Any word on the naval or orbital stuff?

I do not think you appreciate the difficulty of entering the orbital layer IRL.

First:

- i do not think that Orbital weapons will be that effective against moving targets.
- Orbital can have many forms, but one of the things i think is important, is that it has Orbits (for which it was named).


Orbital units would literally orbit the planet. This means you can not move them about like air units. it IS possible to make them fire maneuvering thrusters and orbit the planet differently, but the orbit centerpoint always has to go through the planet centerpoint, so you always have limited movement.

Orbital units could emulate "layering" by movement speed: spy sattelites would move much faster on the orbital plane than superweapons. Remember that in space, half the world can see you at ANY given point and a sattelite is really vulnerable to any ICBM or really-long-range missile.

Types:
-Spy. reveal Fog of War
-Targeting (auto-aim for Tactical missile launchers?)
-Anti-sattelite (equipped with tracking missile. more advanced sats sport better anti-missile defence)
-Tactical missile defence
-Strategic Missile Defence
-KEW (micro nuke)
-Orbit-to-Planet laser (superweapon)

Sorry did you just say IRL?
*Smashes devak over the head with awesome hammer*

Using Real life in discussions is like using Nature in technology: someone's been doing it for much longer, why not learn from that?

Unlike nature and technology, real life applications of military gear focus on efficiency, not fun factor. That's why.

Realism is trumped by fun every time in a game like this. That doesn't mean realism isn't fun. What is not fun though is introducing realistic requirements when none are necessary.

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I think it would be very strange to have units in space near each other, without allowing them to attack each other.

That means adding combat, which also means introducing combat units to space. I imagine the easiest way to do this is to use an existing unit type (air), and permit them to travel in space. No new units, no new balance, just an expansion of the battlefield.

I think the intention to avoid combat in space needs some reconsideration tbh.

To be clear, I dislike air units. Unless they introduce an excellent system of limiting their capabilities (encouraging land / naval use), I'd rather they have a layer of their own, and leave the land / naval units their own battlefield.

That's not to say air couldn't be used on the surface, but I think more effective surface anti-air would encourage their use elsewhere.

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I am biased in this regard, so feel free to disagree.

It should also be noted that I am having trouble imagining this situation in game. Perhaps it shouldn't be used.

But making orbital be air-land and naval seems rather silly and I'm not sure it'd actually be very fun. Because air units would be useful in every single domain, they would be used exclusively unless they were very poor.

Part of my interest in orbital is that it has the potential to be very fundamentally different from air/land/sea.

I don't see combat being hard in an orbital zone, but the difficulty is if you make it "fully featured" with say fully customizable Kepler orbits, units with limited range range, then managing this would be a huge headache using a basic UI, with a good UI it might be manageable, but that's a separate discussion.

So, what can orbital do while using orbits?
1)intelligence- spy satellites downward, giant radar sats/telescopes outward
2)ground/naval strikes (think tactical missile launcher)- could have global coverage at the cost of not always being where it's needed.
3)combat, could be simple (suicide sat) or complex (sat with guns)
4)interdiction of interplanetary travel? depends on mechanisms of that travel, also need way to run the blockade
5) Cheaper interplanetary travel? getting up to orbit is half the battle, but will you have anything in orbit you want to send?

How other layers interacts with it:
1)land-launch pad to launch satellites, maybe sea also
2)anti-satellite missiles, land/sea/air should each get some mechanism to do this, but given my expected proportion of orbit to else, I don't think it should be a dedicated unit, a building may work, but what about air? Option: air and orbital layers don't directly interact, speed differential is to great for small specialized vehicles to deal with

Tools for balance
rate of orbit change(i.e. how big are my engines and how massive am I?) instead of speed
point defense? I actually don't like most satellites having this, I prefer orbital to be highly specialized units
"optimal orbit altitude" if we give things fixed orbital altitudes, or we could make it all the same altitude :cry:
Health/cost/build time/etc

The biggest advantage of orbit should reflect the biggest reason why we use it in real life, the insane amount of coverage you can get from it. It is not useful in and of itself, no resources, the only advantage is how it interacts with everything else, primarily land/sea/Interplanetary layers. Think kinda like air, but heavy on the bombers and scouts, light on the fighters unit wise, with very, very different movement mechanics. As a matter of preference for me, I'd vote for a tad bit on the expensive side, with generally a low population for the design intent.

I like this idea quite a bit!

I did not say we should make it realistic. I said we can look at reality and learn from it. Reality has been at this for much longer than this game. If we understand why things are as they are, we can also understand how to change it to fit the game.

Orbit is so hard to achieve because of the distance involved, the lack of air at high altitude (which means you gotta bring your own air, which means weight, which means bigger engines, etc) and gravity working against you.

If PA scales down orbit, adds antigravity units and magic rocket engines, it would not be a problem, for example.

However, should we allow air units in orbit? hell no. I think sattelite combat can be fun in it's own right.

[quote=" mechfrest" ]How other layers interacts with it:
1)land-launch pad to launch satellites, maybe sea also
2)anti-satellite missiles, land/sea/air should each get some mechanism to do this, but given my expected proportion of orbit to else, I don't think it should be a dedicated unit, a building may work, but what about air? Option: air and orbital layers don't directly interact, speed differential is to great for small specialized vehicles to deal with[/quote]

I think anti-missile sats should be inbetween tactical and strategic missiles. Shooting sats out of the air should not be super-easy (also not superhard). Basically, you could choose to keep an enemy sat in the air cause it's not worth it, or spend loads on anti-sattelite missiles.

However, if sattelites orbit, it means limited range and limited arcs for both sattelite and anti-sats. Sats could be employed to make invisible walls of firepower across the planet, attack enemy bases strategically, or just try and orbit above your own base as a base defence.

Strategic Missile defence could work. It would be a gambit, but it could work.

I should note: to prevent a sattelite completely ravaging the enemy because it has no counter sounds lame. I would therefore like multiple anti-sattelite weapon platforms: A building (for both satlaunch and defence), a Ship/submarine and some ground unit. Air seems too powerful because it could quickly move into enemy territory and shoot that pesky sat out of the air way too easily

Inward and outward: both anti-sattelite sattelites and and anti-ground sattelites. Good one on the suicide one btw.

Inward and outward: both anti-sattelite sattelites and and anti-ground sattelites. Good one on the suicide one btw.[/quote]

I may have stole that idea from a Tom Clancy book, I think it was Red Storm Rising, based on a real soviet system.

I agree with most of your points, my main concern is in using strategic missile defense is that it has a very specific, important role, and reducing it's availability by using the missiles elsewhere could be an issue. Shooting down a satellite should not be cheap, but getting your base leveled in response is bit too expensive.

Also, there should be some type of defense against sat based missiles, so that you don't end up with missile spam over your commander.

2 things that give solution to unit building in this thread:

Orbital Elevator for orbital units.
And a Drydock building. ships wont be blocked that easily this way.

I'm not sure what problem an orbital elevator is solving exactly, but it sure would be shiny when it goes boom (or more correctly, snap).

Assuming my previous suggestions, the elevator could be used as a T2 rocket gantry type building, being very expensive but allowing more efficient up/down,( but no asat capability? if gantry has it in the first place). The issues that would need to be overcome:
1)Physics- technically they should only be on the equator, otherwise they break orbital mechanics (this can be as easy as a meh futuretech)
2)these things are relatively so huge them being destroyed could almost be their own game ender, also, they are a HUGE target, again, if throwing out physics with futuretech, they don't need to be quite so huge, still big
3)technical, a building that goes from ground to orbit could be a problem for the engine, or could not be, depends on exact implementation and engine details I don't have

Underwater structures should be a must I feel. On planets with small amounts of water, hiding structures in small ponds/lakes might be a good idea.

Underwater nuke launchers, underwater seaplane facility ala Core Contingency etc. If hovercraft make the equation then a land based and floating version. Other floating structures like radar, AA and so forth.

Oh and I loved the Cybran walking ships.

If we are working with an effective UI to manage more than one layer of combat, what if we add an additional layer *under* the water?

So you have Orbital, Air, Land, Sea, Underwater, and Deep Sea.

Stuff deep underwater would be unable to attack / be attacked by the surface. Subs could play hide & seek by passing through the layers, and resource deposits could be most plentiful in the deepest parts of the ocean.

I don't sea a reason to add Deep see.


Orbital, Air, Land, Water, (underwater) are 4 or 5 layers. No need for another.


Orbital is an "omni" system: (relatively) massive vision, radar range, gun range, movement range, etc. Also in vision of half the world and practically always within anti-sat range.

Air is a fast-response and softening system, that can move across the planet fast.

Land is more of a steamroller.

Same for naval, but more of a supportive form than Land

Underwater is basically anti-naval.

Probably because your vision of the game and mine are radically different at this point. Heh.

This technically existed in TotalA and Supcom, but not really. Deep sea units walked along the ocean floor, and included underwater facilities like extractors and fusion. Underwater units floated somewhere in between.

There wasn't much functional difference between the two, but you could stack each layer with different units.

You could include some differences in PA. For example, a deep sea unit could fire at nearby subs, but not have the reach for surface ships. A surface ship may similarly be unable to engage units along the sea floor. Weapon types enforce these interactions, such as weapons that can not work near the surface.

I'm not sure I see why this should be added. All it does is make a layer even more isolated than an underwater layer, which is already severely limited in how it interacts with other layers, and has ~1 unit that lives on it, not counting multilayer units. What does this add to gameplay besides making underwater buildings near invulnerable?

Try saying that again to my amphibious tank force supplemented by air dropped submarines with sea plane support.

A boat could interject with some good ol' depth charge carpet bombing. It just wouldn't be a standard feature of boats.

But that doesn't need an extra layer, unless the intention is to make amphibious forces fairly strong, but at that point we're gonna need the extra high layer for high altitude planes and suborbital transports that can't be shot by AA.

Well, the only underwater combat we've ever seen has been .. subs. With torpedoes.

I was thinking that a pure water planet could have similar terrain under the water as above it, and you could make for some interesting gameplay by having amphibious units that crawl along the bottom of the ocean, and actually fight there too. Y'know, make terrain actually MEAN something on a water planet.