Dropship

Again - fixing orbital arrival will help that a lot. I could also imagine that dropping units from the dropship (and eventually, firing units from a unit cannon) is probably a lot less accurate than an Astraeus drop. So you could conceivably try to drop on an enemy commander, but with a dropship you'd be less likely to actually get the drop straight on his head.

Sending escorts with your transports is... well, a perfectly viable strategy you'd have to counter, in my opinion.

Again - I'm not terribly opposed to a transport that actually has to enter the lower two layers to load/unload. I just personally prefer one that lifts/drops from orbit.

Totally agree. ^^ Just one of many possible fixes, and the one that's on my mind today.

HA =P Doctor Axel is a character of mine. Funny coincidence.

Also, if you go by the D-day paratrooper analogy, you could make them spread all over the place when dropping instead of exactly where you want. I think the unit cannon should be extremely inaccurate, not only for this reason, but it would look much better having a "cloud" of units coming at the planet, instead of a perfectly lined up stream.

Honestly though, Uber just needs to decide what kind of combat they want to emulate and stick with that. As long as you have a vision for what you want the end product to be, its not too difficult to make the right design choices. Currently we really have no idea what the end goal is for orbital and invasions aside from what we've seen in the kickstarter trailer, and that info is starting to look way outdated. People are all over the place with their suggestions for orbital because nobody knows what the end goal is supposed to be.

Not to mention there is the other path/point of view that if Vanguards are a dominant strategy something needs to be done to them instead. In a game like this everything is interconnected in many, many ways, most of them not being overtly obvious to boot. You can't let yourself get locked into a certain viewpoint/frame of reference because that's when you don't see the other methods.

Mike

True there.

True there as well.

I also feel they need to figure out what their vision is and stick with it. Do we continue to go down the road of making orbital another full layer ( honestly to make things work as things currently are they need to go down that road) or the option I am more and more leaning towards. Reverse course and give us orbital like we saw in the kickstarter trailer. A less hands on, more simplified orbital game that focus on the planet side combat and not the orbital combat.

I really feel the games focus on orbital is on a run away train right now. Each addition to fix something is going to continue to make things more and more complex, requiring more and more microing.

That said... if we are going down that road I feel the following is what needs to be looked into:

Landing ships:

A landing ship would be a large space ship that unloads a lot of troops all at once. It would be vulnerable to attack and need protection, but if it makes it to the ground unloads tons of troops.


Drop Pods:

The Drop Pod is for 1 way trips on hostile worlds. These pods would drop down and be very heavily armored, perhaps even having a Laser Cannon mounted on them. It would deploy a small force of troops and also act as a turret to help clear a landing zone.


Assault Bunkers:

Assault Bunkers. These will be large structures that can be dropped from space onto a planet. They will deploy upon landing and have several Turrets (both Anti-Land and Anti-Air). Assault Bunkers will also have a Fab unit in them allowing you to quickly start building new troops at the battle front. The Assault Bunker when deployed will have a outer defensive ring as to protect the fab unit at it's center. aka A mini base in a box.


Cruisers:

Cruisers would be large space vessels whos job would be to destroy Anchors and give anti-Air to a radius below it. The Cruiser would have only a few weapons for dealing with Avengers, however it would have 1 large gun designed to destroy other cruisers and Anchors. Cruisers would have a decent amount of hps.


Avengers (space fighter)

Avengers should be multi purposed. Allow them to enter lower orbit if you need them. They would be Anti-Air and Anti-Cruiser. Cruisers are for hitting big targets, were as swarms of Avengers would take them down. Due to their dual nature they wouldn't not be as good as surface anti-air fighters.


Anchors:

Anchors are for Defending the orbit above a base and for helping secure a landing zone on another planet. Anchors are Anti-Avenger. Slow moving but heavily armored, the primary role is protection of an area. Avengers and Cruisers are for assault, not Anchors.


Space Canon:

Ment for destroying ground targets from Orbit. Space Cannons are defenseless and require protection but deal with ground defenses.


Anti-Missile Satellite:

This satellite shoots down Nukes and Catapult missiles in a given radius below it. Each Satellite rate of fire will be quick enough to cancel out a set number of Catapult missiles (1-2?), however it's Anti-Nuke capacity will be much slower. The satellite will start with 1 anti-nuke rocket, and can hold up to 3 rockets. It will constantly be building anti-nuke rockets and can be assisted by orbital fabs to speed the process up. Like the space Canon the Satellite will be defenseless.

just one step at a time, it is never a good idea to bite off more then you can chew ... or devour

Its good to keep the big picture in mind, though. Otherwise you get lost in the details.

No, that's not the case. My point is that you need to "look before you leap". In this case the arguement is that Vanguard dropping will be too dominant if there are Dropships/Unit Cannons are available, and yeah it is certainly a possible outcome(but far from the ONLY outcome as I've already pointed out) but "dropping" isn't he only possibly root cause, maybe it's simply because Vanguards are too powerful, and if they were weaker maybe "dropping" wouldn't be balanced even with no changes. You have to deeply examine issues to figure out what the actual root cause of the issue is and solve that instead of trying to run around and fixing an issue's effects.

Mike

How about an orbital dropship that is also a factory?
It would build "ODST" shock troops of 2-3 varieties and store them in the hull.
Then drop them from orbit on a one way trip down to the planet surface on command.

-No need to load troops
-Dropship never leaves the orbital layer.
-Shock troops are not bombs, they don't cause damage as they hit the ground
-Shock troops can be shot down, but are tough enough not to be instakilled by flack.
-Dropship is defenseless; its payload dies with the ship
-Shock troops cost similar to tier 2 bots but are somewhere in the 1.5 tier level in performance; they should not outclass a tier 2 bot.
-These would be useful in early to mid game; before a unit cannon can be built. Or just for harassment and distraction from a larger invading force.

just no ... what do you have factories and planets for ... seriously a bit of "logistic" work should be needed ...

shoot, sry for double -_-

the point is dropping ANY unit may become a dominat thing ... vanguards just happen to be the current most dangerous unit ... you could say the same for slammers, boomers levelers or lobbers

Logistics, you must work for UPS!
I can get on board with ferry commands if the payload does not immediately die when the transporter does like in TA. It is a lot more micromanagement than I would truly like but I can deal with it. We are talking about invading an occupied planet, not moving into a cleared beach head so I need a way for at least 80% of my invasion force to actually land safely.

But we don't know that for sure, and if you assume that's the case and ONLY focused on the assumption that "dropping" is the root issue you'll never know.

Mike

I really really want a drop ship.

Simply a capsule that picks up and moves planets from one area to another.

I'd think that it should be built by regular fabricators and has a rocket built in. So it's single use.

of course we don`t ... but i rather like to discuss things and theorize stuff before things are done and eventualy too late that they become a mistake that may need a lot of fixing or an entire change ... time is money
i am also not only focusing on one possible issue but discussing the most obvious
as i already mentioned other units that can become dominant and OP to be considered changeworthy ...
and one of them was dominant already before ...

I'm going to guess you meant Oonits =P

I definitely think one-shot transports are a fun idea too, but it would kind of make the Astraeus obsolete (which we might be ok with, I dunno). Early access to that kind of unit could also lead to VERY fast interplanetary expansion, which I'm not sure is something they want on the table.

What I like most about this is the one-shot idea - it really fits with the Cold-War-Era design that they're going for with the space units. That's the main reason why I think the orbital launcher needs to be restructured a little bit - so you have to build the rockets separately from things you send up on the rockets. That way if you had an empty rocket you could just put a bunch of units in a box and launch THEM up. ...something like that, I dunno. It's fun to think about. ^^

It wouldn't make the Astraeus obsolete if done right.

The Astraeus could be cheaper and travel between planets faster than the dropship – which would make it very valid, especially for early expansion,

Although... in thinking about it...

This dropship would now make the Orbital Factory not needed to colonize other planets, which would totally screw with game balance.

So I'm not quite sure how this would be implemented. However, these dropships would need to be built on the ground without the need of orbital fabbers so we can get to other planets even if we're being camped by Avengers. So this would balance the game out so first person to orbital doesn't necessarily win,

That's kinda my issue with it. I think orbital access from the ground should be routed entirely through the launcher - hence the idea of building the launch vehicle separate from the dropship itself and sending both up.

I think the Astraeus as seen in the concept trailer would address this very idea - the orbital launcher builds the launch vehicle, then an Astraeus (sold separately) picks up a unit / bundle of units, packs it up on the top of the rocket, and the whole package is sent one-way in a single shot.

With teleporters and eventually unit cannons the thing we are really missing is something to make a beach head on the planet we intend to invade. If an opponent has complete air coverage on the planet most attacks will fail and I cant see any form of drop ship helping with that.

What about a proper ferry system for the orbital launchers?

So they automatically build transports, load a group of troops and then go to target planet?

That way we could have orbital invasions be where players build up a mass of orbital launchers to fire waves of troop laden rockets to a planet?

All with out micro involved in the logistics!

Can't nuke my 20 landing spots at once!.....or at least not without consequences!