Orbital is unfun and super cheesy

yeah we've been discussing this in numerous areas.

Sometimes it's a problem because of the metal planet : https://forums.uberent.com/threads/re-the-gimmicky-laser-moon.64284/page-4#post-1002445

https://forums.uberent.com/threads/okay-uber-we-should-talk-balance-d.63288/

Sometimes because of the gate : https://forums.uberent.com/threads/iterate-on-the-gate-teleporter.62599/

basically everywhere.

Actually, back in 2012 we had a long thread about planetary assaults with drop ships and like 85% percent of the votes were FOR drop ships, iIrc.

Edit: See the poll here: https://forums.uberent.com/threads/planetary-assaults-and-interstellar-transportation.36357/

I'm glad you've brought these things to light. I'd just love it if we could hear something back from the devs about it. Even if they weren't working on it at all it'd be nice to hear something like "Yeah guys we might consider this or that" or "We're investigating the matter". I can't stand it when game developers never communicate with their community on important matters yet they expect us to support them and their game.

If orbital has been broken for as long as it's actually been in the game I'll probably drop this for another year and just go play Starcraft again. This game probably won't be "finished" for a while.

Honestly, neither of those things will fix orbital IMO. They'll fix planetary invasions, but orbital is still really cheesy and boring, and probably will be until it gets more unit diversity.

Also, for anyone interested in more unit diversity for orbital, we're working on an improved orbital layer mod:
https://forums.uberent.com/threads/wip-server-orbital-warfare-overhaul.62878/

I'm pretty sure this thread is a double post, I won't be able to keep up with the posts on orbital unit ideas, although I think these two threads have some great ideas in them. Keep in mind the What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) design system and they Devs don't want space combat (Like Sins of a Solar Empire or Endless Space) the focus will be on the planets and smashing them together. These threads include ways to create a beach head using both orbital and surface units. MrTBSC has some really good and interesting ideas.

The whole point of this vanilla orbital layer seems to be scouting and expansion system wide. Not "orbital battleships" slugging it out in the vast void. What we really need is a way to effectively invade planets, drop pods/assault carriers/unit cannons/teleporters help here and having those elements working in tandem would be quite satisfying to watch play out. The current game play is quite bland since it falls down to who owns the planet being invaded and how heavily entrenched the occupier is.

Here's the older threads with some great ideas in them,

https://forums.uberent.com/threads/more-orbital-units.63818/

https://forums.uberent.com/threads/...lanetary-annihilation-general-gameplay.63990/

We should really have a master thread for this discussion as it always seems to pop up every couple of days.

I don't want a game like sins. I just want units that can invade a planet properly. I honestly could care less if orbital stays as boring as it is so long as I can invade a planet without doing some ridiculous work arounds like making 20 fabs or something dumb like that. The idea of "battleships" or something of the sort doesn't sound very pleasing and I'd like the game to focus on ground combat more but we need something that can clear out a decent amount of obstacles on a beachhead. Something that isn't a nuke.

Orbital isn't great. It's improved a lot but things like unit stacking and poor balance still make it feel very binary and clicky. The UI has made leaps though and I generally like the feel of the single unit transports. I desperately want a mod that puts expensive jetboot t2 bots in the game that can go between planets to open up early game interplanetary rades.

That's definitely an interesting idea that I'd love to see implemented or at least explored somewhat.

Nobody wants space battles like SoaSE, if I want a game like SoaSE I play SoaSE, the spaceships many people are asking have the only purpose to give more landing options.
In my idea spaceships travel like all other orbital units and they have only the purpose of supporting ground troopers:
- Interplanetary transports have the goal to survive just enough to land on the surface and disembark their troops.
- Space Battleships are needed to distract from the transports and help grond troops in establishing head bridge.
- Orbital fighters should have a greater role in taking down the bigger ships.
In my opionion this would make the game perfect.

i know that this idea has probably been discussed before, so forgive me
I really like the dropship idea(like warhammer 4ok) but with that i will also add an interplanetary artilley. I was thinking that we build this ipotetical piece ( many of them) on one side of the planet, then we use halleys to go in the orbit of the target planet and then we begin a barrage fire ( the best way to describe it is thinking a duel between two 1800 ships, like dunno pirates). Right now once you build halleys you are gonna smash that planet and that's cool, but using it as giant space station with freaking guns to open a beach head on the ground is a really cool idea imo. and in part, it's not difficult to create it. We can already reset the planet's orbit with halleys. So yeah, maybe the devs can give us some lifesigns

Nukes are interplanetary. Use those to create a beachhead. I'm pretty sure someone isn't going to cover all their umbrellas with antinukes... and if they have you've wasted way too much time getting nukes and orbital.

2 orbital units badly needed to create a safe LZ for portals or mass orbital invasion. Current portal invasion is risk, as the enemy would react by sending a nuke to your portal and all your effort is wasted.

Orbital dropships - ferries ground troops from 1 planet to another and eject them via droppods at desire location for a mass invasion. Able to load 20 tier 2 units or 80 tier 1 units per dropship

Orbital aircraft carriers - similar to dropships but only
ferry air units

also add "ferry" command

I also like the idea of a heavy armored orbital dropship, but it would need a delay time for unload his cargo. (preparations for the unload)

Because you can land everywhere in the orbit of the enemy planet.
You can discovered where the enemy commander stands in his base, and then the T2 units falls down on him.
The enemy has no time to react.

With the delay time you will not send your dropships in the enemy base directly, because the enemy commander can escape and send his army to the landing zone very fast.

Invading a heavily entrenched planet is tough, and so it should be...but not create an unbreakable stalemate. That's quite a tricky bit of game balancing to achieve; you don't want to give the invader a guaranteed way of invading and similarly you don't want to give the defender the means to guarantee repelling the invader. Perhaps increasing the options available is one way of achieving this?

I'll not reiterate the ideas already presented in this thread (and others), but here's a few (hopefully) different ones:

Radar Jammer: Orbital unit, very high cost (both to build and run), or perhaps limited time use, jams all terrestrial and orbital radar, friend and foe alike.

Shield|Bubble: Orbital unit, deploy on the surface of a planet to create a time-limited impenetrable shield (cannot fire out of or in to). Must be deployed on open ground (not on top of an opponent's buildings, apart from maybe metal extractors).

EMP: Orbital unit | ballistic missile, temporarily disable all buildings and units, terrestrial and orbital, in a large area. Disabled time decreases as distance from EMP increases.

Different orbital layers: currently there's just one, perhaps some interesting tactical variations could be achieved by defining more than one layer (low|high orbit)?

Note, these are very rough ideas only!

There's no real reason the unit cannon couldn't fire units from ANY planet onto ANY planet. It would be less complicated to code and frankly easier to balance.

I woudln't tolerate it.

my opinions on this here : https://forums.uberent.com/threads/n-body-simulations.61917/page-3#post-961417

As I said, no real reason.

Other then the intense calculations to be actually firing something from one planet to another with any kind of accuracy that would make it worth it?

Yeah, no.

If you're arguing this through realism then I find that ridiculous. Halleys can make a planet flip it's trajectory around entirely in the most arguably ridiculous ways without any sort of reverse thrust or anything and you're telling me a unit cannon shouldn't be able to do the same. Realism isn't something you can base a game like this around, especially when Halleys are in the game

If I'm interpreting what you said incorrectly feel free to point that out for me.

They are super advanced robots, I'm sure they can handle the math. And even if they couldn't the cannon could fire little space ships that are capable of altering their trajectory (although you won't be able to do this) to find the planet.