Hiya, Names kromius. Ive had access to PA since mid Alpha but have been too busy to play a decent game(Yay school and work) but when beta came out i made sure to try out a game and well blow up a planet. However when i got up to the orbital launch and launched the podthingamajig to go out and plant some engines on a moon, I found that it took nearly 10 mins just for the pod to get there.(No Lag) Now I know its Beta and this aint representative of the release but I would still like it if the travel was made faster. the engines for the planet to move(aka how fast the moon goes to hit the planet) dont have to change just getting to the new planet. I also think this would be better for testing as well. The game has a good sized focus on interplanetary game play right? lets not make it a long waiting game just to move between them please. Other than that, its looking good so keep up the good work.
Games like this have always been about scale, and for that reason I think long travel times to distant planets is really awesome. It's completely avoidable if you don't like it, too - just make a system where all planets are in very close orbits so it only takes a couple of minutes to get between them. I hear later on things like teleporters may be added, which at least means once you've established yourself on a distant planet you'll be able to move back and forth instantly. Perhaps there will also be super high-tech transports with space-bending technology to get to distant planets faster, but I still think it's important that the planetary systems feel BIG. This game is all about the epic scale.
Indeed, it really helps to keep the scale of the game feeling rather epic, and it adds a bit of an opportunity cost to move an important unit like the commander planet to planet. As for planetary invasion, well we'll end up with more options so it shouldn't always be slow to move between planets. Sure it might be a bit slow to build up your econ on that little moon and move it into orbit around the enemy base, but now you're raining down units with unit launchers as they roll off the production line! It will be good if we get bigger interplanetary transports that can carry multiple units too ImO. Or as I've seen suggested somewhere else on the forums a kind of assault rocket that provides multiple units with a one-way ticket to an enemy controlled planet.
