The Depressing Orbital War

I wouldn't redesign the game around a current shortcoming in the UI. I doubt Uber will let any kind of transport unit go to final release without supporting persistent area commands for load/ferry/unload . Once we have these the micro involved in moving any unit anywhere should be sharply reduced.

For completely different reasons I fully support a one shot astraeus. A new UI will make it painless, but early game expansions need to be single shot to prevent commander hopping.

Most of my suggestion WAS a UI suggestion.

From having the factory's automatically loading troops into the transport, to the automatic nature of the rockets launching only when full.

I actually changed very little.

Orbital is getting fleshed out. Its still in its infant stages. I have the most fun when its just 1 planet with a few moons.

Just to be clear though. You don't like invading other planets because T2 bombers make it impossible to land or is the orbital layer UI to difficult to utilize for an orbital invasion.

*gently whispers* "...unit cannon..."

Why not both?

I think both of those are very valid issues that need to be addressed, but I'm confident they will be.

Doesn't work over a system, and is only stated to work from moon to planet, not backwards.

It can be both.

But, this thread turned into a pile of mess on how to invade the orbital layer and land on the planet to destroy T2 bombers. There is currently no orbital unit that interacts with the ground/Air of the surface of a planet. I personally think it would be cool to have defenses drop to the surface from orbital fabbers. But that is just an idea. I was just making sure the thread stayed on course with what the OP is concerned with instead of turning into a "I want drop ships" thread

Did anyone discuss how the Orbital UI could be made more awesome and easier to utilize to invade planets?

That was the pre visualization of the Unit cannon. Maybe it will be expanded to fix these orbital issues. *It's all speculation not set in stone*

That's a good point. We know the UI is under development right now, so all we can do is speculate. I do know it's made huge steps in the right direction though. Do you remember the "snap out" celestial view a few months ago? The smooth zooming we have now, and the orbital sphere are huge improvements over what we had before.

I would like to see the sphere a little more transparent directly under the camera and have the edges richer, to help establish the curve of the sphere without blocking my view.

I'd also like ground/air units to become unselectable, and have their icons made less dominant by reducing the scale, blurring them, and making them transparent.

Orbital units need to be highlighted and very easy to see when in the orbital view. This can be done by always showing the icon, and/or a shader to highlight around them.

Movement and area orders in the orbital view should be based on where the orbital sphere was clicked, not the ground location clicked, instead they should have a pointer, like a laser, connecting to the ground location below so we have a solid reference for placing spy satellites and orbital lasers.

The Orbital UI should always activate at a certain camera altitude, and should not require an orbital unit be selected.

A hotkey should hide the orbital UI so I can see my whole planet from above without the sphere, but it should be an option, not the default.

You're right about the smoothing of the Zoom to celestial view. It makes the game much more enjoyable in terms of wanting to see the system.

I agree completely about the blurring of icons to show dominance and emphasis. Showing the orbital units and ground/air units as overlayed icons can muddy up the screen. Blurring the orbital units but showing a glow or blur on those icons would be a positive step in showing seperation. and maybe the same can happen if you zoom out far enough where the ground blurs and orbital is crystal clear. It doesn't have to be a blur effect, maybe even more highlight around the unit icons or units themselves. ( basically agreeing with your ideas as well)

I think the orbital shell can be bumped up a notch. Occasionally. when I want to select orbital fighters, anything I select underneath it gets selected as well. If this selection can be made different, where shift selecting selects everything while normal drag click selects the orbital fighters, it would be much prefered control. I think the UI should have a orbital shell on/off button present. Just in case you want to focus on that battle or shift all your focus on the ground war. ( basically agreeing with your ideas as well)

I feel like having the orbital altitude have a "friction hot spot" would be nice to have. Where manually zooming from the surface to orbital, the friction increases then "releases" to then show the orbital shell and free zoom to space. Sort of like an air brake before zooming past to the orbital shell incase you want to maintain focus on the planet's ground war.

I agree the "friction hot spot" is a nice addition. I wouldn't want to too pronounced though. I rather like the smooth zooming we have now.

In a related note, if I have my astraeus in group1 and I double tap 1 the camera zooms out to the equatorial edge of the system. This is about as useful as a fart in a space suit. It should zoom out to the polar edge of the system so I can see the flight path. It would also be nice if units in interplanetary transit had timers by them so we know how long we'll be waiting. (unless the new balance has sped it up so much we don't have to wait)

* whispers* what about nonmoveable non orbiting planetoids
*whispers* (whithout wanting to sound like a broken record)
Seperate Aircraft- and groundunittransport ....

Just want to add another angle here:

What about making the defense satilite dual purpose? In the last play test, they mentioned getting single units with 2 different weapon types working better, sooo make the sat able to target both orbital and air. This will open up an area to build a teleporter.

Honestly, id love to see a siege orbital ship that has anti-orbital, anti-air, and at least 2 ground facing laser cannons. I know it wont happen, just sounds awesome to me.

I like the general direction of the orbital layer being difficult to reach from the surface layer. However it is important to avoid the kind of binary gameplay that may result from having expensive dedicated countermeasures like Umbrellas, and dedicated orbital fighters like Avengers.

My concern is that completely separating orbital from the surface will lead to two independent sub-games rather than having crossover between the layers. An Avenger spam sub-game laid on top of a surface war is very undesirable because a player who loses the Avenger spam war cannot effectively cross back into the orbital layer. The Anchor is a good idea, but suppose it is destroyed, leaving the player with nothing in orbit, then what?

My solution is to make planes "orbital" units in that they can reach enemy orbital units above a controlled planet, but unable to move between planets like fully-fledged orbital units can. Planes are vulnerable to anti-air, and can be produced without dedicated orbital infrastructure.

If air is a medium between orbital and the ground, then a player in orbit can attack the surface using planes which can be stopped or mitigated using anti-air weapons. And vice versa, the player on the ground can attack the player in orbit using planes which can be denied using anti-air.

I agree it would be awesome to watch, but it would also be game breaking. It doesn't really matter if the unit is large or small, once it can engage everything effectively you don't need anything else. I'm loath to include any powerful orbit-vs-ground unit because it risks making tanks and bots pointless. Orbital lasers already tip-toe on this. If you can build enough of them on your planet, give them a group move order to the enemy planet and all target a stationary commander at once they can collectively one-shot him. The only feature keeping these in check is the need for supporting radar satellites and being helpless against avengers.

It took a while to sell me on the suborbital T2 aircraft, but I agree it's one of the best options suggested so far.

What about a missile launched from a nuke silo that EMPs a large area (no damage, just stops units for a significantly long time) allowing players to land and get something set up.

ORRR what about turrets that are launched from silos that fly in and land where you tell them to. Flak turrets anyone?

I think the emp is definitely viable. It sounds like mod material, but we already have confirmation on multiple missile types at silos.

Firing intact base defenses is funny. It's almost the same as having drop pods that come with a turret instead of loaded with troops. This was a big thing in 40K.

I like the idea, of a second teleporter structure that is built in between orbital and air layers. It would be stationary but hovering allowing you to teleport your own air units to an enemy planet. Can be brought down by aa and fighters.

Ok i watched some of the more recent videos and i thought about options for orbital unit transportation again .... so aside from having orbital transports for both air and ground i think orbital launchers should be indeed a viable tool as well as some suggested before .... meaning let the orbital launcher have a capsule like the austreus for single fabbers or the commander but just a bit bigger to fit in up to 5 units and send those over to an enemy planet in a one way trip ....
Building those onewaycapsules while a low ammount would of course cost always metal and units will have to land on a planet and cant get back without a teleport or another orbital launcher ... or you built the afformentioned orbital transports For either air or ground which may cost a bit more metal but you only pay once and can use them more often until destroyed .... so those might be more prefferable for interplanetary travel ...
Of course the best tool for big oneway invasions would be the unitcannon on moveable moons ... but that way you would have options for each situation imo for getting a beachhead on another planet ...

I personaly still object to the idea of suborbital airfighters for reasons posted in one or both of the linked threads i posted before ... they would be too powerfull being spamable against satalites and orbital units as well as being too mobile

There are some positives and negatives with this idea.

On the positive side: As I was going to mention about the launcher-compatible-Peregrine idea, increasing the mobility of pure AA units does very little offensively except in a support role. You can't blow up bases (aside from the current air factory bug) or kill commanders with AA fighters, as they will be perpetually helpless against ground-based AA. So on that front, this type of function wouldn't make the unit too powerful.

Allowing these units to duck in and out of the orbital sphere, however, has some implications; would it need an energy timer for the ability, similar to bombers' reload times? Would these fighters be able to "hop" over ground-based AA or "duck" under orbital defenses? Would the potential for such create too much micromanagement?
...because this is what I worry would happen.

The issue of Avenger spam is a harder one to crack, I agree. Many people have debated about the "second air" problem, but I haven't seen any silver bullet solutions yet.