Space and the destruction thereof

On several occasions, the devs have said "no dedicated space combat" which implies that there will still be some space combat. Of course, this would be a rather drastic change from the standard formula, as opposed to every form of terrestrial combat, there is no fixed floor or ceiling. As such, without imposing an arbitrary limit, space combat would be difficult to integrate. And as such, I propose several mechanics to make space !!fun!!.

Impose the arbitrary limit:
The 4x RTS Sins of a Solar Empire has every unit mostly confined to an arbitrary Z level, units can go over stars and planets to get to the other side if ordered to do so, but not normally. Of course, this could be justified as changing your orbit's inclination that much would be pretty difficult, and just speeding around on the same inclination would be more efficient. And as such, I would suggest imposing a limit where the only "playable" area in a planet's orbit would basically be similar to the rings on, say, Saturn. You can't go up or down, but you have a rather large area left or right.

Spaceplanes, suborbital planes and projectiles:
At the moment, there aren't many true spaceplanes besides Skylon, iirc. They're extremely prevalent in science fiction, because they are pretty cool. I'm suggesting that, on spacedocks and land airstrips, there's a second, shared unit pool that are capable of going into and out of space and fight in either environment, albeit slightly weaker than dedicated atmospheric or stellar fighters. Primarily, these would be for your first space navy or for invading planets.

Next, we have suborbital planes and projectiles. A sub orbital plane would be able to briefly pass into the space battlefield in order to evade terrestrial countermeasures, but at the same time, exposing it to orbital countermeasures. Same with the suborbital projectiles, except they're not as controllable.

Star "ships" and the like:
The most popular form of space science fiction is portraying a space navy as just that, a navy, but in SPACE! Similarly, fighters are often portrayed as acting like atmospheric fighters, organized like an air force. Of course, this would probably not be how it actually works, but we don't have any yet, so I wouldn't know. I would propose having large, capital ships act like water ships, and smaller fighters/bombers acting like atmospheric ships.

Orbital bombardment and dropships:
Now lets say that you want to destroy a key base without actually going onto a planet. Well, you have your Giant Cannon of Death on your flagship, don't you? Just target the base and poof! It is now significantly weaker. Dropships and drop pods would work similarly, you select a point, and then drop a bunch of units right there.

I would also suggest drop buildings, mostly for quickly setting up a forward base on a hostile planet, or for quickly colonizing a new planet.

Conclusion:
Space is possible and space would be fun, and I do hope to see it in the game eventually.

I'm sure this has been gone over in at least a dozen threads, but by no dedicated space combat they mean the only things that will go in space will be in transit to somewhere else, so transport packets and such.

of course we all hope for mods that will have space fleets battling each other.

Space combat has been rejected for the most part.

Not to say that it will be removed entirely. The orbital layer can still provide important scouting, base platforms, unit drops, and bombardment ability. It just won't be as important or as effective as sending in ground troops.

TA: Final Frontier had some interesting stuff for the space level. But there isn't much for space to do, which can't be more fun on a planet. Don't expect anything interesting to happen between worlds, other than lots of robots in cryo sleep.

Inspired by the channel topic I got the idea of a space implosion device.

You place this implosion device between you and another planet. Once active it starts destroying the space next to it, thereby making the distance shorter between the planets.

And makes Physics weep.

Space is fun and all, but having dedicated space combat is more complicated than having dedicated naval combat, which TA didn't get right without two expansion packs and the use of boats, subs, amphibious walkers, hovercrafts, seaplanes, and floating and submerged base platforms. In a game that involves combat on a galactic scale, I feel that at least some space travel and combat is necessary, but I would much rather have the developers perfect land, sea, and air before they decide to attempt to tackle outer space in all its glory.
I would love to see space battles in all their spectacle and awe, but how about we start off with simple rock-em-sock-em robots....but with nukes.

So you're going to have a spherical (3D) planet, then a planar (2D) space around it?

How do you transition from 3D to 2D? I don't think that's possible. You could transition from an arbitrary 2D slice within the 3D volume, such as the equator, but that means aircraft have to be circling the planet along the equator to do so.

There's a paper written on the physics of realistic space combat. If I can find it I'll post a link, but it can be summarised as;

The most logical shape for a spaceship is a sphere. Big/capital ships are more of a liability than a benefit because they're slow and easy to hit. Armour in space is irrelevant because you have enough space in space to accelerate projectiles to relativistic speeds, and there's so much space to hide in that it's nigh impossible to see anything coming.

Then you have to consider propellant. While small ships are safer, and capable of moving quickly; they can only do that once or twice before running out of reaction mass and become cannonballs.

Boats in space, and planes in space happen to be the most unrealistic design possible. Realistic space combat is 1. take aim, 2. fire, 3. wait three weeks. It's boring.

There are even entire websites about that. Very interesting reads, but they probably won't be very useful for PA. For starters, there are no limited delta-V, heat radiation or ammo problems.

I would love to see space combat in the future, but I am already completely shocked that the devs are going to pull off what they've even offered for the fiscal capital gained.

I think having the ability to explore the space free-form, with no combat at all would be fun and could provide immense feelings of scale and epic-ness. Much more so than just clicking points on a map. Perhaps make galactic warfare games such that you have to (or your allies) have to travel to a location or near to see it on the map besides stars/planets. etc.

I think there is a huge potential to basically turn this game/engine/platform into the next 20 ground breaking games. But yeah, baby steps

part of the problem with space battles thogh is that they very quickly make ground battles redundant when you can bombard from orbit.

Guys, remember, we're going for FUN GAMEPLAY and not REALISM. That being said, I'm pretty sure Mavor already said that they almost certainly won't be doing full-blown Homeworld-style space combat. An orbital layer, on the other hand, is what we payed for.

One does not necessarily exclude the other ya know.

If your referring to the "We're not shooting for realism, we're shooting for AWESOME!" quote in the video, please note that its taken out of context, its referring to sounds in space and not the game as a whole.

Of Course they will still aim for whats fun first, but that said they should not completely disregard realism (or to be more accurate, "making the game believable enough so that you can immerse in it").

We payed for "orbital units". How they will behave or what they will be is to my knowledge unconfirmed. They may simply be satellites that we have little movement control over. Me myself hope for "space combat" like in StarWars: Empire at War in the orbital plane (not full 3d, so not "real" space combat).

Since planets are 3D it would be really weird to have non-3D space combat.

I think we need to differentiate between "space" and "orbit". Orbit is around a planet. Space is between planets. There's no combat between planets. That does not mean we won't get battles in space.

However i feel that proper space combat is something that will require a vast amount of attention and i do not feel it's something you want right now.

Not necessarily, Space combat around planets would have the 2d plane using the "ground" as a reference point in order to match the curvature of the planet. This makes the 2d plane have the illusion of being 3d, when it is actually not. Make it so that the orbital layer (and the space layer that is between worlds) has sub layers so that heavier ships are generally on lower layers and lighter ships are generally on higher layers while allowing the craft to dynamically change layers in order to avoid collision.

Just like with aircraft, they operate and a 2d layer with sub layers, dynamic layer shift, and the layer uses the "ground" in order to match the curvature to give the illusion of 3d.

Hell, the ground itself is going to operate similarly.


The main problem with the idea of space combat would be: Do we allow space units to attack the land/sea/air layer?

My opinion would be no, as then space control becomes the key focal point of the game if we allow them to do so. Space combat in this game should be about helping prevent enemy invasion forces from landing, prevent enemy reinforcements from landing, or the inverse. The only planetary body space units should be allowed to attack should be asteroids. So that space units can serve as an additional option in preventing a KEW from hitting your base.

This game should not be about who has the bigger fleet to Exterminatus the other. Spacecraft would play an important role in big games with multiple planets, but not be the deciding factor on single world battles.

Edit:Now to actually include my post...

My impression is that is not how air works, there are no sublayers and there are no collisions, at least in previous games.

There are sublayers (They move slightly up and down while flying around, at least i belive so) but your correct in that there are no collisions for aircraft (atleast not in previous games).

Anyway, the way i meant it is the way he described:

Just like the normal and air units just farther from the ground.

If they make orbital "space" units slower than air they could handle collision and having some ships having slightly higher or lower orbit as standard shouldn't be hard to do.

This is more a matter of preference, but I don't want that's just air but higher. I want something using some version of orbital mechanics (i.e. satellite based play), but that's just my flavor of nerdiness.

There are many ways they could do it.

Im just hoping its something "space ship combat'ish" even if its not full space combat.

But they havent given any info about it so we can only speculate and voice our suggestions (I have a "orbital unit suggestion" thread burried that explains my envisioned version/suggestion: http://forums.uberent.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=61&t=40426).

Air has the advantage of the fact that the aircraft are nimble and fast enough to avoid collision. This is well within suspension of disbelief ranges so using sublayers you can have them avoid each other, and if they do minor clipping into each other it can be handwaved. Spacecraft that are not fighters do not have this luxury, they are not very nimble, they also do not move very quickly otherwise it becomes harder for them to change course and they would collide with other ships. They would have collision as much as naval ships do.