Orbital Anti-Air – Stalemate Breaking? (Idea Discussion)

Before I begin in-depth, I’ve not seen or found much on the search regarding this (and if there is something, my deep apologies for this) I also hope this can be a discussion if any of these ideas maybe worthy of consideration or are merely pants on head daft.

In Brief...
Adding the ability in within the orbital layer units that can attack air units. Initial thoughts are…

(o) Stationary anti-air defence platform that ‘rains’ down in the air level area only.

(o) Or an orbital transformation craft that can become air level fighters – thus can be flown from planet to planet and changed to the needed elevation as needed.


Detailed...
I’ve seen a lot of posts of peoples thoughts of late game issues with invading another planets being a nightmare with things being destroyed before you can really make a beachhead. Between nukes and the quick to respond to your location air units, your invasion can be halted almost with ease.

Nukes will eventually dry up if they keep sending them, but air seems only to get stronger over time, not being able to take any or much of them out.

I always envisioned taking a planet almost in stages for an invasion. Securing the orbital layer, thinning out the air layer and then constructing a teleporter for a ground assault / construction.

To me, we are missing that ability to whittle the air down – so just throwing out the ideas to see what the general thought of these are.

Stationary Anti-air Defence
A building that sits in orbit which can take out aircraft but is too high to attack anything on ground level. Only buildable by orbital fabbers and are stationary, suck in place very much like the anchor is.

First idea is a platform that rains something like the nano machine goop (that constructs buildings), except dissolves aircraft. Acting like a ‘poison’ over time the planes will be taken out if kept in the area for too long.

The ‘rain’ should be pretty vibrantly coloured to highlight the area of effect so you can see its coming down and maybe call it the ‘raincloud’ to fit in nicely with the ‘umbrella’

Second variation was a orbital EMP that strikes air. Mostly one shotting craft but balanced with a slow rate of fire.

Maybe add a graphical echo of where it stuck so that it can be spotted and maybe call it the Zeus or something?

Building ether of these may make a landing zone somewhat more secure for your invasion but are naturally very easily taken out by the orbital fighters or the ground defence umbrellas and so would need to be defended from up on high and built where it won’t be snipped.

Transforming Orbital to Air Fighters
Pretty sure this idea has been thought of but using the idea similar to how a submarine can rise up and down in the water, giving orbital craft the ability to do this.

Ether as a new more expensive fighter or a new addition to the existing fighters, you could build up a force, send it over and once the orbital layer has been cleared you could then convert them to be air level fighter craft.

I think this would probably be a little too easy to steamroller your way to victory, once its been started maybe hard to stop – but its an idea at least.

Concluding
Hopefully weeding out the bombers, fighters and gunships will make planet fall easier – still hard, but at least more possible.

Do you feel that would work or make any impact at all or may tip the balance in your favour? Really just ideas, but it would be interesting to see what people make of them.

Thanks for reading and also really a huge Thank You to all the staff over at Uber for making this game. So many hours sunk into this beasty game - know your many hours working on it have already been well well worth it all. Thanks!

https://forums.uberent.com/threads/the-depressing-orbital-war.56257

We've just been having this discussion. In particular, hybrid orbital/air fighters, possibly by giving the Peregrine a limited way to go from planet to planet.

It was a fun conversation, too. I still want a drone launching orbital unit that can engage air, orbital, and anti-nuke but has no ground layer attack. It would be a great way to clear a path for an invasion, but would be incapable of attacking bases (or commanders) itself.

I'm sorry - this forum moves too fast for me it seems. Been mulling this over for a few weeks too. Bad timing on my behalf -_-

As for the drone, sounds a little Swiss army knife too me with being able to do so much, but sounds like a blast if it could be balanced.

I like the sound of the Anti-nuke orbital element, but I wonder if it would end up being overwhelmed maybe easier because of swatting down nukes maybe not even going for your base (ether heading off planet / pathing) but leaves you down 1 anti.

But I think generally if it where placed to make landfall easier, that would be pretty solid. - And once more, sorry.

Before worrying too much about it's balance for anti-nuke I would like to see some major changes to nukes and anti-nukes. I'm not a fan of the current balance or the manually built anti-nuke ammo. But that's another topic that has been well debated many times.

I have 3 suggestions:

1. Orbital Anti-Nukes. (ones you can fly from one planet to another)
2. Increased Teleport Health (So they survive longer)
3. EMP Units (Units that disable the weapons of other units)

I don't think the Peregrine needs to be able to fly between planets on its own. Instead, it makes more sense to allow planes (including the Peregrine) to attack orbital units around their local planet. Ideally by merging the Avenger and Peregrine together into a single fighter that can attack both aircraft and orbital units around that planet.

The same unit could be constructed and launched from the surface to defend a planet against an orbital invasion, and also from orbit to secure air superiority over the surface by the player enforcing the orbital siege.

Too spammable and too mobile ... sry its just too powerfull ... you would have to make that type of fighter insanly expensive or nerf it hard to not kill every attempt of invasion before the enemy could even touch your orbit how shall he be even able to respond in a lategame to a defense like this ... This way you make air way too dominant by just a single unittype

Though I like the idea of having a orbital unit target air to clear a path I don't really see a way to counter that strategy from the air or ground. If you are able to position this unit (assuming its not a multi-purpose fighter unit) around a planet, you have already taken the orbital layer of the planet with overwhelmimg force. Then the player on the planet would only be able to counter their air being baraged by a hail of missles into their patrolling air. Its balancable so its not overpowered (doesn't attack quickly, is as slow as orbital turrets, and is realitley weak but can attack multiple air units), but I don't see a counter to it other than the crappy umbrellas which are relativley useless when dealling with a large orbital swarm invasion.

I would however like to see this later on with a rework of orbital that could be balanced in with a variety of counter and support units/buildings.

The simple way right now to counter air for an orbital invasion is to give the orbital fabs the ability to building t1 anti air. A similar concept to them buidling the teleporter. Maybe even giving them the ability to contruct flak canons at a huge penatly cost to the economy. At least this would fix the problem untill the orbital overhaul is in place.

I hear you on the idea that such a thing could really take over at that stage and that when you have the orbital dominance that it would just snowball – and it maybe that umbrellas need some more work if your fighters get swatted out the air before they have a chance to start to take them out.

But the way I through of it being that they can’t move, so the fabber would have to fly overhead and make this thing (say in a dominating position like over a base / air factories themselves) that the umbrella would at least be able to take its construction out on the fabbers or the anti-air orbital itself if they decided to try it.

And even if it did complete construction, it’d not going anywhere so again even a bad umbrella could really just keep taking shots and destroy it. I have faith that it could hit something that doesn’t move at least ^^

But yes, orbital to make t1 ground anti-air until another solution comes up... that actually would help quite a bit until it gets resolved. So simple - good thinking!

It sounds like the umbrella would do with some minor tweaks if that seems to be a concern of not functioning as it should.

I wonder if the umbrella will have a 2nd version or be rejigged balance. I was going to mention like how it could be like the sniper bots or flak works being like a railgun near instant hit - but that maybe a little too much. Maybe just shot speed generally increased instead would be enough it focuses on its job more and hit what it needs to hit would be a solution to that one?

Anti-air mines are the most powerful and direct way to deal with air. But IRL we just use nukes.

you have really good points there, i gotta agree with you, some ideas i had regarding this that could help balancing it are:
https://forums.uberent.com/threads/orbital-gameplay.56369/

Basically orbital units (spacecrafts) capable of traveling between planets, transporting units, producing units, and even perhaps producing and using nukes.

in addiition new antiorbital weapons should be added too (such as the umbrella).

To sum up:
Spacecraft (for fighting another spacecrafts/orbital units, what would lead to orbital battles similar to space battles)
http://media.moddb.com/images/mods/1/12/11043/frigate4.jpg
Dropship/Assault spacecraft (Transport multiple ground units from planet to planet)
http://www.theforce.net/swtc/Pix/dvd/aotc/parade05.jpg
aircraft spacecarrier (Transport and produce aircraft units from planet to planet. might be able to produce aircrafts and produce and use nuclear missiles.)
http://fc08.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2011/294/2/d/spaceship_from_jap_anime_by_mobiustwo-d4dirfk.png