Does enhanced orbital units mean spaceships ?

Without going into compleksity of deepspace fights there could be ability to create flotillas that could travel from and to planets or asteroids and to intercept other flotillas. That has already been done in other games of eksploration and conquer. Simple compromise. The game in its scope would at least give a thought about spaceships.

I thought orbital units included spaceships (ala, an additional air layer)?

thats the reason why spaceships are not included, because they dont want an air layer clone.

Where was this stated?

From the video, they stated there would be orbital units and orbital-only planets... presumably including units that can fly around and shoot at other units?

It also all depends on what you mean by spaceships...

But one reason mentioned by the devs for no space battles was that it takes an entirely different sort of UI to make that gameplay work well. Now we'll see stuff in orbit, but I don't think it's been confirmed how much we'll see.

I personally don't want air layer in space because that doesn't add anything really cool to the game. In videos we saw things plotting courses that look like they used orbital mechanics, I would love a game that had lad/sea/air stuff like normal and actually made space distinct while retaining some of what makes it space.

I'd like to see both. Honestly, an air-like layer set in planetary orbit would be pretty fine by me. You could have battles raging on both surface and in orbit -- and one person having the upper hand in either doesn't necessarily guarantee winning the planet as a whole.

That, and I don't know how you'd play on a gas-giant map without spaceships that can shoot.

Neither do I. I'd like to at least see the devs put some effort into making something new and more distinct, instead of just air in space. Even if they toss it out later.

Assuming that you can have both geosync orbits and non-geosync orbits... and that orbital debris is a hazard, or that you could build at different altitudes... I think it would be substantially different from a normal air-layer too.

I never thought of that, just Kbots or tanks/aircraft?

space combat is no were near as unintuitive as you think, just have a zero plane to click on then move up and down and click a second time to set plus or minus from the 0 plane. Moving units around just becomes an extra click, you can tell where units are by having a translucent layer across the zero plane that has radial distance divisions and lines up or down from it to the selected unit (think of EVE). I think it would be very easy to grasp and very fun to battle in space.

How about having different orbital levels/speeds.

Where Orbital Units are by default on an outer orbit or fast orbit making them unable to engage surface or space threats and also making them untouchable.

When they are needed they are either slowed down or enter into a proximal orbit where they can function but can also be targeted by the appropriate surface/space units.

This could be interesting especially if takes some significant time for the orbital units to deploy. For example if we are talking about Anti-Ballistic Space Defense. You would have to order the Orbital Units manually to deploy and prepare to face an incoming threat.
Do this too slow and your planet/base gets pulverised, do this too early and they are vulnerable to attack for too long and can get taken out.

If you were attacking you might even choose small asteroids first, so they get sacrificed and as the opponent's defences go back into orbit slowly, you send out your secret megaton asteroid and they are caught off guard.

That makes me think by the way will asteroids have different composition? Some are tougher than others, more brittle etc..?

I think the main advantage of just stationary orbital elements in contrast to space ships is the plausibility if you limit their functionality.
If you start from the premise, that you don't want a full space travelling system with spaceships as units etc, then having stationary orbital platforms is far easier to convey than using space ships and start listing, what they can't do. With the term space ships come certain expectations, which you don't want to ruin.

I really want some 'spaceships' flying and exploding around gas giants... <3

It depends on the scope of the game.
-"Total Annihilation-inspired gameplay on a planetary scale"
The batttles fought on the planets surface and additional map being moon or asteroid. In that case the spaceships would be mere extension and it could turn out they are totaly uselsess. Orbital units are all that player needs without much change to the RTS classic isometric interface.
-"A solar system is your playground";"Advanced Command and Control"
It has already been confirmed that interplanetary travel will be uncontrollable but setting up limited number of fleets and giving them orders from the advanced screen would be nice. It still makes sense to make rockets and transport ships uninteruptive in space but i cant imagine the war just on multiple maps even with viewport. Cant wait for this

I hate to burst your bubble but PA veered into 4X territory the second it went multi "area" combat. You explore your local starting area, exploit the resourcers, you expand your territory and finally you exterminate all competition in your area. While the scope of these "areas" and the number of concurrent battlefields are currently not known (to me at least), I can safely say that your argument is void.

The Tollan Ion Cannons would make some sweet Anti-Orbital Defence

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ZrgULzPpA0

The planes you can move, ala homeworld, only works well when you ignore orbital mechanics, which it does not appear the devs are doing given indicated method of interplanetary travel.

Remember everything has velocity, everything has acceleration with no input from the user, and those are changing over time. You tell a unit to go from A to B, and the best choice may actually be to decelerate away from your goal.

Most space games I really like and as far as I know took the homeworld approach (I make no claims about them being first) and gave you 3D movement without gravity.

If you point me to a game that does 3D movement and orbital mechanics for all bodies, I'm happy to look at that, but I bet that if they're out there that's the focus of the game, not subsection of it like it would be in PA.

Good summary right there.

Flotilla from Blendo but its turn simulatoneus. If it was to be made real time somehow that would create game in a game just like uber said, and that would be bad.
It is still unknown how command interplanetary screen will look like and navigate but if ever it would be easiest to put the space units there with a cap on number so it wont be soething hard to look at.

Flotilla was fun, and it did have nice game play I felt. The thing is it didn't have the orbital mechanics, things didn't retain their velocity or accelerate and without those it's not orbital mechanics. That style of UI is also not all that good for large numbers of ships, which I think you were hinting at by mentioning caps.

Maybe instead of a planar x,y,z you could do everything in curved lines around a planet or other object, but I'm scarred because of how much micro this would require, making you spend a lot of time on a very small number of units. Is there a way in one click tell a unit in orbit where(if we're talking orbital mechanics, where you are can be complicated, cept geo) you want it to go? (I ask this hoping someone will give me an answer)

Yes you could with super no fuel engines ignore orbital mechanics, and the game could very well be better for it, but it would make me a little sad on the inside.