Are Orbital Fighters Over the Top?

Orbital units in their current form are not good imo. They are hard to distinguish at a glance, and there is already a lot to keep a watch on with the multiple planets and asteroids and such. At the very least they need a camera layer of their own, where the units down on the ground are not visible and all you see is anything that is flying around in orbit.

Well this is troubling;

From the Build Tracker Thread, seems the Orbital fighter might actually be staying around.

Mike

I think we need ground to orbital flak for the fighters. Make a no-fly zone over your base. Otherwise they can just camp your orbital launcher, which is clearly stupid. There's no counter other than fighting fire with fire. It's pretty dumb.

Umbrellas kill them efficiently

Do they? I thought they weren't intended to hit them? If that's the case, then never mind.

So......lets make it More like Air 2.0 then?????

No thanks, it's bad enough already.

Mike

I don't understand the complaint. They are always going to behave like air 2.0. Unless they were more navy-like, in which case they would seem like navy 2.0. If they are slow moving missile defence platforms, people will still use them like fighters. It's unavoidable.

I thought the complaint was that there is no counter other than "more fighters". (I'm sure I saw Uber say Umbrellas weren't supposed to be able to hit them)

Obviously the ideal situation is to get orbital movement, but we know that was apparently never the plan so we gotta make do with what we got, but Air 2.0 is far from the best option in that regard. The Whole Promise of Orbital was supposed to be satellites, so why do we need an Orbital Fighter? why can't something unique be done like my Hunter Killer idea from earlier in the thread?

Mike

It's a fireship. Instead of air 2.0, you want Pre-19th Century Age of Sail 2.0.

Edit: I get what you're saying. But all it's really doing is moving the era back two-hundred years.

Edit 2: That's not how you use epoch.

Orbital fighters may not be a bad thing once all orbital stuff is fleshed out...

But as has been mentioned, we need a counter for fighters other than fighters, and a means of invading a planet without a fighter deathball to counter your opponents fighter deathball. I suspect the teleporter/unit cannon will fit this role but we'll have to wait and see.

Well, they kill them. I don't know about "efficiently". Umbrellas are crazy expensive.

I think I like this idea. The obvious control structure would be the Orbital Launcher itself. No Orbital Launcher? You lose control of your orbitals. They're still there and still yours and still working on their list of orders but you can't give them any new orders.

We could make it into a separate structure (Orbital and Deep Space Radar = orbital control?) but I feel that's less intuitive ("U GUYZ Y CANT I CONTROL MY SPACE STUFF").

If we can bring orbital down to the costs and effects of other T2 units, then we can decrease the cost of the Umbrella as well.

And make the hole process easier.

A counter to orbital units would be things like radar jammers, cloak gemerators and fog of war emitters.
Along with other proposed things like teleporters and unit cannons. You could also make orbital fighters much more expensive too/require fuel.

You send a unit to another planet, along with a radar jammer and cloak generator, the radar jammer means you don't get detected by the fighter screen and the cloak generator means you can build covert bases.

Hi,

I kinda like the concept of orbital fighters, but I do agree that they need a bit of rebalancing. Of course I always felt that something bigger is needed in the interplanetary transport department, such as a troop barge or a mass lander that has a chance of punching it's way into the orbit of a heavily fortified planet, and popping out enough units for a bridgehead, as currently the pickings are quite slim.

I think it's all about being able to counter even a LOT of units of a single type. On the ground, each unit can be countered with something, even if they're en masse. Be that Dox or Leveller swarms, or a bunch of catapults piled up together.

We just need to see what the Dev team cook up against the orbital fighter, rock paper scissors style.

Rock-Paper-Scissors is the last refuge of the incompetent.

Surely we can get more interesting gameplay out of the wealth of possibilities that is orbital gameplay than RPS.

As mentioned above, maybe a satellite uplink building that lets you issue commands to units in orbit.

Make it so that you need the building to control the units. If the building gets destroyed, then your units in orbit go into an autonomous mode. In other words, they can defend them self if attacked, but you have no movement or targeting controls.

If you fly a buch of orbital units to another planet, then they go into autonomous mode as soon as they reach the planet, until you build an uplink building on the surface, and regain control of them from that planet. Once you have an uplink on both planets, then you can fly your orbitals willy-nilly (that a word..?) between the planets.

For spy satellites, if your uplink building is destroyed, then you lose the info feed that they supply, but at the same time, they still cost you resources to run.

You could also make the uplink building drain a fair amount of energy to keep active...making it reliant on 2 or 3 advanced power plants. If your power reserves fall below say 33% then, have the Uplink automatically shut down and *poof* there goes ya orbital control until you re-establish power.

Isn't Navy just Ground 2.0 with bigger and slower units?

Navy is to Ground what Obital is to Air.
Difference: Ground and Water ; In atmosfeer(Gas), Above atmosfeer(Void).

If there is a "plane" that can fly realy high, you create "AA" that can shoot realy high.
(Umberella vs Orbital fighter)

The real difference between Air and Orbital is that Air has a higher interaction with ground. Orbital isn't finnished and is very 1 dimensional (only orbital fighters). Maybe with some defence platforms (turrets), an orbital factory and some other units Orbital can be a unique feature on it's self.

It might serve as a late game, game changer. When both bases have enough anti nukes and unit blobs get nuked instead. If orbital doesn't work there are always some innocent moons flying around.

I was just thinking. They need much more units in general added to the game to fix this problem.

1) Orbital fighter, in the form of an orbital layer only ship that can travel from planet to planet and is generally faster moving than regular orbitals, and can shoot down other orbitals with about 5 shots taken in 10 seconds (dps wise). Cost could be reduced to basic t2 and built from orbital launcher.
2) High Altitude Fighters, built from t2 air, which can't leave planet can make short passes into the orbital layer to hit targets, firing one time when it sweeps into the orbital layer, taking 4 shots to kill anything, and dying to an orbital fighter in 2 shots. Can also do standard anti air.
3) Anti Orbital weapons platform, unlike orbital fighter which moves at above-normal orbital speed, moves at the sluggish standard satellite speed, but shoots the same rounds as the orbital fighter in any 360 direction against other orbitals at twice the rate of fire (5 shots kill, fired within 5 seconds). Maybe even tankier health and definitely higher cost like t3. This unit wouldn't do well attempting to move in to attack orbital fighters, but it would defend sattelites better than orbital fighters.
4) Ground Radar, for scanning the ground with radar, basic radar range though, t2 expensive.
5) Ground-to-space radar, for scanning orbital layer above, t2 expensive but doesn't require orbital launcher. Can also see orbital transitions (anything traveling between planets), and UI should warn you when one of these sees enemy transitions when previously there were none (so you have warning that the enemy is "out there somewhere).
6) Nukes should hit orbital. Only kills the one unit it collides with, no splash. Cost acceptable on this issue.
7) Nukes should be able to do the orbital transition like orbitals do, and by doing so they must fly around their "target planet" once so there should be plenty of opportunity for it to fly over antinukes.
8) There should obviously be a unit cannon for a strictly "non orbital" planet transfer. Maybe you should be able to simply move any "bots" to it and fire it at a certain rate of fire, something that with multiple cannons could send swarms onto other planets but a single one could still send units to a planet in similar style to a single transport.
9) Orbital transports, load them up with similar "unit cannon" capatable units, however many the unit cannon can fire during the time of the trip, and let it orbital transition to another planet and land. Orbital launcher version of "unit cannon"
10) Umbrella should have low range, no orbital vision, but hitscan, high damage, and fast locking, and slow rate of fire. This way, what it pecks, dies.
11) A wider area targeting, fast locking, faster firing, really low damage, ground to orbital artillery cannon. Constantly fires at orbitals but only brings one down after a minute of fire (even sluggish orbitals have a chance to escape out of it's range). So basically, pressure damage, harassment damage, not lethal damage.
12) An orbital-to-ground version of both ground-to-orbitals, the orbital laser doing it's usual thing, maybe make it to where if you move it in a line over top of visible ground targets that it automatically fires once it's over top so it can make a smooth line of destruction.
13) The other orbital-to-ground version of the ground-to-orbital, the orbital-to-ground artillery platform. Does really low damage, takes a minute to kill standard health units (possible to even repair faster than it damages?), but fast fire rate and fires over it's wider range a little at everything. Think hyperion satellite in borderlands 2. Again, harassment damage, pressure damage, not lethal damage.
14) If there isn't something to repair orbitals, they should really have slow health regen when out of combat.

There, there is a short roster of orbital-intereacting units for every type of terrain, all using "things in the game already" so most of it could be probably implemented the second they enter a model and a configuration file and toss them in. Honestly, when some form of the above comes, if not the exact vision then something strategically interactive and diverse, then the game will appear to function with or without orbital.

Bonus question: Why does the "scout" class units shoot again? Would be better if they were cheaper and unarmed. The gun they have belongs on orbital-to-ground-offense and ground-to-orbital-defense cheap-tier pressure-harassment type artillery.

Fun fact: I haven't played an online match of PA in over a month, and this certaintly isn't making me want to come back.

I play sporadically with other Realm members, or when coerced with the promise of mead. I regret the decision to do so...
every single time.
Even alcohol can't make this game enjoyable.

I play Total Annihilation regularly. Every game ends in laughter; no alcohol required. We also have discussions over what each player could have done differently and what mechanics we need to emulate in PA when we get the chance to mod it.