Because people dont know whats good for them

That's is exactly why it IS balancing issues, if certain t2 units weren't stupidly OP or that rushing orbital was the only choice we wouldn't have this problem.

Thanks for that. I've now totally decided that orbital play is dull and non interesting.

It's somewhere between chess and a card game for levels of excitement to watch.

OOPS sorry i made this post at first german, well, here is what i meant:

The funny thing is, the only fun part after the 35. Minute part is the battle between the two ground armies, and theres that big question if that teleporter gonna survive or not

I've been saying orbital is dull ever since alpha ...It hasn't changed at all

The fact you use chess as an example of boredom when your supposedly a fan of strategy games....

There were a coupe of successful invasions, and the orbital smash was prevented a couple of times...

I agree the orbital combat doesn't do alot, but the impending doom of planet smash prompted the opposing team to take drastic action to try and prevent it, resulting in an impressive invasion. The orbital tools are sufficient to allow that which was good. Stupid thing is if they'd forced custard off the second moon they could have won...

You do realize it was about watching those games, and not playing thems himself?

I love chess myself, but wouldnt actually watch other people playing it.

Yeah I guess, but he was using the argument that watching them is dull thus orbital is dull (which suggests he thinks they are as well)...

Admittedly chess isn't the greatest spectator sport.

Edit: where cards are concerned, that depends on the game and how much alcohol is involved

let's be honest here, when speaking of board games (when you REALLY know your board games... and there are ALOT) chess isn't all that, compared to say, abalone, 4-way chess, quarto... the list goes on.

You know, when you love Chess or Go or stuff of that sort, and you really want to improve, watching can be a lot of fun too, or at least interesting.
But PA orbital dont even offer the "watch for improvement" aspect, since theres not much to learn. It just consumes a lot of time without action. And a game like PA lives from the action. Times without anything interesting happening are poison for the game.

orbital combat isnt the meat of the game ... that is surface ... i think it would be the wrong way to add many orbital combat units in ...
i see orbital as the logistical highway for surfaceunittransits
thus there being a downtime being a neccesary evil but bringing a bit of tactical concideration for when sending your units to different planets....

i think with the additions of multiunittransport and propper functions orbital combat could gain a way more aktive role as for multiplanetmatches you would want to assure control of those inspace highways for saver unittransit ... but that would also requier teleports to be nerfed

I'm convinced the only reason orbital makes things take so long is because of poor UI for managing it. If I could get a good grasp of the entire system without having to constantly zoom in and out it wouldn't be so hard.

Have

have to say Im lovin the game right now, admitidly I mainly playing ai games, but I do sometimes play online. The game feels absolutly epic in scale and there are plenty of different stratagys to keep things interesting.

I know there are still some area's that need looking at, but i beleive uber will continue there fantastic work, and that 1.0 will rock.

Lol, i have actually played a game just myself, and it was one big joke. I got an huge lead startin on a planet solo, in a 4 man FFA, 3 enemies startet on the other planet, and there was a moon without any ressources nobody started on. I set up a teleporter and send an huge army through - my 2 left enemies allied against me, not necessaery though since my huge T2 army just got destroyed by orbital. (Its fun facing enemy units i cant fight) I saw my enemy was trying to send the moon into my base, so i sent a worker there (only took like 5 minutes to fly there, i dont get why this **** takes so long, i still managed to land there and set up the teleporter), and then, when the first units moved to the moon, i just died, the enemy just send like 6 orbital units straight above my commander and killed me.
While playing this game i faced bugs and other issues like pathfinding etc. all way through, too, but not limited to: One of my transporter flew to the enemy planet (where i send it), flew back to my planet, and then back to the planet i send it to (i dont know you guys, but i dont care about realistic space movement when it takes 5 minutes to get from one planet to another for ONE UNIT! Give me unrealistiv movement that only takes 1 minute! )
Several units just moved against a mountain and decidet its a nice place, so they didnt move anymore
3 of my fabber i told to set up the planet with advanced metal ext. decidet that a river was a nice place, and just stopped there without moving, still flagging all the metal spots as "in work"
while sending all my units through the teleporter, they just stopped going through it at couple points n relaxing straight in front of it
My Avenger got attacked by enemy orbital units but decidet as long as i dont manually tell them to attack the enemy avenger they just do nothing and die, repeatatly
Couple of my units just stopped moving at all when i told them to move to another location

My enemies build almost no ground units that i saw, only a couple for scouting their planet in case i set up a teleporter and a couple of long rage artillery, almost only orbital.
This is so messed up.

i imagine orbital traveltime is subject to change but on the other hand we cant have obital travel take too less either other wise it may get too dificult to defend against ... but i think ui needs ETA's to be able to coordinate your army better

To be honest it sounds like you were playing on a very poorly designed system (*or worse a randomly generated system*)...

What planet type was it? Some are worse than others for pathing which is part of your issue. Also with regards to orbital, the best systems have moons around a central planet as that way nothing has to slingshot the sun (which takes ages) keeping orbital travel time to a minimum. You should come try a few games with us in Promethean, we have some decent maps and all know how to play, the game is *so much better* when your playing with a group of decent players on a system that was properly designed by a human.

I'd also highly recommend getting the excellent System Sharing mod as that will give you access to a library of play tested maps by Exodus, PACE, Promethean, Nova, Realm and so on...

If you did want to set up some better games then you can usually find us on our TS server:
https://sites.google.com/site/prometheanpa/contact

I do think 90% of these problems are down to some rather out of date settings for random system generation. I've seen everything from planets with no spawn points to systems that inadvertently intersect orbits and so on. There's also the issue of people playing with the wrong number of players for a system- i think multi spawn maps should be for 6 players minimum, and the UI needs to make it more obvious when there is more than one planet to start on as 9 times out of 10 people assume they can only start on the first planet the game comes up with (when I host multi planet spawn maps I tell the players at game start to avoid that issue). Getting a planet to yourself with nothing to do is a bit dull- and forces you into a tech rush rather than doing anything interesting.

Chess is definitely dull. It's intricate, challenging, and dull.
I wouldn't mind an RTS that is intricate, challenging, and also lets you rampage across the countryside with an army of tanks... But in any RTS I can name, the net 'strategy' is either macro or micro.

Also, I was thinking of collectible card games, which is probably not the best example since I've never actually watched a collectible card game play out. Though I'm fairly certain it involves a distinctive lack of alcohol and gambling, an obvious strike.

Most of what you have written sounds pretty nice. Would be nice playing on some maps without any pathfindingproblems.
But playing with some really good player already concerns me. When i imagine "very good player" i see more orbital units trying to instasnipe my commander without much effort while i try to pull off a carefully craftet plan.

Ok, I've been stalking this thread with interest for a while so I may as well weigh in.

I feel the main problem with orbital is that it is favourable in inter planet play to stack units. This is the opposite of the ground, where it is always favourable to be using your units as much as possible.
This results in constant action when fighting over a planet, but in inter-planetary play long periods of amassment followed by very short spurts of action. So the problem isn't so much with orbital balance itself (playing orbital fights on a single planet, in combination with surface fights is a lot more fun because like surface warfare it favours using your units constantly) but with this balance of build up.

How to fix this, however, is a problem I leave to greater minds than mine. I got nothing.