Space ships and space combat

That would certainly balance out the cost:benefit problem with ships vs. defenses. Don't hold your breath though, all it takes is one continent of the largest energy generator you can build to cancel that out.

There will most likely be a ton of anti NOAH and nuke defenses too, and you could most likely burn any artillery area of a moon to crisp if you invest in some nukes/artillery yourself on the planet, depending on what kind of defenses the enemy focuses on either attack could be easier or harder, whats your point? Supcom planes are squishy (Anti air units does aloot of damage), but orbital units is a whole new unit type, they might be (for example) slow moving but strong, so why judge them by plane standard (The argument i said was a example, you could replace the air unit with a naval unit if you wish).

If its anything like supcom: Unless your playing a huge game (or use a no rush timer or something) attacks happen before bases has a perfect defense against anything, even if the base itself has a perfect defense against the orbital units, they would hopefully still be effective at controlling a area outside the base so you can land forces easier or be used for harrassing etc. Unless the enemy has defensive enplacements around the whole planet, but then you could most likely teleport in a strike force to take a few out (Teleportation tends to be expensive in these games, so you shouldent be able to afford teleporting a whole army) and then bring in some orbital units to defend the area easier. Orbital units would be another option to attacking worlds, not a "sure win" button.

Anti-NOAH? so AA weapons or a few Point defenses at the LZ.

How should i know, it depends on how the transportation of ground units will work.

That's from my experience of SupCom2, Noah unit cannons were goof for inserting units behind enemy lines with relative impunity, but only a fool would attempt to assault a base with one.

From the trailer it looks as it its just a cannon and not the factory, so its fire rate would be dependent on local factory's, of course it is one hell of a bottle neck for your forces.

Greetings everybody, I've read through this and felt I had a thing or two to post about.

First off I'd say that I would love to have some kind of space combat, even if it is mostly constrained to the orbital layer, though I would love for some kind of craft with trans-orbital capabilities.

Secondly, whatever the dev's go with, that's their choice, I wont argue. Maybe some good natured grumbling, but I think that is always fair.

Now, for the actual info. Note: The following assumes pretty spiffy intra-solar system travel tech, but that is mostly just a time scale factor.

TLDR: Method for killing teleported commanders nigh instantly put in place on all useful bodies in solar system. Solar system depopulated of asteroids to use against me. Emergency backup armada consisting of hundreds of thousands of stored military units and infrastructure spread across hundreds of thousands of ships to pick up the pieces if you bombard it all. No longer worth your time and resources until galaxy mostly empty of unfortified solar systems. (Yes my TLDR was a paragraph.)

One thing I kept seeing people talk about is how if you spot a fortified world, methods you would go about setting up an insertion to attack it that make the fortified world idea pointless and dumb.

Edit: A note for you all, the following scenario assumes certain realistic situations. IE, you are not a player, you are the AI/pilot in charge of the development of this solar system, the rest of the empire is doing its own thing without you. You are not playing a game, this is a real world, thus things like unit-caps do not exist. It also reflects my current understanding of the known and proposed/considered game capabilities. It does this to make a point of why if the PA universe was real, ship capabilities would be necessary and overpowered. Thus providing a reason why they should not be in PA (despite how I would love it) because they would actually be breaking the Rule of Cool that the game is all about, as in order to be fair and balanced they would have to be unrealistically UNDERpowered.

Unfortunately I have to state that given the way things work on the SupCom techs and relative timescales, I actually believe that it would be actually very easily possible to make a planet/star system basically invincible short of causing the star to go nova or taking so much of the enemies time and effort that even if you lose you still come out ahead of them.

Lets say I land on this planet uncontested, I'd of course start my base with that usual mix of defense building and infrastructure growth for a while as I explore. But after nearly an hour of time there (assuming SupCom timescales are 1:1 with the real world) you will have an infrastructure capable of allowing a crazy amount of expansion. One of the first things I'd do after declaring to my satisfaction that the planet was empty after reaching this, was set up ten air factories and have them start churning out tech level 1 bombers at a rate of 10 bombers for every scout and just leave these running while I focus everything else on my infrastructure development and developing a world spanning sensor grid.

After a day or two of this, my infrastructure is probably such that I can build almost any structure effectively instantly (assuming production stacking is involved, please god I hope so, I hated losing that in SupCom2) while ignoring the cost. And by this point you easily have somewhere between 10-100 THOUSAND tech level one planes which I would have spread equidistantly around the planet in packets several hundred strong, enough to easily wipe out an early base. I did not do that calculation, but based on how fast I remember them being built off a tech level 3 plant, easily believable. By this point I should also have completed the world spanning sensor grid. Now of course there is jamming available, but even if the commander moving in is equipped with jamming, it would be required to construct buildings without a jamming field. And whatever is missed as a result of jamming will be seen by the partially complete flying scout network (the production queues are probably upgraded to tech 3 scouts now since I don't really care about resource management anymore and equally possibly the bomber queues could be on tech 3 bombers). Somewhere in there I would have also begun construction of an anti-asteroid defense network on any sufficiently developed planet. What this whole method does is ensure that the planet is capable of destroying any commander that has teleported in from afar.

Now, of course that leaves open other avenues of attack, such as from the other planets in the system. Luckily one of the things I will have begun doing by this point if not earlier after some point in my infrastructure expansion, would have been to begin systematically converting all of the solar systems asteroids into planet killers while sending engineers to each of these worlds to begin setting up their own detection grids and defense air forces. Even a well developed base probably wont be able to deal with 100 planet killing asteroids flying at it. Now, an important point about taking all of the planet killers. This thoroughness is purely to ensure that the enemy cannot use the asteroids against me. Once I have them all on my side, then I can decommission them one by one to unlock the materials in their mass if I really care by this point. Now that the enemy has been deprived of teleporting in on my 'homeworld' and no longer has any real access to the asteroids, their situation begins to become impossible, but not fully yet.

Let us assume that after a week of development with my ridiculously expanding infrastructure (it would effectively always be expanding, after all, as far as I can tell in the original TA once a world was owned all it was really used for was materials for further attacks, so why not optimize?), I have managed to develop my sensor grids and pounce swarms on every planet and converted somewhere between 70-100% of the asteroids. There is purely no way for them to take anything without launching a massive space offensive that is probably filled with nukes (if they want to have a chance of taking the place anyway, if they just want to blast the planets to pieces, then its a massive swarm of asteroids probably). There is a way to easily defend against this as well.

Lets say that 50% of my inconceivably large infrastructure is now devoted to helping the empire elsewhere in the galaxy (producing commanders and shipping them out, or just straight up resource shipping if we want to technically make life harder [no commander production means there is still only the one]). That is still 50% remaining of what anybody in a normal game of SupCom or TA would honestly consider infinite resources. I would devote a rather substantial portion of those resources to constructing an emergency fleet. This is basically a massive armada of distributed ships across the whole solar system that is just filled with engineers, prebuilt units (likely aircraft/spacecraft, but some percentage would be ground capable), but most importantly resources and 'stored' infrastructure (powerplants and such that are offline). The purpose of this is really to bring about the nigh-impossibility of losing the system. Even if the planets are destroyed (either just their surfaces scoured clean or full on shattered into rocks) this armada would exist to just pounce on the remains and in a really short time period establish an infrastructure that a player just starting a match would STILL think of as effectively infinite. You have now effectively guaranteed that this solar system is impossible to take by the enemy by all but the most insanely resource hogging assaults. It is quite possible to destroy it as a sufficient amount of enemy KEW weapons could do it, especially if moving fast enough, but this just deprives you of your ownership for a short period of time (days for the most part). Really the only thing to do would be to just nova the sun, that would destroy all my preparations in-system (if nova-weapons were a thing, its a safe bet I'd have done something with defenses or post-nova recovery, novad stars shoot off a huge amount of materials after all).

There is really only one method to take such a system. Massive bombardment first (of the planet shattering kind, it is physically harder to set up on a crumbling asteroid field then a stable, yet melted planet) followed by your own version of my post-bombardment infrastructure/attack armada. However you are still probably at a disadvantage as you have to move in-system, and my recovery fleet is already there, also unless you devoted quite a lot of effort into taking them out, my asteroid fleet still exists as some superweapons, granted though you might have held some of your own in reserve. Due to the dispersed nature and size of my recovery fleet, it is unlikely that any reasonable attempt to remove it from existence will impact it significantly.

Now I agree, with ENOUGH resources behind you, you could make an invading fleet that is just so massive my defenses cannot stand up to it, but this likely will have resulted in you devoting a similar 50% of infrastructure from several of your worlds into this. So really the situation becomes a cost-benefit analysis. Can you destroy my solar system? Yes, temporarily. Can you take my solar system? Yes, with enough numbers. Both of these methods require depopulating at least one solar systems worth of asteroids for quite possibly very temporary gains. And one of these requires devoting a truly stupendous amount of your resources for a somewhat dubious gain in the end. Is it better to take one solar system as opposed to using those resources to take what I'd guess to be at least 3 more uncontested ones (fewer contested). Or even worse, cede to me MORE uncontested systems just so you can ruin/take this one? Not really.

Honestly what I see as happening is that this methodology is the standard operating procedure for the factions, just with the minor change of fighting the enemy off the world first if you both teleported in at the same time. Once a system is this developed, ignore it, work on taking more uncontested systems. Once some substantial fraction of the galaxy in your neighborhood is controlled by one person or another, only then do you begin to change your resource allocation from predominantly expansion to destruction. Once there are no longer solar systems to expand to, you now care about galactically strategic combat because you no longer have to worry about if you are taking this solar system from the enemy, and allowing them to turn 3 others into this same fortress.

Now of course one of the arguments you've probably had seething away this whole time is that all of the resources involved with maintaining these massive swarms of aircraft and spacecraft is immense. But given that these people are literally capable of fielding WW1/WW2 scale armies in a matter of hours from nothing, this is probably of minimal concern for a whole host of reasons. Its probably easier honestly to instead of replacing a broken component on some of these things to just suck out the matter from the broken tank/plane and build a whole new one. And as this tech is thousands of years in the future, something tells me their maintenance needs are probably something the military leaders of today would sell their souls for.

Props to those that actually read this whole brick of text.

Thoughts?

I'm really trying to understand what the heck the previous post is trying to say. So far I have this:

What a bogus scenario. Games shouldn't last that long. Some people need to sleep.

That's a gameplay issue as a whole. There are plenty of ways to give diminishing returns on the economy. Limit the number of extraction points so that planets have a peak value. Limit mass fabs a lot or don't allow them at all. Limit the planetary resources, and the planet becomes worthless after a while. Killing planets is obviously the most permanent way of removing resources from the game. While an issue arising from the scale of the game, it really isn't an issue with space combat.

There's nothing wrong with the pace of the game changing as time goes on. A 30 minute skirmish over control of one planet early game could very well turn into a 5 minute nuke fest across entire systems late game. When players can spread like a plague and build invincible fortresses, superweapons become mandatory just to make the game move on.

Realistically, there should be pressures on the player to bring the game to a close. It is, after all, a war that's destroying the galaxy. Your problem doesn't have anything to do with space combat, though.

That's an issue of game balance between offense and defense. It really has little to do with space.

I didnt read your whole post, but you forgot about one important thing, The unit limit.

The unit limit would prevent you from having hundred of thousands of units, it would also (becuse of the limit) be a bad idea to build to much on a single world (since that means your opponent gets the rest of the system).

The unit limit will also most likely include buildings (as previous games) so that alone may (depending on the world size and the defenses range) limit you to be unable to build a "fortress worlds" that cant be breached.

Do also note that sheilds are no longer a option, so if you move a couple of moons into orbit loaded with artillery they would do some damage (Since the planet would have its own artillery the winner would be decided by the amount of firepower offcourse), even if those moons fail to destroy the fortress world they could be used to open up a beach head for a invasion.

If they add ways to transport air and orbital units they would also help out.

Then we have the astroid projectiles and nukes, these can without a doubt be used to help out, how anti astroid defenses and nuke defenses work and such hasent been talked about so how effective they will be is up for debate.


So i highly doubt you can make a unbeatable defense, even if you could make fortress worlds and unbeatable defenses for early alpha and beta, i belive the devs would prevent it for the gold version (Turtling can be fun, but siege'ing a turtler fortress tends to be borring as hell unless the game is designed for it, for that reason turtling tends to be frowned upon by game developers and players, they removed sheilds for a reason).

Why in the world are people so enamored by space combat? From a strategy perspective, I find it boring. Some games I've played with space combat:

AI-Wars, for all its nifty features, just feels bland to play, as it focuses more on unit composition to make up for the lack of terrain.

Star Trek Armada, had faux terrain, which made it a bit more interesting, but in that case, why bother with space at all?

Homeworld did it best, but it brings the scope of the game to a completely different level. Now you're essentially playing 2 different games, and they end up being so disjoint that it's more of a chore to switch between the two types.

Lots of cool ideas in here. I think the main point is that we have nearly always seen Commanders arrive (nearly) simultaneously. This seems to imply that the interstellar teleport is limited by some inter-stellar scale state or process. If one did manage to fortify a system to this level, I would be extremely difficult to overtake. I'm not sure how the developers are planning to deal with this, but there should be some method of both fortifying, and breaking fortification.

Actually, the Devs have stated that extremely protracted games with multiple hand-off of control is one of the core objectives. So, you are simply wrong about this. Sorry.

Same as above for the unit limit, the Devs want to make this arbitrary. Hardware, not in-game limits, will decree this. In a few years when computers are even more awesome the described scenario could be very possible.

It's still a bogus scenario because such an overly fortified planet is easier to blow up than reckon with.

Spending two days focused on one world? May as well hand the rest of the galaxy to your enemies on a silver platter.

I think its a bogus scenario too, but your assumption that it would be easier to blow the world up isent a fact.

We have no idea how easy or hard it will be to blow up worlds that are fortified, there will be anti astroid/nukes and we have no idea how effective those will be.

Thank you dudecon for your statements.

Though I should perhaps honestly qualify that in my argument, I was somewhat using it as a point to demonstrate that if the TA/Supcom universe was a real universe, this strategy is likely to be what would occur. All of my assumptions follow from a translation of known/theorized capabilities into a real-world setting. It is from the standpoint of the single AI/pilot that is in charge of the development of this solar system. Simply put this is assuming that the rest of your empire is doing its own thing. There is no real material gain in attacking such a fortress world if you can spend your resources over a wider area to be in a better position for 'the end game'.

Unfortunately given the limitations of computing systems, hundred thousand unit strong armada's may only be possible through abstract means.

The main thrust of this argument is that short of a breakthrough in teleportation technology, fleets will be needed.

Sylvesterink: In answer to your question about space combat.

Really, it just has its own kind of majesty and thrill about it. Some people are tank people, some are plane people, others naval ships, and so on. Some just like space combat, and with a game that has a prime selling point of throwing around asteroids as planetary bombardment weapons, you are going to attract a huge proportion of those people.

And from a realistic standpoint one basic fact of the military is that the side that controls the high ground is in a much better position in the fight. And you don't get much higher than space. Past a certain tech level of ship design, it gets to the point where ground battles are somewhat pointless as ship-to-ship weapons need to be so overpowered just to ensure damage to a target as hard to hit as another ship that is trying to avoid being hit, that a (basically) stationary target like a ground unit is just chump change. A rather large portion of science fiction portrays this relatively well, in that it is considered illogical or even just plain rude to refuse to surrender after an enemy takes control of your planets orbital space.

This point alone is quite probably the main reason why they do not want to have ships in the game. Because it is relatively clear that the units in PA are in fact at one of those tech levels where all things being equal, a battleship floating in orbit is just better then anything short of a full sized base, but even so you probably have quite a few battleships.

Actually a really great example of the previously mentioned firepower of space vehicles comment can be seen when you look at SupCom's naval vessels. Dollar for dollar, those things are better at destroying bases within their reach than equivalent tech level ground or air units.

Btw, i have a suggestion for spaceships that arent realy spaceships (same as i have made in this thread, but its a bit more fleshed out and easier to understand) in this thread: viewtopic.php?f=61&t=40426. Feel free to comment.

One of best analytical topics about requirements of space ships in Planetary Annihilation with good explanation of their pros, cons & possible roles. Hats off to bobucles.