Double the cost of orbital. Maybe triple.

Valid point that I agree with entirely. What I don't understand is how is orbital the end all be all??? I mean essentially it is as this is what gets you to that lovely asteroid super weapon, but I haven't seen an orbital unit that just smashes the playing field as soon as its alive

As I already stated, orbital radar is vastly superior to any ground radar, and orbital solar power is vastly superior to any ground energy generation. This is not just about combat units.

Making it take longer still has the same result as making it more expensive, it tries to mitigate the effects and not the actual problem.

So they why should it be this binary choice? Why should going for Orbital first/quickly/mainly be a losing proposition unless you've started on different planets? Why not have it so that Orbital is more like the other factories? Why can't it be that if we wanted to instead of building an Air fact for scouting we Build an Orbital Factory for some cheap Radar satellites? Why does it need to be this incredible set endgame weapons when part of the point of PA is it's scale?

Mike

Don't most other non-spawn planets have like, 7 total metal, including the unuseable atop-of-mountains spots?

How couldn't you kill them with sheer number of orbital fighters?

I

I agree with the solar panels are extremely powerful, but why wouldn't they be??? They are expensive to achieve.....

Yes the scale is part of it correct, but like I said you're asking for everyone up just scamper to separate ends of a system in fifteen minutes, then the game becomes a three hour turtle fest of boring building and lots of space travel time .... yawn...... where instead you could have the magnificent clashes we're already having in an attempt to make it off planet.



BTW Mike, and krak I thoroughly enjoy these discussions they have helped my workday pass quickly, and I'm glad no one is taking offense and getting butt hurt over these disagreements as we put our cents in on the greatest strategy game ever!!!

Yes I agree with using your arsenal but you must think of the small games still.... why make a 1v1 take a long as three hours just because you both went orbital and split???? Orbitals something for large player games where economies reach even more astronomical heights than they do currently and then your going to be sitting in front of the screen for hours anyways. Orbital actually will speed the end of large player capacity matches since you won't fight tooth and nail always and asteroids start flying. Also I don't think they do take long enough 10-15 fabs can throw one up extremely quick, sure just one fab takes time but who builds something like that with one fab?? Unless that's all you can afford to not tank your eco, because you're busy defending or attacking your opponent to slow their space race.....

That is my point, why do they have to be expensive? What if there was a basic orbital factory that had a solar satellite that gave 80% as much energy as T1 power, and cost 120% as much metal as T1 power (to compensate for its ability to flee the enemy and being more difficult to hit)? What if there was also a basic orbital radar that could only detect air units and structures?

Suddenly you have interesting choices. Do I build solar satellites and try to hide them, or do I build p-gens and defend them on the surface? Do I build an air scout to try to find the enemy, or a radar sat that will find him faster, but won't tell me how many ground forces he has?

Right now there are no choices, as soon as your economy is able, you should build solar satellites and orbital radar.

You're saying things, but not explaining anything. You are clearly working under specific assumptions, that may or may not even be accurate.

The Thing is that the Commander is always going to be the BEST tool for expansion, so why hide that capability behind an arbitrary pay wall? Let the Commander get off planet, that's fine, there are ways to limit his ability to jump around and I don't see how the game devolves into any kind of turtle fest, it anything it'd de-emphasize turtling because it's impossible to protect everything cost effectively. Don't forget that we still haven't really grasped fully how large a system "should" be yet for any given number number of players.

Also I'd like the point out that making Orbital and Interplanetary stuff cheaper solves a lot of problems, yes it means it will be easier and more feasible to use earlier on in some cases, but it also means the ability to 'counter' it is easier too, Radar satellites are cheaper so sending some out to different planets is actually feasible now to try and catch the enemy when he's moving around, it makes it easier to move yourself around as well.

Right now Orbital sits in the sate binary type of scenario that Nucks do and it's boring for all the same reasons.

Mike

Tell me what to explain and I shall as soon as I sit in front of my computer, but I believe I have repeated my explanations several times, if more depth is required so be it!!! I shall give the people what they want!!

I think instead of making Orbital just a set of game enders and increasing the price, we should make Orbital a bunch of normal units and decrease the price.



This may seem unrelated, but the sooner I can get to my enemy and hit them over the head with endless hordes of units, the better. I want to be able to have my first raiding party blowing up my enemy's stuff by minute 5, minute 3 ideally. Even if that raiding party only consists of 4 Scampers and a Stinger, all I really care about is doing some damage. It doesn't matter if we're separated by a forest, a mountain range, an ocean, or several parsecs of empty space; if I'm not dealing damage to my enemy, I'm bored.

If you want to have orbital locked behind a ridiculous cost barrier, that would effectively be like no-rush timers from SupCom (which were BAD in every case that they were used), I don't want to be playing the same game as you. It may sound rude and obtrusive, but I play RTSes because they involve strategy. As in, out-thinking your opponent as opposed to out-logisticking them, out-microing or out-rushing them. See my signature for why this concerns me so much.

@beer4blood, Explain why Orbital units have to be expensive and why this is conducive to better gameplay than the alternative.

I'm not even sure why every other production facility has a basic and advanced structure, where as orbital is purely advanced. If advanced technology is the barrier for us to build an orbital launcher, why not make it a basic one, where as the advanced factory could for example be floating in orbit.

Shifting some base buildings to the orbital layer would make it much more interesting to play around with.

ok here goes..... I feel that the orbital launcher should be a great expense, not necessarily the units themselves i feel they are fine where they're at. you guys are thinking against it since it is essentially another tier or T3 which i cant disagree it is, but as it stands now there is no unit that comes off the launcher swinging for the fences and wiping out whole armies or bases. granted the laser makes good comm snipe but thats only because the umbrella is having issues at the moment. to me reducing the cost to reach interplanetary travel heavily negates from the game, as i have said previously people will just immediately jump ship and spread dragging the game out incredibly. orbital travel and units are the main selling point of the game, yes, therefore they should be a reward for your skill and strategy on the battlefield. Granted you can jump straight to orbital now, as many new players do, but it never pays off like they hope. and it shouldnt. It merely makes the game a much longer trip to their doom. I believe an increase in build time for the platform would help to deter such action. i hate chasing someone who tucked tail and jumped. in doing so they are usaully leaving me the planet to expand upon ferverishly then im free to spam as much orbital as i want while theyre busy floating in the void, by the time they land my clod of orbital is more than likely en route to their new planet. they simply delayed the battle and just tipped it in my favor considerably. now im sure new units to all tiers will change this but as it stands right now thats hows its gone for me every game.......

why shouldnt they be cheaper??? i feel that kills alot of the fundamental elements of rts that i love. progressing through different tiers and fighting for every piece of progress you make. cheap easily accessible super sat radar makes early required scouting null and void. imo it kills almost all units that act on the planet surface. why use those units when you can jump ship go expand and start just slinging rocks at each other??? it would be senseless to do so when you can run and go build a small planet into the end game weapon. thats my point orbital isnt the end game super weapon its being described as but is the means to the ultimate end game weapon atm.

early Sat radar kills so much strategy imo, constant scouting is always a requirement of rts. early Sat radar while not giving you eyes on gives you good coverage of your enemy and movements with very little to no risk at all.

space travel is an expensive ventue, always it shouldnt be cheaply given the instant you start. if a super slow turtle rock slinging match with loads of orbital early is what you want then everyone could start on seperate planets and the issue of cost is void as you expand unimpeded. the game is planetary annihilation.....note the planet in there its not called orbital occupation

how cant you get to your enemy asap via air or ground units??? also how is it a no rush timer that boggles my mind?? you can rush just fine with out orbital. now easier acces would make it a no rush timer as most ppl would split off world and make a great distance from you. leaving you bored as stated and that in its entirety is my argument. sitting back turtling away on everyones own seperate planet is boring as fudge

I see the problem, you assume we are only talking about cost and not with the addition of balancing a unit's capabilities to it's cost as well.

You are half right, with the way satellites float around not it is hard to balance something like a radar satellite. But I think it's a bit of a GPG-ism to say "Well it's hard to do it this way, so instead of trying to make it work lets do the complete opposite and hope it works instead." This is basically the explaination for a lot of what happened in SupCom2 in my eyes

This is why having orbits(even really simple orbits) goes a long way to making cheap satellites feasible from a balance perspective, look at what it does to a radar Satellite, it can't provide constant Intel, it can provide consistent snapshots which is still pretty good and if you need something more up to day you can go and scout it manually. you can even give the Satellite a decent sized radar range on the basis that it's always moving so the information you can gleam is more limited.

Even without Orbits you can do things like make cheap "spotting' Satellites, they move super slow(like can't even Keep up with a T1 army) and have a small radar range but can still provide some key intel like "Here is this large Metal clump, I will keep a spotter above it so if my opponent tries to take it I can raid it before he builds too many defenses" and such.

There are a lot of ways to do cheaper Satellites.

Mike

Cost only does so much, when you get enough workers.

Make it taker longer time to build it.

doesnt this make them a redundant unit??? as i can simply place a ground radar wherever i want and get constant intel???

You know how rock paper scissors lizard spock is way more than 5/3rds as interesting than rock paper scissors?

That's how I feel about having orbital be another (balanced) option in the air/bots/tanks/navy decision. It can have its own T2 (perhaps t2 orbital is the current orbital, and they just add a t1 below it).

It occurs to me, since this discussion started with a complaint about turtling, that neither of the 4 existing unit types are good at countering turtling. As far as I can tell, the only good answer to turtling is econ, and once you have the econ it doesn't much matter which type of units you make. Perhaps T1 orbital's destined niche is anti-building.

That is much more likely to be because of the fact that we have maybe, at most, 25% of the final unit count available so far.

Mike

...or that. Probably that.

Which version are you talking about, because I talked about two very different implementations.

Mike