Orbitals movement mechanics shouldbe reworked

That's not how orbits work, you're also assuming that all orbits would be perfectly parallel to the equator.

Ya'll are welcome to have this discussion again if you want, but I thought I'd mention that what we're making is a real time strategy game across multiple planets. You might be looking for this. That's the orbital/space simulation game. If you want us to take an extra two years to build an entirely different game on top of the existing game, well, we can have that discussion too, but just so you know, there are tradeoffs.

But no one is saying that they should be sim.

Just that they should orbit the planet and not simply be a second air(/ground) layer.

It should make things more fun and give more strategy to the... strategy game.

It does when they have engines to change their orbit?... Just not ones to perpetually hover.

If you've seen my other posts, you know I'm in a bit of a snarky mood, but I understand your point - and trust me, we've talked about this a lot on here. What I haven't hear though is, in the context of this game, how is it more fun, and not just a frustrating bit of enforced realism that gets in the way of fun? Serious question, by the way. I just haven't seen any compelling arguments about how real, in the case of orbital mechanics and our game, makes it more fun. It just seems like it slows things down even more, adds unnecessary complexity, and no real benefit to gameplay - and actually restricts what you can do with orbital units. Keep in mind, our scale is WAY off from normal bodies that are subject to orbital mechanics.

With modding, you can "fake" a lot of the orbital physics. Slow acceleration, slow - almost glacial breaking, very limited turning, etc. We tried that for a while. It wasn't fun. But if you think you can find a way to make it work, right now, the best way to do that is give it a shot.

As usual whenever this topic comes up I think it's worth remembering that very few people, if any, wanted Extremely Realistic Orbits because lets face it, that stuff is REALLY complicated(for most people)!

What most people wanted was a system that was representative of the primary elements of the Orbital movement stuff and the idea that Orbital stuff is generally supportive of the action going on across the planet's surface and generally not a fully self sufficient layer on it's own.

Your argument can be turned around on to you guys as well, none of us have actually tried any of the things we've talked about, it's all just theory but frankly I feel like across all the threads on this the community has offered up a lot of theories with good thinking behind them with good supporting discussion as well.

I just feel you guys approached it with the wrong mindset in the context of the generally vibe/expectation within the community and didn't talk about it until it was really too late.A lot of the early talk revolved around the idea of Orbital being different and unique and the community used that as a basis you think along the lines of how that could be done and in the end, Orbital didn't really end up being all that unique in the eye of many.

Mike

It's worth mentioning that it's now possible to test out alternate orbital mechanics ourselves via mods. making satellites have an acceleration, a max speed but 0 deceleration (brake rate) would be a good starting point to see how it plays out in-game.

Something I also just pointed out.

Based on play, a lot of people appear to find orbital fun. Different dies not mean fun. Try it out, we approach things pretty empirically. Find something that is awesome and very different, and we'd love to see it.

Ah. Tunnel vision from browsing on my phone

I didn't really think you came off as snarky, besides the "2 years" thing I guess.

Anyway, the only thing that needs to change from how it currently is giving every orbital object a forward velocity equal to the planets rotational velocity at their height, and then to slow down their acceleration greatly, and possibly give them some sort of "energy" required to move, that recharges itself over time, to limit their movement to orbital corrections instead of flying around through space.

That part is super simple. It's not sim, no. But it differentiates orbitals from flying, hovering units, and makes them... orbit.

It's a very game-y implementation that adds strategy.
Obviously anchors would need some balance changes since they'd then move. Their orbit can't be corrected after being built, but they move.
It's really not much different than how some aircraft are first to keep flying around, and can't simply hover.

The complicated part would be the interface for setting new orbits, and having the game efficiently correct them in the shortest time possible given the limited acceleration and/or energy.


I think the problem here is detractors immediately jumping to the worst-possible-case hyper-realism keyboard-face-bashing implementation of orbits. From what I've seen so far from most responses in favor of it, that's not what most people favor of it want. They seem to want game-y orbital movement like I do. I just don't want them hovering there like gunships.

I'm king of doubting it's been tried out, because the interface and logic for changing orbits is a bit of a pain to implement.
I imagine it's just gone to the stage of "this isn't a space sim" and dropped with what I hear, when that isn't what people are asking for... It's all about how cool orbiting is, and the different flare it adds.
I was going to show an example. I got the whole orbiting part done in 10 minutes, but then I started thinking about how to handle just wanting to make a slight correction to to the left or right(relative to the unit), and the best way to limit the corrections and how they'd need to strafe, and having to account for prediction of what it'll be in the best randevu start time, possible limited energy, and so on; gets complicated.

Tried it. Doesn't work. Units will still stop on a dime.

Also, if you turn down their breaking to 0.01 (or similar) then the unit will refuse to accelerate to maximum speed since it can't reliably stop at the commanded location. Sorry to burst your bubble, but there isn't a " quick fix " to this problem. Either we need more hooks that can enforce a movement speed along a vector, rather than towards a commanded position, or we need access to a deeper layer so we can force units to do so ourselves.

Well here.


This is how it should basically work to have "fun orbitals".

You click on a spot, and the satellite should adjust an orbit that will get it to fly over that spot the quickest, whatever that may be.
Click and hold, and you can rotate the orbit around that point.
Green line is the path it could take to get in that orbit. Well, depending on what sort of acceleration rate and such that it'll have.

Those mechanics are super simple. You're just giving a fixed velocity it stays near, and letting it deviate slightly from that fixed velocity temporarily to let it change into another orbit.
That's really not realistic at all. To change orbit like that would require so much thrust that they could, frankly, hover. Realistically, it'd require many loops before getting the orbit to change. Though that could be adjusted, it's more about fun and just being more plausible rather than realistic.

The complicated part comes with well... it's the game figuring out how to translate the simple UI into automatically doing the corrections.
Like what if you just want to slightly move the craft up and adjust the rotation just a few degrees? It needs to do a tight little S curve.
What if it was like that picture, but the second blue box where it's going was put downward? Then it first needs to adjust the angle down, then curve back up.
I also guess you need timers to say when it'll arrive at that spot you set. I'm clearly missing direction on the orbit there too, which may be confusing.
edit: Oh and you should be able to just right click on another friendly orbital to have the unit join its orbit, and speed up and slow down the best it can to cluster near it. And no, speeding up doesn't need to mean going higher. The "AI" can be orienting the thrust a bit away from the planet rather than straight behind it.

Of course they should be able to speed up and slow down temporarily as well. Like when you're making a pass to attack, you'll want to slow down some, but they shouldn't be able to permanently stay slower than what is geosynchronous. Hence what I mentioned about energy, or something.
On the contrary, you may want to speed up to get out of the way of a pass quicker.

Basically I think they should move almost like they do now, but a bit slower acceleration only temporarily in order to change an orbit, in addition to the normal rotation speed instead of hovering. So they're just no longer hovering, and have to face a direction. Not realistic, but more flavorful.
No going faster and rising higher, or slower and falling, or any of those sim things. It's just more plausible, not "realistic".

But anyways, while some devs have said that's "limiting", that limitation opens up the possibility with different mechancis and buffs to be added to orbitals because they're limited in this way, and not simply floating things.
Like now you can't just sit intel orbitals over top of an enemy base or other points you want to scout unless they're on the equator. So maybe they could stand to be buffed.
Now Avengers can only make passes on things, instead of sit right near them shooting, so maybe they could stand to be buffed too.
Now Anchors can actually be used to attack, and can only defend but they'll be in an orbit while being built, and if aren't built quickly enough could fly over your target at least once before completion.
I feel like a lot more could be done with orbital units due to such a "limitation'. Things that couldn't otherwise be done because of how much control they currently offer.
Those are really interesting things when it comes to strategy.
And for the player it's simple, so long as the interface and AI for them is done well.

Imagine building above a gas giant, and eventually every few orbits, two bases cross. Buildings smashing into each other and exploding. That's really epic, if you ask me. That'll only happen with some plausible orbit mechanics.

I realize it's not super easy to implement, because of that "AI" needing to calculate how to get them in the desired orbit. It's not like the Halley one can just be copied in here. But I think it'd be uber fun.

If we make it really "orbit", then we need control the attitude of the satellite to change the period. And we have polar orbits, geostationary orbits, etc. Maybe we need elliptic orbit as well. So the orbit is too complex to play.

Orbital movement is okay, if a bit fast for some tastes. The important thing is keeping key battles down on the dirt where they work best. Currently nothing in the orbital roster supports this, at least not well enough.

Unfortunately the latest videos show how woefully inadequate the orbital layer is at encouraging more ground based warfare. Raining down hell with orbital impunity may work, but it is nightmarishly slow on one end and a spectator sport on the other.

Right now, in my opinion, the one thing that is more important than orbital mechanics is orbital UI.

I spent a very long time last night playing with predominantly orbital units (not entirely by choice) and I find that the only way you can really see what orbital stuff you have is to rotate the planet so it's 'over the horizon'. It's really fiddly and I ended up relying a lot on drag-select then deselecting ground / air units in the bottom left corner.

Obviously it's quite a difficult one to do - I can't think of any effective solution off the top of my head, but then I didn't get much sleep last night.

The point being - if we adjust the mechanics to the more 'realistic' orbits, with the current UI it'd be near enough impossible to locate and select the things.

should? and how exactly shall it make more "fun" when it rather restricts free orbital movement?
i don´t see it adding more fun than the current orbital mechanics, nor do i see the current mechanics be any less fun than your proposals ... will it differentiate orbital from other layers? maybe ...
"FUN" however is a very subjektive and broad term and not realy something i would use in an argument for justifying those changes ... and there is no guaranty that it will REALY be more fun as you think of it, it actualy could be a worse and rather frustrating experience instead or just simply bland/blunt ...

I think that zooming out just a little further should hide all ground and air map icons while leaving only orbital selectable. It would go a long way toward letting us manage orbital as it's own layer.

I've had a thought. A key that is currently unassigned, that either toggles 'orbital only' selection or enables it whilst held down. Holding down this key / toggling the view would bring up the green 'shell' which would be more translucent than it is currently and partially obscure the planet and icons beneath it to allow a clearer overview of the orbital layer.

While this is enabled, the player can only select things in the orbital layer. Automatically deactivates when the player is zoomed in close enough to the planet.

EDIT: Actually... could this be made into a UI mod, do we reckon?

Ah this thread again. Your real orbital implementation has problems, innociv, because it depends on a fairly small turning circle. This is a general problem with realistic orbital suggestions.

If your satellites have a small turning circle yet their idle behaviour is to circle the planet then their idle behaviour is stupid. Staying in one spot allows you to concentrate your forces, control them accurately and keep them safe. Units are better off staying in one place if they are able to do so. So in effect if you have realistic orbital behaviour which depends on strong rocket engines to make rapid course changes you don't actually have realistic orbital behaviour. What you really have is the current orbital behaviour with an intentionally poor UI.

Reducing the thrust of your satellites fixes the small turning circle problem but brings its own problems. Every orbital maneuver that your satellites can perform must be within the constraints of low thrust. If a maneuver cheats a bit players will find it and exploit it to make their satellites do tight little circles. In effect your satellite has to have a turning circle on the order of the diameter of the planet. This restriction makes it very difficult for the player to control their units. How do you group together your units for a coordinated attack when they move at full speed and turn very slowly? How do you plot a course that takes them safely around a base? Can you predict when two orbits will cross?

One solution I have seen is to give thrust an energy cost. I am not so sure that this will work as the nature of the exponential energy economy means that this cost will only be interesting for a short period of time. The calculation behind the spending of energy may also be too complicated to expect people to make real decisions.

I would like satellite movement which is not just floating units but it is not easy to do and most suggestions have the above failings.

That's already been a menu option for months. I forget what it's called though.

Honestly it'd be nice to have a hotkey for all unitypes: Only building icons, only fabricator icons, only orbital icons, only units with weapons icons, etc...