Orbital invasions.

Well somebody need to teach those players not to play broken scenarios I guess.

It doesnt matter if it 1v1 or 10v10, if a team leaves before you, you need to hurry up and get there before you can't attack them. You normally get you commander under 2 fully loaded anti nukes by 25 mins?

Well this thread isn't about orbital invasions at all.

Its orbital prevention.

It's about building a radar and knowing what your enemy is doing other than complaining that you cant invade his planet. It's about preventing him the luxury of building a planet full of catapults or bombers before you notice he is gone. This is not the games fault.

Of course there should be better ways to do it if for some reason you are fighting another player and didn't get the chance to build an orbital radar. I wasn't talking about ways to make the game better, but ways to improve peoples understanding of how it should be played as of now.

You could probably replace the entire post with just that.

Well currently is still a really bad mechanic.

If the only way to play with them, is to prevent your enemy from getting there first, then it is flat out a bad mechanic.


You should not be calling out most of the community as bad players because you don't mind using a bad and broken game mechanic.

We all are bad players. What the best do now will be nooby in a year. I hate orbital and never play it, but was practising for the 2v2 tourney so thought I would see what the fuss is. I just dont think it is as bad as everyone is making out.

The bad part about orbital is selecting it.

Surely the whole point of a tactical game, such as this, is to out manoeuvre your opponent. Does this not include being aware of your opponent's position and activity at all times? Yes, orbital is kind of broken at the moment, but I agree with Clopse in that people seem to be moaning about it more than is entirely necessary. There ARE tools for successfully invading planets, given that you act within a reasonable time frame of someone else trying the same thing, which is what he is trying to emphasise.

Well sure, preventative measures are always better then actually having to tackle the issue.

The problem is tackling the issue when it's already too late to act.

Ok, maybe not. But you have to consider that the game has different stages. You got early game which consist of expanding and harrassing. Mid game which is probably tier 2. And late game orbital.
Even if you try and prevent getting into lategame by getting early scout on the other planet and nuke it before he builds up.

But you have to admit that the late stages of the game(orbital and other planets) is not polished or seems unfinished/lacking. You cant say that avoiding it is solving it, that is not right to do, and yes, you are trying to avoid it when you trying to deny him expanding on the other planet.

I don't like that the icon pop is the same that's applied to land units. It's not logical since contrary to the land units at the same angle beyond the horizon, the unit can still be in sight (since atmosphere is transparent) it's icon should sill be visible at that stage.

And the PA icons for orbital don't stand out in the least.

I'm not going to comment on where you can find orbital icons that DO...

Once the component parts are balanced, I can't see a problem with orbital. Anchors, avengers, astreus drops, teleporters, SSX lasers, interplanetary nukes. This is an assortment of tools that can be used to successfully invade a planet.

with admitable clunkyness...

what does alt f4 do

XD did anyone just tell you to do that in a PA match?

not yet

just googled it though. it closes the window right?

ye it's the ultimate "terminate this app" shortcut. no "are you sure you want to quit?" or "save progress?" messages will be displayed.

used to be a running Joke in FaF and GpGnet, but in PA I don't really see the point since you can just reconnect.

people would ask something, E.G. : "how do I open up the connectivity window?"
And people would answer "I don't know but did you try this awesome hotkey? alt-f4, if you press them you get instant full bars of eco and a free experimental."

I have tried to play a bunch of 5v5 shared teams on orbital focused maps and I think orbital gameplay is not what players in gneral are used to as in no other game has this really been done. It's not a very big leap from this to concluding that the majority of the players don't know what they are doing (you get to experince an early meta instead of a game that is researched into boredom).

Annihilations make it questionable to add on more eggs into the same basket. It's also hard to gear up to orbital settlement fights as I often need I would really want to be ecoing before lashing out if the map was flat. Orbital settlements fights are also pretty contained fights, if you clear a moon you clear it but it is harder to carry on that momentum to the home world.

If players in flat maps would not leave within 100 units of their starting position for 40 minutes and then only push out, this would result in a widely different expansion mechanics. If in this kind of situation base sieging would be boring or numbers game or expansion impossible the problem might not be what happens in that period but that the player don't stick their foot out for 40 minutes. In such a situation the first ones that do stick their foot out "fix" the situation by not letting their foolishness to spoil their game. Similarly orbital expansion is important and forfeiting planets without a serious fight might be a very foolish thing to do. If we have a player that somewhat butches his eco in order to get more planets do we automatically know that such an exhange is bad? What if it is neccesary?

There is also a game phase that with enough planets annihilating a couple doesn't really close the game. In these kinds of games it's relatively more easy to not lose the orbital units meanwhile ground eco is bound to be lost. If you are properly contesting the aquiral of smasher, either you get the decisive fighting happen before any sieges happen or you get smashers on both sides. Then the value of fortified planets is less appealing, you are way better off to bring a planet from minor development to medium development, capture a planet or colonise a new one.