Nonselectable Deep Space Layer for Entering / Exiting orbit and Implications

So much hate, so much demands... all of this towards oribital layer, spaceships? escape velocity? UI friendly solution?

Well its all here!

My idea is about adding a new layer called deep space layer, but before you will all burn me in a volcano let me explain what exacly i have in mind
A Nonbuildable and Nonselectable layer above oribital that units are using to Accelerate to escape velocity and Decelerate before entering into Orbit, That can also sustain interactions between units

Basicaly this

Every unit will have to go trought that layer BEFORE going on interplanetary journey or exiting oribital layer where they can be selected and ordered

And where units can be shoot at, maybe some units could even shoot back, the closer to the planet unit is the more accurate shoots become

Theoreticaly there could be weapons especially desinged to target ONLY units within this new layer, think of possibilites





EDIT - STUFF LATER ON IS JUST BONUS AND EXAMPLE WHAT CAN BE DONE WITH THAT LAYER (invasions, rocket boosters from kickstarter trailer and spaceships with right, natural feel)





Trought there would be a one drawback, the bigger the planet is the bigger the layer, and more time it takes to accelerate, maybe some units actualy couldn't get off from high gravity words... and that bring us to
Rocket Booster Systems and Drop Pods Mechanic

Remember that kickstarter trailer? astareus that hooks up onto rocket and then gets off? exactly...

For a small Energy Cost your oribital launcher will materialize rocket booster and shoot up something in space very quickly (every unit ordered to get from world to heavy would automaticaly hook up and shoot up)

Those rocket boosters will also stay with unit until it touches oribital layer, or until is destroyed by enemy fire, bassicaly being a protective shell for invasion purposes

But what about droppods? what about mass invasions?

BEHOLD

Unit Catapult is a building that will box units into tough and slow boxes equipped with thrusters, 5 units per box, Unit Catapult will gladly produce those on infinite quene basis, full boxes will be shoot into orbit, and then can be ordered to move, hook up into rocket and launch to their destination!

Sadly unit boxes ALWAYS need rocket boosters... but there still is a possibility to mass invade cheaply and fast!


Oribital Booster Fabricator is a monstrosity that can quickly fabricate boosters that can be filled with 4 oribital units (or boxes) and then shoot them to their destination

Sadly this buiding can hold only 4 Rocket Boosters, and due to their complexity they need to be build just like a nukes in nuke launchers, on a infinite quene bassis, but your EVERYTHING will happily hook up to those and launch!

Remember when i told ya about units that could shoot back when in deep space layer? well BEHOLD


Oribital Warships are powerfull and sturdy units that will decerelate and accelerate VERY SLOWLY, but they can shoot freely (but unaccurately) in deep space layer, possibly weakening enemy oribital defences, some of those can freely shoot planet surface, trought they are VERY innacurate, even when in oribital layer, but still, powerfull mother****kers they are!

What you all think about my idea?

Anyone?

What about a planet that has moons, the deep space layer would just intersect with the other moon's layers or even go through the physical moons.

I like the idea, but it seems so complicated.

Those layers are separate anyway, actualy they could be them invisible anyway, just a space where units can ascend / descend before leaving / entering

Alternatively you can add more distance between planets, or compress deep space layer and balance unit descend/ascend speed and weapons accuracy acording to that

And actualy its pretty simple the Deep space layer i mean, rocket boosters and unit boxes are just bonus

Though if the layers intersect, I could see it making an easier transition between the two. I kind of like this idea, though it could use a little bit of simplifying.

Actualy intersecting layers could allow for fire exchange between 2 planet's oribital systems, trought very unaccurate

Hell you could use this to allow shooting very close moons with something like holkings, or better, fire exchange between mobile fortress asteroid and a planet

way to complicated ...
exit velocity for orbital units as well as a short cool down on entry may help balancing orbital

i dont see a real need nor use for such a extra layer...
mass invasions will be possible with multiunittransports and unitcannons
spacewarships are a confirmed no

and stuff like rockedboosts dont add any particular depth or strategy but unneeded complexity that slows down pace ...

That's exactly my problem, it's not exactly a polished game when you see a laser magically fly through a planet to get to the orbital layer of another one.

This extra layer deals with exit velocity and short cooldown in a natural way
This extra layer permits interaction between units in some degree before they actualy enter orbit
This extra layer can make simple warships possible and balanced, just as i explained in my post
This extra layer can help modders so much!
This extra layer can also in future be used to mobile fortress asteroid bombardment by intersecting deep space layers
This extra layer can also make oribital attacks very interesting and balanced
This extra layer is very natural and its WYSIWYG

in every single layer units need to close in first, but not in oribital, they just pop in single place clustered, cool down its not going to help, instead its just going to make even more units die before they can defend, exit velocity using just oribital layer and circling around planet is weird too, but more importantly its making retreat from failed oribital attack impossible since unit will crash into anchors and good knows what when they try to accelerate

but most importantly, shame on your lack of imagination

No lasers are going to fly trought planet, have you seen that second image from first post? umbrellas and other stuff are going to have range in a cone like shape, if 2 planet's layers intersect umbrella is only going to fire at stuff in that cone above it, and there is a probability that planet its not going to even be here

Of course if they are actualy allowed to interact similar to new planetary collision detection, and that would be best i think, if not, then its very improbable that some lasers fly trought a planet, that layer its only for exiting/entering and initial combat, if planet fly that close that lasers are flying trought it then probably it will collide anyway

this layer can also be entirely useless or broken and a waste of time ... what should stop modders to include interplanetary weapons and warships having exit and entry cooldowns into the existing orbital layer ...

Cooldowns dont feel natural.... like, at all, besides "this change can be a waste of time" its not a valid answer, same goes for "this change can be useless or broken" i dont think that you understand how simple that idea actualy is... you actualy dont need to add new layer at all, just make units ascend to very high height or descend from it, similar to astareus, but automaticaly, while still being able to be shoot at (unaccurately that is)

Edit: Actualy i would like to hear a modder, or a uber member opinion if its really that simple as i think it is

I've been thinking about orbital too lately, and you make some interesting points - so I'm just going to add a wall of text of my general thoughts on this.

So the way I see it with orbital right now the main issues are:

1. Orbital units can leave a planets orbit pretty much instantly and when they arrive at their destination they just pop in instantly too.
2. With deepspace radar we can see units travelling to a planet but we have no idea where they will arrive on the planet.
3. Because of these two issues people can abuse by spamming movement between multiple planets and location to draw out a lost game and generally be a nuisance.
4. halley planetary collisions are too fast, and it is not obvious where they will target, so there is less room for counter-play or exciting close escapes (which for pa as a competitive spectator sport would be awesome to watch)

Your suggestion with the deep space layer could help with issue 1 and 2, however your suggestions would add a lot of additional complexity, which may or may not be a good idea. We already have land, sea, air and orbital - I think having another layer to worry about (although uncontrollable) could be too awkward or distracting... not to mention difficult to actually implement into the game.

However I think the same concept could be done in a much simpler way.

A possible solution to issue 1:
Lets say for example in the case of issue 1 above: orbital unit is orbiting a planet and we send it to another planet.

I think we could do a similar thing to your acceleration / deceleration idea in that before a unit can start travelling to another planet it must visibly charge its engines before it can travel. When it does leave the planet it will travel as usual (however its actual transit time could be sped up to match up roughly with the current total travel times).

So instead of:

1. Unit leaves planet
2. travels for 30 seconds (just an example)
3. arrives at destination

It would be:

1. Unit charges engine for 10 seconds (or longer?, have a nice animation, and probably a progress bar)
2. unit leaves planet and is in transit for 20 seconds (same slingshot travel system we currently have)
3. arrives at destination (and has a cool arrival/deceleration animation)

This would solve issue 1, and also it would allow for some tense situations where your commander escapes the planets surface and gets into orbit with its astreaus and it's waiting for its engines to charge while orbital fighters are closing in on its location.

Possible solution to issue 2:
Ok, so solving issue 2 isn't quite as simple. Ideally what would happen is that deepspace radars could give a visual indicator of the rough location of orbital entry (this could be red circles on the planets orbital layer, that indicate the area in which the orbital units will arrive, in typical scifi movie radar style).

While this would be nice, and would allow the defender to scramble an orbital fleet at the arrival point, it may not be a good idea currently as orbital invasions are already quite difficult and being able to arrive at an unexpected location is one of the few things we can use to our advantage.

Possible solutions would be to have the deepspace radar only show arrivals within a certain range of it, then you would need to build multiple across the planet to have full coverage. Also travel time could be tweaked to give a good balanced amount of time so the attacker has a slight advantage, and the defender has to react super quick.

Halleys and planet smashing.
I think the recent changes to make planet smashes proportional to the planet size is good, however my main issue is that the process is all too quick. You get a warning, you zoom out and dont really have a clue what planet is being attacked - and before you can really react it usually lands and kills someone.

I would like a similar approach in that, you get a big warning - you see a big red travel line of the moon to its target planet, it should travel a lot slower so you have some time to react. Also if you have a deepspace radar in the target destination then you should have a visual warning that that is the case. (then you could either act to teleport away, or attempt air transport your commander to the opposite side of the planet - which again would be amazing to watch happen.)

I understand that it is a late game ending weapon, however in the case of large player games with large systems - often someone can slip away undetected and work up to halleys while everyone else is occupied. So even if you have been fighting it out and doing well winning on your planet, it kinda sucks to be instantly killed with little chance of escape. So I think even if you do get a better warning and chance of escape, the sheer economic damage and production damage would still be enough to justify it as a powerful superweapon.

Other orbital ships and weapons..
Yea these would be great to see, and might be necessary in the future with gas giants - might be nice to have the typical space fighters, bombers, corvettes, frigates kind of system. But any additions would need to be carefully considered and balanced.

Anyway that's the end of my wall of text, hope it adds to the discussion... now I gotta go and have some beers!

Bravo!

i'm going to like your post just because it is enormous.

Duude, just waooow wow dude, its amazing, really good! I would love, litteraly love it if they made something like this. Me like soo much.

and now you would know where the enemy is landing so you may mustard you forces and so on. and maybe if he has some sort of intel he can maybe escape a orbital pew pew( don`t remember)by nuddging abit and maybe it take some time befor they get onto the planet or something, befor they can move. i like it, and then im thinking about a perfectly landed nuke

I like it, and I think this kind of approach can benefit orbital gameplay.

An idea to simplify the depth of the deep space layer would be by giving objects moving through it a 'height tag'. I imagine movement would still be possible but in a very limited way until it reaches orbital.
The tweaked accuracy for greater distances is nice but it could be better to adjust the (re)load time of the umbrella to give less power to chance.

All in all I don't think the basic idea isn't complex at all, just something to get used to. It's obvious this fixes the popping out of nowhere and leaving in a moment problem.

An additional idea that pops into my mind is to have a T1 and T2 space radar: T1 is able to detect all objects moving through the transitioning and orbital layer of your planet and movement between planets, while T2 is able to detect objects in the transition and orbital layer of other planets.