In PA planets and space play an important role, therefore orbital units are one of the highlights of the game, while being harder to pull off respect to other "classic" unit types because they are pretty much a novelty. Naturally I know that the devs have already their own plans and what we can play with in the beta is WIP, but I thought that having a big thread with different ideas could be a great source of inspiration. Enough with the talking, let's start. First, much like in the kickstarter, putting stuff around a planet would need two buildings: -the missile silo -the orbital factory the first would make an "empty" rocket, wich could be loaded with units produced by the orbital factory. This will help the abuse of the landers as hyperfast escape pods (you need to protect a loaded rocket to do that), but it could also serve to differentiate gameplay between different celestial bodies. I'll get there in a moment, but first here is a quick draft of the possible orbital units: -orbital cruiser: visually a mix of ship and a plane (to give a feeling of space unit, without making it as big as a star wars battleship) capable of attacking other orbital units and shoots missiles to planets that are orbiting around the planet it's on. -orbital laser: to change it a bit, it should need the sun to attack, and have a lower damage output per second. -lander: how it is now, basically -orbital radar: it would give sight of units in a big radius araund it -solar array: it should work only if it sees the sun, and have lower output if it is on a far away planet. On the department of energy I have a pair of other ideas if different sources get implemented like suggested in the new units thread. -nuclear warhead: with a missile silo, the nuclear bomb could be moved to the orbital units section. It would give PA's nuke it's own "flavour" and make it less a binary game of nukes and anti-nukes system. -orbital engenieer: to repair your orbital units All those units when produced on the surface by the factory and would be in a "packaged" state, they could move slowly around without doing anything, except for the lander that can catch another unit. After you launch them in orbit they became functional: for example you can make the nuke detonate with a button, and it would fall down on your enemies head, and a nuke could be intercepted both with anti-orbital ground systems (the nuke would still go off in orbit, damaging any units that an inconsiderate enemy has left around), or if you spot it you can sacriface a cruiser to intercept it. Solar arrays could be made orbit around the planet to follow the sun if you are confident that no enemy will destroy them and so on. You can also send them to other planets much like now, or even put in orbit in outer space around the sun. The trick is that those units get damaged by the solar wind when they are away from a planet. In a travel it would be neglegible, but if you want to park a solar panel in an orbit near the sun to max out your energy rates, or a radar to see if the enemy is moving units in space (or even your commander), you would have to include an engenieer in an orbit near them. So if a troll parks his commander in an orbit when it has been pratically defeated it's going down sooner or later. Or you could send a nuke and make it explode near them Your choiche! Last, talking planets, small ones would have a good advantage: orbital units can lift off without a missile from them, only with an energy cost proportional to the mass of the planet. Also, you can build the catapult that was in the trailer to send bots on the planet you're orbiting around. This could be particularly fun if you will be able to use halley engines to put an asteroids around a planet, not only to crash them into it. A last word for gas giants: only orbital units can "land" on them, as there is not any land! But the factories must be built on land, so the moons around it will play a very important role. Combine them with the abilities of the cruiser and you have pretyy intense battles! I'm going to get my launch now, I'll add more different and "less likely" stuff tonight. You're encouraged to give criticism! Off topic: I got a captcha that is "half three"...
Some ideas here that I like: solar-related units actually sensitive to the sun's position (angle, distance, etc.) orbital units allowed to orbit the sun (e.g. not just around planets, moons, etc.) but with some cost (e.g. fatigue) to balance the advantage of them being relatively safe from attack nuke-from-space versus nuke-from-ground being able to intercept nukes and have atmospheric or even orbital nuke explosions (that last one could be coupled with an idea from another thread suggesting having "fire" or "napalm"-like weaponry that will blanket the ground with flaming stuff for a certain time period... an atmospheric nuke detonation that rained fire down onto the planet would be ... spectacular) I have to admit I don't like the idea of having to build two fabs to do something orbital: an orbital factors and a rocket factory. Even if the answer is a double-difficult-to-build single-fab structure, it just seems silly to force players to build both for either of them to be useful, and then manage the interactions between them.
I really like the idea of having asteroid belts in planetary systems. Perhaps an SCV or drone like unit that collects small asteroids and hauls them to a space based smelter I think "aircraft" should not be able to function on planets without an atmosphere. Sometimes we can't use ships, sometimes you can't use aircraft. Orbital Defensive platforms. orbital buildings that protect the planet from exta-planetary attacks like nukes or ships. Space based manufacturing for space ships (probably a tier 2 tech item). (more to come)
I agree with the idea of this thread. I would love for some sort of rocket factory, that then needed a loading system into a seperate laucher platform, with a choice of warheads and delivery angles/methods. Taking into account sun position in regards to orbital solar platforms would be nice, and attrition for placing them around the sun sounds great, high return (well reliable return) for attrition is great. It would help balance out the power, as currently once I have an obrital solar array, my power issues are gone, just keep pumping them out as you need. I also like the idea of intercepting a nuke will trigger it anyway, but I think a fine balance needs to be reached.
It's not a unit thing..But I've love a slider to turn the orbit speed of planets down (as a whole, not individually). OR even have them stationary I think it would allow for more artistic systems without the problem of overlapping orbits (planets with slightly different orbit distances, which causes them to go through each other).
a few ideas while playing a game: 1: space fighter (already in game) 2: space cruiser, effective strength of 3-4 laser sats, can target ground, but is weak to fighters 3: space destroyer, effective strength of 4-5 fighters, can target space units only, and is slower then a fighter 4: space battleship, is the 'artillery' of the space race, can fire shells at faraway planets, however can not aim at all, so the shells will land on random points of the planet in question, cannot defend itself from fighters, can target cruisers. 5: sun blocker, a large sphere shaped object that when targetting a planet, will position itself between the planet and the sun. this kills all vegetation, and prevents energy from being generated on the planet in question. no weapons at all. 6: Icarus Missle System: space based platform that will orbit the sun. can deploy missles that can intercept slower moving objects like asteroids and sunblockers. no weapons on it's own, and cannot be in gravity well of planet. 7: sun amplifier, identical to the the sun blocker, but does the opposite. will double energy production on planet in question... however having the power of the sun coming down full force on a planet is sure to have dire consequences... any unit, structure, or satellite caught in daytime of affected planet will slowly lose health, constantly, until it dies. power generating units (generators and commanders) are immune due to being built to 'withstand' temps created when producing power. 8: Space Nullifier, space based platform, this unique structure will actually slow any object smaller then an asteroid that is in a (very) large area around it. satellites unaffected. 9: Prometheus Sattelite, an experimental world terraforming satelite. when completed, it can be launched at a planet that has been destroyed by an asteroid, to return it to it's original state when the game began. however, this process takes a LONG time to complete (like, at a bare minimum, at least 10 minutes, more likely 30) and is vulnerable while doing so. if destroyed, however, the progress is not lost, and can be picked up again with another. 10: Battle Station, don't have enough asteroids in the system to fling at each other any more? no problem... make your own! this project starts as a space based platform, but when completed, turns into a small metal asteroid that acts like any other normal asteroid. it does, however, take 2x as much health though, on account of it being metal, and not rock.
