Orbital Units and Planetary Economies (An In depth look)

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Introduction
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This thread will put forward my ideas as to what direction I believe Planetary Annihilations should go with its planetary interaction. Throughout this thread I will touch on the topics of Orbital units, interplanetary resource management, and mechanics that are currently in the game.

I will be breaking each topic up into sections for your ease of reading and there will be a bullet point TL;DR at the bottom of this post for those of view that don’t have as much time at the moment. Finally you will notice that I have included links to relevant threads under the TL;DR.

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Mechanics
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So before I get too deep into this post I wanted to clarify some things that I believe are key to Planetary Annihilations existing and/or planned game play.
1) Multiple layers of Combat (Ground, Naval, Air and Orbital).
2) Static Resource Points (Metal Points).
3) A lack of Defensive Structures (Shields or Anti-Missile Launchers)
4) Multiple Planets (Varying in Size)
5) A Command Unit (Which You Must Kill)

For me all these things cultivate into a clear design vision, the vision being a game designed around gaining victory by remaining on the offense. You must expand rapidly, constantly harassing your enemy while focusing on preserving your Command Unit.
This leads me into the next section of this post.

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Resource Management
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For resources in this game I believe we should have separate economies tied to each planetary body, I know much of the community seems to be against this idea but hopefully this section will address those concerns.

Now from what I have seen the communities issues boil down to the following issues.
1) It Favours the Defender.
2) It Creates Complexity and Requires Micro.
3) It Slows Down the Games.

I believe all of these issues could be solved by implementing two of my ideas, the first of which is a structure that allows a player to share resources between planets and the second is an emphasis on orbital battles in the later phases of game play)
I will touch more deeply on the actual resource sharing structure in another section of this post but the idea behind the unit is simple, each Planet has separate economies but building this unit on multiple planets will tie their economies together. If you destroy the structure on a planet, that planet will only have its local economy open to the player (Not the combined pool).

Adding this system will mean that a player is rewarded with a larger economy when they expand however it also means when attacking a planet that does not have a Command Unit on it, you still have a target. By destroying your enemies resource sharing and constructing your own, you have completely levelled the playing field. As for your opponent being able to destroy this structure the moment you place it on his planet, I believe you could defend it with orbital units but that will be touched on later.
Just before I go onto the next section (Which will focus on the UI of sharing economies), I would also like to point something out that people seem to forget. If a player has fortified one planet so intensely that you have no hope of invading it is highly likely that they have not expanded on the same level as a player who has not. In this situation why would you try to invade his planet? In all honestly by not expanding he has limited the amount of planets his commander could be hiding on so why not just bombard the planet he is on? The easiest solution would be to just send a meteor flying into his planet.

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Resource Sharing UI and Structure
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So there are two main ways you can be viewing your planets in Planetary Annihilation. The first way to view your planet is in the solar view, the magical view were you can see the entire solar system. In this view I believe that above each planet it should have an icon showing the planets separate economy (both metal and energy). If a planet has a resource sharing unit on the surface, this icon should be displayed in red and it should be in green if not. While you are in the solar view it should also display the combined economies of each planet that has a resource sharing unit, it should put this icon somewhere easy to see like the top centre of the screen.

In the planet view there should also be two icons, one showing the planets separate economy and the second icon should show the current global economy, the Economy that is in current use should be displayed in green and the other in red. So for example, a planet with a Resource Sharing Structure would have the global economy flagged up as green.

Now I actually believe there should be two units that grant access to the global economy, the first is a structure that you have to build on the planet and the second is your command unit. I believe whatever planet your command unit is on should have the ability to use the global economy.

The resource sharing structure would obviously have to be constructed on a planet; personally I believe that this unit should have a rapid but costly build time. This would mean that a player hoping to invade another planet should send some engineers along with a large chunk of resources (Maybe in the form of eggs) to construct a resource sharing structure. Lastly I believe this structure should have a larger pool of hit points than say a metal point as it is such a high value target but that may be my inner noob speaking.

Now I said it before and I’ll say it again, I know that you think it would still be too easy to stop an invasion and so I give you the next section.

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Orbital Units
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So I believe that Orbital Units should be key to invasions, you would have two typed of units and those types are Satellites and Attack Vessels. Essentially Satellites would orbit a planet but would not able to modify there orbit and attack vessels would be able to modify it, Satellites would be measurably stronger however both Satellites and Attack Vessels would not remove the fog of war.

These are the units I believe should be added.
-Satellites
1) A radar styled satellite that has a large range, a very weak weapon and high HP.
2) A satellite that has medium health, no radar and a strong weapon. This satellite would have one powerful weapon and would be used to rapidly destroy enemy orbital units (A fire and forget style of defense).
3) A Satellite that is used to create attack vessels (Essentially like a factory). This is your factory in the sky.

-Attack Vessels
1) A interceptor that is designed to fight other orbital units but has no orbit to ground capabilities. This unit would not work in the same way as a typical aerial interceptor, instead it would work by modifying it orbit so it circles the opponent all while using side mounted turrets to fire at it.
2) A Bomber that is designed to fire from orbit to ground has a rapid but medium damage fire rate and can only attack objects highlighted by radar. This unit will essentially fire a single powerful shell and then it reload as it completes another orbit.
3) A Radar ship with a very short range and low health. This unit should literally only be used until multiple satellites could be put up.
4) A Transport Shuttle is used to move Air, Ground and Naval Unit between planets.

-Turret
1) A ground to orbit turret than has a very low field of fire but an incredibly high damage.
How I imagine this would Pan out is you couldn't use a fleet to attack an opponent’s main base on the planet due to ground to orbit cannons however they would not be able to cover the whole planet in ground to orbit weapons due to their low field of fire. So essentially you would use your fleet to clear a section of the planet and hold it, allowing you to set up your resource sharing structure.

In this vision of mine you would be using your satellites for defense and your vessels for punching a whole. You would produce your fleet on one of your occupied planet and then you would select your attack vessels and give them a target planet, the vessels would then take X amount of energy to travel to that planet. You would not be able to change the course of these units once they have began to travel as they have entered a "Warp" state. You would use Orbital units to destroy structures and Units outside of bases your opponent has constructed and then you would send in the transports to finish of your invasion as the Ground to Orbit weapons in his main base make it impossible to take out with orbital.

Obviously this still needs more fleshing out but please put forward more ideas as I will have more free time soon and I will be able to do an extensive look at Orbital units.

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TL;DR
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Space battles would not work however battles in orbit would and a local economy is a beneficial system.

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Links
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viewtopic.php?f=61&t=37176 Local vs Global Resource thread.
viewtopic.php?f=61&t=48935 Space battle thread.


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Update Notes
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I'll put a note here whenever I update this thread.
Updated poll 4/7/13
Updated Orbital 9/7/13

Do you have any info on that? Lack of Shields is confirmed, but Anti-Missile launchers... I thought they are just not implemented yet.

The issue that I heard from uber is that you can't have bases of different roles. Every production base should have economy to produce and you can't place a hundred of factories on an asteriod with three metal spots. And you can't have economy heavy base, since you have to produce something there to avoid wasting your resources. This is just not fun.
Your idea kinda address it, but I would still prefer economy just to be global.

Nope. You didn't solve the complexity problem. And slowing down problem too, since you have to invest in expansion more.

You can't have that. Buildings only have cost. Build time depends on fabricators.
Also, people will build twenty of those things per base just to be sure, and you can't really restrict this, because this will be dumb restriction.

I'm afraid I voted no, for the sole reason of the terrible complexity introduced by bringing in separate economics for each planet owned. Not only thus mentions but it also limits players as if they are trying to get X amount of X for an X structure they can not do that. (The suggestion of sharing resources between planets- that's just solving an issue that would not be present if idea one was not implemented)

I am against.

I think each planet should have its own economy.
this way you cant just farm one planet you have completely over run just for its resources while across the galaxy, on the front line so to speak, you are producing units with the metal farmed way behind the front line.
the front line of your galaxy control should be determined by how you gather resources on that planet.

How ever i do not think there should be orbital vessels, satellites are a good idea, like scouts but should have low health and should be taken out by anti air / anti orbital guns.

there is definitely going to be a unit cannon to send units and maybe the commander from planet to planet, although there was mention of a space program to send the commander because that unit is larger than most.
An the anti orbit gun should be used to shoot down scout satellites and the units as they enter the planets orbit, sent from the unit cannon.

just like a scout plane is destroyed by a anti air and the incoming foot troops are killed by turrets. makes the game uniform in its combat instead of having special rules for special troops, should all be down to to the units abilities and advanced properties but still can take damage by a defensive measure.

The poll is crappy. I can either agree with everything you said or nothing you said, so I choose nothing. Sorry. Split your poll up and put some thought into it and you will get better results.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Agreed, have a pole for orbital units or economy sharing, not both.

would u like tea or coffee

Yes / NO, its dumb

I appreciate any post where the author has put some effort into describing his views.

However, I cannot support any suggestion for space combat that relies on the tired and endlessly re-hashed concept of space-battleships and space-fighters. I've described why it's a bad idea in many other threads, and there are far more interesting ways of handling orbital warfare.

Vote updated. Thanks for taking the advice

You need to remember the scale of this game and compare it to smaller scale games, for instance you could take a look at Supreme Commander (Not number 2). When you enter a assassination match your focus is on killing the opposing ACU and this gives focus to every battle however when you enter a Supremacy game, the game becomes tedious as you have to wipe out everything.

Now when playing a game of Planetary Annihilation you aren't in a battle but rather a war, your end goal is still to destroy the enemy ACU but each planet you invade along the way will feel like a supremacy game. There will be no focus to your invasion and to capture a planet you will be forced to duck hunt each and every unit rather than going after a single object like in an assassination game.

By separating the economies of each planet you stop a player simply leaving a single engineer on a planet once he has lost a battle so that he can instantly rebuild the moment his opponent shifts his focus. I mean honestly how boring would each game be if after every battle for a planet, you had to go around scouting the entire planet for that one engineer he left?

However if you separated the economies and make it so they could only be tied together by structure, you make it so each battle had focus and you would make it so it was no viable to have a single engineer lying in wait after a loss.

Not only this but a global economy means that snowballing turns from something that stops a game drawing out into something that drastically reduces any chance of your opponent winning.

For example lets look at a assassination game again, it's not possible to secure a win through economy alone. Building high Eco will provide you with a very large advantage but you will still be open to snipes. However a global economy in a game over multiple planets you will not have that option available if you loss a foothold on a planet, there will be no target to snipe and therefor no priority target. Then once you have been beaten on that planet you've now got a massive disadvantage on any other planets you are fighting on and no way to snipe on those planets.

In reality A global economy bring problems just as a local economy does, this is why I would like a compromise system.



As a side note you could have restrictions (similar to no nukes) that allows each type of eco. You could have three options, global eco which sets all units to have to have the property of the unit sharing structure (acting like a global eco), you could set it so it is a normal game with the unit sharing structure, and finally you could set it so there is no unit that allows shared resource. This means you could play as you want.

a) You already need to go around scouting the entire planet to find opponent to begin with, and I don't remember anyone saying that it's boring.
b) He can't rebuild instantly with just one fabricator.
c) You don't need to scout entire planet, because at this point you should already have 100% radar and sonar coverage.

It will be viable to have a single engineer and this structure lying in wait after a loss.

That's various degrees of the same thing basically.

You were talking about how hard it is to completely eliminate someone from the planet and now you are saying that it's too easy?
Global economy also means that it's easier to come back and take this foothold again. Just nuke some enemy base and quickly build your own at this place, before he reacts. Or have this sneaky engineer that you talked about earlier.
Who said there won't be interplanetary snipes and other priority targets? There always are.

You mean similar to the endlessly re-hashed concept of ground battles with tanks, artillery and robots?

I completely understand the reasoning for why deep space battles wouldn't work in PA, but I am not convinced with the reasons for not wanting spacecraft in orbital combat. Just thinking of orbital battles involving nothing but satellites puts me right to sleep.

First of all I agree with your view on planetary resource management and the resource share building. I will however say that Orbital bombardment should be looked at closely. My problem here is that you may just be able to kill everything on a planet without landing a single unit once you win a space battle without the planet being able to retaliate. Here I see two way to go around this - one where we abolish orbital bombardment and orbital ships just blockade a planet either form enemy attacks or they cut , but cannot harm it in any way (easier to do, but worse reality) - the other way is make orbital bombardment not actually be orbital, but rather ships descending to the planet atmosphere (to air level) where they commence ground attacks and where AA is to strong you must send your you ground forces. The will allow you clear an area and defend it wirh orbital units, but will also force you to land and commence planetary invasion. In event that both ground and air defenses are too strong: please tell me why haven't you bombed the planet already or sent it into the nearest star?

As for resource building I would only add that there should be both and orbital and a ground based building. Orbital would be used primarily on attacking and until planetside is secure, but for obvious reasons would be bad as a permanent structure since it would be the first thing blasted when enemy planetary invasion comes thus blockading your planet. Ground based one would be open to ground and air attacks but it would mean that your planet cannot be blockaded form orbit giving you a strong defensive presence on that planet.

I realized that this might put air balance in trouble. The idea behind balance is simple: Orbital ships as wall as aerospace fighters should cost significantly more for the same bang as regular fighters (consider this: NASA Space shuttles cost a lot more than and airbus 474: Why would you use a space shuttle to fly form Berlin to Ljubljana if you can take a much cheaper and bigger plane).

This. If a game will really be on galactic scale, then space battles in orbit must have a pivotal role, but like I mentioned before: Orbital bombardment should really be limited to low orbit - in atmosphere attacks to propagate ground battles.

To me, that speaks more of a lack of imagination of what true orbital combat would be like, than anything detrimental about satellites themselves.

I understand that the only form of "space combat" that many people are familiar with is from Sci-Fi franchises with the word star in them somewhere. That's fine. They have pretty explosions, and can be enjoyable flicks. But there is an opportunity here to do so much more, and I know I'm not the only person here who would be disappointed if Uber didn't take it.

Here's the question: why not both? As I said on the some other topic: Have Orbital units which are cheaper, tier 1 but bound to orbit of one body and are basically satellites and have T2 Units a Space ships that fight in the orbit.

Because ships have their own fuel and propulsion, beyond the minimum altitude control systems of satellites. If you have vessels with their own fuel and propulsion, you need to answer the question of why can't they fly off and battle each-other across the entire solar system. The devs have already described that this is technically difficult, and a bad idea. This means you have to come up with some arbitrary and inconsistent hand-wave as to why.

Satellites, on the other hand, are launched by a carrier rocket, similar to the one shown in the Kickstarter visualisation. I suspect that once launched, they are limited to the orbital layer they are launched into. Once in an orbital layer, they will (hopefully) move under the laws of Newtonian mechanics. Players will need to plan their orbits, although the complex parts are done entirely behind the scenes. I don't know if this is what the devs are planning, but seen as Jon Mavor clearly harbours an interest in space technology, and seems to be familiar with terms such as Delta-V and Hohmann Transfer Orbits, I'm hopeful we will get something unique.

I think it's clear that some people are stuck at the Star-wars paradigm of space combat. I understand why, as they are visually appealing, and I can't think of a franchise that has even come close to presenting how space travel actually works. As a result some people have got this odd idea that the only way to make space combat interesting is to fill it with giant battle-cruisers, that fire at each-other from point blank range.

This. Is. Not. True.

I think I'm going to have to sit down and write a long detailed description of just how awesome space-combat could be if we move beyond what has been done before.

It won't. Galaxy is just a metagame, logically connecting multiple matches. Actual maps are solar system sized.

No kidding. It feels like such a shame that people are so dependent on Sci-Fi style space combat. Even Today Space Exploration is pretty mind blowing. Just under a year ago we landed Curiosity on Mars, a 'rover' the size of an SUV, and we had to do some pretty extreme **** to get it down*(Autonomously no less!).

I think the problem is that a lot of people assume 2 things;

1] People assume Orbital is the same as Space/Deep-space style combat.

2] People assume Orbital is meant to be a "standalone" layer very much like the previous Land/Air/Naval.

Satellites offer something unique is almost every aspect in terms of RTS as said by yourlocalmadsci;

This is, and always has been, the strength Of TA, SupCom and PA due to it's simulation heritage. Being able to do stuff like simulated Satellites is the kind of thing that provides unique and engaging gameplay.

*When ever I watch this video I always have a little panic moment at 3:16 when they say "We have no choice, we have to cut it off." It's really a shame that stuff like this get so few views.

Mike

Seriously, I still can't believe that insane scheme worked. It is unbelievably awesome that such a feat is possible, even with the technology we have today. I've tried to replicate this on Kerbal Space Program, and I've still ploughed the thing into the ground 9 times out of 10.

Fine, accuse me of lacking imagination. I assume this means supporters of satellite only orbital combat have great imagination. However, this alone is not a good reason to exclude spacecraft, other than it offends personal sensibilities with its apparent lack of imagination.

"arbitrary inconsistent hand-wave"? You mean like how green electric goo stuff is used to construct buildings? Not exactly complex, realistic physics. In sci-fi settings, its trivial to explain almost anything you want with sufficient techno-babble. Why couldn't we just imagine spacecraft using similar propulsion systems and abiding by the same laws as satellites, carrier rockets and KEW? Why would it automatically mean they HAVE to behave like star wars spacecraft? Maybe this suggests a certain lack of imagination...Spacecraft could travel between planets/moons in the same way carrier rockets and KEWs can. Which is to say they most likely are on rails until they get to their destination.

In that link you provided, the devs were clearly talking about deep space combat. Orbital combat is confirmed. Whether its satellites or spacecraft, both can be part of orbital combat.

Hey I'm all open to be convinced otherwise. I just need some really good reasons. Personal aesthetic preference is a hard sell, and I know that it basically what we are arguing here.

I don't see why? We wont have shields and the official explanation is "We don't like how they play out in these kind of games". Why not say that our ships don't fight in deep space because that kills planetary conquest. The other explanation may be that ships can easily outmaneuver fleets in space because of its vastness, thus all battles are done in orbit.

This is nice, but it doesn't quite capture the feel of Uber armies fighting to the death in the future, but I see it as acceptable Tier 1 orbital warfare.

I am interesting in reading this as I cannot see this going farther than satellites shooting the ground with lasers, satellite spying, orbital marine deployment all that feels more like something we might do now or in next 50-100 years, not something technologically supreme AI driven armies of the future would do. Though you might just do it that way and give the same answer as with shields :mrgreen: