Interplanetary Space Battles (Orbital Space Battles) *not in-between planets but on the orbit layer

yea your also right but it shouldn't require any interface change. i agree that since they have the potential of being over kill they should be expensive and take a bit of time to build *not as long as halley's but up there* and their size should be maybe like 2 - 3 x this size of navel ships. meaning they wont get in the way of ground battles and not take up too much space in the orbit layer. the space ships are to provide a way to invade another planets surface (orbit layer large ships cant attack ground forces like the orbital fighters cant attack ground) whos orbit layer and planet is overly fortified that any thing the enters orbit is destroyed on entrence.

FFS invasion is ALWAYS the answer... unless your nuking your invading with something! Land, air, sea, or in the case of orbital, satelites or spaceships.

I completely agree with the OP here, obviously he just kinda gotten carried away with the details. Before you make all dem ships how about just 1. A experimental space warship that could carry a few troops, probably not very many because its primary role is a battleship that can fight anything better than the anchor and bombard planets from orbit. Now like the OP said it'll be really really expensive cause its a prototype, so much so that you'll need a whole planetary economy to even start building them.

Also mike invasion is the only answer rather its by land, sea, air, or satelite/spaceship. You MUST invade to win unless your firing nukes I guess...

And people keep thinking that the unit cannon can break stalemates but it can't anymore than a Stargate could. You'd just be shooting your units 1 by 1 to die on a fortified world plus why shoot units when you could shoot explosive shells that are more robust and lighter than robots and tanks?? it simply makes no sense!

Smashing a Planet with Asteroid(s) isn't Invasion at all, it's just flat out destruction.

If they are so fortified that you can't land units ANYWHERE in the planet, then Invasion isn't the answer, smashing the planet that he can't do anything to prevent from being smashed because he spent so much Metal fortifying his still fragile planet is the answer.

Mike

To quote Neutrino:

It's an invasion mechanism with a simple UI. That's the point. At the moment, we really don't have an invasion mechanism that is simple to use.

I agree, one by one trail, as seen in the kickstarter, seems silly. But when I imagine a "unit cannon", I'm imagining the D-Day landings. Or the Gallipoli landings. Or landings in Rise of Nations or Civ V (where each individual unit turns into their own ship and you can land them en masse)

The issue is that you can use a stargate to build a bridge. But that doesn't give you a bridgehead on the other side. That is the point of interplanetary transport - it gives you the opportunity to make a bridgehead first, and then build a bridge to your bridgehead. Until your first units walk through the teleporter, the teleporter isn't providing a military presence for you.

I get your point, and I get Knights point as well.
But how do you prevent your opponent from smashing his asteroid into your world, if you can't invade his asteroid?

Well invading other Asteroids is completely different from invading a planet, if the Asteroid is small enough, it's actually really hard to fortify it because fewer defenses will be able to focus on a single point compared to a planet. Heck, imagine if Orbital(satellites) only worked around planetary bodies of a certain size? You'd potentially have much more flexibility in how you approach a planet because it's not caked in Anchors?

At this point we're getting dangerously into 100% theory crafting and working on assumptions of things instea dof facts.

But I do believe it can be done, and done well if everything plays it's specific role.

Mike

True enough.

Your argument goes both ways - smaller objects require less surface area to be covered to be defended.

The problem however remains. If you can smash stuff into other stuff, how do you prevent the thing that is about to be smashed from smashing you? It has less available surface area to be built on, so you're actually less likely to be able to find an area large enough to plop down a teleporter.

This may have been said before but interplanetary literally means between planets.

The game has already few end game solutions like Halleys, Nuke spam, and soon Metal Planets. Perhaps it needs more.

Those solutions are to be achieved with some work and dedication by the player. So why not to add one or few more in the form of a space ship? If it needs tons of metal/power to build and operate, and has a counter (Nukes? SXX?) why not?

What I do not like much is when a game ends with a Commander's snipe, specially if operated with one single kind of units, like Gunship. But if a huge Astroship enters in your orbit and vaporizes your Commander, it isn't that different than be splashed by an asteroids. But it adds variety, and the counter to it would be different.

I haven't had time to read all the posts, but I'll throw my idea in quickly before I log off.

Orbital = very very expensive (2k fighters and 15k anchors, non battle units only a sleight increase, perhaps 10% or so)
That's the main idea, make orbital so expensive that it's only a viable way to go afther you control at least half a planet or moon. Right now building and launching two orbital fighters costs less than a t2 tank.
Orbital transports should remain the same price, making orbital rush a viable strategy when you got a bad spawn on the starting planet

Results I think this will cause:
-No or very little orbital on single planet systems, which is a good thing I think, since it's rather silly to have large scale orbital battles on 1 planet
-It will make it harder to lockdown a planet, instead of spamming out anchors, you need to strategicaly place them if they cost a lot (although if they can't move in the next patch that will solve it too a bit)
-Transporting units through space is a cool concept and will become a better tactic (maybe add a cheaper 't2' transport or equally expensive but more capacity (build at orbital factory, 'soon' patch?))
-It's far easier to get a teleporter up and get your land armies in since the rate of building remains the same for all units and buildings, you only got less orbital attack/defend units. (perhaps increase the cost of interplanetary teleporters, since I feel that that would be expensive and would allow for responding in time from the defender)

The goal is to shift orbital to a transport/scout layer. With only minimal escorts to support landings and defend from other orbital. And small fighter battles around satelites. Not turn orbital in yet another microintensive layer or worse a factory-on-infinitybuild-patrol-entire-planet-with-heavy-orbital-units layer.

(On a side note, add armour variable to buildings and commander, and make a satelite that 1 shots units, at a rate of 15-20 rpm, preferably AA (litlte rockets), and/or ground units (kinetic projectiles), obviously super expensive
Just to prevent gunship-t2bot-catapults from preventing you of getting troops over)

I just read the asteroid posts: trailer shows a failed attempt of launching rockets at asteroids, I wonder if there was a succesful way to do so, (heating ray/sun reflection satelites? nuclear? it is confirmed-ish that nukes might do terraforming like the moons do now on impact

I don't understand all the opposition to this idea.

If there is going to be a large amount of orbital combat, we will need some more and more interesting units than what we currently have.

And that's exactly what he is suggesting..some new unit types. Nothing more.

And personally I really like the idea of having an epic orbital invasion fleet that conists of more different combat units than Orbital Fighters and Astrei (combat between Orbital Fighters and Anchors alone will NOT be interesting in the long term....we need more units).
And having an actual larger scale transport ship as well as an orbital unit that can be used to bombard the ground in invasions (not only snipe single targets like the SXX but more like what the Anchors were when they could shoot ground but were not stationary) would be really helpful to spice orbital battles up and make invasions more fun and viable (and less of a glitchy hassle as they are right now).

If the orbital layer was to be reduced into a satellite only layer that would be a different story..but even then we would have to have a good way to invade other planets...even fortified ones.

It really is unacceptable to tell someone that if a planet is fortified, their only option is to smash another planet into it.
A strategy game stops being a strategy game if there is only "strategy" you can use in a given situation.

...and what if there simply IS NO OTHER planet/celestial body that can be smashed into the opponents planet ?

Nuke snipe ? Best gameplay ever.

Your exactly right on what im suggesting. some new units that would add some strategy and another viable option at your disposal late game where its difficult to land on other planets for since planets cant be moved once fortified the game stops practically or your doomed to loose with no counter strategy or invasion method for an opposing team that controls a moon/ asteroid

from what was posted on my original idea and what i figured out from the rest of the forum, simply i figure that this option could be looked into. As what KNight and Kiwi said the devs don't want the game to become a *star wars* space battle which i understand and is not exactly what i meant when i suggested the original idea (due to my wording, my mistake) and i agree completely i may have gone over bored with the details but i was thinking cause after the last three matches i had i take over the planet and the enemy takes over the moon. (the rest of the system is either destroyed by collisions or taken over by other players) This is the stalemate end game. your only option is to wait for the moon to collided with you for you cant make it on to the moon its self to destroy the halleys in time. as for the other way around if you control the moon then your only option is to collided with the planet and sometimes its not what you want (for me personally its not a satisfying end to a match where your trying to strategically destroy your enemy. cause isn't that the heart of RTS? To outwit your opponent and overwhelm them and ambush or distract and sneak around and hit their heart of their empire.) Yes i do like the planet collisions for it adds a lvl of epicness that is unmatched from what ive noticed, but it has turned into the nuke senerio like so many RTS that came before in (my personal fave game Rise of Nations).

Rise of nations had a way to basically prevent nukes with the Armageddon feature where only a certain number of nuke can be detonated or else everyone looses to a Armageddon. This creates a nuclear deterrence and no nuke gets launched after that the game gets close to the Armageddon number ( until u have that one ******* that's like you know what **** it im ending the game with a nuke) for the rest of the match the players using their resources to build up defenses and armies to invade or defend (there's no stalemate ive encountered in this game ever)

Now if the devs came up with a way to create a sort of Planetary Deterrence that would be great. I personally think it would be cool to have the orbital invasion battles but i know not everyone agrees and if it means killing support of the game then by all means dont add it the game is fun as it is. im merely suggesting solutions to an issue that ive (and probably many others) have encountered.

From what the post on my forum has stated from everyone here i think that the devs should

*a few new units for orbital layer*
now maybe what i suggested seamed a bit over powered and what ppl vision is star wars or galactica battles i do not mean that in that sort of scale.

• these ships would be only 2-3x the size of the battle ships they currently have for naval
• the operation of the units would only be on the orbital layer that's currently implemented requiring no UI change or another orbit layer (even in star wars most space battles happen over the planets in its orbit
• they would be support roles mainly only attacking orbital units (the fabrication bots that the orbital craft carriers produce can build the orbital weapon unit (i haven't used it much) that's currently there would be able to attack the ground BUT the fab bots have to build it once they make it to the planet so its had to build under the heat of battle in the orbital layer
• transports are a definite must. if the orbital layer was to remain a support layer then transports fit into this category. *a group of transports holding maybe 50 units each accompanied by fighters can land planet side and provide some kind of presence on the ground to push from. (being on a fortified planet the enemy would have more then enough production to outnumber the attackers so that's why the transports need to carry a large number of troops)
• the orbital large ships are meant to be a late game asset for invading fortified planets so they must be EXPENSIVE other wise they can be made early game and they would prevent any kind of planetary expansion when a team aquirs them (like experimental units in supreme commander)
• a way to counter planet collisions (OR since its a expensive task to colied a planet provide a way of reducing the damage to maybe obliterate only have the planet instead. the trailer for the game showed something of that sort and ppl on this forum mentioned it.)

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(i dont have much experience with forums and develpoment stuff but personally i spent nearly a decade with RTS and im a 3d artist and i know how difficult it is to add stuff to a project that may not work out for you put in all the work for nothing. so i dont expect this forum to get the dev to add it. im just hopeing it would get them thinking about endgame solutions and more unit variety and levels of strategy)

You don't need transports that can move 50 units, just get 50 transports that can move 1 unit each.

would take the focus away from surfacebattles would invalidate surfaceunits ...
by all means go mod that stuff in but for vanila i rather not want startrek armada added to it ... avengers are pretty borderline orbital spacebattles already and with multiunittransports and carriers (that are realy transports only and not mobile factories) eventualy added in you may have some fleet vs fleet action as you may have to escort those ...
the anchor as seen in the experimental video being able to move and shoot at ground crossed the line for me .... this was definitively something i never would want for this game to be in .... i am ok with it moving but it should be restricted to the planet it was build on like a defensive antiorbital station

My point was that while there is less surface area to defend it also means there is overall less defending any specific point as well.

Why would you use a teleporter to invade an asteroid? That kind of thing should be where you're using a unit cannon or maybe a multi-unit transport if things go that far.

There has been much discussion on how counterable KEWs should be and my favorite idea to come from all that is the idea that there might be a way to shatter an asteroid to help mitigate it's damage somewhat. I like it because it's not a binary counter and can give the player being smashed something valuable, time.

We're also at the point where it's really hard to talk about one specific element without spilling into or heavily affecting other elements. xD

Mike

I'm talking about the need for a transport mechanism while acknowledging that we don't have one yet. Sorry for the confusion. I.e. why do we need one.

Why would we use a teleporter- because there is nothing else.

On second thought, I do would enjoy watching massive spacebattles, not sure if PA is the game to put them in though.

1st they would need to put the orbital layer a bit higher
some sort of t2 umbrellas will be needed to counter frigates from entering orbit right above your base, and also cooldown period from interplanetary travel to give the already present units and defences a head start in the massive exchange of fire of land-orbital, orbital-orbital and orbital-land.
Clearing out a beachhead on the surface would be nice, but they should avoid that someone can make a beachhead of your base, if you get what I'm trying to say.

And most important, orbital formations for entering another planet's orbit. It's just stupid that 200 anchors/avengers enter orbit at the exact same spot.

Just another thought slipped through my mind: the trajectory that orbital units follow is just stupid, it makes no sense that units follow that kind of trajectory and enter orbit on the poles of a planet. Maybe additional time and animation to get to that? It may be a restriction to where you can orbital invasions to occur, creating 2 safezones (N- and S-pole) where you can't be commander sniped with massed orbital.

I really want the space battles too. I guess I do have a concern though with commander sniping frigate cheese, your own frigates might not be able to stop it. I don't want t2 umbrellas as a hard counter either, as a solf counter though should probably be okey

orbital guns were supposed to be the frigates weakness

uh you only need 1 catapult that'll shoot completely round the asteroid to kill the other guy's stargate while its being constructed or whatever might be dropping out of a astreus lol. And a umbrella next to your 1 catapult and the asteroid is secured, in which case you can start building halleys.

StormingKiwi is makin some sense, now if you had dem drop pods that units come out of in Halo that would be really cool. They gotta come from a big ship in Orbit though or I guess a unit cannon.... it seriously can't fire units 1 by 1 and succeed lol

Your right forget about the T2 Umbrella entirely and give us orbital guns Although I'd think you'd perfer a Space Station like Deep Space 9 Frigates always did seem like a warship thats just too small to trust my life on, I'd only fight on BIG ships like capital ships or be a wing commander in the old dos game Wing Commander

droppodships are too exploitable for commsnipes
and again this is not startrek armarda nor conflict frontierwars .. this game is bout wars on planets surfaces