Invading a planet is impossible

I played several big multi planet games now and it was at some point impossible to invade a planet or conquer it.

The death star balance in my opinion is fine and the halley is fine too.

The Problem is that you cant invade the planet at a later stage which makes the lategame broken and slows the game down to a point where you just want to quit.

Currently invasions are defended mostly via airforce. You can assist your Air and groudn forces by placing Anchors (have powerfull AA weaponry) above to point you are going to place your Teleporter.

Then just drop a few engineers with heavy AA support vehicles and build up that teleporter to get the direct reinforcements waiting on your planet.
Don't forget you can area-command the load order and to reinforce that beachhead with turrets and a radar.

It is still more expensive and difficulty then just nuke or sxx-sniping the commander, however. In GW I mostly just use the nuclear option to finish of foes on other planets, only using the teleporter beachhead when nesseary.

I've managed it, what was the issue?

I've seen "invasion proof" planets getting properly assaulted if you devise the right strategy. And I'm going to assume you're talking about something like a moon completely covered in umbrellas, anti-nukes, and anchors. Yes they appear impenetrable, but all you need is to mass produce an orbital assault along with an army to teleport onto the surface.

This might be an argument for including a deathstar in every map.

It basically makes the deathstar into the "victory condition" for the map. Whoever can lock that place down is going to win and you can pretty well just quit the game at that point. King of the hill.


But more to the point, I'm not sure I believe in the un-invadeable planet anymore. It used to be a huge problem but a number of changes have made it easier:
* Anchors don't move, so it's not feasible to protect your whole planet with anchors. You can build them everywhere but a sudden incursion by a large group of space fighters will make a hole.
* Teleporters build really fast
* Laser satellites are much better at acquiring targets and firing on them after insertion into orbit (which is a great way to assassinate commanders if you can see them)
* Nukes are interplanetary. This is the big one. While you can build enough anti-nukes to cover a whole planet, I don't think you can build enough anti-nukes in one spot to counter a mass nuke attack.

While it may be possible the options for an invasion are quite limited. Either you get a teleporter up or you don't. I'd really like to see mobile teleporters as well as bigger unit transports.

Or a unitcannon

A drop pod launch pad?

Designed to fire units via rockets to target destination?

I'd like to see unit cannons where we can bundle up, say, 15 units, and send them to a random location on another planet.

I think it will be total chaos if we can pick a location. There will be no possible way to defend anything because units can just magically appear exactly beside the thing you most wanted to protect. But random insertion allows us a chance to make some arbitrary holes in someone's global defense network without necessarily getting to drop on his commander's head or right in the middle of a bunch of fusion plants.

I'd prefer that they were vulnerable to anti-air and anti-orbital so that it'd be impossible to drop units into defended bases. I'd guess that if they were scattered all over the planet it would be too hard to make any meaningful assault.

The first step is prevention. Strike earlier - you should never allow your opponent to cover the entire planet with layers of umbrellas and fully stocked antinukes.

Of course the other alternative is just sniping their comm(s) which is usually much easier and quicker. However this can be countered by putting your comm in an air transport and setting it to area patrol the planet. You then have to rely on blind luck by an SXX laser or a fast anchor build that by sheer improbability happens to be right above the random patrol of the transport. Although if your opponent elects to use the transport tactic then you are basically forced to use an all-in invade strategy:



Invading:

• Scout the entire planet with advanced orbital radar.
  
• Multiple nukes to overcome antinukes and clear an area to build on (Not cost-effective, but its the price you pay to get your foot in the door).
  
• Invade with orbital fighters and fabbers to build up anchors (These are a nightmare when someone builds them on your planet).
• Teleport a lot of AA to start taking care of their huge roaming air force.
• Teleport engineers to get up antinukes (and possibly flak).

Once you have antinukes up it's gg.


Now unfortunately this strategy is kinda countered by nukes, which I believe still target the orbital layer. At 50k a nuke however, you can still get cost-effective exchanges with their nukes which makes this mildly viable.

However I should point out that this often is pretty difficult to pull off so you basically have to do this twice, simultaneously. You can often defend against one all-in assault like this but rarely can you stop two simultaneously.

They don't.

But they can hit the orbital layer.

I thought that was patched out.

Nope.

Commander explosion destroying orbital was removed if that's what you mean.

Hah! Not sure about mobile teleporters but I'd like to see bigger unit transports too. Could be interesting. Another option or two for invading an occupied planet would be nice.

I'd just have to say, this is my least favorite part of the game at this point.

It takes SEVERAL minutes to get the right orbital make-up, kind of have to get lucky to find a commander. Then execute it PERFECTLY or else give away what you are doing, and have to start all over with scouting.

and ON TOP OF ALL OF THIS, it comes down to SNIPING COMMANDERS..................

Boring.. i usually just quit when planets get hunkered down.

I have 3k units and they are sitting idle.

I literally have to delete units to keep playing and trying snipe after snipe after snipe....

This is INTERPLANETARY WAR, not whack a mole (commander).

Units should be Moveable from planet to planet, you should always need some sort of force to attack and defend.

It's like the first 20 minutes it's all out production of units and taking planets.. and then...... ok, scratch all that... eco spam with a side of snipe cheese curd enchilada.

Really frustrating, and I LOVE this game... plz make interplanetary fun....

Commander assassination is the point.

Invading a planet is possible it's just WAY WAY WAY WAY easier to snipe. At least sup com made this a little more challenging with stackable shields and ******* good AA.

You are confusing winning by attrition leading to an eventual commander death and a cheap commander snipe whilst the opponent still has a chance to win.

One method of victory is mortals combat's "finish him" and the other is a knife in the back in a dark street. I'd rather been killed after I was beaten than killed before I was beaten in a match. Call me nostalgic.

Sniping at the moment is ridiculously easier to pull off, and the only solution to this is to either a) nerf all fast moving units to the point they are useless or b) introduce shields, which should have always been in this game. Or I suppose c) introduce a annihilation game mode, (or the ability to spam a building which can acts as a HQ if your commander dies.)

Else deal with cheap snipes being the only way you should attempt to win. And re-brand the game "Could have been Planetary Annihilation but SSX snipes are easier"

Orbital is kinda crappy atm and you want to introduce shields to somehow counter the situation?

Yeah, no, or we can re-brand the name "Stacking shield simulator 2014".