An idea for Orbital Battles

Hey everyone,

I will give some of my background about myself before you read my thread. I have been playing RTS games for years now and when I say this game on kickstarter I was laying on the ground half dead from unbelief (very exaggerated, lol) that anyone was going to be making a game like this. Unfortunately I found out about it after it was funded and over with.

I'm a College student working on getting a degree in Animation and Art so I can open my own studio and do what these awesome people are doing. I have my own studio type environment in my room, got my computer, Cintiq tablet, and a bunch of digital art and animation programs. I have SketchBook Pro
(don't have photoshop because I don't like how they have their monthly things setup), all of autodesk programs with their education plan (I get them all for free because I got to school!!! lol You can as well: http://students.autodesk.com/), I'm also going to be learning the programs with Digital-Tutors (http://www.digitaltutors.com/11/index.php) to get that extra help.

Enough of me.

I have been looking at the post on the orbital gameplay and I have come up with some interesting ideas and ways that orbital could function. Wanted to post this on my own thread that way everyone can see it. I originally posted a way smaller version in the Orbital Units - 2 directions, but it was all the way in the back and I wanted everyone to see this.

So I am voting more for of a fake Orbit with half-way real orbit. So in a sense having fake real orbit (if that makes any sense) rather then going for real. I will be posting this in sections for time wise (since I still have College work to do.) I will also be making charts,basic drawings (nothing fancy), and talking about other games to help build this idea.

I will be breaking up the sections into "The Idea", "Units", "How it will work", and then "Execution."

"The Idea"​

First off, the idea. Orbital combat has to be extreme to be in line with the rest of the game. We don't want it to be boring. If it was boring I wouldn't want it in the game. But I want it in the game. From what I got out of Neutrino post, they want this to epic (not boring) with lots of ships and lots of explosions.
This made me think of how Star Wars has made their Orbital Battles. They didn't take in the idea of "Hey, the world has an orbit" no they discarded realism and made something awesome. Here are some pics.



They want to make this game epic, not boring like this


With such a big idea comes many features that have to be considered: UI, Unit movement, interplanetary interaction, etc.

The idea of Orbital gameplay is to: #1. Have a since of space battles without actually being in mid-space. #2. Have an extra layer of strategy to the game. With this extra layer you can have way more options of play. You could even setup a mode based off of just orbital play. Look at Star Wars Empire at War's Space Battles:



This was actually the only thing I found fun about this game. The ground mechanics weren't all that fun. But the space/orbital gameplay was a blast.

I will come back and post more on this thread for "The Idea" and then I will work on the next sections.

Hope you guys enjoy and feel free to post your own thoughts and talk about this.

Cmdr_Firezone38 out!

But how does it all work?

Pretty Pictures does not an idea make.

Mike

The poll is terribly loaded and pointless, and the ideas are the same, old, tired wet-navy-in-space tropes that we have seen a thousand times. If I want battleships, broadsides and space fighters, I'll play sins of a solar empire.

Furthermore, stating that you lack the ability to conceptualise an interesting game based around satellites is just a fallacious argument from ignorance.

This idea has been done to death. Let it rest in peace.

And the pictures you use to fuel your argument are pretty lame, either you should think about being a politician because you purposely chose them(to suit your own ends) OR your didn't fully explore Satellites as an option, cause there are many cool ideas for satellites out there;




And some from my personal collection;







Yes, so boring indeed!

Mike

yea... satellites are so boring...

OMFG must see in game!

I vote for the more "boring" kind of idea.

The massive quotation marks are entirely justified, I assure you.

Hey guys, my First Post!, after a few months of lurking....

i feel the need to say, orbital battles like this would draw away the attention on ground battles / smashing planets.
I would much prefer having a simple Satelite system.

let it be known this debate is dead, i'm not even voting. It happened on Neutrino's and Yourlocalmadsci's threads that I'm to lazy to even post.

EDIT : (actually back on first page)

We'll he got the voting part right hurrr hurr hurrr

Awesome models by the way, I had been looking at your stuff for awhile and never saw the orbital designs. I like the honeycomb on the solar panels and their fold/unfold poses.

Welcome aboard, and yes your opinion is shared with alot of us and the general direction of the game is the land battles and destroying planets (which has a strong impact of land battles ahaha.)

It's a long story, there are a bunch of pics and discussions buried in the old 287 page BlackOps thread.

Mike

I still hope your hedgehog design for anti sub comes to existence. Freaking love it.

Eh, it's still super rough, I should probably revisit it, the thing is that the design can be dependent on how it functions so its tough to say what a good design is at this point.

Mike

Did you read my post even. I said I was going to be breaking it up into sections. Also I wasn't even done with this post, but I ran out of time.

No offense, but honestly, save yourself the trouble and don't bother, there have already been over 30 pages of discussion on the topic. Let's wait until the beta tomorrow to see how orbital works currently before we worry about anymore changes or suggestions.

Hey everyone. I'm sorry if it seemed like I was making a lame post or something. I am going to be talking about each section I just ran out of time to finish this post. I will have more information and I'm not saying satellites will be lame or anything, I would just like to see something more than just sats. I would like to see cruisers that will allow you take a good size army from one planet to the other.

I will have more.

Actually it wouldn't be a waste of time for me. I love doing this kind of stuff. I have too, otherwise going into the game industry wouldn't be all that interesting to me.

Okay, but what about all the other points raised?

Mike

Sorry if I responded blatantly, I just wasn't expecting people to attack me at the neck this quick.

Is there a particular one you would like me to talk about, because there are a lot of points.