Orbital units - 2 directions

I don't think people are looking for realism for the sake of realism. The goal that most people have is internal consistency. In the most trivial sense, it's the reason why the aircraft have flying, 'swooping' animations, as opposed to looking like they're just walking in the air. The fact that they are in near continuous motion while doing bombing runs is a nod to realism, and it's the same reason people want 'orbital' stuff that feels kinda' like it's orbiting. If it looks like it's just floating there and moving around, it feels 'strange.'

Now, there are certainly fixes to /that/ from an art-design perspective. Throw a bunch of engines onto the bottom of it so it looks like it's hovering in space, or something along those lines, and then it's suddenly internally consistent. It's kinda' jarring to see these satellites zooming around with no real mode of propulsion, and people instantly go to all these ideas to make them 'orbit' correctly, the way they would expect an object like that to act.

i already stated my concerns about orbital weapons .. i can´t provide propper feedback or solutions since i don´t know how the stuff works or will work .. i have assumtions at best
so best i can do is to wait for the stuff to be ready to test in beta and then eventualy provide feedback hopefully

How would I clarify something like that when I didn't know myself? Orbital units were simply a concept that we all thought would be cool. The exact mechanism of how they would work wasn't figured out until much later. To me the idea that doing some kind of fake orbital layer is somehow cheating people is utterly ludicrous. Like total crazy talk.

I think you simply have unrealistic expectations about how games are made. I certainly am not capable of sitting down and writing out some crazy design on paper and then implementing that exactly. I've never seen a game work like that, ever. The real work of implementation of this stuff is fantastically more complex than I think most people appreciate (although I know there are some here who do).

And yes the galactic war is definitely like Boneyards. It's a metagame!

Just a note that I'm done in this thread for now. 4 days of PAX incoming. If you want to talk I'll be glad to rant at you at PAX.

I would like to add my support for the Uber Team. While I have advocated an alternate methodology for orbital units, and would like to see the team at least experiment with the concepts, I will throw my full support and appreciation behind any form of orbital that the Uber Team decides to implement.

It's not difficult to figure out the realism approach of orbital mechanisms is very dubious at best without experiment with it, I thought as veteran developers Uber probably have known this since the begining. Usually game developers won't put a concept into the game just because it sounds cool and not think about how it could make sense as part of the abstract game mechanisms.

A lot of people (not include me) don't know what the term "metagame" means, and it seems that video (www.youtube.com/watch?v=5caRZBS9QsM) gives them a wrong impression, as if it is some kind of real time galactic level simulation, I'm not sure if Uber should have debunked that illusion back then.

I've read this a couple of time but I'm not sure what you are trying to say.

It never even would have occurred to me that there is anything to debunk. I thought it was clear that the galactic war is a metagame and it's conceptually based on the many other rts metagames that have been around. Anyone could google search for http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boneyards#Galactic_War

Note that metagame simply means that it's an extension of the game outside the main game mechanism. In this case the idea is a procedurally generated galaxy where you conquer all of the star systems to take over the galaxy in both single player and multiplayer modes.

Have a Good Time.

I honestly see no problem with any itineration of orbital, as long as it seems more appropriately themed. The forums already discussed a lot of feasible cosmetic and gameplay type ideas around orbital.

As far as Galactic War, it is a procedurally based large campaign, ie a multiple battle war, so I don't see how it was confusing. It is basically whatever game you were comparing it to, boneyardz?, or Risk, or Star Control where the difference is a single game being a "melee" and a galactic war being a "full game", where you fight one star system at a time being the metagame and the actual encounters of combat being the "melee".

I think it will be cool having a procedurally generated universe to conquer against multiple teams of AI myself. Procedurally generated single player lends replayability.

BTW, I do want to apologize for my gruff attitude. It's been a lot of work so far, it's like having your children criticized. At this point this game is a huge chunk of my life energies.

If it's any consolation making games usually does involve a few broken eggs along the way. We've been trying hard to capture some of our internal arguments on video for the doc but they seem to have a way of drying up when the camera appears. I would say there are loudish arguments almost every day about something though (the art team is way mellower than the coders for some reason).

hopefully I'll see you at the indie megabooth on Sunday

Neutrino, I really appreciate your commitment to share your thoughts with the community.

Why not use very slow turn rates for orbital units? Just force them to keep moving and and it should look
like it's in orbit. That would be sufficient for me

With the introduction to orbitals, my big question is do you plan on some interplanetary units? Or is travel going to be done solely by rockets?

Second, I know its in Alpha so there is a lot of animation and work to be done and I really appreciate all the work you are doing, my question is: are you planning on have all the orbital units be launched from rockets or will they continue with the planet side creation and "hover" to orbit?

Yes, units than can move stuff between planets.

And yes we will be using the rocket to launch them. This is being worked on right now.

There has been a lot of talk about fuel on the sats to make the movement more expensive.
I have a suggestion about it maybe you should use the "ammo" bar to show fuel/energy of the sat so when you make a move order and start accelerating the energy drains,
and when the bar is empty you cannot move faster untill it recharges (which is a semibig power drain) this way you could have t1(needs ground energy support) and t2(need support but maybe has solarpanels as well) the sats have different movment profiles.

Neutrino, many of us know that you and Uber are doing your best and putting all your energy into this game. Many of us are sometimes over reacting, sometimes without even considering the relality of game dev behind the scene. I think many of us can figure out the complexity of developping such an ambitious game with a such small team. Involving the community is this process is not easy because also many of us are likely to request for unrealistic stuff. I think most of us will be ok to say that, not because our statements are sometimes unfriendly, exagerated, means that we do not trust you and we do not know how much efforts and energy you're all putting into this game. honestly, i do appreciate all the stuff (alpha, forum discussions) Uber has done so far.

You're doing it well and that's the most important. Thanks again
Did i mention how much tons of fun i'm having with PA alpha ? Yesterday evening, again, had an incredible 3v3. Yes this game is AWESOME

Please don't ever think this was a waste of time. It's cool and interesting to see you at work here and it definitely clarifies a whole lot of things.

It also made me more and more a proponent of the current system. A geosync shell gets (relatively) the most out of Orbit at -by far- the lowest cost. Seriously, it's cost/effectiveness is through the roof. I truly look forward to playing with orbit as a fully implemented system.

OFFTOPIC

On that note, ETA on transport ships/aircraft???

I think I can explain this (I made a long post on it about 15 pages ago).

Say we are using the current implementation of orbital units. Now think of creating a unit. So far you have defined every unit attribute except for whether it is a ground unit or an orbital unit (this is not how people think of units, bear with me). What does this choice actually affect?

• Whether the unit ignores terrain.
• Which weapon types are able to shoot at it.

I feel we already have enough terrain distinction with air, land and sea. I don't think the planets will become much harder to traverse so terrain isn't particularly important. The only significant distinction left is whether the unit can be shot at, as in orbital is basically a stark armour class system.

I know, I know, "What about what the individual units actually do?". Unit type access will be split along factory lines and unit roles will mostly be exclusive to either orbital or ground units. While there is nothing stopping us from having ground based long ranged mobile radar it would not fit with the theme. A stark armour system can be used to create new unit interactions but these are common in RTS games.

For me at least, the discontent with a 'fake' (I wish we had a better word for this) geostationary orbit system is it seems to just be an armour system which I've seen before. There are many ways to make the orbital layer more interesting, something we haven't seen before. In previous RTS games it has not been possible to create orbital gameplay anything like what could be done here. Basically it seems like a waste to settle with a floaty static system when something new could be done.

I'm fine with a fake orbital layer. I'm fine with anything.

What if instead of only geostationary, you set it up so that units could either move to a point, or orbit along a determined path? A traditional patrol system doesn't make much sense for orbital units. They could patrol by orbiting.

Sorry for all the re-edits. Didn't want to double post.

It's strange to me that Uber didn't know the fake orbital is the only right way to go back then.

https://forums.uberent.com/threads/possible-mass-disappointment-about-galactic-war.36689/
Uber was quite clear about GW but misinterpretations were popular at that time, so it wasn't clear enough for the crowd, and I was talking about debunking the misinterpretations.