While it sure is cool to imagine a moon as a kinetic weapon gone planet killer, are there any ideas for energy concentration sufficiently large to bake the surface of a planet or shoot a hole through it? To accomplish something of that magnitude, you would need unspeakable amounts of energy. I'm not sure if solar power was ever considered as a source of power. I imagine it would wane in comparison to the other supposed sources of power in the game. However, if you could construct some orbital platforms to farm solar energy, I imagine you could either convert it into microwaves or condense it into laser beams. For those of you familiar with the concept of a Dyson Sphere (basically, a star existing inside of a shell constructed to harness the power and leave the surface livable), could you not create solar arrays to orbit the sun and farm light at the source? Couldn't those satellites maintain a transmission of condensed laser energy broadcast and received between them? So, then, what if 50 of these arrays from around 1 or more stars coordinate an attack on a planet that is meant to be focused (to attack the planet's core) or diffuse (to annihilate surface units)? Also, I like the idea of a streak of high energy bolting across the galaxy like a comet converging with other tongues of scintillating death on an unlucky target. Not to mention the fun of units in deep space traveling and accidentally getting caught in the path of the beam ... or when a Swarmer is destroyed and the energy in transit has nothing to catch it ... so it drifts out into space. I guess the easier analogy would be if there were 2 guys juggling chainsaws and a conveyor belt that had chainsaws on it. The man closest to the conveyor belt can grab the chainsaws and start juggling with the other man. When another chainsaw comes by, the close man can grab that and throw out another chainsaw, This continues until they are saturated with chainsaws and cannot take anymore, so they do not. Note, however, that they cannot stop juggling ... they would be destroyed if they tried to absorb all the "chainsaw" energy. But they could throw a chainsaw at a mechanic who could dissemble it for scrap just as easily as they could throw the chainsaw at a crowd of gawkers to bloody effect. In the end, if they went all-out, you would have two guys chucking chainsaws at a target in approximately equal intervals over time (like a beam length ... although probably with a characteristic density of energy instead of discrete packets). Anyhow, just an idea for using proximity to stars as a resource and converting solar power into death. []
Meet the "Star Forge" from Star Wars (Game KOTOR II). The Star Forge was a giant automated shipyard, designed to create the most powerful army of all time. The Star Forge drew energy and matter from a nearby star and was capable of creating an endless supply of ships and droids. How is that for mere solar power. Might be nice to convert into a giant laser of death. Edit: I know its diffrent from just solar power. This is just consuming power and mass of the sun. Still if I could just build 1 factory, I would choose this one.
This gives me a new idea for Galactic Warfare, you should be able to destroy a Sun, and wipe out a system, now THAT beats planet smashing
While cool, what purpose would it serve? Wouldn't it just result in a draw since it destroys literally the entire playing field?
Actually, for those of you who are playing the game, is HEAT considered in the game? If you fly too far from a star with a unit not suited for space travel, does that unit freeze? If you get too close to the sun with spacefaring units (that aren't built to get close to the sun), do those units burn up? ... just curious of knocking a planet out of orbit would cause the units on it to freeze "to death" if they drifted too far from their star (or if there were terrestrial units blown into space and somehow didn't die from damage).
As awsome as this may sound, this is not a good gameplay suggestion. Single games are played between a number of people that want to invest maybe 20 minutes to an hour to play on average so it's good to have a game ender if the game turns into a stalemate. Galactic War on the other hand seems more persistent. You actually have to struggle for territory control over a large time span with a lot of users coming in at different times. It's no fun if it comes down to being defeated by such a binary system. In a persistent system it's much better to actually allow players to interact in a multitude of situations until they manage to kill eachother off. OP's idea isn't too different from the orbital lasers, except the orbital swarmers is stronger due to a charging mechanic of storing solar energy. It would be very aesthetically pleasing to see, but I'm not sure it actually adds something to the gameplay.
What it would add to gameplay is questionable. However, it would create another resource that could be exploited (albeit, more obviously than asteroids) to kill planets if asteroids are not terribly numerous. I'm not sure what other units exist in the game for long-range (i.e. interstellar) attacks other than (presumably) asteroids, but Solar Swarmer Arrays might be an interesting way to decide battles (anticlimactically) between solar systems that would otherwise be fought to a stalemate (supposing that stalemates seemed likely in such a scenario. Alternatively, as I suspect it would be a vulnerable and easily targeted structure, perhaps a "completed" Solar Swarmer Array could count as a "Wonder" that results in automatic victory in games in which such an end is enabled (assuming that it would devastate rival planets handily). Obviously, it would be difficult to build, but could offer a (non-combat) Victory Objective. But I'd still like to see it blast some planets ...
Forgive me for being blunt, but why and how are you in the Backers Lounge if you don't have the game, which seems like what you're implying by saying several times that you don't know what units or features are in the game. To answer your questions: - Yes, there are already satellites that collect solar energy, but as far as I know, they can't orbit the sun. - No heat, which would make sense since the units are basically robots something like 20 000 years into the future, so you'd think they're advanced enough to take a little heat/cold. - So far there aren't any interplanetary attacks apart from orbital fighters (that can only orbit one planet at a time, not fly freely in between), and a 'moon' lander that can transport a single unit at a time, which is meant for transporting a commander or a fabrication unit to another planet to start a base there.
@sienihemmo: I backed the Kickstarter and have access to the beta ... I simply have not played it yet. Also, thanks for the explanation on some of the different units!
