So, I'm sure I'm not the only one wondering... How will you detect an incoming KEW? Do all players have persistent visibility of all celestial bodies? Would you need an observatory or space radar (cosmodar?) to see live updates of celestial bodies? Can I hide an entire asteroid with enough radar jammers? Can stuff be hidden in the shadow of a tidally locked moon? Will all players have initial knowledge of the entire stellar system? Will there be Interplanetary fog of war? Does the moon absorb radar waves if it's made of cheese? I'm sure Brie or maybe Gouda would make excellent radar stealth materials. Especially baked Brie, that **** could absorb anything.
I imagine the system will function just like the planet, you'll see the terrain but not know what is going on unless you have some kind of intel on it. So you know what is in the system, but until you get on planet or get a recon sat in orbit you won't know anything beyond the terrain. Mike
I was thinking about this too. Needing an observatory on the same planet as your commander to see the other planets would be interesting. Perhaps that orbital launcher thing serves the purpose, so if someone isn't yet orbital, but are way ahead on land they at least have a 'land based' option to attack. This might moderate the 'rush to space' idea where someone turtles on land and techs up ready for space, while your 500 levelers are left with no meaningful task
Or you could use those units to take out his small compact base and negate pretty much his entire economy until he gets his going on a new planet. Even if he gets to another planet before you do, you should have a big head start on capturing the planet you're on. Mike
I can't wait to see what orbital units we get to play with. And I agree, I don't think there is going to be Fog of War for the position of Celestial bodies. I imagine with some sort of orbital or terrestrial "observatory" we will get the the ability to see planets orbit lines in the Celestial view or (and probably more importantly) once Uber gets the alert system up and running give us an HUD countdown until impact when there is something on a collision course with our planet. Since Uber made the change form N-Body Celestial physics to 2-Body physics they will be able to "instantly" determine a collision course. Sure this makes it a little less realistic but frankly should make the game more awesome, to coin a phrase Besides if they hadn't done that it literally would be rocket science to predict a collision course.
I think that Celestial Intel should work similarly to the way it works in real life. Large planetary bodies would be easier to detect than small ones, topology can't really be accurately mapped known until you send a space craft to the body to survey it,, once a planetary body is found its position and orbit can be predicted so even if you lose sight of it you still have an idea where it is and giving off large amounts of gas, dust, other material makes a body easier to spot. In this way large planets would be known at the start of the game. and like Knight said earlier you should need intel on the body to see what is happening on it. Asteroids could only be detected by nearby space telescopes or ground observatories. once a planetary body is found its current orbit is also known and its position is known as long as that orbit does not change(although unless the asteroid is detected again it is impossible to know if the orbit changed). Should a player use engines to change an asteroids orbit it temporarily be comes easier to detect(although far away telescopes may still miss it). In game this means that finding places to expand to in the form of planets or nearby moons is relatively easy. but finding weaponizable asteroids would be more difficult. but one a player has one it would essentially be a stealth base until the player tries to move it in which case other players would see the asteroid move to its new orbit. I like this system because it starts this cat and mouse game with asteroids. players could put asteroids with observatories on orbits to find other asteroids. player can hide asteroids in the outer limits of the system to hide valuable units or to use them as stealth bombers so that they can move to a collision course with there target remain unknown. Overall, I think forcing players to actually need to find planetary bodies both available and hostile makes the game much more interesting than simply knowing everything at the start.
I would appreciate this because it reminds me of Light of Altair, which I loved. However, I know a lot of people who would pass this off as shallow complexity or needless micro, so if it were implemented it would have to be a toggle option for matches.
Space telescopes if the planet / moon / asteroid may rotate so if your telescope is watching another planet that would in theory mean you'd have a moving visual scout so if you left it for long enough it would observe whatever was in a line of moving sight across that planet. Hopefully that makes enough sense
