I just updated the game after a very long hiatus back from when we could spam extractors anywhere w/o metal points. My main question: Is the current orbital system the way its always going to be? its just a layer above everything else, when you direct a ship to go to another planet it suddenly starts obeying the laws of physics etc and launches it self around celestial object to get to its location and suddenly as it reaches its destination it starts to hover above a fixed point. now you could get away with it by saying its a geosynchronous orbit but I'm not really seeing it( also when you order the transport to pick up a unit it just descends directly down picks it up and ascends back up). Back I think 2 years ago before we even got to play in space I envisioned it as building a spy satellite and picking its orbit, inclination, low/high orbit etc, then the satellite would orbit around the planet and you could see the surface depending on where it was. but I see a different path was chosen. I looked past that for a bit and played a custom game against a bot, it started on a different planet that I did, I industrialized my planet while it took over its planet, I built up an army and i noticed the teleporter so I thought hey I'll build a teleporter on my planet and sneak one over on his, maybe the teleporters dont work yet cause my units just walked around the teleporters not doing anything, I built some on my planet to test them out and they still didnt function. In the end I just got fed up and sent a worker to the 3rd small moon built some halleys and collided it with his planet.
I don't think it'll ever be quite that advanced, Mavor has said before that they aren't trying to make a space sim. But afaik it's definitely not 100% finished yet.
Orbital is not finished, like how the game isn't finished. There's lots to consider with orbital. Mainly, it can't be too complicated or the game will be too complicated. As people have said before, "Realism is the enemy of gaming." Making something realistic isn't always fun. And that's one of the biggest complications with Orbital. Uber needs to find the fine line between fun and realistic. Who knows what orbital will end up being like, but it'll likely be similar to what we have currently.
I really hope it wont be like it is, I don't want orbitals to be as involved as they are now, I want them as I described, you have so much to do on the planet, an extra layer to worry about becomes annoying, IMO it should be limited to SATS, missiles launchers, some others i cant think of but I really hope it doesnt stay how it is. I dont think the realism in allowing you to place a sat in the orientation and way you want it will ruin the game infact it will make it better, you can make an orbit to avoid their surface to space weapons, make a highly ovaly orbit to just swoop in and get info.... my needs are outweighed by the needs of everyone else....i was really dissapointed in seeing how it all turned out. I really like everything about the game excluded the orbit mechanics...just another large shperical layer above everything else you ave to worry about. I just want them to see my perpective even just a little
Having my units just fly over the enemy bases orbital defenses would suck, you say you need to pay attention with them now... you'll have to babysit your says SO much more if they had endless orbit- at one point the game had it so orbital units had very slow acceleration and deceleration which made it feel more spacey. I remember all the arguments back when orbital was being conceived originally and I'm sorry but endless orbit for your satellites would just be very hard to work with, especially if you had a lot. (Which this game aims for A LOT remember) people were worried it'd become air 2.0 or naval 2.0 but to be honest atm it's most similar to land based units. I think I'd enjoy the slow acceleration being back.
