Upon hearing of neutrino's interest in John Mavor's Live Free Or Die book recommendation, I picked it (and its sequel Citadel up from my local library. And wow, they are freaking amazing. The scope and scale of these books is astounding, and if PA ends up being 1/100th the size, I will be impressed. Here's some of my favorite ideas from the books: - SAPL: Solar Array Pumped Laser. A gigantic mining laser, built from countless mirrors scattered in clusters throughout the solar system. When the civilian laser is turned on an enemy ship in military combat, though, it melts through it like hot butter. Useful for extracting resources from metal-rich asteroids, and distributing laser-power so as to provide a redundant energy system. - Fabbers: Automated construction machines, with scrap metal and electronics going in one end, and processed components, vehicles, and weapons coming out the other end. I like the idea of having to actually *move* my mined resources to a fabber to begin production. Also in the book, fabbers are seen building even-more-specialized fabbers that excel in creating a specific item (a single missile type, or a single laser crystal). - Hollowed-out asteroids: If in PA we could heat an asteroid while spinning it, the diameter will increase, the density will fall, and we might be able to hollow it out more easily. This would let you shelter a propulsion unit, a weapons bay, a command center, radar system, or other such strategic resources within a fortified, metal/rock ball, zipping around in orbit! It's expensive and takes lots of time, but think of the possibilities...! - Gravity drive (grav plates): In the book, a grav plate (a reactionless propulsive drive) can only be built with another grav plate. This presents a chicken-and-egg problem, but perhaps in the PA late-game it might become possible to search for and extract a tiny, trace amount of [unobtanium] from a smashed-planet's core, and build a microscopic grav plate. With enough time, resources, and effort, this could be enlarged, and again, and again, until entire asteroids could be moved reactionless-ly around the solar system. This would certainly give the end game a certain goal, an "end-tech", especially if it requires the destruction of an entire planet to begin this upgrade-chain. Of course, grav plates are extremely fragile to shock and vibration, and so they expose a weakness that can be exploited by defending enemies. That's all I can think of for now. If you've read the books, chime in!
Funny, I just finished Live Free or Die and am chugging through Citadal. Definitely very good stories, and his take on culture and politics is just great fun to read. The idea of a battle station where the walls are 1500 meters thick.. wow. The only in-space combat is either missiles or lasers, although it's interesting to note that the missiles could be set to either attack or intercept mode. Also interesting is that incoming missiles that get blown up create a cloud of debris that blocks defensive lasers from hitting the missiles behind - almost exactly what I was talking about with how I think antinukes should work.
While I don't quite agree with Ringo's political views, I can understand his reasoning and I don't read his books for the politics anyhow. While all the stuff in the Troy Rising series is basically made of awesome, you've got to remember that the reason human tactics were so effective was that we were basically using low-tech but extremely effective methods that were "overpowered" compared to what the aliens were using. The SCALE of what goes on in the books, on the other hand... That's why I kickstarted PA! INTERPLANETARY WARFARE.
This thread made me start reading it last night... I'm about 25% in and the Sci-Fi elements are good but the rest of it is a pretty average, the dialogue in particular, it is jarringly off-putting in some places. Heinlein pushed many of the same political ideals in Starship Troopers* 50+ years ago and did a far better job of making a novel out of it. * For those of you have only seen the 90's movie, that is very much a satirical adaptation, and only loosely related to the book which is a Sci-Fi classic well worth your attention.
Another point to consider: In the books, to lose control of your orbital space was to essentially lose the battle on the planet. Which makes a lot of sense. BUT It begs the question. Why is PA then a ground-combat style game? How do you reconcile the two without drastically 'nerfing' the power of orbital weapons, ESPECIALLY if you're talking about fighting over multiple planets? Oh, and btw, it hasn't escaped my notice how much of the books are about collecting and moving resources to the right spot... Energy required to move resources = fuel = fuel refinery on gas giant....
Don't read too much into it, he just has some cool ideas. Also you have to realize that the game doesn't make any sense when you try to rationalize things too much. Things are tuned and balanced to make the gameplay work, not the fiction. Orbital units will be exactly as powerful as they need to be to make the game fun.
Oh, I'm very confident you'll be able to (probably have already) figure it all out. You could add some Bolo variants into the mix. Who could say no to enormous tanks capable of anti-orbital combat? On the other hand, the planetary defenses and Assault Vector class ships took years to create - if we have super advanced tech, but only a little time to extract and use resources, you're going to need a much smaller class of unit up in orbit.
Curse you! i was gonna use it. its probably the thing that annoys me the most on these forums. People will say that something doesn't make sense, even though it greatly balances the gameplay or adds to it.