PTE build 79270-pte now up

We've had this dox balance for much longer than any other balance in PA's history. I'm quite certain the strats are very refined. Dox were slowed down because they are the exception to the rule among ground units.

That's a legit argument.

Even though you do need the ability to deploy gates from the orbital layer in some way. It's just the construction part which doesn't feel right at all.

I'm still trying to bend my head around the idea of portals (and possibly other structures) being manufactured in orbit and then dropping on the ground. I'm only having some issues with finding adequate locations in that scenario, as the ground can neither be cleared from reclaimable obstacles, nor would it be possible to use the known placement system for that deployment type either.

The other option would be orbital portals. Slightly more advanced, one-way version of the teleporter which remains in orbit, can only act as an EXIT, and deploys teleported units Unitcannon-style to the ground below the portal. Possibly even as a regular unit, capable of interplanetary travel. That would make regular portals from Orbital Fabbers redundant, and allows attacks of an magnitude which can't be reached using the regular Unitcannon.

You can deploy it from orbit by dropping unit cannon pods from orbit. We've been doing it like this with Orbital Warfare Overhaul, and it works quite well, and it makes more sense.

I'd like teleporters to be buildable in orbit, and they'll then drop down with a commander like drop explosion that clears obstacles for easy placement.

They won't be able to move interplanetary, and any orbital movement will be very slow, just enough so that if you build over a mountain, you can move it off to the side to place.

I'd prefer we not have the ability to build ground stargates from orbit. That would nice. It also makes sense.

maybe, but the commander drop explosion is too awesome to have only one per game.

In all seriousness though, it's still a little too easy to lock down a planet without some kind of orbital invasion system, the unit cannon really helps, but just isn't quite enough IMO. If more multi-planet systems had small smashable moons in them (*cough* asteroid fields *cough*) it might not be needed however.

Isn't enough?

Isn't enough?
Dude, the Unit Cannon is the easiest thing with which to invade. Use the damn thing! We don't need more options to invade. That just invites people to build more and more and more units as the game hits the late game mark - which is stupid because it lags the game out and there are so many more cool ways to kill things at that point.

But how many of these ways allow you to make use of the units you already have? The unit cannon only allows you to send fresh units, but not reusing your existing army. And a ground based portal is quite difficult to deploy in a good position as everything you can target though that portal can also destroy the portal or respectively the fabbers in return.

The easiest way to construct portals was by doing so from orbit, it's just the build process itself which isn't right.

Making portals more persistent by moving them out of range for ground units might actually even help as it means that it becomes easier to deploy entire armies and not just a few units before the portal is sniped.

Well, that is just an assumption, but what could possibly go wrong?

Anyone noticing that move commands given to infernos don't have them attack buildings as they pass by anymore? I guess they think there's something else nearby that deserves their flamer attack more but is out of their reach and so they just don't attack whatever IS in reach now. That or someone decided that move commands should just have flamers ignore enemies that go right by them. I'm not sure what to think of that.

We already have orbital noobs who deploy thousands upon thousands of troops, but never use them, even with EZ mode orbital fabber teleporters.

I wish the Unit Cannon simply shot units across the system, but it currently doesn't. It's a factory. This is a problem. The devs chose the easier way instead of the time consuming money hog that a true unit cannon would have been. I'm okay with this, but people have to realize the issues this brings to balance.

Full ack. Hence the proposal of at least using the portal system in the way the Unit Cannon was originally pictured. Strictly One-Way travel, and difficult but not impossible to defend against on the exit point, designed to strike in locations where you have no chance of obtaining ground control, but the orbital layer is still unoccupied.

I think its a big problem that Orbital fabbers isent able too reclaim wreckage, when you need to place a teleporter on a planet with many "dead" buildings....

Just had a AI game, but no replay has appeared yet so it seems to be lost.

I had some grenadiers walk towards a turret they were told to attack, even though they were in range. Later a few more walked over to hug an air factory before firing.

Bot factories stopped going to rally point, felt like several times

One set of walls built with a spacing that allowed enemy units to come straight through.

I think I narrowed down the inferno behavior a bit more: when told to attack, they attack buildings and ignore units. When told to move they attack units and ignore buildings. It didn't matter what attack command was ordered, an attack to location, attack this object, or area attack, all produced attacking buildings but not units.

...or trees :/

Build 78886-pte - 3/2/15
Bugfix/Polish:
Orbital Deepspace Radar
- Metal Cost increased to 600 from 300
- Celestial Observers now give system-wide orbital radar coverage as opposed to system-wide orbital sight coverage.

Orbital Fabricator
- Can now reclaim features and wreckage
- Can now assist and repair units and structures in the orbital layer.
- Can now assist and repair teleporters.

Air Scout (Firefly)
- Sight Range increased to 300 from 200

Radar
- Radar Range increased to 500 from 400
- Orbital Sight increased to 600 from 500

Advanced Radar
- Radar Range increased to 1000 from 800
- Orbital Sight increased to 1200 from 1000


Bugfix/Polish:
- Fix for build orders not loading (not factory queues, but actual build orders like from Commander or Fabber)
- Fix for weird floating units after load
- Annihilazer should now load correctly (unless it's mid-fire, you will need to fire it again in that case
- Craters now load correctly
- Alliances restored during save/load
-- Loaded games don't end properly when allied victory is true (upcoming)
- SimWeapon will no longer try to use the previous pitch when finding a firing angle.
- Credits system added for our writer
- Fix for game not ending correctly after load
- Coherent fix for crashes
- Fix for a crash during shutdown

I like the balance changes, looking forward to using more fireflys and scouting better by outranging commander aa more easily.

writer? what writing are you talking about?

Does this mean the Orbital Deepspace Radar will still give your position away on a planet as soon as someone builds an orbital unit? This needs to change! If you are on a planet by yourself you don't want to give your position away by simple building your first orbital unit.

What I propose is this....

The Orbital Deepspace Radar gives you "sight coverage" of all units in transit between planets. It actually shows you what units are travelling (not just dots), but you only see the units while they are travelling (i.e. while they are in Deep Space). With this behaviour it would be important to have deepspace alerts so that you can switch to the system-wide view to see units travelling from point A to B. Only at this point you would give away your position, unless you have already been scouted by someone using a Radar Satellite sent to your planet (i.e. scouting).

Orbital units that are in the upper atmosphere of your own planet are not in Deep Space so we shouldn't be able to see these units with a Deepspace Radar.

I think it important to see what is travelling between planets (once they are in deepspace) just like we can see the nukes, etc. What we don't like about the Deepspace radar is the fact that it gave away our position so easily (with very little resources or time required to build).

I'd also add that it could see radar coverage of the entire planet that it happens to be on, but not any others.

- New build arm attribute: "reclaim_types", array of Unit, Wreckage, Feature
- A number of empty localization files; possibly just to silence warnings?
- Unused items removed from icon_atlas.js list
- A number of new js libraries that don't seem to be in use yet; mostly new or minified knockout