A comprehensive Example of Orbital Combat

I am also fascinated by the kessler syndrome.

as for it's implementation I reserve my jugement.

I like the idea of space junk as it could have lots of potential. However, i'm generally against adding hidden values, and would prefer to make mechanics emergent based on the physical rules of the game, where possible.

I can see a simple and elegant way of doing space junk and kessler syndrome, without adding any new mechanics. Quite simply put, why not just give the spacecraft a chance of leaving wreckage on death, just like every other unit? Bonus points for if it breaks up and leaves multiple chunks of wreckage.

This way, every time a satellite dies, it leaves bits in orbit which will continue on the same orbital path as before. If these bits of wreckage smash into something, then chances are that the smashed into thing will be destroyed as well, producing yet more wreckage. This will be particularly important as players will tend to fight over specific orbital paths. Trajectories that go over landside bases will be prized orbital real-estate, as well as polar or geosynchronous orbits. These will naturally become cluttered after prolonged orbital warfare.

Don't like the space junk? Orbitals too cluttered? Just get rid of it the same way as any other wreckage: send over an engineer to reclaim it. Less clutter, and a tasty metal boost! It gives a further use to orbital engineers aside from just building a couple of special structures and this system feels a lot more in tune with how TA did things.

I like the idea that you could clean the problem up, because otherwise it's like: fearsome battle on a planet, smash asteroids into it, it's ruined, time to go to another planet : can't ; the planet is also surrounded by lethal debris. :roll:

Who here has read planets?

First I watched the anime, then I read the manga. It's probably one of my favourite pieces of fiction ever.

It doesn't prevent you from leaving the planet, really (assuming PA rockets don't need to enter a parking orbit while their systems are checked), it just prevents you from putting anything into a long-lived orbit.

Kessler syndrome naturally diminishes after a while anyway because the atmosphere continues upwards (very tenuously) for absolutely miles, and so producing drag for anything in orbit. Eventually stuff re-enters.

I was writing a post saying this would be too expensive to do in the PA engine, but given the exaggerated sizes of orbits and units, maybe it would work after all. It would give an importance to orbit inclination as well.

I really like this idea. TBH, I was quite surprised by the positive response the OP was met with... I was expecting the thread to be set upon by ravenous "Wet-navy-in-space" types, or those who just didn't want to have to deal with super simple orbital mechanics. Since that hasn't happened (yet), however, I just want to throw my wholehearted support behind the vast majority of the OP.

Agreed.

I'm trying to mentally pick holes in it to try to stimulate some debate - hopefully I'll be able to make a somewhat lengthy post on it later on. But there are some very solid ideas in here.

If I'm being honest, I don't actually think that there is a hard core of "we must have wet navies in space!" people (I will henceforth refer to this as WNIS). I think that there are a lot of people excited about orbital combat, because it's in a lot of science fiction, and looks cool. The vast majority of WNIS suggestions tend to be along the lines of "Oh man! This sounds awesome! Are we gonna see Ion cannons and rail guns and...".

In other words they're not really a coherent suggestion of how space combat should actually work, they are just a shotgun blast of various "cool" things from sci-fi. As a result, the only conceptual framework most people have when thinking about warfare in space is what they have seen from Hollywood. The only concept a lot of folks have of "space combat" is what they have seen in Star Wars/Star Trek/Stargate/Battlestar Galactica/Starship Troopers/any other franchise with the word "star" in it somewhere.

The whole point of this thread is to provide an alternative conceptual framework for people to understand. Even if people don't like some aspects of this suggestion, my hope is that it will move the dialog away from "Wow! Will there be giant battleships in space?!", and towards something which doesn't overrule ground warfare completely.

I reallly like OP's idea. This goes along my own thinking about the orbital layer. Really well written post.

There may be some little details i dont agree with but i cannot remember them now hehe. So i give my full support to this way of orbiting.

while I appreciate all the thought and work yourlocalmadsci put into fleshing out his idea, I still would prefer to have plane like units in the space combat too. Even if it just means having air bombers able to go into orbit only to drop back into the atmosphere to complete bombing runs behind enemy front lines I really hope to be able to command impressive feeling armies in the orbital layer and be able to move them from planet to planet. Nothing about satellites alone has sounded as visually or functionally impressive to me so far as some of the dogfights I see in FA and satellites have 0 ability to move between planets making invading someone else's planet that much more limited and boring.

I wanna be able to have "the battle of Endor" raging across the Orbital layer of a death star that is orbiting a planet engulfed in an all out land battle over the giant anti orbital defenses on the ground! To me, that says epic. Being able to respond to external threats with units you've built seems essential to me. Basically, if the orbital units don't obviously help in a multi pronged attack on an opponent they just aren't a worthy addition to the game either. If i establish a beach head with my naval and scramble air fighters to distract the AA defenses while I land forces with a transports how are your satellites going to uniquely assist with that assault? From your post it seems nothing that a nuke launcher, artillery or UEF experimental can't already do...

This is a great idea, since it explains how to make the orbital layer without making it another plane layer.

Indeed a very interesting read, and while I concur that the approach to orbital should be oriented more on the realistic side of things, your "draw ellipses in space" version is not what i envisioned. Also i think your unit selection, while certainly compelling for the scenarios you describe, could be improved upon gameplay wise, but i'll get to that.

What I envision regarding the mechanics of orbital warfare:

In my scenario orbital entities have two properties:
1.) Distance: Which decides your speed relative to the surface, basically this could be a slider with geosynchronous in the middle and further (slower than planet rotation) and nearer (faster than planet rotation) to either side. There would be hard limits so you cant make satellites that are unselectably fast or slow.
2.) Inclination: This could also be a slider, with one end being equatorial and one end being polar orbit.
Eccentricity is omitted on purpose, for one it makes the concept harder to grasp and as far as i can see it adds nothing of value to gameplay (though feel free to correct me if you can think of something)

What is important in my opinion is that whenever you set an orbit you see a ground projection of where your orbital entity will be during one revelation, that will make planning easy and the concept understandable to anyone.

Also you should be able to change an orbit at anytime you want, it will however take time for this change to take effect (this time has to be made visible to the player somehow). Which also brings me to my next point, i would give orbital bombardment satellites only a very limited angle in which they can fire, meaning whatever you attack has to be almost directly below you. So whenever you give a bombardment satellite an attack order it would show you the orbital path (projected to ground) it will take to the target (it does orbital corrections automatically if necessary, you have other things to do) and display the time until it is in firing range.
I admit that i prefer this solution mainly because of films like golden eye...

Now regarding missiles, i wouldn't treat them as orbital entities, i'd just treat them as projectiles like all the other ground based missiles, maybe display estimated time till impact if the target is orbital (but then this would also be a neat feature for ground to ground nukes).

The actual orbital units i envision go something like this:

T1 spy satelite: has reasonable viewing distance (comparable to t2 radar), maybe even with omni directly below. Easy to kill with orbit to orbit weapons or missiles.

T1 orbital factory: builds ground units (or maybe even naval) that can be dropped to the surface in pods ( has a storage for units so more can be build and then dropped simultaneously) can also build T1 orbtial engineers and is the thing you have to shoot into orbit to start your orbit game.

T1 orbital engineer: builds all t1 orbit stuff as well as the T2 orbital factory...

T1 orbital defense: shoots at missiles flying high enough, and maybe other orbital wepons in range

T1 orbital bombardment: (as described above)

T1 orbital attack drone: Now something like this is needed since we will have orbital only situations on gasgiants, but i have no idea how they would work

T1 solar array: power for orbital situations

T1 metal fabricator: Again i'm not really sure if that's a good idea, but is somewhat required for orbital only planets...

T2 orbital factory: Build advanced units to send down to the surface as well as T2 orbital engineers

T2 orbital engineer: self explanatory

T2 spy satellite: better visual range, maybe even with stealth system

T2 orbital bombardment: huge a** massdriver maybe one-use with devastation that only an asteroid can top (takes huge amounts of Mass to build obviously)

T2 gas giant power siphon: also self explanatory

Additionally there would have to be orbital interplanetary weapons and surveilance in T2 as well as some other stuff, but i haven't really thought about that in detail yet.

Hope that wasn't too long, and would like to hear what you think...

I'm not sure I understand what you are getting at. You state a number of things that you don't think this form of orbital warfare can do (epic battles, beachheads, ground support), that I deliberately explain how it can do in the original post.

We already have impressive dogfights in PA. They are pretty awesome. They involve planes shooting at each other. We don't need more planes, we need something new.

Furthermore you say you want orbital units to be able to be used to help invade other planets. Forgive me for asking, but did you fully read the original post? I know it's a bit long, but you seem to have missed some of the important parts.

Orbital units can be used to invade other worlds. You just need to launch them to another orbital layer, instead of the one around the planet that the launch site is currently on. In order to do this, you may need a bigger rocket (T2 instead of T1), or to get to a world that's closer to your invading target, or to a world that has a shallow gravity well. Let's give an example, using our own solar system as the map:

Player 1 is on the moons of jupiter, and wants to invade player 2 who is entrenched on Earth. A T1 launcher can only access the other jovian moons and jupiter itself. However, a T2 launcher could get to mars or the asteroid belt. Player 1 builds a T2 launcher, and gets his commander to the asteroid belt. From here, both T1 and T2 launchers can fire at Earth. P1 builds a large array of launchers, and begins building lots of orbital satellites of different types. Types, Mostly Artemis missiles, with a few Aegis and Apollo platforms. He then launches them all at Earth's orbital layer, by giving a shift click orbital move, and then putting the factories on repeat. The Satellites will continuously launch at earth, and start attacking enemy orbital forces when they arrive in Earth's orbital layer. Earth's orbital layer is a spectacular battle, as P2's Auroras and Artemis missiles are constantly attempting to blast the incoming invaders. Missiles swarm in dozens as defending platforms try, and fail, to take them out before one get through. P1 gets an orbital engineer on a polar orbit which was poorly defended, and manages to build an Orbital factory, churning out units locally. Meanwhile they switch to putting ground units in their launchers, and begin firing them directly at the planet. A constant stream of units begins to land at the designated drop zone, and P2 scrambles bombers to attack them. Meanwhile, P2 has managed to fill up a missile cruiser with ASAT missiles, and gets it into range of P1's Orbital factory. The factory and it's newly churned out satellites get smashed out of the sky by a salvo of SOMs, leaving P1's orbital cover torn to shreds. P2 rallies, and brings in some Auroras, which were on the other side of the planet, and begins melting the incoming troop transports with gigawatt level X-ray laser beams. P1 relents the assault, and P2 has lost a lot of orbital infrastructure. Of course, for P1, this is no real setback. While all the fun was going on around Earth, P1s commander launched from the asteroid belt base, and is now setting up shop on the moon. The Bot factories are already churning out bot's by the dozen, and the first two unit cannons are just about to come online. Theres no way that P2s battered orbital defenses will be able to take out this many incoming units...

I hope this paints an exciting picture for you to understand. The key thing is that the player needs to capture new worlds in order to expand their reach across the solar system. They cannot build an orbital armada around their starting planet, then just smash each world in turn before moving onto the next. At each point, they must capture hard solid ground, and that is what PA is all about.

A few additional comments that i forgot about in my initial post:

I think projection of your orbital units path on the planets surface is mandatory if either of our two systems is used, because what most people don't realize is that your orbital plane is not affected by the planets rotation, and even if you are aware, the combination of inclination, relative speed and rotation of planet under the orbital plane makes it hard to imagine the actual path you orbital entity will take relative to the surface, a picture says more than a thousand words:

(Fig1: An abstract representation of a satellite path projected onto a planet surface)

Also, i'm rather sure that the version Uber will end up implementing is more like another layer of slow moving aircraft. Since i doubt that when they announced the stretchgoal they were planning to include a whole new set of ui, controls, pathfinding and so on... But i'll be gladly proven wrong on this one...

Agree with most of your points here, though I would remove chance based things, of course. In addition, I did purposely avoid suggesting that the space junk be reclaimable, as I was trying to reduce the advantage of orbital superiority. Having unique space junk cleaners that serve no other purpose also diminish orbital superiority instead of having engineers that the player would have built anyway.

Also yay Planetes.

So can I get a reply to my first post plz?

Pestering me for a response does not necessarily engender goodwill. I've put off posting a reply because, quite frankly, I don't understand half of what you are trying to say. Your ideas are all over the place. I will try to respond thusly:

1. That's hopefully the point.

2. Either I don't understand you here, or you don't understand me. You talk of ships, and wonder why they won't be able to switch orbital layers. There are no ships here. None. Zip. Zilch. Zero. Nil. Nout. Nada. Naught. The whole point of this thread is to present a non-ship-centric view of orbital combat. I've explained in countless threads why ships are a bad idea as a space-combat paradigm for PA. They are great in games like Sins of a Solar Empire and Homeworld, but they would be terrible here in any implementation that remotely stays true to the concept of a "ship". This is the whole point of designing a system based on satellites and weapons platforms.

You then go on to say that space travel should only be a late game thing. This really doesn't make sense in the context of a large number of possible maps. What if two players start on opposite sides of a solar system? What if a group of players each start on their own moon in a gas giant system? Space transport needs to be flexible enough to cope with different game-types, and having it only be a late game mechanic turns every game where players aren't on the same planet into a 20-minute no-rush game. Thats poor design. The system here is presented so that players are gated in terms of what they can achieve in space, but that gating occurs at an earlier level. Players in a gas-giant environment will have no trouble hopping around moons on the T1 rockets, but will need bigger launch vehicles if they want to go further. This drives early engagement where possible, but still opens up the solar system more as players progress.

Furthermore, Uber has recognised this from very early on:

Hence why a T1 launch platform is already in the game files.

A similar philosophy can be seen with the unit cannon. Why construct a cannon for the only purpose of moving units from a moon to it's parent planet? It's far more intuitive to keep it within the bounds of what works loosely as a Delta-V concept which I outlined in this suggestion. Firing units off a small asteroid is easier, hence they can go further. It's that simple.

3. Again, I have no idea what point you are trying to make here. Of course an atmosphere will cause refraction and possibly blooming of a laser. Of course it will cause aerodynamic forces, and aerodynamic heating of a re-entering object. What are you trying to suggest? That lasers shouldn't be able to fire into atmospheres? This is something that can be tweaked as required in order to serve gameplay, as a powerful enough laser can easily (and spectacularly) pierce the atmosphere.

4. Already discussed.

5. Each of the units here has a specific role. For example, the missile, you don't think is necessary is actually crucial. It is the players basic offensive orbital unit, as much as a tank on the ground or a fighter in the air. You shouldn't think of it as a missile, such as something fired by a TML or nuke silo, but as a suicide unit, as i say in the description. I state in the first post that Nukes and Artillery follow the same basic delta-v system as the rest of this proposal. Namely, if you are on a low gravity body, you can hit other nearby bodies, hence why there is no need for a special inter-planetary missile as you seem to be saying.

6. Again, I'm not sure what point you are trying to make here.

I'm sorry tatsujb, but I think you need to try being a little clearer. This isn't the first time that people have misconstrued your posts here. Theres nothing wrong in taking a little bit of time just to sit back, re-read a post and think through precisely what points you are trying to add to a discussion, before you hit the post button.

I'm more than happy to discuss things once I know what you are trying to say. Hope this helps.

Well I'm sorry, I really can't tell, I do spend a lot of time reading and re-reading my posts during which I correct a bunch of grammar and spelling mistakes, as for the paragraph construction I swear I'm doing my absolute best but I think it'll continue not being enough. my english as well as my french suffer from poor construction as a result of how I was tossed around from france to U.S. during my childhood.

I still think I express myself better than alot of people around here who just use google translator (or don't ; kalherine)

But I think you got a good part of what I meant.

I still think T1 space is a bad idea, I know it might correspond to the spawn on different planet scenario but really in that case you can just rush T2 space station. I manage to rush T2 land with good eco right after 5 mex and 6 energy, that's real fast.

As for the missile I now see what you had in mind but I really like my idea of a nuke missile on the launch platform because
-of a bigger nuke missile 3D model
-the idea of inter-planetary nuke (not mentioned by Uber)
-the strategic depth to choosing between a nuke and a sattelite

(about usage of the word "ship" please don't take that personally that was just old habbits, I already know what your vision of space combat is form previous posts, I did not missunderstand your OP)

I mean you no Ill, I sincerely thought you had not seen my post because people posted after me so fast and no longer looked at the first page.

Space needs to be balanced so that while it is viable even in small games, starting with it (if there are other players on your planet) is a bad idea. It should be somewhat like air, where you use it for certain things (AT, scouting, transporting, bombing/antiheavy) but it functions mainly as support. Land factories should be what you mainly use, and then air/sea for some things, then orbital for space travel, transport, radar, or superweapons.

However, it still should have a small enough cost (transports and radar especially) that you can get it fast if you are alone on your planet.

but In that very quote I explain that you can have that very fast, so T2 space fits in the context of a small game. no need to split it up.

Yes, but getting it at that speed means its at the expense of other options. You have to build one of these things, as soon as you can, or you're left on the ground while others fortify the space above you. T1 means that it's not a huge investment to get into space, but it just needs to be a part of your plan, rather than centring your plan around it.