It feels to me as though removing the orbital layer as a game mechanic would be beneficial to the overall game experience. I have a couple of suggestions to fill the holes that it would leave: 1. Add in the 'lander' unit shown in the kickstarter trailer at ~1:05. I envision it as being built by the commander with a one-shot rocket attached. Maybe for a cheapish ~200 metal or so. You select it, select a target spot on another planet, and it flies off. When it lands it creates a fabber with the same technology as the commander, but with only maybe 1/2 the building power of a t1 fabber. It would be simply used to get an early foothold on another planet. 2. Change the teleporter mechanic. Having to build an exit under fire is probably one of the most frustrating parts of the game right now, close only to watching your astreauses reposition before landing. I'd suggest the following mechanic: You build a teleporter building on your planet. Once it has finished it will start to drain energy, charging up. Once it is charged you can select a target anywhere on any planet without having to build an exit there first. When you do this an alert will sound to anyone on that planet and a swirly vortex effect will appear where the exit will be. This effect will remain for maybe 60 seconds to give the players on the planet time to respond. After the 60 seconds is up the portal will open and your units will pour through. The portal will last for 5 minutes, after which it will close and the teleporter building will start to recharge. The lander would speed up the early game planet expansion and allow for small skirmishes on moons in addition to the bigger battles on large planets. The teleporter will allow players to easily launch large scale invasions of fortified enemy positions, especially if you combined area commands with the portal exit command so you can open several wormholes at once.
It was a Kickstarter Milestone. And also the Unit roster is incomplete, we could be seeing more orbital units. Also a function could be implemented to be able to quickly switch between orbital view only, planetside view only and both O. o
Orbital definitely needs further work to make it fun and interesting. It adds an extra layer of strategic depth to the game so I don't want to see it disappear, but it requires more fleshing out before it can really work.
Single unit transports will always be more frustrating to use than teleports for large scale invasions though. Even in an ideal world where you could set them to a repeating patrol of area loading on planet A and area unloading on planet B it's still far more work than just setting a waypoint on a teleport.
Does anyone know of an easy way to change which Teleporters are linked? Once I've linked two Teleporters I don't seem to be able to change it to another Teleporter.
Nope, there's a dedicated stop button in the same segment as the move/attack commands, if you excuse the terrible wording. IIRC it looks like a little circle with a cross in it.
This would be great. Having to micro across two or more planets can be cumbersome. Also without an actual exit gate that the defending team would automatically shoot at, it opens the opportunity for a defending team to counter attack through the gate while it remains open.
Sorry for the double post, I also think there should be a T2 fighter that is designed specifically to fly through gates, so you can get some air support on beachheads. I also think gates should be buildable in orbit and units should be able to rain down with little boosters to slow their decent much like the bots do in the kickstarter video.
There is already functions in the game to help with porter linking. If you get your view point (cam) into a position of you liking. ( like a place where your base teleporter is ) press shift 1 to save the cam view. then when you plan to invade. Scout your enemy and then press shift 2 to save a second cam point. Using alt 1 - 2 to switch between cam points to then link your teleporters ( pretty much instantly ) you save time and you can focus on your point of invasion, from rallying units at base at the same time. Obviously there is room for improvement but there are tools in place to make life better at invading.
Yeah you can do that, and you can use hotkeys so you don't even need to move your view, but that is still way too complicated for new players. It also doesn't solve the problem of invading planets where patrolling air means you can't build the endpoint or land astreauses.
Another solution i remember has been suggested in a thread is to build teleporter in orbit, then to drop it down when finished.
