just drop a moon on and be done with it. The second is one that's been quickly secured with a global-patrol air force. I'm personally more concerned about the ease with which the second is established, as it's a component of the first; arguably, the greater part of it, since it's far cheaper and easier than any global coverage of Catapults/radar.

Hybridizing the Peregrine would be nice, but what if we make use of its folding feature? If the Astreus gets altered for one-way trips as in the trailer, couldn't you order your Peregrines to fold up and load themselves into an Orbital Launcher to facilitate their IP transport? That way they wouldn't be able to go scouring the solar system without having a friendly Launcher, and by proxy an established bases, on each planet they intend to leave. This could be a more elegant solution than making a second T2 AA fighter, and would help fulfill the goal of T2 being different from T1. Bombers would still have to be earthbound, I think.

If T2 Bombers get balanced right, then the Unit Cannon or Dropships/Drop Pods loaded with ground AA might be able to clear space at a terrible attrition cost - especially once ground-based defenses and units arrive, requiring more of your own ground forces to cover for them - leading to the D-Day scenario you've envisioned, which is something we all want to see being possible in this game. But a hybrid Peregrine of some form wouldn't hurt.

Because you don't need this new unit to destroy his entire air force.

All you need it to do is create a small defensive perimeter for about, oh, 20 seconds. In that amount of time, 10 or so orbital fabricators can very rapidly create a teleporter, you can link it up and get some T2 fabrication bots through which will start building flak (plus your massive ground force that's going to rush in and spread out, hopefully in time to avoid the nuke...)

These new fighters don't really need to be that competitive. They just need to handle the random circling units of "global patrol". By the time your opponent sees what you're up to and organizes the Peregrines for an attack, it should already be too late (except on very small planets).


Incidentally, "very small planets" is a serious problem. Not only are they the most dangerous objects in the universe, but they are the easiest to lock down. Just finding a free spot large enough for a teleporter can be a problem. We might need minimum size limits on planets. (I don't think 3-Halley planet destroyers should even exist.)

I like that idea of the Peregrine folding into a Unit Cannon. looks simple and effective.

Beside, all those transports operations seem overly complicated. If I can move a Moon into a new orbit, I'll smash it in the face of my adversary (or into his butt), and I'll be done with that.

Specially in Tournament, when people legitimately want to win quick and neat.

Care to expand? Or are you just going to fling out insults without backing up your statement.

Small planets are also more vulnerable to nukes. Everything need to be condensed, and a single Nuke can vaporize an hemisphere. At the moment Anti-Nukes are slow as hell in re-stocking missiles. So just launch enough nukes and they're gonna do their dirty job.

The other night I launched 20 nukes at the same time, in tandem, and I vaporized an entire small planet (not even a Moon). So, it is very possible.

On big planets, you would need to launch way more nukes, specially 'cos you lack intelligence. So first you need to know where to launch them.

Anyway, once you land, no matter how fast you're gonna be with the Teleporter, a Nuke may already be on its smoky way, and you have less than 10 seconds to do all the work.

Not really enough. Specially 'cos all the planning cost you perhaps more than 20 minutes per wave. Very frustrating.

I did. If you do not care to read what people wrote, I can't do much about. Go back, kid, give a second read to my posts. It will also help you in re-evaluating who offends whom

Keep in mind, Teleporters may not remain as cheap and fast to build as they are currently. Even without that, though, loading fabbers in with your attack units (via transports/unit cannon) does fit your proposed scenario - You only need to survive long enough to build adequate defenses, and then you can start on factories/teleporters to reinforce your assault.

Tiny moons are a problem, but there are balance levers available to make it less so. Increasing Halley cost, and/or reducing their size a hair so that you can fit more of them on a planet to meet the "more halleys" requirement would be a start. Even removing air from moons, as I've preached (with a bit of foam on my mouth) might help. But there's a bigger problem...

Prolonged seige scenarios are fun to watch and fun to play, but fun =/= victory. Without the right balance between various game-ending options - a topic on which you've opined before, Slamz - we may see too many "surprise victories" from sudden strikes. There's enough dissatisfaction now with surprise T2 bomber runs or nukes ending the game in one stroke... I fear highly competitive players will gravitate towards those and leave others by the wayside. Obviously, victory is still the end condition, but we don't want it coming from a disproportionately "boring" source. I'd rather see a nuke win involve glassing an entire planet, not finding the enemy commander and finishing him with a one-two punch.


This may be slightly off-topic, however. The Orbital UI needs drastic improvement - starting with the inability to select (or see the tactical icons of) ground units while in orbit. Balancing between fabbers and mobile assets also needs work - Anchors are a great step in the right direction, as they encourage positional play, but more needs to happen. Right now it's like trying to play chess with ten-foot-long chopsticks. We have to be able to get our "hands" on orbital, the way we do with ground, to find their proper place in the game.

@ carlo I generally said transports anyway ... and yes im very aware of ddays casulties ... but thats the thing .... you cant win wars without sacrafices ... you want a less risky approach? Get yourself an asteroid and build unit cannons and halleys on it ...

Hell of a micro? Transport assist or ferrysystem and uistuff .... oh and areacommands ... not that much of a problem ... just needs time to be propperly implemented ...

Also dropships being able to drop their units from orbit gives too much of a snipeattempt However you would still be able to make that with aircraft transports

Don't assume. I did read your posts and they do not directly address any of my claims, so you must be using some made up definition for the word "logic."

"Kid?" There's also no need to be even more of an *** by talking in a demeaning manner. It does nothing productive in any way to anyone. It's just resulting to schoolyard bullying tactics and is... well. pathetic.

You haven't once talked about why "There needs to be drawbacks to very powerful abilities like hopping layers" is an incorrect statement.

That has nothing to do with "logic." Pull up a list of logical fallacies and point to one that I have committed. There is none. So stop wasting my time with incorrect insults.

Invasions are expensive. It requires tons of units. You have admitted that yourself in another thread. Just because invasions are expensive doesn't mean that balance should be thrown out the window to make it easier for the invaders.

You should also do some simple math.

There's nothing something magical about it being "more expensive" so therefore I'm not using logic. (Again, look up some logical fallacies and try to find one)

If we make the new unit a lot less combat effective and as expensive as the Peregrine, it would be no different than a little less combat effective as the Peregrine and more expensive than the Peregrine. It's just a matter of where the "sliders" are.

There's nothing magical about this new unit being more expensive than the Peregrine so it suddenly cannot prevail against the Peregrine.

It simply must be built in greater numbers, which is what must be done before any invasion in any case.

Proper balance means that if a unit has extra abilities, it must have drawbacks or increased cost or both.

Again. Google logical fallacies and find one that I employed. You won't be able to.

Also, do the simple math. This new unit being more expensive doesn't suddenly make it invalid.

Issues of logic and math aside, don't you think that having the Peregrine be a scaled-up copy of T1 AA violates Uber's goal for T2? Why not just upgrade/sidegrade the Peregrine to give it a more unique functionality, with appropriate costs and tweaks?

I'm very open to such an idea.

Could possibly have it as less effective, expensive, and can hop orbital/air layers and have the Hummingbird be the king of anti-air. But they aren't very good at taking out Hornets...

We probably do need a stronger dedicated anti-air fighter.

Hm...

Any suggestions?

Just let me throw 2links in here

1. https://forums.uberent.com/threads/helicopters-fixed-wing-aircraft.55966/page-5#post-861566

2. https://forums.uberent.com/threads/suborbital-aircraft.53849/#post-824465

That's all very closed to what I've said weeks ago. Go figure it out...

@Brian, you're doing all by yourself. Calm down

In my experience, when things are starting to get heated, the absolute best thing to do is tell the other person to calm down.



Also, on topic - by release, won't we have a better "mothership" in the form of an asteroid pulled into orbit of an enemy planet, with teleporters and unit cannons on it, with additional interplanetary nukes?

It depends on the availability of asteroids. Until we have an idea what the final default solar system will look like we will have a hard time deciding how practical that option is.

Even if the default system has pushable asteroids in abundance, I'm still worried about custom systems creating stalemate games. I would rather we have a buildable option, even if the asteroid is preferable.

I'm hoping that Uber will implement a default system for matchmaking that will only include big planets with orbiting moons. This will get most beginners into the game without encountering (hopefully) fun ruining stalemates.

I'm all for thinking of ways to counteract the stalemates that can occur with other systems that don't involve orbiting planets (that aren't shifting other planets orbits, although personally I think that is an elegant enough solution), but I'm not keen on using the method by which you go "hm, this problem exists, lets make this unit to counter it."

I think it depends entirely on the nature of the problem. If two units have an unhealthy interaction it should be fixed by balancing. If the entire game reaches a grinding halt (interplanetary stalemate?) then I think adding a new unit or feature to get it moving again is an option, so long as that option doesn't replace or damage the other interactions in the game.

Also, when dealing with shortcomings in combat there is nothing wrong with identifying a combat role, such as mobile anti-nuke, orbital vs Air, mobile radar, etc and creating a unit to fill it. If the role is too much of a niche you can create a unit to fill multiple niches, or you can add it as a secondary ability to an existing unit.

Scale of units is another related topic... a unit is not made "super" by simply having a high value compared to another. An orbital unit for destroying aircraft could have a 100 to 1 expected kill rate, but if his production cost reflects that 100 to 1 and his role is fairly niche it's not a "super" unit because it can't stroll into a base and finish the job itself. I could not support a monkey lord, or any other giant unit that can be used for base breaking because it risks invalidating far too many other units, but when we have an unfulfilled combat role that is supporting in nature there's nothing wrong with investing into a few large units. Large does not equal super.

Agreed.
I guess I just want to see how well the unit cannon/teleporter/IP nukes/altered orbit moons balances this problem first, before people start clamouring for a unit to do all of this for them in one go.

The main problem I have is how the asteaus thingy works.

Load the unit, move into orbit, move to other planets orbit, move to surface, drop off unit, move back into orbit, move back to origin planet, go down to surface, and repeat.

Thats far too many commands, which is why I propose the newer one shot astraus:

Build orbital launcher, set target world, build transport, have factory 'assist' orbital launcher (Or a few) so built units automatically load into it, orbital launcher fires when fully loaded or via manual button, transport moves to pre-targeted spot and drops off transport and cargo, transport automatically drops off units and then they go idle for new orders.

So, set target, build rocket, load rocket, wait till arrival.

Simples *squeak*