More orbital units?

Currently scouting in the orbital layer is a slow motion nightmare. Satellites would be op if made faster and cheaper to run, which the only way they could be used as scouts.

Highly recommend these changes:

Drone Missile Pod - A missile unit build able from orbital factory/orbital launcher, it can travel through the orbital layer about as fast as the current avenger, (including between planets) has a nifty deployment option to "unload" a handful of drones/scouts into the atmosphere, which you can then use to scout out the planet, this causes the drone to disintegrate. No anti-orbital capabilities.

Avengers - Increase speed, quite simple really.

don't see how it "violates the WYSIWYG philosophy"

Again.
Large (Capital ship)
Cruiser. Defensive vrs small orbital units, poor vs other cap units or structures.
Battleship Offensive vs Other Cap Units and orbital structure/ground structure, poor vs small units.
Carrier. Essentially a mobile factory that can also repair other units allows for small unit transfer to other planets.

All three of these units have bonuses and drawbacks, The Battleship isn't going to take out many Avengers because it's weapons while powerful, won't hit them. It needs either other Avengers or a Cruiser to defend itself vs them. The Cruiser isn't going to take out Anchors or Umbrellas well, and the Carrier is prey for anything if not defended.

The purpose for these units is the same as having Vanguards when you can make do with Infernos...because they're fun. Also some range differences with orbital might make it a bit more tactical.

The reasoning behind having small orbital units not able to go on their own towards other planets is the same behind teleporters. It creates a choke point that can be attacked (the carrier)

A fighter that can move between the orbital and ground layers would be a cool addition to the current orbital units.

I really like your suggestions and was wondering what "WYSIWYG philosophy" was.

I honestly think that the cruiser and battleship we can do without only because of the devs being pretty low on resources but a sort of interplanetary troop transport is a must at this point. I'm tired of "invading" a planet and then as soon as my teleporter is built it just gets bombed by around 40 bombers or just hit with everything the other guy has.

I'd really like to see something similar to your suggestions of a cruiser and battleship but I honestly don't see them expanding on the whole orbital thing anytime soon. I'd love to see actual warfare over the gas giants and not just avenger spamming until somebody wins. It just isn't fun as it stands right now.

meant your bonus or penalty stuff for planets

build from were? and what does it fighterwise the other 2 don´t except from the obvious ...

Seems there's not many suggestions in this thread that help. Apart from the obvious space ships additions.

The 'unit' or 'platform' things being suggested could go low orbit (planet air unit level) and discharge explosions/units/disco lights or what ever else is fancied.

The issue still stands that you can't really contest enemy orbital space in the late game and there's not many decent solutions for it. If someone has their orbital layer patrolled and protected then you're gonna have a bad time trying to penetrate it, let alone scout it out. Radars will get shot down even with avenger/fabber support.

Sniping with the SXX is the only viable solution thus far and even then you gotta hope you have enough critical mass to one shot the enemy commander. Not much tactics involved, it does take the potential away from orbital gameplay.

Then there's the issue of gas giants being entirely orbital. Avenger spam is neither fun nor interesting. It'll be a race for the gas giants too xD

Then you need more units that can:

Fight avengers

Fight anchors

Siege units and tanking units come to mind, anti-orbital artillery for enemy blobs (Possible umbrella adaptation, or T2 variant) and of course a mobile sea/land/air umbrella to give limited mobile support.

I've already posted a suggestion in this thread. It's probably better if we wait and see what the Devs have in store for future updates and patches. Hopefully they spice up the gameplay some.

i suggest a umbrella hovercraft or amphibius vehicle ....

I still think Landers spend too much time in the airspaces but not enough in the orbital space. Orbital invasions should be coutnerable by Orbital Superiority most, not air superiority.
Right now the only job of avengers is to shoot down spy and SXX satelites. And zerg-rush the ocassional enemy anchor.

The best anti-orbit building in the game is the umbrella, with it's high area and DPS. If you want to control Orbital Area, it is the way to go.
The anchor is a Orbital Anti-ground, anti-air unit. Wich happens to have some self defense guns against fighters. While it is hard & expensive to kill with fighters, it's job is clearly not to deter fighters (way to small orbital range for that). We have a orbital defense building that does everything - except defending the orbital space against enemies (but that is okay as we don't have a counter the avenger could take care of in turn either).
And the Avenger is an interceptor with almost nothing to intercept (SXX are taken down faster by Umbrellas, only spy sats can regulary outmaneuver them and still provide intel).

I have a theory:
Gas giants have no (buildable) ground layer. Nukes affect the orbital layer. Could you fire a nuke right under thier gas giant factories? It can be a bit tricky to hit the exacts spot below them, but it might jsut work.

To build that umbrella you need to land and build it. Even then you gotta have a ton of units to defend it so the umbrella is built and then so it can do it's job.

I honestly don't see how a hovercraft is gonna help us shoot down avenger/anchor spam. While a hover unit would be cool I think it needs to have it's role thought out ie. It's not gonna be affected by terrain and water so it has mobility, an advanced scout with cloaking tech? Give it some AA to take down air units, it doesn't need to shoot at the orbital layer.

I also don't see how an amphibious unit would help with the orbital layer either, We've already got amphibious bots and they seem to do scouting/raiding just fine with their mobility.

Gas giants can only support orbital factories, and to nuke it you need a moon in orbit of the gas giant. To move a moon into orbit you need to build halleys, and for that to work there needs to be a moon of the appropriate size.

The only issue with gas giants is you can get A LOT of metal resource from them, if you're the first one there and you lock it down with some anchors and avengers it's practically uncontestable. There needs to be a way to contest them, right now we're just racing to the free resources early - mid game, locking it down, forgetting about it, checking occasionally to ensure you have enough units to fend off anything that looks at it.

Yeah orbital layer needs some work. We got interplanetary warfare but not many viable ways to move units between the planets in multi planet games. It really stands out against competent human opponents not the AI.

If Uber is still aiming for the massive 40 player matches we'll need something to smash a hole in another players orbital defense.

I would like a better way to counter umbrellas, probably a cheaper and weaker sxx, the problem with the sxx is that it is very expensive and kind of overkill, unless you want to fight factories, vanguards or commanders. Support the idea of a orbit-to-ground missile fighter/pod/cruiser/station(Rods from the gods, or Odin from COD-Ghosts).

Also i believe that EMP-Missiles, fired from either the nuke-launcher or something else, would be a good way to disable part of enemy orbital, whilst you move in and take stuff down.

There is no orbital counter to nukes, and nukes can travel to any planet in a system, so build up a few and literally target the whole gas-giant, you will destroy anything.

it would help covering orbital layers on terain varying planets whilst not being static helping in invasions attacking or defending and we are speaking about a transport and teleportable version that can be versatile on its role ...
umbrelas have a pure defensive role
avangers are supportive as would those antiorbital hovercrafts
it should be however be less effective or maybe expensive to build as it would be a very specialiced weapon

Now I finally get why Anchors are really that good against air/ground, while having no mobility:
They are anti-obrital invasion tools. That is why the got such a huge AA range and but no mobility.
Thier current use as orbital AA is a side effect of orbital invasiosn not spending enough time in orbit to counter them there.

ok guys here is my suggestion of a perfectly viable crossplanetary airfighter:

it is statswise the same as the regular fighter or even a tiny bit weaker dpswise but because of its crossplanetary capabilities a specialised t2 air unit and more expensive but can NOT attack orbital units .... BAMM!
thus the attacker has a viable swarm option but the defender has still viable defendingoptions and even a flexible counterattack option
and neither avanger nor hummingbird will ever be redundant ...

me good ? or cake to face?

That page includes the phrase "nuclear flamethrower". I'm sold.

Maybe something like orbital boombots? A 1 time use unit with good AOE and low health for clearing groups of fighters?

Sounds good, although not to keen on the "swarm" option. Too easy to spot if you got enough of them with the build up times, preparations, etc.

Although it does give me an idea of an interplanetary travel capable carrier which can then deploy on a planets surface as an "aerial base"
Here's the gist of it;
- It can carry several units (25-40 or so)
- Said units can only be aerial units (For deployment purposes)
- Units can enter freely (You can just ram a blob into one without worrying too much about queues building up)
- Upon deployment units come out in waves (Maybe 5 waves of 5 units or 4 waves of 10) This way you can't just surprise! Death cloud someone.
- During interplanetary movement in the orbital layers it's defense systems are disabled so it needs a viable escort of avengers/fabbers
- Once it reaches the target planet you can choose when to switch it to surface mode. Once it is in the surface (air unit layer) of the planet it can then deploy into an aerial base.
- Defense systems contain AA defense and minimal Anti surface point defense and are activated when deployed.
- Would have a considerable health bar and associated cost.
- Can build T1 Air units.
- Does not come with a radar.

Nice idea.
It does go a bit too far into the area of exprimental units for my taste, but the dev's might be able to figure something out that fits the games scale otherwise.
It must be expensive enough that it is not a viable choice to deploy for same-planet battles as faster way to get air reinforcements.