Need better end-game conditions

I know the "orbital layer isn't finished yet", but something should be done about players exploiting the orbital layer just to drag out the game. It's really frustrating to watch someone rush-build an astraeus and send their commander to another planet just to drag out the game for another 10-30 minutes when that player has essentially lost the battle on the first planet.

There should be super-nukes or something that you can build when massively ahead to just blow up the other planet no matter what the stellar range.

Maybe introducing the RTS equivalent of a TKO?

Your army strength is -905 compared to your opponent...etc? Some kind of graph that'll track progress. I'm sure accurate predictions could be produced. Of course this could remove any possibility of a mothership rush tactic.

Well I don't see much point in Uber doing "band-Aid" fixes to things that going to be fixed in teh natural course of development.

Also, if you know you've won, why not leave? It's not like there is anything "at stake" during the beta.

Mike

ok. a few things:

1: when the devs get around to it, i believe we will have access to asteroids, which will end up being anything from super-nukes to planet crackers. in the mean time, nukes may go full interplanetary, we may get the unit cannon, who knows?

2: for many, including myself, fleeing the main planet outright is the only sensible solution sometimes. especially if the starting planet is crowded.

3: if the guy that fled actually manages to rebound and pose a threat again;

I) you probably ignored him to focus on the other players. this is what he probably wants.
II)if the fight is still going on with the two of you trying to attack eachother's planet, you probably needed to hunt him down when he left. i often win games when people fail to succesfuly hunt me down.
III) there may be a chance that he was planning on ditching the main planet the entire time.
IV) if you can't break his defenses, and he cannot break yours, due to bomber spam & what i come to call the"home field advantage" event ( he has umbrellas everywhere, so even a large space force will get picked off)
then we now have a legitimate stalemate.

Are you playing on a system with multiple planets, or multiple moons? It makes a big difference. Right now, you should only be playing on moons with one planet to avoid these stalemates.

That's was actually envisioned in this game. Lots of hiding, perpetual battle with the playing field shrinking as you lock down/annihilate celestial bodies. Sure it's a bit boring now, but that's because it's unfinished. Here's some stuff you can expect from the future that will help solve this problem (source is uber's january livestream):
- Full on interorbital nukes. Not just bound to one planet and a moon (though they will probably cost more and be a different unit then current nukes.).
- More orbital goodies, namely Transports for invasion of normandy style orbital drops on fortified planets.
- Interception nukes. A way to shoot down units in orbital transit .
- Faster orbital movement.
- more optimisations that will allow more smashable bodies and less slowdowns.

Good advice, but the random system generator always includes 2 planets. If I generate my own systems then I end up knowing where all of the metal spots are. Well, maybe this is just a first world problem on my part.

Considering you can see all metal spots once in game anyways I don't see the issue.

Mike

Hey Mike,

Part of the fun is picking out the best spawn point from the choices offered.

The issue is not that metal spots are somehow hidden in the game, the issue is that once I've played a system several times I know where all of the start spawns are located and have also had more time to think about strategies for the particular terrain. It's not really fair to my opponent either when they have never seen the map.

you still don't know which spawns you'll get to select from. To gain the familiarity you claim you'd need to not only make the system, but play it several times before you get that level of familiarity.

And who knows what is coming down the pipe from Uber, they have said they want to remove Metal Placement from the "Generation" stage of system creation so they can have more control over it, it's possible we could see something similar being done to spawns as well for better control from a procedural generation standpoint.

Mike

Mike,

It's pretty clear you don't want to understand what I'm talking about. Please argue with someone else.

Where is this thread going haha.

Anyway, I'd reccommend changing the Seed/water on the system to change the planets terrain conditions, i'm not sure if that changes the metal spots, but at least you are playing on a "different" planet.

But to answer your end game question. Orbital is hard at work being turned into a 1st class citizen. Its a little bit of a waiting game and hard to suggest "balance" on something that doesn't exist...yet. Unless you want to have certain options in the end game or ideas to prevent those lack luster endgames. Then suggest away.

I don't want super nukes to decide the end game. I want asteroids to knock commanders out that are traveling in deep space.

You mean like an asteroid?

It would be nice to leash players to their planets just a bit longer. That basically comes down to the difficulty of building and using an astreus.

There is a mod that let's you generate new seeds for planets when you are setting upon a nw game. That let's you pick the system you want but not actually know what the terrain or metal distribution looks like.

I need the link! Or at least a mod name. This sounds brilliant!

Download PA mod manager (if you haven't yet) and then use it to install Planet preview Details.

Hah, wouldn't it be cool if they had a module targeting-computer. You attach an engine and a targeting-computer to the asteroid. For you to fit a targeting computer that hunts commanders, you cannot equip the asteroid with a hyperspace-drive.

Targeting-Computers:
Planet Seeker
Unit Seeker
Capital Ship Seeker
Commander Seeker

Engine Attachments:
Hydrogen Drive ( Fast Acceleration, low top speed)
Ion Drive ( Slow Acceleration, high topspeed)
Hyper Drive ( Wrap the asteroid into a planet, with a limited range. )

Haha - yeah good point. Although it really gets back to the current state of the game where default systems don't have any asteroids. I think I'll try the mod suggested by someone else that randomizes the seed automatically.

Hey - thanks a lot for the tip. That sounds like a great short-term fix until the game gets fully developed.

I was about to make a thread about this. Games in systems without moons often result in a stalemate since interplanetary nukes aren't really interplanetary and each player/team has control of one planet each so any laser satellites or landing parties are out of the question. I was in a stalemate recently and the only reason it ended was because I used my super psychological warfare to convince the other team to self-destruct.