certainly i would like to be able to do more with asteroids than ram them into planets. the only other galactic scale RTS i have ever played is Star Wars: Empire at War, in it you could build a Death star and well kill planets. I have to say i didn't find it particularly fun, i felt really cheap doing it, like what is the worth of my skills if i don't want to fight over the planet, just blow it up, certainly fits the empire and was expensive, time consuming to make, showed everyone you were making it, but it still felt cheap. sure i would have to invade otherwise, but that is half the fun. take that away, and its half the fun on fighting over the space. without space combat killing a planet would not even have that much. this being said please excuse me for wanting to add deterants to killing a planet. first i think each planet type should have its own special resource that can be harvested from it, so if you kill that planet you lose your chance to extract its special resources. the special resource on metal planets would be technology so you lose the stuff only a metal planet can build. We should be able to build bases into asteroids, instead of costing you proper mass it will cost you 0 mass as you are converting the asteroid into the base, you can harvest asteroids, doing so will use them up until they disappear, kind of like the asteroids are reclaimable wreckage that can be harvested for a hour. and you would building a caretaker mine which reclaims it, when the asteroid runs out it leaves the mines behind (could be units like in the concept except they don't morph into a asteroid base they attach to the mine). Power plants, storage, and factories, can also be built into asteroids reclaiming the metal needed to produce what is needed. Cannons, and weapons of several types can also be placed on the surface, some might be necessary to protect your asteroids from collisions with other asteroids in the belt or ring, factories of course apart from factories that build orbital units will fill the units they make into transports. there should be detection mechanics for radar in space, or space telescopes, these can detect planets, moons, asteroids and everything between including transports. but radar cannot detect who owns what, and if that is a transport or asteroid. so it will not be easy to detect an enemy base among the asteroids. if you want to find the base among the asteroids, you will have to fly along it with a scout. now this does not mean you can build a planet killer so sneakily, if you want a planet killer asteroid it will take some special resources to power the engines that you can only find on a planet, you will then have to transport the special fuel resource to the planet killer, and the enemy will be able to see the transports on the space radar, and put 2 and 2 together and hunt your asteroid base down. of course if you simply want to put an asteroid into orbit around a planet it will require less fuel resources. Primary Asteroid destruction techniques include Bruce Willis, Albert Einstein, a potato in the tailpipe, the force, shooting stars. think about it You can land on the asteroid, drill a hole and plant a bomb, you nuke it which works on asteroids smaller than Armageddon, destroying key parts on the outside can cause the insides to take damage until dieing, with big enough openings you can shoot torpedoes in, and of course you can kill a meteor by hitting it with another meteor given enough force.
There certainly are a lot of difficult questions to answer about asteroids: How many are there? Do they have money? What does it cost to get on one? Where can it go? How fast can it get there? How does it fight? So far we've seen a few answers. Asteroids can have bases, and they can be used as bombardment weapons. We can guess a few things. For example, the square-cube law states that asteroids will have decent surface area, but extremely low mass. Compared to planets they will likely be owned by a single player, will be much easier to push around, and will have far less access to resources (if any at all). Although it may not make much scientific sense, players will be forced to fight over resources, and keeping resources on planets is the best way to keep asteroids from being too dominating. Asteroids could be an unlimited resource, and just like anything else in a macro game, could scale up to huge masses of rocks flying through the cosmos. It's hard to say if that's good or bad at this point. On the one hand it allows virtually unlimited "surface area" for infrastructure where ever it is needed. On the other hand, helloooooo death ball. Could asteroids drop units on a planet? Most certainly. In fact, it may be the best way to move large numbers of units for an invasion. Build them on the asteroid, fly the asteroid in, and drop. Existing factories can assist by pumping in fresh reinforcements from space. Could asteroids be precursors to an invasion? Of course. Gigantic doom rocks have a way of putting holes in enemy defense grids. It is pretty much accepted (and anticipated) that planet killing tools are the ultimate turtle cracker, though the cost and degree of devastation are certainly up for debate.
perhaps i wasn't clear enough on a few points let me clarify: players don't really build on the asteroids they build in them reclaiming the asteroid for the resources needed to build the structure making it free in at least metal, the structure being built inside the asteroid gains the protective benefit of the asteroid's outer shell while the asteroid itself is fairly weakened. mining asteroids would also not be the same process as used on planets and moons instead a player would place a caretaker mine on an asteroid (the exception to the build inside rule) the caretaker mine reclaims large chunks of the asteroid until there is nothing left of it. mostly i think of it as an advanced form of what we saw in the concept a special unit will got the the asteroid dig in and over a period of time turn it into a base. Asteroids would have limitations on how much you can put in them a set number of modules per say, so you could build an asteroid base for the sole purpose of building and storing units, you could also build engines into it but the engines would take away from factory space and make constructions slower.
Why? It sounds kinda cool to be able to tear an asteroid apart for resources. Kinda like major-scale reclaiming.
yes, but then you couldn't really use them as KEW's if you demolished them threw mining: Asteroid mined out, shell left... Launch at planet. ??? Turns into a LARGE frag bomb. Does nothing to mega-robots. Congratulations, you just lost the use of a top-tier weapon. I'd prefer it just had normal, finite, deposits on the asteroid.
Personally I just hope Asteroids are smaller versions of planets that can be fitted with engines and smashed into things. The Mass/Metal deposits should be exactly the same as the ones on Planets, just the fact that there will be less of them. I put quite a long post on the "What's your biggest worry about this game?" thread most of it based on Asteroids. I've cut it down a bit where I explained my example more in depth. Asteroids/Planets/AA Defenses (Anti-Asteroid) won't be balanced. I also want asteroids to be balanced against Planets in more ways than just using them in battle. Basically commiting to throwing away a secure portion of the playing field (And his possible income streams) shouldn't be something a smart player would often and to commit to blowing up a planet should be more of a "If I can't have that world you can't either!". But that doesn't mean it should be an IWIN button. hmmm might be easier if I explain my self in more depth. 1v1 Small Map - 1 Planet, 1 Moon (If they are even in) 5 Asteroids Planet has 25 Metal Deposits, Moon has 10, Asteroids have 15 between them. Asteroids need to be worth the loss in possible Industry/Income. So just like Planets are going to be hard to completely destroy, asteroids should be able to take a fair amount of ICBM damage and do varying amounts of planetary & unit/structure damage depending on the damage the asteroid took. But you should also be able to negate them (Not completely negate mind you, Asteroids should always do damage) with surface launchers tl;dr Asteroids should have metal/mass deposits to make using them as giant bombs something a player has to think about. If he/she does commit to launching one, they should be guaranteed to do some damage between annoying repairs and total destruction depending on the ICBM defences of the defending player, either way it should cost the player who committed to it via lost secured land and mass income.
well, If you destory a planet with a asteroid , all satellite of this planet will fall out of the orbit and the other planets of the solar system don't like it
I don't think we will be outright destroying planets in PA; it will just be making some or all of a planet's surface area unusable. And if a planet WAS destroyed completely, the other planets would be just fine and the natural/artificial satellites would be flung off into space rather than fall into the star(s) of the system for no reason. Personally, I think that mining an asteroid should be the same as mining a planet except doing so reduces its effective use as a KEW.
The fact you're paying to build engines on a 'resource' and fling it into an even bigger 'resource' should be an even bigger factor thought. Mike
True. I meant that you would face lesser KEW power if you uses an asteroid as a serious mining platform rather than a small mining source to make ends meet while building the asteroid thrusters.
think you are thinking on too small of a scale, we arn't talking 1 planet, 1 moon or 5 asteroids, we are talking a single solar system can have 10 planets 20 moons, and 150 asteroids including planetary rings, and thats my lowest generalized calculation of asteroids per system, and this isn't even the galactic scale. quite frankly you will have more than enough asteroids for whatever you want, mining, building on, shooting into planets, if you can do all 3 that is a little OP, especially when asteroids will be a dime a dozen. what i suggest is you have to pick on of these purposes for each asteroid, a couple for factories, storage, energy production etc, 1 or a couple for building engines in and shooting into a planet, not an quick and hide-able process mind you. and use 10 or more for mining into oblivion and when they are gone mining another 10. asteroids aren't all 1 size they range from the size of New York City to the size of a car (another generalization without research but doesn't sound off to me). generally you can only build in an asteroid the size of the empire state building and above. still think that would be at least half the asteroids in a belt or field. the same for planets really and i imagine a planet can have hundreds of metal spots and even a moon can have 50+ scaling is important
Scaling IS important... Realism would ruin this game beyond repair, not everybody wants a game that lasts hours and a map that big doesn't force combat in a 1v1... Yea I imagine a 10-20 player game loving a map that big, not a quick 1v1. Thats why I specifically said 1 planet 1 moon 5 asteroids in my example the game also needs balance as much as scalability. Anyway given the scale we've witnessed in our not-to-be-taken-as-gospel video that asteroid was more the size of a dwarf planet like Ceres. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Masse ... n_belt.png Most of the asteroids in the belt would be worth little more than as a galactic spud gun against a planet as the atmosphere would just break them up, its the really big ones that should be able to be built on and fired at planets as WMDs. Also having 150 asteroids would take away from the risk/reward of using asteroids as weapons.
I am not sure 1v1 will be played on an interplanetary scale, i do believe they are adding the ability to fight on limited maps like normal, i could be wrong, but at most i would expect a 1v1 to be a full planet, to quote a phrase . I don't think a system or galactic scale would be very fun or worth it 1v1, and certainly its system and Galactic Scale i am thinking on, that will be ubermegga superfights between as many players as what the F2P RTS are hoping for so like 50 players give or take. the scale shown by the video, i see as a starting point, and quite frankly there is the opportunity to do things differently, that has more potential pay off than 5 Asteroids per system that are mini-planets imo. i like the idea of building into a asteroid especially when it comes to adding engines, you have an opportunity cost with each asteroid, build factories, Fission/fusions, storage, mining, etc. or engines, possibly mixing them for a lack of mastery. basically there will be a storage limit and you can determine how much of what you can fill it with until the storage is full, like a Supcom 2 Carrier except building and storing buildings that operate in those conditions. if you want to hit a planet with an asteroid you should probably be required to fill the whole thing with engines, otherwise you will find you just put up an expensive satelite again asteroids will come in all different sizes, with different storage limits depending on how much metal is in the asteroid, some asteroids cannot be built in, at which case the player is left with 2 options, drop a mine on it and finish it off or load it into a cannon and shoot it at a planet for anything between a Nuclear Yield, a meteor shower yield of rock rain, to burning up in the atmosphere *if there is an atmosphere*. Players also have to fear asteroids colliding into each other, damaging each other and reducing their storage limit, which is why you might need to upgrade them with exterior defenses, for taking out small meteors that could pose a threat. 150 asteroids again include asteroids of all sizes, also handy for the whole stealth feature in that you can hide anywhere along an asteroid belt so as not to be found in 2 seconds as on the 3rd build on able asteroid. now even for the asteroids you can build engines in there are a couple things the player has to consider A. he will need special resources possibly from the planet he is attempting to remove, and those special resources must be transported manually to the asteroid in question, which will be quite obvious B. It will take an hour or more to build engines in an asteroid, where that is the only thing you are building in it C. that planet you are attempting to kill has a special resource on it specific to each planet type, meaning if you do not own another planet of that type, you may lose that source of resource for good. D. the enemy may have anti-meteor defenses that will take your asteroid out. E. the factories and buildings he could have built in that asteroid F. the metal he could have harvested from it
Basically not everyone has the time/willpower to do a massive 10v10 battle I know i'll tend to prefer the smaller 2v2 to 3v3 battles but that doesn't mean I shouldn't be able to fight over a system, yes Galactic battle is a whole different thing but then thats going to be a different sort of game to your bog standard skirmish. Way I see it in the smallest maps is just 1 full planet on which both players start, said planet has 1 moon and the "System" also contains 5-10 Planetoids, Personally I suspect Uber aren't going to bother with the smaller asteroids for anything but decoration. This gives ample room for expansion but that doesn't mean it will get expanded too. How many games have you played of say Starcraft 2 where all the current resources are been mined or mined out? I think since release i've been part of 2 lol We don't know if building inside Asteroids will even be possible, personally I think it will be just surface building with the closest to "building into" been minor terrain deformation. As for a Carrier, I wouldn't see anything wrong with this, but it would most likely be simulated mining out, e.g you place the Aircraft Hanger on the Asteroid and it has storage much larger than a hanger on a Planet for instance Hopefully the Asteroids will have different sizes but still I suspect they'll still all be in the Planetoid category and not the 1km asteroids that would just be too numerous as to make the playable area stupid. I do agree that different sized asteroids should do differing amounts of damage... But it should be clear to the player by not having wildly varied sized asteroids on which we can build. Some sound ideas but I doubt Uber will add any more resources to the mix other than Metal/Mass and Energy to keep it simple, at the most I can see resource income been changed between planet types. Gas Giants having better energy generation etc... and I just can't agree on having 150 asteroids on one map that isn't a massive computer melting map lol
actually we just heard from the latest live stream that you build special fusion reactors over gas giants that harvest helium 3 through big tubes, i don't think its asking for the moon and even then, when you are talking about something that can potentially destroy a planet there needs to be some very Obvious signs you are doing so as a nerf, plus again each planet type having a different special resource He3 on gas Giants*confirmed*, Technology on Metal Planets*confirmed pretty much*, Water planets could give us water for something like a Weather control gizmo, and zap our enemies in a lightning storm, while adding to the water in a potentially water void area so we can set down ships, Ice planets could idk maybe we mine crystals from it for really big lasers, Ube/neutrino said it was interested in special resources. anyways that makes it a tougher decision to destroy a planet, cause there can be useful stuff down there. also not sure there should be asteroids or planetoids in a 1v1. i think they can set up planetoids, it would probably just be Moon types at the setting for supersmall. asteroids are probably their own body to make it easier to set up fields of them in the editor.
Waiting for the Twitch TV thing to start on my phone while I work (Work PC has no speakers -.-) Do they actually confirm "What He3" does? because I suspect it'll just be better energy I could be wrong of course but as for Tech on Metal planets they said they are going to be weapons... fired from the Death Star (Obviously this is all up for change). As for Asteroids in 1v1s then we'll have to agree to disagree, I think scaling of a map should be completely up to the player in custom games but if there is any "Ranked" games then there should be 1v1s with ample room to expand.
