It strikes me that orbital, and by this I primarily mean orbital transports, are too far up the tree. By the time you can reach it the game has more likely been decided than if you reached it sooner. You don't make a decision to expand to another planet, you make a decision to evacuate the one you're on because you're losing, and if you're not losing you don't go to another planet because there's no point. Currently there aren't interesting decision mechanics around it. I think by bringing it forward a tier you present the opportunity to make a early decision on whether to invest in a larger ground force or rapidly expand to another planet for the long-term resource bonus. This also makes multi-planetary battles far more likely. I realise that we're likely to see multi-planetary starts further down the line, but I want orbital transports to be more than something you do after you mop up your planet, it should be a key decision, and to maximise its use it should be a key decision available to you early on.
In general, Orbital currently is basically T3/T4 compared to the rest of the units and I think this is very damaging to the gameplay and needs to be addressed. Mike
I don't really think this is the case here, we're talking about the Overall Availability which is more or less directly tied to overall power level. we already have a sample of the power level of 'basic' and 'advanced' satellites and it's not looking all that good. It's not a matter of individual units really but the overall trend for the group of units. Mike
Make it easier??? Why make games longer at this small amount of players?? Most players rush straight there as is, drawing out their inevitable doom ...
Like all factories, going orbital should be a viable option at any point in the game. Right now going orbital (or all of T2 for that matter) is much less a strategic choice than one of economy. Building highly specialized units at the start of a game should not be discouraged solely by their price but rather by their limited strategic viability at that point in the game.
I know it's still in relatively early development but I think that orbital in it's current state spoils the fun of the game more often than not. Balancing will be ever so crucial here, in a recent three way FFA I had destroyed one player and was just at the cusp of killing the next when he managed to sneak his commander off the planet. You may well say "it was your own fault for letting that happen", but I did in fact have 5 or more orbital fighters (avengers) in place directly above his commander and orbital factory, for the purpose of preventing escape. All of them fired on the orbital transport in the brief instance that he was attackable but when the command is given to move to another planet/moon, the orbital transport switches into the celestial layer nearly instantly. What resulted was a chase across the solar system, with no possible avenue to end the game except to send radars, orbital fighters and laser platforms after him (or for him to concede defeat). My opponent had no resources left on the home planet and was simply in self preservation mode. Highlighting (in my opinion) one of the most important things that needs addressing: dramatically increasing the speed of orbital maneuvers. All notions of space travel realism need to be discarded at this point in favor of compelling gameplay. Having to pursue an already defeated opponent for 10-15 minutes across the solar system is no fun at all. Second to that, asteroid/moon smashing should not automatically cause planet wide annihilation. An asteroid smash should simply be the equivalent of a much larger nuclear explosion (dependent on the size of the asteroid) and might cause planet-wide destruction if the planet is small enough or asteroid is large enough etcetera. If your commander is under that though, then it is definitely gg for you. Yes... it is beta, but we were having more fun when we were restricted to a single planet and many of us are currently choosing to build single planet systems for that reason. I certainly hope that orbital doesn't just end up being the gimmick that it currently is.
This is how I currently view orbital. This game as it stands is a top class RTS, and still rather unique in its use of a rotating planet instead of a flat map and unique battle situations occur from this. Currently 1v1 games on smaller planets are the most fun and decisive. As you move up to larger systems and more players, The initial battles on the starting planets are brilliant, with a variety of tactics and army movements melting out of the current mix of units and build orders. But.... once that period is over it comes down to who built an orbital laser platform first (A unit I think should be removed perhaps?). Oribital layer is very clumsy and does not seem to match the furious pace of ground battles, It almost cheapens the hard work you put in on the ground. It is early days, and I originally bought alpha access because of the promised orbital. Now I fear it is going to muddy a potentially ground breaking RTS and most certainly a future E-sport. The idea regarding asteroid smashing is sound, I too do not think it should be a game ender. As I said before it almost cheapens the hard work you put in tactically in the first furious 20 mins.
I would say that currently orbital transporters are way too accessible. It'd be much better to make them more difficult... I don't know - perhaps add a new unit: Refueling station that will be required to send any unit onto another planet? Right now you can rush for orbital units, simply send unit to another planet (preferably rich in metal), build up, and... well: win the game unbothered by what happens on starting planet. As for orbital laser - I don't see much of a problem with it. There's so many ways to counter it that it's hard to believe.
I think orbital will have it's place, it just needs some major balancing. First off, the time it takes to move units between planets needs to be drastically reduced. This might be as simple as making higher mass planets in the map generator. Increasing the mass of the sun would help too. Also we could use higher delta V's for object that travel between orbits. Some kind of teleportation system (probably gate based) is also a must. Ground based orbital defenses need to be better, maybe a missile based orbital defense system, and a nerf to the orbital laser and advanced radar would be good. I do agree that the orbital crazyness, while great for promotion of the game, should only supplement the ground battles, not dominate them after a certain period of time. The thing that really makes this game unique and awesome is the fact that it is an RTS on a sphere. It really is an entirely new way of thinking about an RTS, which I think could be very popular. Edit: Ohh, and Avengers should just be removed from the game.
As I said in my initial post I'm primarily concerned with the availability of orbital transports. I believe the entire layer will receive some rebalancing and repurposing so things like the dominance of lasers etc. doesn't bother me. I'm worried more about the relevance of multiple planet scenarios. Does anyone have an example of a game where a player who wasn't winning on the first planet went on to win due to expanding to another one? My concern is that because orbital is so late this simply isn't possible. By the point you have orbital you're committed to the war on that planet and the war is likely already going in your favour (so you have no reason to leave), or it's not, by which point leaving doesn't help because you're too far behind in resources to be able to make up the ground and committing to orbital is removing resources you need to be investing in the fight on this planet. But I don't think it will become more interesting. It will be a case of clearing a planet and moving on. I want there to be more to it than that. Going early orbital should be like an early expansion in Starcraft 2, a risky move made for the long game. Likewise, players should be factoring in the richness of the planet they're on verses the other planets in the system. On a planet with 56 metal spots but there's one with 107? You probably want an early presence there. I wonder if advanced metal extractors shouldn't just be binned to necessitate this kind of expansion. Whether planet wide annihilation is the way to go I'm not sure, but they do need to be devastating enough to ensure that asteroids are fought over. With the way bases can be spread out is a one-hit large nuke really going to be worth the bother? Also, I think planetary annihilation is necessary to keep game times down in a multi-planetary battle. The fact that asteroid smashes are seen as a game ender is indicative of how useless multiple planets are right now which plays into my concerns over orbital transports. I think the asteroid should probably render the planet unusable for the game to prevent endless re-expansions which can no longer be countered by non-existent asteroids and to keep game times down. Orbital transports and multi-planetary expansion being relevant would prevent it being a game ender because you shouldn't have every player on one world with other worlds only being used to prolong losing fights. No, that's not accessible, that's an all-in strategy. Making them accessible would counter this by encouraging other players to have their own troops ready to oppose you on the new world. Right now they probably won't because to do so they'd have had to go all-in to, meaning they're no longer challenging for the first world. What I'm unsure of is how do you overcome the advantage of first player to land? In theory whoever arrives on a planet first should always win that planet.
Finally some people who see it as I do!!!! Orbital should be further from grasp!!!! No you usually lose if you hit orbital first it just takes six hours because of time it takes to travel space. Usually first up rush orbital gets steam rolled by my units killing their economy so they essentially start over on a new planet. I only get laser sniped if i fail in my regular duties of the immediate umbrella. Which has only happened once I might boast granted we're still missing units here but I still say it's way to accessible... @yrrep..... so just eliminate our tiers and make everything easy quick build????? The reason you stay t1 to begin with is because of price..... you have to be economically prepared to go to higher tech in any era. That's the order of things, that's the distinct advantage over t2 that it has, otherwise it would be immediate nuke or orbital with comm, five minute games
Seeing as there is already a 2d map in space. They could add space battles. Ability to build space ships that can fight in space navy style. Issue is you can start to overload the game, forcing played to fight on too many fronts will make it a less fluid and fun game IMO.
They won't be adding pure space battles. It was already said during initial kickstarter campaign. Not to mention now. PA isn't Homeworld nor wants to be it.
