SSX is imbalanced, multi-planet aggression too hard

I've observed in many games now that multi-planet aggression is just too hard. The defender's advantage of holding a planet in complete control can outclass even a much larger attacking economy. A few Holkins can clear out a teleporter even if you are stacking defence platforms on top. This leads to the only successful late-game tactic I've found- SSX sniping. The laser satellite is very hard to stop. It's very weak in contested areas but incredibly good at sniping Commanders. Just suicide-send radar satellites to the enemy planet and, once you have located their Commander, send several SSX satellites right on top and then queue attack on him, and he will instadie regardless of how much defence is around him. In any other situation, though, it is terribly weak. The long-term damage output is too low and the health is pretty low too.

The game would be much improved if the laser satellite, instead of firing down on enemy units, intercepted enemy projectiles (including artillery fire) in a SupCom TMD kind of way. This would make it much more feasible to maintain beachheads on enemy planets, encouraging interplanetary aggression, and remove the problem of insta-sniping Commanders. Some kind of shield-like thing would serve the same purpose.

This of course mostly assumes that all the planet-annihilating weapons have been consumed, e.g. Annihilasers Halleyed, and all Halleyable objects already used. Not all games go this long but the ones that do have a real problem.

I don't think so.
If you see, your enemy is sending a lot SSX to you. The easiest way to avoid this sniping is to send your commander on walking around your base. The umbrellas and avengers destroy the SSX, and that was it.

Solution to this problem is simple, introduce the unit cannon.

I hear that its a myth.
But as stated, you must have the presents of mind to just keep your commander on a patrol as you get into the late game so snipe's are not as easy to pull off.

The way to improve the game wouldn't be to improve sniping, but to improve invading. Multi-unit hardy transports and unit cannons would be really good for the game. Just saying uber.

Teleporters would be really hard to counter if destroying them became even harder.

The main problem with that is that it's easy to build so many fighters your opp can't possibly see whether or not you're sending many SSX. A long-term patrol might be an effective countermeasure, but that still leaves the SSX as useless.

Perhaps a hardier multi-unit transport would be a good start too.

They are so difficult to kill already its insane. Let's not.

Oh my god - someone else found the greatest weakness of the orbital layer. What ever shall we do?!

Its a problem, sure. The Devs refuse to change it because certain balance mods already made a cheaper, more useful SXX. Not sure why, but its the way it is.

Well, at least they are better than use orbit fabbers to kill commanders.

Fixing the SXX is only part of the issue. You also have to fix the astreaus to be a viable means of interplanetary transportation.

Without a complete explanation, I'm lost. Do you mean multi-unit orbital transports?

The orbital transport is good, but not great.

It needs to be better at combat drops (When descending to drop as fast as possible, and to actually have the HP to survive a few blows) and need ferry routes to automatically drop of cargo and collect more.

Enabling the use of hundreds of them with just a few clicks.

Multi-unit transports would help, but reducing the cost is the most important factor. 600 metal to carry a 150 metal unit is bad. Even carrying a 1500 metal unit with a 600 metal unit isn't good. Cheaper transports are needed.

Wouldn't mind if Astreus were single use either...

50-100 metal, pick up once, die on re-entry, with unstoppable shock-drop like behavior once unload sequence has started. Basically "the egg", constructed around arbitrary units.

Still feels weird anyway that the Astreus is even capable of launch/reentry sequences when it initially needed a rocket to get into orbit in the first place...


Main problem with the SXX however is, and remains, this one:
"Take off speed" for interplanetary transfers

I wouldn't even mind if the SXX gained the ability to aim at (and hit!!!) fast moving units too, if it only didn't fire instantly after dropping out of orbit.



I think I'm just developing a new concept on the unit canon...
Try to follow my thoughts:
What if the unit cannon was the only unit capable of bringing non-orbital units up into orbit? What if the unit cannon packed all units into eggs, capable of orbital and interplanetary travel, but only of a single re-entrance? At a minor metal cost of no more than 10-20% of the units base price?
And the health of these eggs would scale with the health of the packed unit? Or at least its transport size? When on target, drop the egg. Drop is fast and release the unit when the egg hits the ground. All damage dealt to the egg, would be transfered to the unit instead, hence also the tied health values.

It's not exactly a replacement for the teleporter, since it has distinct one-way characteristics and a rather long deployment delay, but also no requirement for an incoming portal. It also has none of the drawbacks the current Astreus has, namely the low-health issue, the mostly unnecessary re-usability and the limited use for assaults, plus it allows for command chains just like the portal does.

Plus, it's actually far more economic to use a cannon to launch units than it would be to use a propulsion based rocket:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_gun, inspired by the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-3_cannon

*click dislike*

Seriously though, an anti unit in the orbital layer would be cool, like making anchor slightly more expensive again, but making it able to intercept artillery fire and tactical missiles. Maybe make 2 different things, offensive anti-land and anti-orbital anchors, and defensive anti-air and anti-artillery anchors.

I haven't brought this up in a while, but used to all the time in alpha, but I have grown attached to the teleporter and haven't said much since. BUT, my favorite system to invade, would be establishing orbital presence, make it so orbital defence is greater than offence but expensive to establish. The orbital layer is much larger than the ground layer, and nukes would clear an orbital patch. Then, you establish an orbital perimeter. Then, you build invasion factories, factories that are expensive, orbital, and pump high volumes of units out inefficiently in bulk. Like 10 dox per "build" and no rolloff, they just float on down.

This is basically what teleporters already do, except you amass units from other proxy factories across other planets, and instead of establishing a presence you just sneak a teleporter in.

Really, the teleporter thing works, but I still occasionally miss my idea. Might get bored and mod that oneday.

He has some point though.

What you describes works on large planets, but every tried to invade that one, sole smash-able meteor in the entire system? Fully covered with anti-nukes and enough Hornets to take down any portal within seconds. Plus Umbrellas which also cover way to much of the sky due to small circumference of these planets and Avengers patrols which don't have much of an reaction time either. No matter what you do, you can't hold position in orbit for more than 10-15 seconds before you are shot down, far less on the ground.

No matter what you do, there is currently no way to break defenses in such case since the orbital layer can be almost completely sealed off to anything except for that SXX exploit.

If you take enough avengers, you can take some part of the planet's orbit. The more exponential you describe the cost of the defence, the greater the question is how they were able to successfully survive long enough to invest 45min worth of metal straight into covering in umbrellas and anchors. It takes a minute or two to cover a planet in dox, but to cover one in umbrellas, antinukes, and anchors, each of those alone takes 15 minutes.

Only works like this if the planet is actually big enough. Otherwise the deployment delay is small enough for Avengers and ground forces to be virtually omnipresent on the entire planet. Plus, two antinukes and a hand full of Umbrellas already becomes planet spanning too.

If it is too small, then yeah, you have your nuke spam or sxx spam, depending on which one you scout your enemy to have with a radar sat or astraeus. There is nothing that can really prevent absolutely everything.

If absolutely everything is present, and it would still cost 20 minutes to build this and drain your economy to do so mind you, but you can SXX land atop umbrellas, pretty much all at same time. You can flood avengers with those SXX. You can bring orbital fabricators to build quick anchors. You can even land an SXX above an antinuke, then land a nuke in the absense of the antinuke.

A lot of those require the SXX landing instakill. Now, it inheirently isn't that strong, it just counters halleys, camping with antinukes, catalysts... it doesn't counter commanders because they can move and the SXX cannot track between transits. Patrol the commander or area patrol him.

If it were ever removed, we would need to come up with something by then to change the game around in that reguard I suppose. Maybe faster firing single hit missiles? I liked those when I made a mod with one. Cost 8k per missile, built at t1, takes 4 to kill a commander, 1 hit kill a vanguard or other structures, most importantly other nuke launchers, antinukes to open up for a nuke, umbrellas, catalysts and halleys, that sort of thing.

And now we are back to the claims of the OP, orbital defenses being to hard, and SXX exploit being the only cost effective way to break it

The claims are bogus lrn2play sort of stuff, the orbital defences aren't too hard because there is an answer for everything, the SXX thing is in the game right now so as I explained further down in the same quoted post it is basically part of the game and balanced as such.

It's hard to even call it an exploit considering it technically functions as designed. It is cheesy as hell, but it costs enough and suicides to do so and requires recon and only hits a single target. Even requires 5 if it is a suicide run. So it is pretty UP for an exploit. It is a gurantee opening creater, but it is underpowered by it's actual stats and that is all it has really.

At the very least, this stuff discussed, isn't tournament bending strategy. SXX are used in tournament, but snipes isn't the pinnacle of it's use. In tournaments, they don't say "that planet has too many defences, can't land, will just SXX snipe commander".