Inter-planetary Animations for Orbital Units.

I wanted to write Interstellar, but I thought that would be too strong

Can there be an animation that indicates to the player that *THIS UNIT IS LEAVING ORBIT* in a loud manner? Maybe like a warp speed thing, where it charges up engines briefly, then shoots off into the interplanetary molasses....

Not only would it make units suddenly disappearing from your orbit less immediately confusing, it would add more AWESOME to the game, AND add some crazy cool polish on top.

Maybe the units could also accelerate in a, say, eastward direction, no matter their position on the planet (relative to the unit, not the planet, or else poles would be weird). It would be nice if the animation was kept quick so the quick transfer of orbital units away from enemy forces was possible, but it also might be a nice way of preventing commanders from bouncing between planets in an astraeus - just add a cooldown in the form of an interestingly COOL AND AWESOME animation!

"OH MY GOD THERE ARE SO MANY OF THEM!"
"JUMP BACK JUMP BACK AHHHH"

"They are spooling up for the jump....I DON'T THINK THEY'LL MAKE IT...."

I like this.

It'll give an indication of what units are doing and it'll look super awesome. It'll also mean a delay before units leave orbit. So if a group of defending Avengers is about to be overwhelmed, they can't suddenly disappear and become invulnerable in an instant.

So it'll look awesome, and it'll improve gameplay.

Agree with both the posts here. I recently played a 4 planet game against the AI where it ended with them trying to escape with their commander in the Astraetus. I had orbital defences on all 4 planets by then but it still took 4 jumps before they were destroyed since they could enter orbit, then exit, pretty much instantly. Was funny but kind of annoying

And yeah, it'd look awesome to see units boosting for a few seconds before they leave the orbital layer.

Unless the unit is spinning that direction is ill-defined and anyways that wouldn't not be what you mean </nitpick>. You are intending a direction which near north poles would point nearly to south poles?. I am also rather bothered by the discontinuous movement from the orbital shell to escape trajectory. Place for another delay? Although it could be unhandy if it one of variable length.

It might also be nice to have some kind of indicator on the destination side that something is incoming, like a spinning whirlpool thing or something like that. Maybe just a tiny one, so that it isn't instantly obvious to the possible defender, but something subtle.

Liked both for positive gameplay benefits and delirious enthusiasm.

At the moment even if an enemy comm arrives at a planet absolutely crawling with fighters, the astraeus can almost always scoot straight off again with no harm done.

Are we talking about animations or balance here?

Also, Im not you know how real life satellites work, because you don't need to charge up a warp drive to move.

We are talking about real life science fiction here.

Im not sure why you bothered with the real life bit, when you could have just put fiction.

You're telling me this didn't happen?

Right, so you are joking around....why did you even bother?

Because it's fun.

Really good idea, hopefully they work this in along with a brief cooldown for things entering orbit as well. *looks sternly at exploit where 4-5 SXX insta-kill a comm*