What do you think about the workings of the current orbital units?

The current orbital workings being they just float in space, like this:

(thanks to ghostflux for the image)
Personally, I would like them to be changed.
I do understand, however, that it is first pass and that it may very well change.

What do you think?

They are good unit types (Kinda) and the hight they sit at is good from my in game experience.

But are a little underwhelming in how they work.

I think there should be a move order to allow satelites to orbit. It is planned to have the ability to change the orbit of planets and more importantly asteroids. If we can do that then physically it is trivial for our much lower tech orbital units to change orbit. With enough micromanagement on that part, it is possible to change a satellites orbit so much that it could appear to remain stationary, so what difference would that make on that part?

The main issue I have is that with forced orbits, you can be completely denied any use of orbital units if the enemy has bases on at least the opposite side of the planet. Ground based anti-satellite weaponry is most likely going to be automatic, because trying to micro a dozen manual launch facilities at 100 satellites for example is tedious at best. Simply building any satellite would mean it would get destroyed no matter what orbit it takes, the analogy being having a factory build and send units straight into a well fortified base. That's not fun.

If you control a piece of water or a piece of land you aren't denied the ability to build naval or land or air units simply because the enemy has a base on the other side of the planet. With forced orbits, you are. All theatres of war should be valid no matter where the enemy is (so long as units can get across to them).

Sure orbital mechanics would make it interesting, but at the very least just make it an option or move order and allow players to at least build and use them without fear of them heading straight off into an enemies base with nothing you can do about them.

when this patch initially was released, I didn't have any time to hop in and build me some orbital units (or test out lava or metal planets for that matter). Instead I wanted to see what people were saying, and from what I've gathered everybody is complaining about the units not actually orbiting. I was also concerned because that would actually be kind of vanilla for what this game is turning into.

I then proceeded to punch in a quick game against the AI yesterday during some down time and my goal was to check out these new units.

It was so blatantly obvious that these were just thrown in there to get them to us. What are people complaining about?! All I can see is Uber making some decisions based off all of the negative feedback here -

"well we rushed the orbital units too soon due to the feedback on the forums guys, next time we want to add something to the patch or alpha we're going to wait until it's 80% ready because obviously people don't understand that we're trying to help them out by pushing stuff to them in it's current state because they are complaining about not getting it soon enough."

And rightfully so too!

My observations: When I built the launcher it was a simple placeholder to access the menu to actually build the two other units. Next, there is a placeholder for the orbital fighter - YES it acts like a plane, yes it looks like a plane, NO it will not be when they are done. The radar satellite when finished being built didn't even "launch" into orbit - it simply lifted off of the planet surface to a predetermined height on the map and hovered. OBVIOUSLY they are going to polish this up where it's done being constructed it'll lift on top of the rocket, and the rocket will launch into orbit and release the satellite -- I might add that this is going to be so beautiful and amazing, people are going to do it just for the eye candy for a long time.

Orbital units will orbit - but that stuff is tricky to code and implement yet, along with creating a whole host of new bugs in the engine, etc. etc.

My faith is that Uber and all the fellas and ladies (?) working there are going to have this up and running very soon. Does everybody forget what nukes originally were like? Very boring and lack-luster; now they are exactly what they should be - intimidating and loud. The same polish that went there will come here.

Just wait!

//rant over

No they won't. It has been explicitely stated that orbital units will be on all encompassing geosynchronous layer. Ie. they will float in space.

Which makes the rest of your post invalid.

and not citing your source makes your statement an opinion

Ooo, I felt that one. (Neutrino = Jon Mavor by the way)
Anyway, my vote is cast. Let's get something a little more realistic than a wet-navy in space... at least just to test to see if it's fun to play.

The part with Jon saying that orbital won't follow real physical models but rather some approximation thereof, gives me a good chuckle... in a humourless kinda way.

An approximation of what exactly, I wonder?
Because from where I stand, it's approximating approximately nothing.

regardless if orbital units not being set in an orbital path was the original intent - it still doesn't invalidate any of my argument from before; if you expect what they have put out in the current patch to be the final orbital installation you've got another thing coming. After all, that is what my rant was about:

and I know who Neutrino is, but thank you for clarifying.

It doesn't matter how they move, that's just purely cosmetical.

A fast phasing orbit with high inclination provides coverage of the whole planet anyway - which kind of invalidates the "positioning" of units in orbit anyway, intercepting another unit or traversing over a specific point of the planet is quite easy, but simulating and visualizing it in an accurate yet comprehensible way isn't.

Therefor, keep it simple. Give them a nice launch animation and a "fake orbit", but screw the simulation aspect. Just assume that anything is on a phasing orbit and that you can therefor always give a (fake) intercept time between two orbital units or an orbital unit and a location on the planet.

For units with passive effects, DON'T EVEN BOTHER with pinning them to a certain location. Just give them global effects - and if that won't work for the effect because it would be to powerful, SCALE the effect. Otherwise every smart player would put them on a fast phasing orbit anyway, just to achieve that very effect.

They should orbit or be able to move, imho. How else are we going to have ground firing satellites that are useful? I'm sure they could jargon in satellites that can move themselves independently and freely. It is the future right.

That is incredibly limiting in what is possible, just as constantly moving satellites are, and it's obvious that gameplay is constantly being shoehorned to fit the mechanic, rather than the other way around. You have energy production satellites, radars and nuke launchers and .... most other things require a defined location, and one that can be set, rather than passed over every now and again. A list of possible orbital units was devised in another thread - less than half are usable if you can't control a satellites position. The other half are just going to get shot down as they cross parts of the planet you don't control.

Gameplay is constantly taking a backseat to scientific accuracy and visuals in these discussions. And I know certain people will argue "This is bad because Air 2.0 is bad", but you do not need moving orbits to avoid the Air 2.0 issue. That is a very different problem.

Why people say this like a harsh rash.

So far, there is a surged group of people upset orbital isn't spacey, one group who understands that if it wasn't geosync then it would be easy shot down or microed to be geosync to avoid shot down thus making THEIR posts on real orbit invalid, and generally my personal opinion is that having an air unit be a placeholder for orbital leaves a fear of orbital doing exactly what air does a few feet higher.

You forgot about the 3rd group of people, who want neither a "new air layer" nor "real orbits" but who would be happy with a pure cosmetical solution where satellites are nothing more than an abstract, planet wide enhancement or parking lot for interplanetary travel without any micro or other stuff which draws attention from the warfare on the planets surface.

Doesn't sound like a large enough population to call it its own precinct.

I like it though, maybe it could be a parking lot and passive utility layer. Either way, satellites should behave like satellites, geosync be it, it shouldn't behave like typical combat units. Orbital attack should be able to attack, but that's limited.

Matter of fact, i wouldn't mind if orbital attack were "low altitude", and can be shot by anti air or whatnot, but itself could attack other orbitals, while other orbitals fly higher outside of air range but are very limited in what it can do. As far as tac missiles, i guess they would reach but the anti orbital or another orbital low enough to be killed by anti air would act as mobile antimissle.

As far as i know, being orbital doesn't mean some cant have a higher orbit than others, and a height difference like that would give better cause to have a very few units that are similar to air.

Wouldn't that make "low orbit" essentially just "aircraft with high altitude"? So why should it be in the "orbital" section?

rotating orbits would be very micro and not to mention collision course pertental to either "wierdly just move out the way" or crash in to each other?

geosync way easy to manage so i can be more focused on my tanks

I really think the devs need to step up to the plate here. These non-orbital units have been the subject of intense discussion for the entire weekend. There is a poll here that demonstrates that less than ten percent of the people that funded this game are happy with the current implementation.

I know they are reading because other less controversial topics are being responded to.

I appreciate that they clearly know more about writing games than we do, but come on now. It looks to me like (almost) everyone wants a go with real orbits. Given that we communally paid for this game, surely they can implement (if just for testing) what we are asking for.

Any arguments about it being too complicated for us (the players) are surely nullified by the simple fact that this is what we are asking for.

Please Devs - an answer please....

First off, please be patient guys. It was the weekend, we have lives too.

Second, while I have a lot of thoughts about all the discussions over the weekend, before I go into much detail, I'd like to sit down and talk to Neutrino for a while. And he's still in process of returning from the continent.

Also, don't conflate "a vocal group on the forums" with "less than ten percent of people that funded the game". They're not the same thing. I don't say that to minimize the feedback so far, but it's a really frustrating bit of "here's a data point derived from my perception" that just distracts focus from the conversation of fun vs realism, which is what most of the orbital discussion is about, and should be about.

It's easy for people to get all up in arms over a very incomplete feature, Garat. Don't sweat it; we all still trust you guys. Tempers just run high sometimes.