Does the orbital layer add anything?

On the upside at least you can (potentially) exclude them from your system.

Okay. What does a gas giant have?
There is clearly no ground.
There is clearly no metal.
There is an atmosphere, which could potentially have air units.
There is... more atmosphere, which could potentially have ship-like units.
There is plenty of fusion fuel for high yield energy.

Don't even worry about what units can or can't fight for a gas giant. Look at the first two points again. There's no ground, and there's no metal. Why the hell are you fighting there? You are missing the two most important reasons to have a battle! The only possible strategic value is with high yield energy, but efficient energy boils down to a single metal bonus. It has no long term potential.

I wouldn't feel bad about killing solar power and using gas giants to provide high yield orbital energy. It's not great, but there isn't that much for a gas giant to do without going into lunar orbit.

That covers teles KEWs and cannons. Nothing more. There are plenty other ways to bring down the hurt, but without an orbital plane there's no place for them to exist.

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Giant straws and there are ton of other threads out there as well.

https://forums.uberent.com/search/223105/?page=2&q=Gas Giants&t=post&o=date&c[user][0]=1773902&c[user][1]=53

Yes, they are tied to it. People pledged money towards the gas giant and orbital stretch goal. Barring some major technical reason they're tied to it.

No one said they weren't tied to it.

You did right here:

Oh, you're right, my bad for the phrasing. They're tied to it in so far as we know they said it, but there's no requirement for them to do it.

I still like the idea of orbital units actually orbiting and being placed in orbits by clicking and dragging in a direction.

Yeah I really think the orbital layer needs to be more point and click than just a really high air layer.

Separate from that idea, I think that the construction isn't really consistent with what is happening on the ground. You have a factory, and a fabber comes out of it. On the ground this means that units come out of the factory, and structures come out of the fabber. But in the last patch the fabber made a unit, and even in this patch the factory is making a "structure" which in orbital terms would be a satellite or station.

How it probably should look like is the launcher makes fabbers, fighters and transports, where the fabbers then produce satellites of all kinds. They are not strictly stationary but maybe they should be. It certainly seems silly that they can just get to escape velocity unaided.

If the orbital layer is however not going to be orbiting, I see no reason why we have to have fabbers building units in orbit. Why not have factories and satellites be buildings? Not being able to auto-build units in orbit is frustrating.

Not unit orbital is actually easy. And not until they have orbital flying factories and large dropships.
I assume when they are midway done with orbital, It's going to feel like what non-orbital feels like now.

I just think you need to let them finish the layer / game before this can be really debated. At most all you can argue is how it function and plays right now.

I am still of the opinion that the orbital layer is not required for and would server best as an intelligence gathering layer. As stated here.

https://forums.uberent.com/threads/orbital-layer-should-be-tactical-intelligence-gathering.54380/

Right now I think the orbital layer can add a good amount to a game. I've created a defense screen in orbit before which prevented enemies from landing on the planet because they couldn't stay in orbit for long enough to get anything done without getting shot out. It meant that I had almost absolute control of my planet unless they came with an insane number of fighters.

I would like to see them expand it to interplanetary space battles. Effectively, a new naval layer involving space, and dry docks in space. Frigates, destroyers, cruisers, and battleships not just stuck to the orbital layer, but positioned between the planets along the injection lanes and blocking ships and nukes launching from planet to planet. An expansion of the system like that could make the game even more intense then it is currently.