Gas Giants as Sources of plentiful, cheap energy

As the Devs have said, they're considering "he3" mines as a potential late game source of energy/a boost for fusion plants for players that build orbital platforms. I think the idea is a little excessively complex, as it involves adding another resource to the game. to that end, why not take advantage of a different aspect of a gas giant's near orbit enviroment as an excuse to provide low-cost high-output energy to players who have captured that space?

Allow players to build Magnetic flux plants. by nature they're non-volatile, but extremely fragile, as all they are is a hub with kilometer long wires hanging from it, spun gently so the wires remain straight. as the wires cross flux lines, they induce a current from the magnetic field. Players who control the area can maintain these plants for a abundant energy on the cheap, but they'd be really vunerable to raiding parties. oh, and they'd be just as, if not more viable near orbit to a star. (one unit, two purposes)

Just an idea, considering it's all but guaranteed that we'll see at least that stretch goal made.

He3 is not a different resource. It's simply a requirement to build a powerplant which depends on this technology, same as wind turbines require athmosphere and solar power plants require sunlight. In return the standalone powerplants from SupCom without prerequisition will probably be removed from the game.

Those things never did make much sense, only a lore thing, but I still preferred the solar/wind/hydro stuff from TA, and helium from gas giants would be a very cool addition to all that

What? When did they remove standard powerplants? reference please.

I think he means that the power gens will have a viable means of fuel, such as wind, H3 or solar instead of just things that you make that pull power out of their behind, a-la supcom

I feel gas giants shouldn't just be limited to resource gathering planets, why not have them a great place for energy generating facilities, but also allow small amounts of mass to be gathered (dust collector?) Having a battle on ONLY a gas planet should be possible, with aerostatic structures and mainly aircraft/hovercraft to fight.

My concern is how will the game be balanced. Do Gas Giants represent almost unlimited forms of energy? How do you balance games WITHOUT access to that huge source of energy (random map didn't pop a gas giant, for example)? Will getting a gas giant be a sort of 'game over' as far as energy concerns go?

I'd doubt it'd be THAT big of a deal, more like 1.5-2X the energy you'd make with an equal number of generators on a normal earth-like planet. Then you'd be able to gather 50-70% the metal with similar number of structures. Having one means it's cheaper to earn the same amount of energy, but hardly so cheap you'd be set.

I really prefer having different types of energy production which have properties that depend on their type to universal Pgens like in SupCom.

Helium 3 fusion is a great idea for a source of power. However it seems odd to have the less-efficient method of extracting it from Jovian worlds be present, but exclude refinement from lunar regolith. Moons, or other bodies without atmospheres will accrete He3 deposits from their star's solar wind. Building a plant on such a world is far more energetically efficient than harvesting it from a gas giant, as they have extremely powerful gravity that would cost a lot of energy to overcome.

In case gas giants were to make it into the game I agree that they should be high-energy low-metal planets. Dust collectors are a good idea, it allows you have a gas planet only fight as well giving you a fighting chance in case the your primarily planet/base is lost.

I fully agree, but what it is named honestly doesn't matter, it could simply be called "gas collector" and give me energy and I'd be happy. I feel quite strongly about forcing every building to function or have a similar structure to function on any terrain, simply because the stretch goals allow these "only gas and only water" worlds. I think it's quite important that if a player wanted to play with 1 planet, and it be gas that they can do that (though it would obviously behave differently, such as only using air units, or only naval on water worlds)

Sort of off topic, but maybe whatever "air factory" we have, should by default have a flying asset, and naval yards by default be floating so when/if we get these new planets there is no need for entirely new asset creation

I see gas giants balanced by
A- The fact you can't get to them straight away, a rocket to get an engi there might be considerably expensive which though affordable might be more difficult if currently fighting someone.
B-Limited construction, only orbital and maybe air

I don't see to much of a problem resource wise as I can't see it being any different to a metal heavy planet which most seemed to expect before the third stretch goal anyway.

Basically if I have the choice between planets have different strategic values of there own and the insane pipe dreams of working orbits (Which royally cocks up balance and map variety) then I'm going strategic value all the way.

I think this is one of those cases where awesome trumps realism. Fusion being limited to gas giants is simply better for the game.

I think we are talking about a special type of cheap, high-output energy production. Fusion has been the canonical build-it-anywhere-energy, but has had a high price tag to go with it.

Someone earlier made the excellent point that you need to be spacefaring before you can access a gas giant, which means there is a certain amount of investment required to access a gas giant's cheap energy.

Here is a possible way to do this- gas giants are treated as having an unlimited capacity for energy production. However you have to build somewhat more costly orbital structures to access it- a gravity pipe or some such thing. But there is no limit to how many of these you can construct around a gas giant.

Worlds that do not have atmospheres might have spots on them, like mex spots, which produce energy instead of metal. They cost far less than the type of orbital structure you need around a gas giant, but are limited in quantity, and require the same kind of territory control gameplay that fighting over metal spots does.

I think the H3 clouds were put in so there would be some fixed points on the gas giant to fight over rather than just slapping down reactors all over the place.

Also yeah you'd need to be space faring to get to the gas giant so you'd already have a working planet with mass sources by that point.

I like the idea of gas giants spewing out free energy because they'd act as sort of an Achilles heel to your empire. Imagine you and a buddy are fighting over a solar system and you get tot he gas giant first. You slap down a bunch of energy producing structures, and now since you have a LOT of free energy you go nuts with the units and buildings that take up a lot of energy. You plop down tons of radar stations, that perimeter monitoring thing from FA, shields, that artillery from SC2 that needed thousands of units of energy every time it fired, and a load of mass fabricators. And while you are expanding you don't plop down any more reactors because you don't need them.

If your buddy can get to the gas giant and blow up your stuff then your economy will be incredibly lop sided. There will be power outages all over the place. Artillery will shut off as they lose radar, shields will flicker on and off, the mass extractors will shut down, and factories will grind to a halt.

I'd be up for gas giants giving out easy energy but also being hard to defend somehow. Maybe the fixed orbital turrets have terrible stats compared to the orbital attack units.

The energy resource is the why people should populate Gas giants.

Allegedly we are shooting for awesome not realistic. I think it would be awesome to have floating mega-power stations in gas giant upper atmo, or obiting mega power stations with like a big tube trailing down and sucking atmo out of the planet.

A mega power station would make you energy rich but you would be metal poor just feeding on a gas giant (maybe fusion could make a weeny little bit of iron?) so you would need ore bases on moons of the giant or on NiFe asteroids. With different orbital rates (I hope) you would have to guard both resources seperately because you would lose the power stations round the other side of the planet to the ore bases at regular intervals where they would be vulnerable to attack. Moving terrain/infrastructure can be interesting for gameplay, e.g. ORB (Offworld Resource Base) which wasnt perfect but had its moments.

Metal planets would be the reverse of that, you would have loads of ore but depend on solar power only due to not having any light elements. Would be a problem if the planet rotates!

IMHO I dont like mass extraction points. They are too small. I would prefer ore regions ie seams on planets, which you can detect and mine if you build close enough to extract ore. So an ore seam is like a Mex point in an abstract way but is a larger region which gives some leeway in building placement. You still need to control territory to get it, like Mex.

There is an opportunity to do something territorial with power and regolith. He3 production depends on surface area, which is why gas giants have so much, they are huge. A regolith power station (eg as in the film "Moon"), would need a large area for regolith harvesting. So you could not build them all together, you would need a power farm spread out over a large area, each station farming a region of regolith. You would need the full area to get max output. If regolith was again a detectable area you might be able to get say a full two power stations worth of output for two stations but could squeak two and a half power stations worth of output if you built three to use up the extra area. If you see what I mean. Then you would have to guard the spread out power stations of your He3 power farm.

Just thinking out loud.

From the experience of our solar system it might be so that Gas giants often have a lot of moons (or rather asteroids orbiting, since many of them are really small). Jupiter for example has over 60 moons, ranging in size from almost half the size of earth, with a radius of 2500 km, to the smallest with just a few kilometers of radius. You could imagine that these hold a lot of minerals, which would definitely make the gas giants worth fighting for! Interesting fights aswell, with a ton of satellites flying around.

I think gas giants should be very plentiful in energy but anything you build on there guzzles energy as well. If you want a ton of energy then you can fork over for just an undefended mining outpost, but if you wanna protect it then you have to spend a bunch of the energy you're storing. Perhaps also toss in some unique superweapons you can only build on the gas giant.

Similar for metal planets in reverse; you get lots of metal income but you need to spend more metal resources for the stuff you can build there to reinforce it's structure against the high gravity. Could even be done with modifiers if it was made super clear (like a giant sign at the top of the screen saying "this is a gas giant stuff will cost more energy here").

I think gas planets would be fairly balanced even if they're reasonably cheap, since laying all your eggs in one basket can be a risk (meaning if the enemy gets that gas ball you've put all your power on you're boned

Similarly for the metal planetoids, it seems they're going for smaller moons made of metal, which due to limited size would be harder to defend than a big ol' planet