PTE build 79270-pte now up

There is plenty of room to design stalemate breakers without completely invalidating ground forces in the late game. I already dislike that T2 units completely displace T1 units. OWO orbital units displace everything else in a "now I have the next level" style gameplay. I would prefer the entire gameplay revolve around every unit remaining valuable the entire course of the game.

How does the gas giant change orbital to surface interactions? I agree with a lot of what the mod adds, the new orbit-to-orbit combat options are fun, and they would still play out well on gas giants, but there's no reason that adding new ways to control the orbit layer means the orbit layer needs to dominate the surface layer.

Late game economies are also stupidly out of whack. We have runaway inflation in the game right now. Sure, "bigger space navy spending" is an option, but it's not the option I would prefer to play with.

OWO is a fantastic mod, but it's not one that I plan to use in it's current form, nor is it one that I think belongs in vanilla PA.

You can easily counter the incredibly expensive SXX and very expensive hailfires with umbrellas, a cheap T1 solution... All you need to do is build the right counters, IE a tesla or sniper bots against hailfires, along sied the anti-orbital defence of your choice, and any anti-orbital unit/defence for against the SXX. They're really expensive, you can't just spam them easily... And once you can spam them, then you can spam their counters well enough. Just try playing on a single planet system. You'll find that hailfires and SXX's aren't used at all for the most part, and when they are, It'll be in small, counterable numbers.

OP updated:
Build 78264-pte - 2/17/15
Balance:
Commander
- Energy storage increased to 45,000 from 30,000

Bugfix/Polish:
- Fixed crash from patrolling with large amount of subs
- AI will now use subs
- Fix for amphibious units not using patrol correctly

There is not plenty of room. What are you referring to? We have TWO methods of invading with ground forces: teleporter drops and Unit Cannons. OWOM limits teleporter drops to the initial phase of planetary expansion by increasing their cost and removing the ability for orbital fabbers to construct them (which didn't make much sense in the first place). If you want to invade somewhere, use the tool that was created specifically to invade planets: the Unit Cannon. It's simple to counter, but hard to stop due to the difficulty of saturating a planet with umbrellas.

Invasions should be discouraged because they are already one of the biggest wastes of metal I have seen in large scale orbital games. That, and it gets really old when people build a thousand dox to invade your planet but never get the chance to- and lag the game excessively. This problem is slowly being resolved, but having a few hundred air units patrolling to protect against invasions is also a foolhardy and lag-inducing affair. Overall, it produces a negative experience for all players involved. For the love of all that is holy, just use nukes! it's cheaper, it's quicker, and it could be a nasty surprise to someone trying to stop an invasion.

You either contest the gas giant or you lose the game. Plain and simple. An enemy could have a base solely on the gas giant and still win because they can outproduce every single planet in the system without breaking a sweat.

In other words, it's an important foothold that cannot be ignored. You have to go orbital, and that's all you have. Now, to balance that for OWO, you have to realize that orbital isn't important without the gas giant. In other words, why would you build it? It's not necessary (mostly). Add in hailfires and better SXX platforms, and suddenly orbital is something you have to learn how to play. You can't neglect it. You might not get beat by it (after all, nukes, halleys, catalysts, and unit cannons exist....), but you can't be passive about it anymore. You actually should have someone on your team who knows what's what in the orbital layer.

And, more importantly, it give units in the orbital layer the same standard every other layer has: a tool to shoot at the other layers. The only exception is an anti-orbital air unit, which wouldn't be a good idea

Instead of being a gimmick, orbital is a tool. Instead of a slideshow, it's an epic battle for control across multiple battlefronts in a solar system. It's every bit what this game claims to be: awesome.

You have another option? I certainly do not see one. There has to be some sort of progression, and also some way to spend your metal that late in the game. Pumping out ridiculous amounts of the little things is one way to win, but it's also the slowest and possibly the most tedious.

That should help balance the fac->two energy->mex->fac start.
I think.

I don't know what you guys did. But the issue is now fixed (I haven't updated drivers). Sli is also working as I am getting 70% utilization across both gpus. And no more crashes or menu crashes!

Hmmm.... weren't planet collisions supposed to have gotten an overhaul in the latest patch? Here's what happened in a game just now. Notice the little asteroid approaching the big planet...



Impact. Looks normal so far...


...then suddenly, POOF. GG strongest player in the game who was almost certainly going to win.


At the same time, some really weird stuff happened to a different planet, which had previously also been hit by an asteroid. Looks like it's been covered in stretched metal textures? I think it's only a graphical bug though, but every player could see it.

I really hate to say you're right, because I love the idea of "take all my land units, and move them over there" invasions, but the more I play OWO compared to standard, there's just so much less lag and giant piles of units doing nothing that I can't say you're not

Honestly from a gameplay perspective, having T2 being noticeably better metal per metal but having a large barrier to entry would improve the game immensly, because people would stop spamming out thousands of T1 factories with thousands of units because "I can get T2 now without losing my base doing it so why not?" and I feel like orbital here is basically the same thing, although I'll say what I want changed to the OWO mod in it's thread instead of here

Could you post a replay ID?

In the lobby for a new game now, but you should be able to find it by searching my name in replays.

(Also people kept dropping out throughout due to constant spontaneous crashes. The game just overall feels pretty unstable recently but it may just be my system that's bugged)

Nice change, the energy storage was very, very limiting at the start!

First PTE that is unplayable will wait until Stable to play this one.

? Why?
????



?

on the new idle notifications: how do I exactly use them to find the stuff? I have a hard time using them. I see I have something idle. So I click it. Then... it selects some things if they happen to be on my view already.
I think I said something like this before, but it needs to select the idle things one by one by clicking the idle warning. It should not ask me to go search for the idle things myself.

Mhm, the Galactic War can't be started.

Just so you guys know, the pheonix can shoot air while it's still decending from the orbital layer, but is out of range of AA while doing so. (I'm pretty sure at least) In OWO, we quickly fixed this by just reducing the lifetime of the missiles down to ~2, so that it's still just as effective in the air layer, but can't be exploited by hopping it around orbital layers...

Will be fixed in next build.

I wish I knew, I'm trying everything. even updating my drivers. It just plays for like 3 minutes then bam everything freezes and blue screen. It was working perfectly the other day too.

Good god no. Grenadiers already have a huge problem with not being all that effective as it is. Specializing them will make them even more scarce. Besides,why do I need something specific to counter walls when there was never a problem with them in the first place?
If they turtle up, they're giving you free map control. Grab up all your eco, Mass produce and push on your opponent. Using Walls for an offensive push is a valid tactic, but is very easy to counter with just simply using pelters, bombers or poking on weak sides.

The problem lies with players not using their brain to figure out an easy counter, rather than walls being an actual problem.

I keep crashing