Orbital and interplanetary game is not cool.

I hate interplanetary games.
I think that the PA is excellent on one or two planets but the games on multiple planets, becomes stupid.

Here are a few things that irritate me:
1. The biggest problem for me is the management of a number of planets at the same time. Having a base on a one planet is cool. You think about its development, defense, deploy a buildings etc. cool.
Once you have a couple of planets, the only thing begins to count are the numbers. Number of mexes, power plants, factories and defenses. It is not especially important that where you build things. Numbers are important. From that moment atmosphere of the game disappears forever.

2. Functionality, gameplay and UI orbital units is hopeless. Fighting on the orbit is not very tactical and is boring.

2. View of the planetary system is very difficult to read. Planets are tiny, units icons are too large, the trajectories are unreadable.

It's my personal opinion but
These are two different games.
The first is a game for which I waited. A lot of tactics, excellent UI, amazing atmosphere.
The second game begins when the orbital units appear. For me it is boring and stupid.
Unfortunately I do not see an easy way to fix this.

Of course, the issue for me is the game on systems with one or two planets.

However, I believe that we lose players discouraged orbital game.
I am very curious to know if just me?

Unfortunately, the language limitations do not allow me on more accurate description.

Have you tried using picture in picture for multi-planets? It can help a bit with managing, I suggest you set up something called "Camera anchors", in which it sets up certain places that when you press the hotkey you instantly switch to that camera location, huuuuge help.

An overly orbital game tends to descend poorly.

Orbital being used in a standard game, is less a fustercluck and more interesting and useful.

More things could be done with orbital, but the fact will always be, that playing on 12 planets, you are less playing on the surfaces and more on just the gravity wells. The surfaces are just mostly completely protected and eco-farms, the fighting happens with superweapons and in-orbit.

There are mods that makes playing on 12 planets a more fun experience. The thing I could suggest to vanilla, is more variety of orbital units. Things I thought of while I modded that would work in vanilla:

-turn the "damage-health" scale of orbital down, so they are in fact as squishy as air units, but all current orbital-damaging weapons are scaled to take same amount of hits. This makes orbital do anti-air damage.
-add some orbital specialty. Fighters for fast cheap anti-orbital and built from launcher. t1 radar from launcher. t1 landers from launcher. t1 fabber from launcher.
-orbital factory, quite squishy actually, like 2k health.
-t2 fighter now, this one is little more expensive and little slower and just as squishy, but has longer range than even anchors and can also fire directly onto the planet below it (it's damage would be bad given it's scale)
-anchor, fires 5 fighter's weapons, has 5 fighter's healths, can fire in a 80 range around it to the surface, cost 5 fighters, can't move.
-sxx, moves slowly like it does and has anchor's health, but can fire in a 80 range around it to the surface, costs 1/5 current price, and just does 800 damage every 5 seconds. This makes them possible to land and trade shots with anti-orbital land weapons, but unable to attack the orbital layer.
-make umbrellas cheaper.
-make tactical missiles able to shoot orbital layer
-make deepspace radar instead of vision, make it t2, also give celestial radar to t2 orbital radar
-make some units able to see a radius of orbital layer as radar, like commanders
-make t1 orbital radar only radar instead of vision, remove vision of surface from most orbital units, give t2 fighter, astraeus, sxx, and anchor a small radius of surface radar, give t2 radar a reasonable radius of surface vision.

Or to TL;DR, make orbital and land interact in more areas, where orbital can threaten land and land can threaten orbital and yet both have pretty big divisions to prevent either from interacting unless intentional (a very intentional unit to attack from one to the other)

Orbital Wars are really screwy right now. Picture in picture and camera hotkeys are the easiest ways to compensate for the awkwardness of control. Practice makes perfect

There is an Orbital Warfare mod that enhances and expands the orbital layer. Take it for a test drive It's a fairly popular addon.

I use picture in picture and Camera anchors.
Of course this are a very useful thing.
I'm talking about the general feelings.
Playing in the late stage gets unreadable and tiring. In addition, it disappears what I like the most: the expansion of the base (your home) and a very tactical control units to destroy enemy fortifications.
It is best for me.

truth

In terms of orbital combat and interaction, try the mod in my sig.

Yep, it is really really nice!

I will

Well there are some cool things to play with in the orbital layer
but I would love to see some other Units besides the fighters ...

https://forums.uberent.com/threads/congrats-to-the-latest-patch.66656/#post-1047084

Yes, I think there is currently at least something missing in orbital play. And this is a mixture of overview of the whole orbital layer and the orbital unit balance itself.
But you point out something important: Once you defeated all your local enemies and you get enough resources the game changes into something that is more of a high level game play. For example, it doesn't matter where you place a factory, but it matters more how many factories you have at whole. And how you move your armies between planets.
But it feels that the UI does not accommodate for this, it stays at the level you had when you fight your local enemy. I don't know how to fix this, and for sure this isn't a trivial thing, but I feel that some time in the future there needs to be something that eases this pain.

If you ask me, systems with more then 2 planets are aimed towards team games

I brought this up a while ago, but deepspace radar should only show the orbital layer of your own planet and the units in transit.

Personally, I love the Unit Cannon, it makes the late game interplanetary game-play lots of fun, but I would love to be able to have a game-play element option so I can shut off elements of orbital. For me, I only see a purpose for 2 orbital units: engineer (to build teleports) and satellite (spying).

I think it is overwhelming with orbital fighters, SXX, rigs, and those orbital turrets. Especially, when fighting on multiple planets with: land units, air units, naval units, defenses, Eco, and factories. For me, it is too much. So if we had the option to shut off a few units that would be great because than I can shut off orbital in my games and not affect the game for someone who likes that sort of (to me overwhelming) game-play.

On that I agree the deep space radars range is too big at the moment so you can see everything in the solar sytem - it basically lifts the fog of war and that is usually in games a tier 3 or top tier feature if the game has that implemented cause it takes away a lot of uncertainty from the game.

My rules of thumb

maximum number of planets = number of players + 1
maximum number of spawnable planets = number of players

I agree. But, "Celesital" is the vision type of deepspace radar, and it only has effectual values of 0 and 1, >1 results in 1. 1 gives you the whole package, 0 is "none" or "off" like a normal unit. This is the engine.

In the engine, it would be nice if celestial gave only transitional vision and not the orbital layer of every planet. It would be even nicer if there were a few settings, like 1 was just transitional, 2 was transitional and every other planet. The planet the radar is on can be given a seperate "orbital" vision to establish it's vision, so that doesn't need included in celestial at all. To be honest, I would even be okay with "orbital" having a "sphere" vision so you can see in-system but not other planets EXCEPT MAYBE CLOSE-PASS as that isn't a terrible "chance occurance" that is gamechanging.

Anyway, @jables , wouldn't it be nice if celestial was split up into "just transitional" and "just orbital shells" somehow? Just some suggestions:
DEFINITELY) Remove same-planet orbital vision from "celestial". that can be given seperately with the "orbital" observable.
DEFINITELY) Whatever you do, this is a balance suggestion, make deepspace radar into "radar" type instead of "vision" type.
possibility 1) Make "celestial" 1=transition only, 2=transition and things in same orbit, 3 = all
possibility 2) Make "celestial" just transition, and make "orbital" as a sphere able to just make it barely big enough to see same-orbit and the chance pass-by-planet.
possibility 3) Make "celestial" just transitional, and make new observer as "interorbital" and "outerorbital", interorbital as what "orbital" currently is, and "outerorbital" as the current celestial vision of every other planet, while celestial just sees transitional paths without any orbital layers.