assaulting planets

Didn't I mention it? Time. Planetary invasions don't just happen. It takes time to get them set up. That's an opportunity for the defender, and is working against the attacker.

I agree but this isn't to say that the attacker doesn't have some advantages working for them as well. Bear in mind these are just some thoughts so they are not gospel:

1) An orbiting attacker could probably get a better view of the planet, giving them an intel advantage. Unless the defender has somehow covered the entire planet with equal defences this means the attacker has the opportunity to find a weaker point and strike there. It would be easier for the attacker to knock out any satellite intel the defender has than vice versa.

2) An attacker has less transportation costs to get to the planet than vice versa. Going on the game-play visualisation the moon base was able to use unit cannons to air-drop units onto the planet. The impression I got was that sending things off planet was far more expensive. Requiring a single use rocket to be built to send a single unit (in this case the commander). Now of course if that were the only options a defender had it would be hellishly unbalanced but I think that it will likely be more difficult for a defender to send units or missiles to the moon than it will be for the attacker to send artillery/units down.

Now another thing to consider is how likely it is that a player had enough time to cover an entire planet with near perfect defences that could not be breeched by an attacker with conventional unit to unit warfare. I think this unlikely as it would require that the player had the time and resources to spend time on that planet without:

A: Being attacked before covering the whole planet
B: Having to divide attention to other planets being attacked
C: Spending resources trying to mount attacks of their own.

If the Attacker has been lazy enough to let a Defender become that entrenched and the Defender has been short-sighted enough to not spend resources and effort elsewhere then the likelihood is that the Attacker has control over more planets/moons/asteroids and thus has more resources to throw at the problem.

So far I have seen the argument that the Defender has the resource advantage when I have not yet seen any indication that the economy will be entirely local. I would argue that the Attacker may well be able to bring more resources to bear if the Defender has been doing nothing but turtle on that world.

Now let's assume that I am wrong with my assumptions. Lets say that the Defender is a good player and has been good enough to attack, take planets and perfectly turtle this planet. Or lets assume that the economy is local and the Attacker is at a resource disadvantage. In either case it is the attackers fault for letting the Defender become that entrenched and they are left with little choice but to throw an asteroid. Yes it sucks that the Attacker has to destroy the resources and real estate but they should have attacked earlier when the Defender wasn't perfectly turtled.

I think there's going to have to be orbital units capable of bombardment. Treat it just like a naval assault: You take the orbital layer first with the orbital equivalent of destroyers. Then a few nukes and orbital battleships/cruisers bombard to establish a 'beachhead' at a weak point on the planet, followed by a swarm of drop pods stuffed full of land units.

If the orbital layer is too heavily defended you bypass it with unit cannons.

If nukes can target orbital units there's going to need to be orbital anti-nukes and missile defense too.

The coolest thing would be if you could drop prefab point defense and factories onto the planet from orbit.

What if you built that battle station moon since the start of the game, before he even took the planet, suddenly you have the time advantage.

So no, he dosent nessesarly have a time advantage.

You guys are basically contriving scenarios to mess with the simple existence of the defender's advantage. That too in a game that isn't even in alpha yet.

Yes, whats your point?

LOL, indeed

This is true in every RTS.

I wonder if invading a planet from space actually gives the defender any advantage at all. It might be the opposite. On one hand carrying troops across planets is a hurdle for the attacker, on the other hand the line the defender has to hold becomes a sphere.

I think this is not going to be a turtler's game. No matter what the situation an attack can come from any angle.

On the back of your head where you can't see it. See if you can use a few mirrors to see it.

Being serious, I just think you guys are taking it wrong. I'm looking at it like: "Okay, defender's advantage, then what?" You guys are looking at it like: "Defender's advantage? That doesn't exist."

Ekulio's last post is more in line with my thinking.

Space is unbelievably open, with attacks possible from virtually any direction given time. Front lines may not exist in the way they exist in warfare done exclusively on land except that it might take a longer orbit to reach a planetary body deeper in an opponent's territory. Though even though a planet can be approached from any direction, players will want to accentuate their ability to defend themselves by building important structures in one group on each planet. Natural features, such as bodies of water and mountains, will probably accentuate this as well.

Im just saying that if you have a mobile base (for example a moon) there might not ALLWAYS be a defenders advantage (depending on the situation offcourse).

I sure hope I'm not. Defender's advantage is intrinsic. It's a simple case of "He has the same options as you, and you are invading his territory". That's all it takes.

The paradigm between offensive and defensive options might go in any direction. Asteroids could have a high ground advantage. A single planet certainly can't hold up against an attack from multiple planets. Surprise attacks and raids can whittle down key defenses. But no matter how you crack it, the burden is on the attacker to exploit a weak point or make one.

Because of this, it's important to know what sort of tools a defender is going to have. We obviously don't have specifics, but we do know some broad brush strokes. A defender will have a base. A base will have production and base defenses. A base will have access to countermeasures like anti-nukes, and it can do orbital stuff just like everyone else.

Hmm, I forgot where I was going with this. Anyway, there seem to be a decent number of options for assaulting a world. You have brute force(big drop), precision strike(lightning/suicide raids), extended campaign(build a base), and total destruction(KEW KEW). Or a little bit of all of the above. That seems to cover everything.

nah, !!!!FIRE EVERYTHING!!!! *Drops troops*

I think you misquoted there, I believe it was mechmarines4life who said that.

You do have a point however, in that I think that it is going to be a rare occurrence where a player cannot launch a big enough attack on a weaker or unpopulated area of a planet to gain a foothold.

IMHO, the owner of a planet doesn't necessary has to have a defender's advantage in a game with interplanetary to interstellar combat.

While it's true that the planet-owner has the advantage of the full economy of said planet and time to prepare its defenses, there are some unique disadvantages somebody in the gravity-well of a planet has compared to an invader coming from space.

First of all, a planets position is fixed. This makes anything on it perfect for long range bombardement. The invader on the other hand can more easily manouvre its forces, either being in orbit or not even near the planet itself yet. Of course, the defender can also build artillery, but its position will be fixed on the planet and thus easy to target (even if its in orbit) while the attacker can move its forces so its harder or even impossible to hit them.

Secondly, firing up from the planet is hard, firing down on the planet is easy. Non-orbital defenses will always have the additional cost of shooting out of the gravity-well while any invader can, most likely, much easier bombard down on the surface.

Third, a planet, even a small one, is pretty large. Attackers can pinpoint their attack on a smaller area of the planet, concentrating their forces, while the defender has to cover the whole planet all the time. This allows invaders to mass stronger forces against comperatively weaker, more spread out forces even if the total of the defending forces may be higher.

You can compare this with a normal rts game where a player has covered half of the map with its huge base and the attacker has a teleport ability to place all of its unit anywhere it wants. Such a huge base would be incredibly vulnerable to such strikes, even if the defenders economy outclasses the attackers. Orbital insertions are said teleports. You can land everywhere, not hindered by terrain while the defender has to move its units around to react.

Finally, you can't establish frontlines until the invader has landed. This means there are no choke points to build up with static defenses, really nowhere where massing defensive units makes sense. Because why fortify a chockepoint, when the attacker can just land behind your forces there? The frontlines only get established with the invader landing, meaning that most previous buildup will likely not be where it should. This in effect reduces the defender's advantage significantly, since while he's landed in your territory, you most likely have nothing prepared there yet to fight him.

The defender will imo most likely have to rely on its shorter resupply routes (newly built units will be faster in the action until the attacker has built up its own factories) and perhaps even be forced to have its own orbital insertion forces to be able to quickly react to attacker. It may even be that moving forces on the ground wont be fast enough to stop even smaller landing forces from establishing beachheads.

Of course, once the invader has landed, he has the same problem as the defender, vulnerability to orbital bombardement and slow movement on the ground.

Anyway, this is all speculation. It will all depend heavily how easy long range bombardement is, how fast one can move units between planets, etc.

But imo, in the end we will all be suprised how differently a game plays where fixed frontlines may be impossible in the end.