Invasion scenario:

Two factions in one solar system. Each faction made out of multiple commanders due to each time being played by multiple players. It is a big solar system, some moons, some planets.... well, it WAS a big solar system, then those two factions began fightining. Moons crashed into planets, whole armies got obliberated in epic fights, nuclear warfare put craters everywhere. In the end only two planets are left. Or perhaps the whole thing started with only two planets, I don't care.

I have an issue.. or well, not an issue, a question. Lets say you have two planets, just two. They are both big, provide lotsa metal. But one is one end of the solar system, the other on the other end of the solar system - out of the reach of nukes. How do you invade the other planet? I mean, I doubt satelites of whatever kind will always be able to just travel through space, right? ... Right? I hope they won't. It feels odd that some satelite can just fly through space like it's a rocket. Feels more like a spaceship than a sat then. And just firing rockets with sats on them towards the enemy planet? That is supposed to be a proper invasion?

What I am basically asking is: How are we going to invade planets, when we can not use a unit cannon because there are no moons to move around, when we can't nuke eachother because the distance is too great, when we can't send sats at eachother (because hopefully they won't always be able to just move through space or because the enemy has loads of umbrellas and avengers) and sending your commanders to a planet that is completly in the enemy's hands.. ehh... Hell, your enemy has the same freakin' problem after all! How are they going to get ya?

I am guessing we will get unit transports at some point.

On the issue with "moving through space". I have repeated myself once already, but I think I might want to make my reply to a post ,that was asking how we are going to take coms out that are parked in space, part of this thread:
Landers shouldn't just be able to fly through deep space anyway. No satelite should. Landers should only be able to travel from astroid to astroid, moon to moon or planet to moon and back, but not from one side of the solar system to the other. You should have to use actual space-rockets for that. So you need an orbital launcher to leave the planet.
Just like in the visualization trailer! It looked awesome how the lander picked up the commander, then put him in the rocket and he was launched to the moon.
Then those three little landers picked up fabrication bots and got some asteroids to be used as KEWs.
Nothing should be able to stay between planets. Nothing. The space between planets should only be an area that is used for the rockets to fly through. Or other means of transportation with enough thrust to actually go anywhere.

This would also prevent commander hopping, since commanders can't just leave the planet they ran to when you get there, without an orbital launcher, and make "where do I send this rocket now" an even bigger decision.

EDIT: Alright, fabbers should also be allowed to be picked off by landers and put into a rocket, of course. Or perhaps a.. transport-rocket that's bigger and allows to take in a bunch of fabbers and a few other units. Or a huge lander-ship or something. We need ways to transport, yes, but none of htem should be able to stay between planets and none of the ones that can pick up a commander should be able to start without an orbital launch pad to prevent space-commanders.

AND other orbitals units shouldn't just move through space either!

Isn't that the point where using Moons/Asteroids become mobile battlestations? Barring that, I would have to say that this could be a thing where planet destruction should be more common than just scarring the planet to help avoid the possibility.

I also like the idea that asteroid belts have 'infinite' small asteroids that have no Metal spots, so you always have Asteroids you can Weaponize, but the larger ones you can create an Eco on are limited.

As far as the lander and deep space, I think what I would like see is;

1] For planets, Landers need a booster to get into Orbit

2] Although a Lander does not need a Booster to travel between and planetoid, Boosters used from moons/asteroids would dramatically cut down on the travel time.

Mike

What if you have no moons or asteroids? Just two big planets, far away from eachother.

Like I said, that comes down to not allowing "broken" systems and/or providing things like "infinite" KEWs.

I don't play SupCom:FA with NR20, No Nucks, No Air, 2x Resources, No Shields, No Arty games because I know the game doesn't work well when you throw all that BS into it.

I do agree it's something that needs to be planned and accounted for, but instead of trying to figure out what to do IF it happens, Uber should instead figure out how to KEEP it from happening.

Mike

Why keep it from happening? I think it would be better to make such scenarios possible but instead give players a way to invade planets with ground forces not sats, not drop pods from unit cannons, not KEWs.

There are so many possibilities! Army-carrying transport-ships with EMP weapons, mobile factories that you can launch into space, produce extremely fast (high metal usage) and can be fired into space. They land on a planet, then dig themselves into the surface and begin spewing out the units you want to spew out. They would have a lot of health, an installed anti-nuke, AA and some anti-ground weapons. For water planets you could use a big carrier ship that produces other ships.

Depending on how halleys end up working, you may be able to rocket up your planet and bring it into a close enough 0rbit for unit cannons etc to go nuts, for a large planet, you might need a lot of halleys, but at least it's a means of ending these sorta stalemate situations.

I really dislike the idea of a "unit cannon" that fires units up out of one gravity well and down into another gravity well in the same action. The Noah Unit Cannon in SupCom 2 was a disaster in every respect. And I highly doubt adding planets into the mix will salvage the idea.

Lifting units from the surface should be hard. Landing units from space should be relatively easy. Lifting units using rockets or a space elevator is going to be expensive, no matter how you slice it. Either you need to pay a lot for each rocket, even more for a reusable dropship type unit, or you need a megaconstruction that can lift units very cheaply or for free.

But slamming units into the ground from a ship in orbit only needs a pod that can survive re-entry. Orbital insertion is relatively easy compared to achieving escape velocity with a significant amount of mass. This could even encourage having space stations or ships that construct units expressly for the purpose of orbital insertion, with the expectation that it is a one-way trip. Units ready for orbital insertion are like reserves that can be brought down anywhere on the planet, but limited in quantity.

The problem with that is that you're now removing the cost of moving metal off the surface only because it's magically teleported from your planet-side metal storage to your orbital-side factory.

No matter how you spin it, metal is moved from the planet, up into space. Turning that metal into tanks first shouldn't give you some mysterious and arbitrary cost penalty.

If both players are on isolated, distant worlds, there are still ways to win. For example, a "tech" victory might be achieved by building Commanders and shipping them "elsewhere". The two players, devastated from battle, don't have to reach each other to win anymore. That same "elsewhere" machine can be used to send sniping teams directly after the enemy Commander.

Oneway teleporters are total game enders regardless of map scale. Granted it can feel like a pretty shitty way to win, so it really depends on the Comm being smartly designed to "lose" before the game reaches a crappy point.

Rockets already exist for long distance travel. Unit cannons are best utilized as a short range hop from orbit/ground or vice versa. Without quick and easy access to/from asteroids, there is no such thing as a land invasion.

It may be useful to restrict travel off a planet, in favor of making landing much easier. But is that something that should be arbitrarily assigned based on a unit's position? Or should it be a more natural behavior of orbital tools?

If one wants to follow the lead set by TA, the results should appear to be as natural as possible. For example, a fixed emplacement unit cannon is very effective on an asteroid that can point towards its target, but is nearly impossible to use on solid planet. No stat fluffing is required, because the tool works in the right spot and for the right reasons.

Obviously the unit you construct on a planet which launches units and the unit which orbits around a planet which launches units are completely different. I'm simply saying that the unit on the surface should launch into orbit (not down onto another planet). And I think the surface-to-space launcher needs to be more expensive than the space-to-surface launcher.

A "unit cannon" might be used to launch a unit from the surface into a transporting ship. And then the transporting ship launches the unit back down to the surface. Or, it might fly to a different planet and do the same.

The cost difference is in the cost of the units that perform the launching action, and is only as arbitrary as any other costs in the game.

In addition, I don't think it is relevant that you can use metal anywhere. Your decision about where to build matters precisely because of the resource and time cost of transportation. Building on one continent versus another might require air transport to move in a reasonable amount of time.

Look, I was all for having local economies. But since that's not the case, we have universally accessible metal. You can actually use metal acquired from one planet on a different planet, with no cost associated with the transportation of the resource. Obviously you can do the same with production in space.

The "arbitrary cost penalty" being the cost of the unit needed to launch the unit into space? That is just like saying needing to transport units across continents imposes an "arbitrary cost penalty" of needing some other kind of transport. Your decision about where you build your units imposes penalties; be that time to travel somewhere, or cost needed to construct units to transport them.

We will get a orbital factory at some point, won't we?
This mobile base that you can fire at another planet to have it dig itself in there could be constructed in the orbital factory! It could be a big ship that you can construct in orbit, then you don't have to leave the planet's gravity well anymore. From there you send it to the enemy base.

The thing should be VERY expensive though and orbital factories are probably hard to protect and keep if you don't control most of the planet. So the mobile bases I described are only a solution when you have captured your own planet and now try to invade another that's far away. Oh and I forgot something: We might get teleporters, right? I guess we will be able to either teleport a whole army at once somewhere... oooor it works like a portal. So you can stream units from your planet to the enemy planet in an attempt to overthrow their defences.

lol. @ledarsi, It wasn't about local economy. If you can magic your metal from extractor to factory - be that factory in space, or factory on land - then I would like to see moving resources in the form of units cost the same as moving resources.

N

Not necessarily a pod, make the process more awesome than that.
You could have a large interplanetary unit transport, arrive in geostationary orbit of the world to be invaded, shoot a tether into the ground from orbit and slide your units down the line.

Skip to 6:10 for a look at such tether: