How do gas planets work?

Unknown, but Neutrino seems to be leaning Orbital only, it's entirely possible to give a gas giant(or any other planet really) a multitude of Moons in orbit to fight over.

Fact is without any core gameplay in place it's impossible to say yet how Gas Giants will turn out.

Mike

Like a moon? Hopping between tiny orbital bodies won't be free, ya know.

I would think that a gas giant with an orbital layer (and giant energy resources) plus a ton of moons would be like an orbital island hopping map. Lots of fun!

Why not create a platform that hovers at high altitude around the gas giant. The platform could have the vacuum on the bottem gathering energy for structures on top of the platform. A player could possibly build an air factory (Gas giants still have atmospheres so aerial battles are still possible) or generators on top of the platform. The platforms could also be used to provide protection for the vacuums. This was kinda of what I thought Uber had planned for gas giants.

I remember that it was what neutrino mentioned in one of live streams.

Vote for: ***Platforms built with modules***

The floating platforms idea could be great. You'd be essentially building a massive flying battlestation that you could maneuver to fight the enemy platform. A huge flying base/carrier! That might just satisfy those looking for orbital space battles. (and could the same be done for water planets?)

Edit: also maybe cool - if you could build land units on the platforms and attempt to board the enemy base. Might be a neat implementation of the unit cannon in that situation. Since gas giants are sort of the oddball here, it might work if they required a radically different strategy to play with. That's the point of different biomes here, right? Just a thought anyway.

Not with the info we have now, no. They are pretty clear about what game play targets they are shooting for. They have specifically outlined combat to be planet based. Placing units in orbit as combat platforms directly contradicts this.

Now, what they haven't addressed is what type of weapon exchanges there will be between ground-to-orbital, orbital-to-ground and/or orbital-to-orbital. Obviously, with the comments in the May 17th Livestream, there will be enemy spy satellites in orbit that you would want to remove... what method would you have to do that?

If you put factories on an Asteroid with engines and a unit cannon or two, stick that in orbit around a planet, that's not unlike an Orbital Unit factory. Heck, it's easy enough to cut out the middle man, have a Fabber Satellite build a Small Factory/Unit Cannon mash-up, it can store say 5-10 units at a time and drop them onto the planet on command.

Get creative! ;p if you try to use what's been 'confirmed' about orbital play we have nothing to go on because as Neutrino once said, he has a good idea about land/air/sea combat, but fuzzy on the orbital stuff, so once the planet based stuff starts to solidify he'll have a better idea how we can slot in the Orbital stuff to better compliment(rather that overtake) the planet based stuff.

But that's Boooooooring until then so we might as well come up with some ideas! ;p

Mike

The fact that an asteroid could be utilized in such a manner precludes creating a specialized unit factory orbital structure. Why do that when you can use the asteroid and existing assets? This allows them to put more finesse in the celestial mechanics and not have to create a new building/unit with its associated costs for each scenario.

What? Sure on a superficial level they perform the same task(Building units and sending them to the surface) if you think they are the exact same you aren't looking at the concepts hard enough.

For example, the Orbital Factory(henceforth 'OFac') is fundamentally Planet-based, you need to have a gantry to get the Fabber Satellite into orbit to build the OFac and it's locked to that planet, it's not the kind of thing you'd build if you were the sole owner of a planet. Like wise an Asteroid Factory(AKA Asteroind with Engines, Factories and Unit Cannons, henceforth 'AFac') Is not planet based at all, first you gotta go out and get to the asteroid then using engines direct it to where to want to use it.

Also look at the Cost, Even if you include the cost of the Rocket Gantry(and it's likely you'll be using it for other things too, not just building OFacs) they're still waaaaaaaaay cheaper than an AFac would be, as you not only need the Rocket Gantry to get off planet, you might even need to set up a moon base first, and once you GET to the asteroid, you need to build engines, Factories and Unit cannons all separately.

Last thing to consider is how you're using OFacs and AFacs, Considering the lower upfront cost of OFacs is why I posited the limited number of units it could 'hold, between that and maybe making it a slower factory overall, you end up with a nice little rapid insertion force, good if you're caught off guard, want to make a quick reinforcement or send out a small raid. AFacs on the other hand, but have a scalable production and deployment speed based on how many Factories/Unit cannons you built, along with thier actual mobility they make for great staging points for planetary assaults, you don't need to bring an army, just build one right on thier doorstep.

There is LOTS of room for differentiating units like this, I guess having designed tons of units for BlackOps and working to not only create interesting units, but also to make sure they compliment what was already present in SupCom;FA and prior BO units makes things a bit easier for me.

Mike

If you have presence on a planet, why would you need an OFac?

...........................try reading the WHOLE post, 4th paragraph to be precise.

Mike

I did. My question is, if you have a land base on a planet, how would it be balanced at all to make the following components:

• 
  building a Gantry
  launching an OFac to orbit the same planet it was launched from
  building units to be dropped down on the same planet from that OFac

be cheaper than building the same number of units and transporting them to the desired target on that planet?

You've answered your own question. It's all to do with how expensive the "Transport" is.

They don't have to be cheaper to make it balanced. Sure it's one way to go about it and it's entirely plausible that the OFac itself could be the same cost, or cheaper, than a standard factory once you factor it's pros and cons, but the idea isn't to replace Surface Factories(SFacs). Imagine you're on the other side of the planet in the middle of a big attack and you get raided, is it better to get a transport to your army, have it pick up units and fly all the way back, or just tell your OFac to drop units right on said raiders? OFacs will not always be the answer, they will be sometimes thought.

Mike

I'd love to see something like that as well. As I mentioned in another thread, similar gameplay's been done for an older game that was reasonably well received named "Stratosphere: Conquest of the Skies", so such a gameplay model is viable. Abstracting from the Wikipedia entry:

In PA's context, one can envision floating platform battles as being similar to PA's naval battles, except that you would be effectively be laying out the armament and structure of your own "ships" in a customized fashion.

I guess volumetric fog like fog light in Unreal 1 or a ball with animated texture with atmospheric texture particle in the center.

Well, we don't even know whether launching an OFac into orbit around the originating planet is something we can do. Even if so, why would it be sitting on top of, or near to, your home base? You keep referring to an OFac as a builder and storage facility. It almost sounds like you are actually wanting a way to deploy troops via an orbital transport mechanism.

Of course we don't know for sure, that's the entire point! We know nothing right now, so unless you want to close any threads dealing with orbitals until we get info from Uber, lets come up with some ideas already!

There is a thingy for geostationary orbit, so it's not impossible to have it siting above/near your base, it'd be great if you choose orbit type, but anyways. In terms of unit delivery they would be similar but that's it really. An OFac would require less user input for smaller numbers of units, it's also likely be a lot more timely when dealing with a raid.

Mike