Space Combat

with all those features who needs ships, just build asteroids and park them in orbit for bombarding enemy homeworlds. :lol: plus with the added bonus of being a mobile factory.

But asteroids ARE space ships. They're cheaper and more convenient because most of the raw materials for construction already exist on site. The investment is less catastrophic when they're destroyed, and they're more directly useful for orbital bombardment. Plus, it's not as though you can take a space ship with ya to another segment of the galaxy.

Giant rocks just do it all better.

+1

All combat should center around useful objects anyway. Be they Stars, Planets, Moons, or even Asteroids. There is no good reason (I can think of) to hold battles in empty space. This makes the arbitrary dimensions of space inconsequential (IMO):

^ this. Think of them as aircraft on a new level above traditional aircraft with and easier methods of moving from celestial body to celestial body. Give capital ships the same mechanics as asteroids (maybe even more restricted as it doesn't make sense to build on top of them) and it might not be as hard to implement as you first imagined after all. I'm not saying I expect this at launch. What I am saying is that it is worth a separate kickstarter expansion. In the end, if you try another kickstarter for it, that will succeed or fail all on it's own. If it succeeds, you will have all the time and money you need to do it and if not at least it shuts us up

While the temptation is there to think of homeworld as a model for space units I don't think it is the way I would go.
The orbital shell is just another 2 dimensional layer to the game and I think units that exist in the shell might simply be able to transit from one planet or moon to another and once they have arrived behave similar to air units in the control mechanics. I don't think combat in all of the in-between spaces would be relevant. these units would simply be the units you use to rapidly reinforce another base that may not have time to build the reinforcements that they need.
This would essentially make it possible to have an interplanetary force that can be built in one location and then be transitted to another when needed.
The controls would essentially be: select the group of units, set them to transit mode, select the destination world and off they go to provide immediate support to a base that may be getting overrun or is in danger of being overrun very soon.

Every combat is in space, so can be called a space combat since planet is in space

Some interplanetary long (and at the same time finite) range transport units that can carry plenty of units (and can't float freely in space or turn back once they are there) and that have strong weapons on board, and bases shooting ultra long range high altitude defense satellites or ground based lasers or missiles that can shoot down these transports is a good idea, but making interplanetary warfare in middle of space is a bad idea that will distract too much from on planet warfare.

Interplanetary carriers could be good for quick invasion or colonization of planets. They could carry really plenty of units (for example 144) have quite strong (but not insane strong) armor (so there is risk involved of loosing the carrier with huge army). These carrier could carry very fast shooting and powerful weapons to quickly kill air and land units, shoot down some anti air missiles (for better protection) when hovering over planet and looking for good landing spot. They should make devastation on the ground too, so they could within 10 or 15s destroy some decent number of enemy land units to make safe landing spot. Weak point? Vulnerable in space. So when they get close to planet but are still outside of atmosphere they could be easily shot down by some very powerful, strong anti invasion ground or satellite based planetary defense lasers. That's the part of space combat I can accept. However having space fleets "floating" between planets and fighting in space far away from planets is a stupid idea, that may make planetary bombardment with asteroids impossible, and pointless. I like PA where main idea is about ground bases, destroying these bases and bombarding planets with celestial bodies. Space should be only for colonization and finding celestial impactors, not for Star Wars - like space combat. I like the idea where war goes primarily on planets and moons.

the way i see it the problem lies in the transit between planets/other celestial bodies. What if a method similar to that of sins or Star Ruler where once a ship is committed to travel between bodies it cannot be intercepted. or more realistically would fly past its attackers like they do in Star Ruler making intercepting enemy fleets impractical or impossible.

I have trouble thinking of a space battle in any star wars movie that didn't revolve around some astrological body. There was Death star fight 1 (metal planet), Han solo's pursuit (asteroid field), Battle of Endor, Battle over coruscant in EP3, Blockade of Naboo... Can you think of one?

I cant think of any, and i feel this is because hunting down an individual ship in the depths of space would be near impossible, and downright silly in particular for any escape pods and what not.

Okay, so no space combat during alpha.

Question! How do we travel between planets then?

no space combat doesn't mean no space travel. nasa and soyuz dont have space combat vehicles but they still have space faring vehicles.

afaik we will be locked to one planet till they sort it out

Yeah, that's kinda the whole point with the iterative game design method, you start with the core aspects and add layers one at time.

Mike

The Galactic thing might be better more from a risk point of view. strategically moving markers in an attempt to fight (non-interactively) past a blockade to then engage in a RTS attack on the planet/system.

this way a kind of overview/general management with regards to a frontline can be run without some crazy need for spacebattles...


Equally it could be done on a global basis with a persistent starmap and a simple blockchain arrangement to ensure a secure record of what planets have been taken and by whom.

While I do believe having space battles would be super awesome and I would definitely support it and buy a Total Annihilation like game that had space battles, it would be a pain in the *** to program that. Also, strategy-wise, how would you defend a planet from all sides, where a small number of ships or whatever could probably wipe out your planet?

how do you defend it anyway with enemies dropping in on the opposite hemisphere to your base? its all a part of the game.

This is the fun part that most all space combat games ignore. If you look closely, they are almost all 2d so don't address the issue you bring up. For someone to mod in space combat, they will have to take this into account.

Might be fun, though, depending on how it is done. I would envision that a modder would have to create very high altitude satellite defense platforms that are locked in geostationary orbit to allow a defensive grid to be put in place. To counter, a spacecraft with long range bombardment capabilities that could range attack those defenses would be necessary. To counter that, a spacecraft with quick strike capability to destroy those bombardment craft needs to be added, etc. You get the point.

The question that still remains, however, is whether the celestial mechanics engine will have what is necessary to support mods of this type.