A comprehensive Example of Orbital Combat

this early in the game placing either the t1 launch pad after 3mass 1energy or t2 launch pad after 5mass 6energy 1land fac comes down to the same amount of focus on space, appart from the fact that the second plan has t2.

I think you mean;

"t2 launch pad after 5mass - 6energy - T1 land fac - T1 Fabber - T2 Factory - T2 Fabber"

Mike

I would love to see a orbital combat unit tier something like this

ORBIT
TI
sensor satellite – high range sensor limited vision
point satellite – mid range anti orbit/air/missile reduced range vs air
TII
corvette – medium size/speed orbital anti air/missile ship. 4 medium point rails. Short warp drive
frigate – explorer, mid range sensor, 2 anti orbital low range medium rail cannons. Long range warp drive can carry 1 shuttle
TII (experimental)
missile satellite – long range missile launcher can target ground
TIII
cruiser – missile ship anti air/orbital rockets anti ground/orbital missiles fires in bursts.
destroyer – artillery ship anti ship laser cannons. Single target bombard vs ground has to set up to fire
TIII (experimental)
shield satellite – shields nearby ships/orbitals at high energy cost. Moves very slowly.
TIV
battleship – sustained barrage heavy ship. Super heavy rail turrets fire constantly at medium long range. Has to set up to fire vs ground
laser satellite - can fire at ground targets directly below, has a long range vs orbital and rips through heavily armored unshielded targets
TIV (experimental)
supercarrier – huge shielded transport that can carry 4 shuttles and launch ground forces in drop pods.


satellites travel in orbital paths and have limited mobility.
ships also follow orbital paths but have much more mobility
ships can also charge up and teleport to other worlds.

Very good post, OP. A thread I started a month or so ago, but which was not nearly as thorough, covered basically the same points; even suggested the same units.

I think you might actually be able to ignore changing a unit's orbital altitude, as there is so little orbital space available to begin with (the exception being interplanetary transports and the like). Given the very close proximity of a typical moon to its planet in this game, and taking into account the planet's likely atmosphere and the minimum altitude requirements for orbiting it, there's going to be very little space left over for highly eccentric, stable orbits. You wouldn't be able to pull off, say, a molniya orbit in most cases.
To simplify things, I'd just have orbital altitude defined by the unit in question, and all player-positioned orbits be perfectly circular. Autonomous kill vehicles would loiter at low orbits to take advantage of the Oberth Effect when engaging targets, and Project Thor-style god-rod bombers would fly at higher altitudes to give their projectiles more potential energy.
Orbital unit management then becomes a matter of altering orbital inclination such that the orbiter flies over targets of opportunity on the ground, or avoids ground-based threats.

Also, I'd like to see some method of ordering orbital units to assemble into formations and keep station with one another, subsequently following a single orbit and taking orders as if they were one unit.

A few replys here.

tatsujb - Just to clarify, i've nothing against you, or anyone else on these forums for that matter. I just sometimes have a little trouble understanding you. I'm sure things will get better as you post more on the forums.

As for the whole T1/T2 launcher thing, knight has got it. I probably should have explained it better in the OP, but I', working on the principle that orbital launchers are offset by one up the tech tree. In other-words, T1 launchers are build by T1 engineers (not the commander), and T2 launchers are built by T2 engineers (not T1). I feel this gives a good compromise between granting early access to space when players are on different bodies, versus giving plenty of time for conventional combat to develop if players can attack each other.

As for moving the Nuke to the launchpad instead of it's own separate silo, I have no real problem with this, as I think my suggesting is fairly flexible in terms of where the missiles come from. The only thing to worry about is that I would prefer Nukes have a high capital cost, and a low marginal cost, so as to encourage their use after economies have grown to a certain point. Given that i would suggest the orbital launchpads are priced similarly to other factories, this may be difficult to achieve.

I'm sorry, but this unit list really just wouldn't work. For a start, It's pretty much fixed now that there will only be two tech tiers. Secondly ships are a really, really, bad idea for this type of game. What you have suggested is Sins-of-A-Solar-Empire, PA edition. A game where the focus is on blasting each other with spaceships around various procedurally generated worlds where the devs have, for some bewildering reason, elected to add a well developed but completely pointless surface combat system. It isn't true to what TA and PA are about, and would result in a sub-par game with all strategic importance heaped on a small fraction of the available units. If you have an itch for spaceship combat, go and have a game of Sins-of-A-Solar-Empire. It's a great game, and one I've sunk many hours into. It's just the wrong approach for a game like PA.

and

I did contemplate other, more simplified modes of orbits. The issue of having a system where everything orbits at the same altitude (although at different inclinations) begs questions as to how orbital units intercept each other. In order to catch up with a target ahead of a missile, it would have to drop down to a lower orbit, while in order to slow down to meet a trailing target, it would have to boost to a higher orbit. I'm guessing you are both familiar with this. Of course, it could be that units making intercepts would do this, but that the player isn't able to specify a lower/higher orbit themselves.

Another option, as pointed out by timmon26, is to have units occupy orbits depending upon type. Again this was something I contemplated, but decided against it because I suspect it will end up being irritating. If a missile, just goes slightly ahead of it's burn injection point, then it would be unable to intercept a higher-up unit for nearly a whole orbit. I imagine this could be quite frustrating.

Overall, I think varying the altitude and eccentricity of orbits does add a lot of strategic depth to the game. For example, if I have a bombardment platform orbiting, I would probably want to put it on a path that passes-over the enemy base. It was suggested by guzwaatensen, and I mention in the op, that there should be a projected planetside track to show where this path would go. Although If I'm being honest, I actually think it will be a lot easier to see this when players can just zoom out and see the satellite, instead of in real-life where we have to project paths onto a 2d map, which can look a little counterintuitive.

So, we have our scenario. What kind of orbit do we want? If the enemy player has no orbital defenses, then it would probably best to go for an orbit with a high altitude above the enemies base, and a low altitude on the other side of the planet. This maximises the percentage of the orbit that the satellite can attack. Players who do this are effectively independently discovering Molniya. orbits. Of course, if the enemy does have ASAT weapons, then this just means there is a great big fat target hanging in the sky for a long time. Instead, the player may keep the whole orbit at a low altitude, meaning it shoots across the sky, from one horizon to the other. This gives the enemy less time to build and fire an ASAT missile. This is just one example. Geosync orbits above a player's own base would be a great place to put Auroras for missile defense duty.

I'd like to see these full orbits (in a confined layer) be tried, because i believe there is a fair amount of strategy introduced by them. Of course, if it turns out to be too complicated, these compromises may also work as well. As long as the key rules of forbidding inter-orbit transport (intra-orbit is fine), and relying on gravity wells, i think there are a number of systems that could still work.

No ships. There won't be any ships.

I don't think it would be a good idea, to allow satellites (with weapons) to be built on one planet and sent into the orbit of another.

The reason for this, is that if you are able to establish oribtial dominance over a players only planet, then there is no way to recover. Unlike with air dominance, where upon you could always attack your opponent by land, albeit with some difficulty, to overcome it. Not possible when there is no land route.

For that reason i think, you should have to construct something on the Planet prior to being able to take over that planets orbit, (despite the fact that this sounds amazingly unrealistic).

i.e. send a lander, with a few engineers, construct launch pad, start spamming orbital weapons and factories along with land, air and naval factories. The orbital layer you fight to create allows for protection of your lander carried forces when they arrive, and allows you to start putting the hurt on your opponents on that planet.

If it was possible to launch satellites from one planet directly to the next, there would have to be a super easy way to get rid of them to balance it out, in which case that would just clutter the game with unnecessary units.

The idea of establishi ng orbital dominance over a planet does not mean you wouldn't be able to recover, not when you have groud to orbit weapons znd you arn't facing ships.

And if you remove this mechanic from the game then what's the point of galactic war?

sending your commander to another planet to colonise it too? no you need to be able to ascertain that you're not sending your commander into a rat trap.

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Galactic war, as i understand it, is a campaign where you fight battles across the galaxy one system at a time. I would imagine otherwise it would become a nightmare to manage.

Firstly i was talking about sending engineers to an enemy planet in order to secure a foothold. (not the commander, although you could do this, if you really wanted) If this turned out to be not possible, then you'd just have to send in a massed army of landers, get in there and force a space through which your engineers can come through. Or possibly deploy some inter-planetary artillery, asteroids, or big metal balls of death.

Secondly, Anti-Orbital weaponry can either A) be in abundance or B) be expensive and useful only situationaly. A) is what you are describing, hordes of satellites flitting between planets requires hordes of interceptors, B) can be achieved if you can only deploy to the planet the factory is on, why is B) a good option? Well it would declutter the game considerably.


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edit: i just wanted to be clear, why these restrictions are necessary. These aren't point defenses we are talking about, these are artillery cannons, flitting around planets on adjustable orbits, that can you can micro in real time to pummel everything on the planet. I like the concept, but they have to be limited in some way, because they sound super OP.

One of the things he mentioned is that the vast majority of satellites can not change orbit once launched...

So isn't the idea just that you launch them at the target planet?

So say you want to launch a recon sat at a planet to scout it, instead of launching it into orbit around the same planet the Launcher is on, you just launch it directly to the planet you want to get recon on.

That was my understanding at least.

Mike

Exactly the way I read it too. You launch your sat at the other planet, it stays in that orbit till destroyed. What's the point of launching a spy sat over somewhere you already know (i.e. your own conquered planet)

no in fact, if you look at the second piece of bold text, i'll highlight for you, you'll notice the opposite is true.

I don't have a problem with recon satellites being built and deployed where-ever you want, but weaponised satellites will just dominate the game, build them to win, neglect them and lose.

Introducing a unit type into the game that will necessarily require heavy amounts of base defense just to avoid being rofled stomped, isn't a good way to go.

Satellites shouldn't be too powerful.

That's assuming they are powerful enough to dominate the game despite having countermeasures, in which case it's less about satellite mechanics and more about number tweaking to balance them.

A unit that has 5 times the DPS of any comparable unit is OP pretty regardless of how often it shoots, it doesn't matter if it fires once a second for 500 DPS or once every 5 seconds for 500 DPS, the issue is not how the gun works(its Rate of fire in this case) but simple the fact that it does too much DPS.

EDIT: I get the feeling you also assume that there will be "armies" of satellites, which is not the impression I got from the OP, as I said earlier int eh thread, I fully support the idea of Orbital stuff working in SUPPORT of the surface based combat of PA. I doubt the intent was for them to have as much power as you assume they will.

Mike

maybe you haven't played TA/PA/SUPCOM, there are armies of everything. Anything without a hard limit is going to be spammed like crazy

You trying to be funny? Anyways, There are too many unknowns, but look at Experimentals in SupCom/FA, even when Spammed, you don't end up with hundreds of T4s. And you only ever get to them in certain circumstances, most ranked games never get to that level.

Everything is relative, you might be able to 'spam' launchers and Weaponized sats, but if the strength is reasonable and the cost is appropriate, it's not all that different from scamming anything else, if anything it's worse because regular units are likely to be a lot more flexible and numerous.

Frankly I think you're bringing all kinds of assumptions to the discussion but haven't properly fleshed out your reasoning or are just flat out rejecting any alternate reasoning, I'll let the OP handle this from here out as it's his proposal.

Mike

My bad, i misread the post. Thank you for pointing that out to me.

I think you are underestimating the impact of orbital mechanics, and just what an effect it will have on the maneuverability of the satellites.

The thrust that the satellites can muster is very small. Much like real-life satellites they only have small thrusters used for station keeping. This is relaxed slightly, to allow them the ability to change their orbit (in the layer they have been launched to) by a significant amount, but that it all. They still have pitiful thrust, and changing inclination is very, very expensive (in terms of thrust). In other words, changes to the apoapsis or periapsis will be doable quite quickly, but changes to inclination could take a great deal of time for the satellite to get to it's new orbit. I would imagine that a +90 degree to -90 degree plane change maneuver will take nearly 10 minutes to complete for most satellites, although the Artemis missile would have greater thrust at it's disposal.

The whole point of being able to launch into another planet's orbital layer it to allow orbital units to make up part of a beachhead for a full invasion. They can be fought off with other orbital weapons platforms, or with ASAT weapons, of which I have described, have both static and mobile forms. As long as the costs of these weapons systems is balanced (which i think is perfectly viable), there is no reason that satellites cannot be fought off. Even in the off chance that your opponent has massively outspent you on orbital satellites, and bombed all resistance on the planet into rubble (which would be a challenging), You still have the opportunity of fleeing to another planet, meaning all those fragile and expensive orbital units of his are now sitting around a world with nobody on it. He can't bring them with him to a new planet, so he has just massively overcommitted a lot of his resources in a way which is difficult to re-purpose.

I really like the ideas posted in the OP and hope it works something like you described.

How would asteroids fit into this? It has been confirmed that we can alter the orbits of asteroids to collide with planets, but could we alter its path to simply orbit the chosen planet instead? If so, this would function as some kind of "super satellite" that you can build a limited amount of land units on. I would imagine the asteroid would count as a unit in the orbital layer and be affected by other satellites as such.

Once in orbit around the planet, you have several choices for what you can build on it. You could build nukes/unit cannons to assist with invasion, anti-satellite structures to assist with clearing out the orbital layer, or orbital factories to pump more units into the orbital layer. There's also the choice of sacrificing your nice "super satellite" by sending it into the ground, but then you lose the previously mentioned capabilities, which offers a nice strategic choice I think.

Anyways, I just wanted to see what your opinion is on integrating asteroids into your orbital layer mechanics.