POLL: Fixing Orbital by Changing Orbital Combat

I chose the TL;DR, Get a job etc. option, because there was such option, and it was far too tempting, but otherwise, I agree with you.

I usually appreciate the idea of changing a certain mechanic, however I feel this comes out way to early for me to truly believe orbital combat needs to be "fixed".

I only played one game with orbital units and one game only. It is fairly hard to say that the whole orbital structure needs to be thrown out and a new one put in its place after one game.

I would give this patch some time to breath before we throw the hard work of scathis and his team under the bus considering the reworking they have done to orbital in a first pass of balance.

It doesn't need to but there sure is a lot of overlap between air and orbital at the moment - ambiguity intended. And this discussion is less about balance than design and thus should be allowed to propose more radical solutions.

One way to push the 'suicide units' concept in the orbital war is to see it as something of a missile war. We've heard that there will be different types of missiles that can be built and launched from the silo, and it has been proposed that they could be fired into space, so why not combine the two ideas? Think one or more (I think more could be justified, for specialisation) large units , be they quite tanky or quite fragile (or a mixture of both), that build a broad spread of different missiles, either like the nuke silo, or like factories build bomb bots, or somewhere in between. These 'missiles' might be true suicide units, or they might be highly disposable fighters that only get a one-way interplanetary ticket. They might be something else entirely, be it EMP weapons or combat repair bots. Crucially, some would interact with the ground. Furthermore, ground launchers and silos could launch a limited selection of these missiles, and different ones besides. The orbital fighter would probably be rendered redundant and hence removed, and that's fine. Meanwhile, the Anchor's role could be slightly redefined, so that it could defend against some of these missile types, but not others, still acting as the first step of defence but not an insurmountable obstacle. Other factory like units in orbit would then fit better with this grand scheme.

(Yes, I'm aware I'm starting to sound like that guy at some neighbourhood soiree who works in agricultural sales and will just not shut up about the benefits of various types of fertiliser, but so be it, I like the idea of orbital factories immensely.)

I'm not OK with removing orbital combat entirely, and I feel like a suicide unit would just become the new avenger. Spam them until you dominate orbital.

Paper - Rock - Scissors doesn't build a perfect RTS, but it's a whole lot better than a single unit spam. If we introduced a third orbital unit that's strong vs anchors but weak vs orbital fighters we would atleast have a dynamic battle that can swing due to changing your build priority instead of raw eco-vs-eco until someone breaks through.

I would also like to see the avengers, anchors, and the hypothetical new unit have additional roles and value that extend beyond Orbital dominance, while allowing our Orbit to Ground roles to influence orbital combat.

Potential examples would be:

• Avengers can shoot down high altitude tactical missiles (anti-Catapult).
• Anchors can build/fire anti-nukes.
• Laser Satellites could roll sideways and act as a slow moving, slow firing, anti-anchor artillery.
• Radar Satellites provide radar coverage for orbital allowing orbital units to fire beyond their LOS. Avengers could be anti-anchor when paired with a Radar Satellite.
• A new missile based Anti-Anchor unit could also fire AA missiles down into the atmosphere.
• etc...

These are just brain stormed ideas. I'm not advocating all of them, or saying they are the only way. The goal is to simply mix up the combat to be more dynamic and more interesting than "who can make more avengers". If they have more ways to interact the battle is more than just a unit spam, and if we have more roles than pure "Avenger vs Avenger" then the units still have value before and after orbital dominance is secured.

Honestly, while I can certainly see valid points on both sides of whether or not there should be combat in the Orbital layer, I think that's a bit of a red herring because there will always be some form of conflict related to orbital stuff, even if its not dealing directly with lasers and missiles.

I think we should be focused more so on the specifics of the combat/conflict that's going on and currently I think the biggest/most fundamental issue is simply that Orbital combat is the same as Air combat, as the popular term went back when orbital was still new, "Air 2.0".

Ideally I'd like to see orbitals play SOME role, it's doesn't have to be any more complicated than the method used to create systems in the Editor.

Barring that we really need to look for ways to make it unique from the other layers while still allowing for interplay with the other layers.

Mike

I'm a big fan of making "orbital units" into "celestial units" with orbit radius effecting the speed of the unit. Real satellites can only use geosynchronous orbit around the equator, and they certainly never hover above the north pole.

True, but i'm not advocating separation at all i'm advocating integration, or multiculturalism but for units. Each of the orbital units has its clear role, and orbital fighters in the scenario where air can hit some/all orbital have the very clear use of being the first wave in establishing a beachhead since they can travel between worlds and fighters can not, and there does need to be something to fill this role. Anchor's operating AA on high but are vulnerable to the superior range(?) or T2 fighters, and I got to say i really like the idea a cople of posts up where laser-sats can turn and hit oribital structures like anchors, that would help too and the additional aa method is needed as well judging by a number of threads.

Yeah planetary war is indeed a tricky topic, i have not played this game that mutch, but with every patch i get more exited and play more and more. The orbital fighting thing is a compleet let down for me and very one dimensional, as soon as it happends i rather forfeit then spent another hour because i find it boring. In my humble and respectful opinion i think you shouldn't be able to to send your commander at a certen size planet, or astroid since that is so easely put full of ground and orbital defenses. Commanders should only be send too larger planets + a restriction to how many orbital fighters, platforms and lazers you can have will also help with this problem i think.

Just as a point of note; Spaceships weren't in the original Kickstarter video because orbital units were a stretch goal.

Yes, but what is the relevance? I'm not seeing it unfortunately. I know you wouldn't try and use that as some kind of excuse right? That'd be silly! ;p

Mike

Personally I can't wait until I can load up my unit cannons with Vanguards and blap them at my enemys base.

He is refering to the Original poster regarding this i think

Okay, but hasn't one of the lines from Uber been that "Surface Combat" is one of he primary foo uses of PA? At that stage the idea that orbital acts as a support/extension of existing layers instead of trying to copy he air layer with a few unique features tacked on seems kinda on opus from my perspective and has been one of the biggest talking a points for me regarding orbital aside from orbits themselves.

Mike

What if we had a T2 anti-satellite air unit?

I think orbital needs to be there.

Right now most people's problem I think is that orbital acts as too much of a barrier to invasions, and doesn't interact enough with ground.

I've said it before but I might as well say it again, I'm all for an advanced missile structure that shoots at orbital and can take out avengers and the like. This would help with orbital interaction and reduce the usefulness of death-ball building.

Before you scream at me saying "that makes no sense, that'll just make it worse!" bear with me.

We need a way to transfer land units between planets that does not interact in any significant way while passing through the orbital layer. *cough*unit cannon*cough*

By not making it a requirement, and in fact making it very dangerous, to take an orbital layer before launching an invasion, it will encourage ground combat instead, hence using an orbital death-ball makes no sense unless you already have some of your own ground based anti-orbital to support it.


So please people, lets give Uber a chance to actually flesh out invasion before we start talking craziness like removing the orbital layer/orbital combat completely.

while I agree with your opening statement : that extremes brought us to this, you follow up with an extreme proposal

have you given this a read? https://forums.uberent.com/threads/poll-fixing-orbital-by-changing-orbital-combat.56669/#post-875710

What's extreme? Using orbital as a support layer with a priority on ensuring conflict between worlds? Keeping the primary focus on ground battles where lots of things can happen and there's plenty of things to blow up? I hope I'm not out of line by saying those things are kinda sorta really important.

The orbital layer should be drawing more attention to the best arenas of the game. So when you're trying to invade a world is your focus on storming the world, or is all the effort spent on fighting over his orbit? The latter's even worse than having no orbit at all.

Those saying that the Unit Cannon will solve everything:
The Unit Cannon relies upon shared orbit, and being built on a small moon with low gravity.
In the situation I outlined in my OP, we did not share orbits but were on two separate worlds. We therefore had no way of invading beyond making Orbital Fighters in huge numbers (as we each had planetary economies).
What's needed is some way to use the big economic surpluses late game whilst simultaneously actually invading the surface of an enemy planet.

I am interested in the diversification of Orbital in the ways that it can interact with the ground. There have been some good suggestions in this thread.
My primary issue is that late-game in separate orbits turns into an Orbital Fighter/Anchor spamming contest, and even if you win Orbital you have no way of mounting a large-scale invasion.
Furthermore, if we did have an Orbital Transport, it would need some "Flak" like means of defending itself, or would be instantly destroyed by my 1000 Orbital Fighters.
My solution to this hypothetical was to remove Orbital Fighters/Anchors as they are currently the only means of planetary invasion, and yet simultaneously do not affect the ground.

To those who say they've only played one game with orbital:
I haven't.
Late-game interplanetary stalemates are still a thing in this patch, as they were in the last.

I think this is what this is referring to.
That's fair. But the rest of the combat is on the surface, and Orbital behaving like Spaceships is wrong because they're in Orbit of the planet we want to invade. If they interact with the planet more and enable invasions then we wont have games ending in me building 50+ Orbital Factories and only churning out Orbital Fighters/Fabbers making Anchors.

The trouble is that Fighters/Anchors simultaneously deny a solution, because they make late-game a spamming contest which kills everything else in Orbit.
Heres another idea for ending stalemates, instead of a transport:

• Orbital Teleporter.
  • Gateways, in Orbit of both worlds, that beam up and down Aircraft (which can transport/carry units).
  • Problem: 1000 Orbital Fighters would make short work of it. Thus Surface Combat is denied.
    • Why not build 1000 Orbital Fighters of my own?
      • Long Travel times.
      • Long build times.
      • Not as engaging as interacting with terrain. Watching tanks going around mountains and valleys is much prettier than watching Orbital Fighters drift towards each other. I'm sorry that this is the case, at least for me. It's partly because Orbital is tied to a shell around the planet - you can't have engaging Star Wars dogfights, and if you did you'd have even more people wondering what the difference was between Orbital and Air.

I like the ways in which Orbital interacts with the Surface. It should do more of that, and less combat within itself, otherwise it's at least going to need this:

But greater differentiation is key if we're going to avoid spamming contests.

Preferably though, there would be a greater emphasis on 'Micro' tactics in Orbital, rather than building huge numbers of units for combat in Orbit, as this draws our attention from the Surface... I know that this is a macro game, and I love that. But Orbital Fighter/Anchor deathballs are killing late-game with lag, long travel times and stalemates. And by Micro I mean giant death machines/Teleporters in Orbit, raining destruction down on the surface.

In this scenario we would use Umbrellas to take down Orbital, and Orbital Lasers to assault the ground.. Orbital needs to interact with the Ground as its primary source of combat, in order to tie early-game and bases to late-game invasions.
Orbital Teleporter which hoovers up Air (and possibly Missiles, thinking about smaller bodies covered in Flak/Umbrellas here) on one planet and shoots them out on another. This means your units early-game aren't relying on you building a Teleporter on the surface. You can pick them up and fire them out once the Teleporter reaches another planet.

The orbital teleporter is the same as my proposed starport in all but name - and I thus concur with your assessment.
Orbital should link the planetary theaters, not separate them.