Let's assume that Uber continues work on PA for many years...

I said "long-term". Read the thread. We are talking 5 and 10 years. The things you list could come in a matter of weeks, so of course they are talked about more. And I have never seen the Uber "no" you mentioned. All I've seen them do is discuss what it would take for it to be done.

I'd like to oppose on the matter that for team games to be possible you need more complexity. I think that such complexity can be achieved by merely increasing the number of planets on which the players play so that they have to spread out more. Or perhaps getting the Galactic War a multiplayer version. I definitely disagree that there should be added more layers to the game, we don't really need Space battles, expanding our current layers could help the game more.
Just by the way I think that PA has one of the best ways of team cooperation with the Shared Armies option. I honestly don't play 1v1 almost at all, I mostly play Team FFAs (2v2v2 etc.) with a friend in my team and these games are amazing when it comes down to scale and pure fun.

Unit confirmed pre order reward for half life three!

Well, the orbital layer is a space layer. And the more you keep expanding it, the closer you get to a fully fledged space layer.

We need more people like you.

This made me realize something. The bigger the stellar systems become in terms of number of planets/moons/asteroids/etc., the more pressing the need for a space fleet will become. I am sure many people will not understand this but I don't think I can explain it any further. It looks like common sense to me.

Put it this way... A small collection of huts in a forest doesn't need modern road infrastructure anywhere near as much as a town does. If you have 5 or 10 or 20 celestial bodies under your control, you need some more efficient way of moving between them and managing them (also of protecting them and attacking those of your enemies en masse) than whatever limited possibilities are now offered by the game. It would be too tedious to try to take them all one by one. You'd want a spacefleet to move forward and steamroll all of them. Proper balancing would mean that you could only build the spacefleet by harnessing the resources of many planets at once, so that it would only come into play in the endgame of a massive game, and thus could not be leveraged in small games and unbalance them.

I am loving the idea more and more the more I think about it.

An added benefit of this would be that all the people who are against space would never see the spacefleet (since in my experience these people also prefer smaller/fewer planets, 1v1 games, etc.), and everyone would be happy without having to fragment the player base by putting spacefleets in a sequel.

This is why I am in favor of keeping Stargates in-game after the Unit-Cannon is released - and adding an orbital Stargate.

In the lore, the FTL type of these games is a highly expensive single teleportation jump, thus making the commanders essential as very little can actually be sent from place to place, especially now that civilisation has ended.

You don't build space fleets, because you can't use them, the resources needed to move that much mass would be more then you could ever possibly generate.

Edit: FTL, not FLT

I disagree. Spacefleets just aren't part of the settings. If you want, you can make your fleet of Avengers etc but I PA doesn't need Space battles that aren't above planets. As was pointed out before, why would you fight over a piece of void? To travel in such huge systems, I believe that teleporters are sufficient although I think that it would be nice if you could see all the teleporters of your team when fully zoomed out (meaning you see the whole solar system) and you could link them from there, which would be much faster and much more efficient. Also I am a big fan of the Unit cannon which combined with the possibility of changing orbits of planets could prove incredibly useful. Technically when you change orbit of an entire planet it is sort of a space ship, isn't it?

You wouldn't. Just as armies that fight over roads do not fight for a piece of road (or an over an ocean for a piece of water, etc.)

Yeah but you fight for roads because you need to pass. What would be the point of fighting in Space, Space has plenty of space (no pun intended) to pass through, the only logical place where you would want to stop someone is the planet's orbit because that it is the only place which the invader can't circumvent and must get through.

Don't cram in a totally huge new gameplay system where it's not needed

What would be the point of fighting in an Ocean, an Ocean has plenty of water (no pun intended) to pass through, the only logical place where you would want to stop someone is the city's port because that it is the only place which the invader can't circumvent and must get through.

What would be the point of fighting in the Air, the Air has plenty of air (no pun intended) to pass through, the only logical place where you would want to stop someone is the city's airport because that it is the only place which the invader can't circumvent and must get through.

What would be the point of fighting on the Ground, the Ground has plenty of ground (no pun intended) to pass through, the only logical place where you would want to stop someone is the city's main highway because that it is the only place which the invader can't circumvent and must get through.

FTL. I play a lot of FTL so FLT stood out like a sore thumb.

I get the feeling this guy REAAAAAALLY wants space battles

I think the point we're trying to make is that the game your asking for *can be made using PA as the foundation* but it doesn't really make sense *for PA itself to become that game*. One of the corner stones of PA has been the mod / platform development- I would hope to see a number of complete games evolve from the superb foundation that Uber have created. All the previous games have done it- TA had 2 expansion packs and then gave rise to TA:Kingdoms. Supcom had 3 iterations in the end. PA is only the beginning

If the lore is indeed a limiting factor in the inclusion of a fully opened space layer (which is something Uber never mentions -- the only difficulty I have seen them mention is the UI), then the lore should be altogether changed. Or slightly modified. Or new developments could occur in the universe's setting to coincide with the new developments in its mechanics. I take the lore seriously because I hate it when the mechanics don't match the aesthetics (and lore is part of the aesthetics), but in a game with such flimsy narrative as an RTS, it is the mechanics that should shape the lore and not the other way around.