Orbital units - 2 directions

Oh please dont casualize another game. Ive seen enought of that already - nothing good came out of it, spare the *Annihilation series if possible.

Its another genre but look at what happened to the Fortress games. Anyone remembers TFC? Not that easy for a beginner, you had to learn bunnyhopping, rampsliding, concing, concaim,... lots of things. But once you got the hang of it, huge fun to play.
Successors where Fortress Forever which failed for numerous reasons and TF2 which gathered a lot of players. TF2 did away with most if not all things that required training, skill or just a bit of dedication to the game.
No bunnyhopping, no rampsliding, no airmovement, not even nades or concing. But instead, they introduced hats. Woa, huge success. Makes me sad.

Back to topic:
A bit of complexity in a game is not bad thing. Why does everything have to be stripped of all requirements for skill, dedication or even the understanding of simple mechanics like an elipse and velocity change around it.
If people are too non-bright to comprehend the very very basics of that in less than a few hours,.. my gosh do school systems really fail that hard? Are most people really that lazy in their minds? Cant beleive that.
It doesnt have to be KSP with weapons but a bit more "difficulty" than just click-to-move orbital units would add a great deal of depth to the game. For example, the players now have to plan for time periods when and where their sat is available.

I think the major decission to be made is not about the actual implementation of orbital mechanics but the playerbase it should appeal to.
And I hope it will not end up beeing for some halfway illiterate instant gratification addicted casuals that play half an hour per week and blame PA for loosing.

So, in regards to my post, you agree
IF you want a broader audience, keep it simple.

Don't get me wrong, I prefer more realistic physics, complex things.

Yes, absolutely. The simpler the more players. My point is that more is not always better .

Sure, the unintuitive stuff like bunnyhopping and rampsliding got cut out, but then we got classes that actually depend on each other to succeed. It's a fairly complex game (well, relatively speaking in our current game ecosystem), despite the fact that advanced modes of movement based off of glitches were removed. The complexity is instead in deciding what class to take when, and how a class is best used, and how classes can best work together. All that stuff you just mentioned is just one kind of complexity, and despite your misgivings TF2 is still incredibly popular and though competitive play may have suffered some it's still a fun game.

In terms of the orbital mechanics in PA, Uber needs to be able to set up a system that can be picked up and used (not necessarily used well, mind) by a beginning player, but which offers room for the development of interesting maneuvering strategies and isn't simply 'gunships at a higher altitude'. There's a fine line between cool, deep, complex and complicated, unintuitive, not fun.

My 2 cents: (note I already covered this on another topic) Make 2 kinds of orbital warfate: T1 is satellite based, t2 is literally orbital weapons platforms with engines the ability to do an orbital jump to the nearby planet/entity or descend to atmosphere to attack ground/air (but be vulnerable to anti air).

How to explain the second part and not having space battles: limited fuel which prevent long term engagements. After that the platform returns to orbit and behaves like a satellite intil engines are recharged.

Link to that topic. (ignore the talk about non-orbital stuff)

Realism for its own sake is not a good reason to use realistic orbits. However realistic orbits will have a few gameplay effects, including exposing orbital units to the entire planet's surface. And it seems that features like orbital altitude are actually a very significant feature of orbital units, as well as the area that passes beneath their orbit. A stationary orbit can predictably see or attack a particular spot, but takes a very long time to reach a different spot. A lower orbit circles very quickly, and can see or attack a variety of locations on the planet's surface with a short time delay in between, but doesn't give continuous overwatch on the same spot.

So what I propose is to have a fake system which nonetheless must orbit around the planet's surface. You don't have to model orbital mechanics accurately, but having geosynchronous only seems to significantly detract from the functionality of orbital units. Having different orbital paths in 3D and at different possible speeds and altitudes seems critical to the orbital system.

Suppose you have a gun on an orbital unit with a fixed range. If it is geosynchronous only, essentially the orbital layer reduces to a land warfare game played in 3D instead of a plane. We can imagine a situation where both players have groups of these units stacked up on opposite sides of the planet, and move as a group around the planet. In gameplay terms this is very land-warfare, and extremely dissimilar to satellites in orbit around a real gravity well.

However suppose an orbital unit with a fixed attack range must orbit the planet. The region the unit can attack is a sphere around its current position on its orbital path. If it is lower altitude, the area of the planet below that it can attack changes constantly. If you order it to attack a target point on the surface, there would be a countdown until it is overhead based on orbit; its current position and speed. And, conversely, the unit is exposed to any anti-orbital guns on the surface below on regular intervals, instead of only when it voluntarily moves into range above that gun. You can't freely position orbital units anywhere in space- they have to go around the gravity well. However if the unit is much higher, it may be out of range of enemy anti-orbital guns, but it is also farther away itself. (this raises the issue about range/accuracy for orbital weapons; arguably they should have 'unlimited' range but deteriorating accuracy with distance)

This can be implemented simply by having circular orbits only, and have fixed orbital velocity for any stationary unit at a fixed altitude. A unit that is not moving at all will follow such a circular orbit. However a unit with engines can accelerate in any direction (including backwards to decelerate) and can move freely under the 'fake' system without having to worry about orbital transfers and other orbital mechanics.

Truly realistic orbits will mean very complex elliptical or decaying orbits become an issue. A fake system which also has simplified circular orbits (of variable speed/altitude) seems to capture most of the gameplay advantages of a truly realistic system, and avoids the thorny problems and edge cases of unstable orbits, highly elliptical orbits, and orbital transfers.

yeah i do agree, its like a diease thats infecting gaming. that everything has to be so simple. because mr god you could scare the gamer/customer away if he had to learn something, or be confused. Its indeed a sad state of affairs especially for us who have grown up, learning how the world works, that everything isnt simple. thats how the world works you learn and improve.

Ubisoft have taken this dumbing down to a whole new level. their 1 button for everything in their games. if you watch say Watch Dogs i think their new game is called. one button for everything, just press 1 button and the game plays it self more or less. I find that really disheartening.

Its like some games today are proud that their game has 1 button and the game decides when you should jump, slide, crouch, crawl. personally i prefer such freedom myself to decide.

But back to RTS have complexity is good not bad.

Age of empires 1 amazing game so many resources. Age of empires 3 was such a mess, workers didn go back they just instantly gather stuff without walking. suddenly a lot of the resources is gone.

Im guessing its all in the name of maximizing sales.

Maybe im just part of the masochist generation, but i dont mind games where im totally confused at all.

One could even argue that Minecraft kinda shows that people enjoy not being spoonfed and the whole dumbing down, you go into a game and thats it, no tutorials, no oh do this press that, nothing.

Im sure that sooner or later as generation after generation gets more into gaming not being casual, they are gonna get sick of the whole dumbing down. Because lets face it, humans as a species we likes challenges, thats what drives us everyday and keeps us going.

And yes its sad about TF2 as well, they lowered the skill ceiling which is also what many Broodwar players are complaining about in Starcraft 2, everyone can play good enough that the difference is like 5% maybe.

I personally miss grenades in TF2. sure they lead to spamming grenades, but you can solve stuff another way than just being lazy and REMOVED, sadly removing stuff seems to be the lazy norm these days.

if you take old games like Quake, counterstrike Tf1, they allow personal skill, which leads to some people dominating everyone, because they have the skill and the have the freedom to become this good by mastering a lot of skills. Like bunnyhoping, rocking jumping and aiming with weapons that isnt just point and shoot.

I always personally refer to these games as fastfood, because thats whats happening, your supposed to sit down and the instant you turn on the game your as good as you ever gonna get, like with fastfood, its made for you to take with 2 hands stuff in mouth and done.

But as long as majority of gamers dont challenge this and says fine. it will keep going until video game industry crashes again, and it will. Because sooner rather than later we will hit a point where they cant dumb down games more.

Looks at FPS shooters today, limited to 2 or 3 weapons, because surely if the player had access to all 14 weapons at the same time, that would overload their frontal brain cortex and make them shut off the game and run away crying.

And its all genres across the board almost. I mean i dont play sport games or driving games, so i cant really comment on those but again i guess you cant really dumb those 2 genres down.

You sir, hit the nail on the head for me. This is what orbital is all about.

Hey everyone,

I'm late to this thread, but from what I've been reading from the dev's they want crazy orbital battles with a lot of ships and explosions. Well when I was reading some of their stuff it made me think of this.

and this:

and this:

and one more:

They want to make this game epic, not boring like this

Wouldn't you rather have something like those pics above?

Is this more on line with what you were thinking of Neutrino?

I support going with the 'fake' orbital mechanics. I don't really like the idea of auto moving units that I have little-to-no control over. Wheres the strategy in that?

Please exactly define "little-to-no control".

Mike

+1 to this response.

Just to point out that there are many silent lurkers like myself who love the direction the game is going in, the videos, the posts and everything. While no doubt very stressful for the game developers, this has been a great experience for us.

For anybody that feels ripped off that orbital won't work as they had imaged. First of all, you need to remember that when you kick started this game, that this was really more of an investment rather then an outright game purchase. There was not yet a product, and so with that comes the risk that the product may not have been developed at all or may not turn out the way you want. For a lot of us, that means a big saving on the final game, as we took the financial risk spread out among us. For others that meant special bonuses that you would not normally be able to receive from a game.

I'm excited to see how orbitals will turn out. How it is implemented and works though won't both me so much as having a great game. I am sure the direction the dev team eventually take will be the right 1, after all their previous games have all been awesome.

i think he means it like either
launch rocket with sat that just sits on fixed orbitdegree and cycles around the planet
and cant be moved afterwards
or changing the orbiting dergree but with the satelite still moving in cylces
so in both examples you never can have it stop on the wanted position

full control would mean you can have the satalite on a exact spot all the time
or chose a patrolcommand of any route for it

I have read a lot of this tread and I have decided to add me 2 cents.

For starters please, add a button that only shows orbital and ignores ground.

Supportive orbit:
Energy satalite
Spy satalite
Orbital laser (currently ingame)

Gas giant/Orbital war:
Fighters
Cruisers(fighters, but slower and with more firepower)
Lasership (Long range laser unit(orbital artillery))
Gasmine
Factory
Gunplatforms (stationary defences)
Orbital Fabber

Both of these situations are in my eyes very fun. But if you would just combine the two of them the fighters would easly crush the satalites. I dont know how you can combine these two.
Maybe you can only let the orbital factory build fighters.
Make 2 sizes spacecenters: The small one for supportive and the large one for orbital war.
Basic and advanced orbital

The supportive orbit could make use of simulated orbit. But simulated war is no option for orbital war, just to many limitations. Personaly I prefer a fake orbit, it's the future, they travel between planets and galaxys.

EDIT:
I read almost the entire topic(argument). And decided to rethink my idea.

No.

Nope.

.

Didn't read thirty pages but I vote FAKE!!!

Hm ok. So timing your land based attacks and coordinating them with time windows your orbital based weapons or radar satellites are over the desired spot is not a gameplay mechanic offering a bit more depth than rushing deathballs into each other?

Or solar arrays delivering non constant output due to an orbit placing them behind a planet for some time?
Another addition to gameplay that you have to take care of. Storages, pause production,.. whatever.

Doesnt have to be 100% realistic but after playing some 50 to 70 hours with air 2.0, it doesnt impress me at all.

Simplification for creating casual games with little to no learning involved and offering a good deal of instant gratification without investing anything like effort or time is a bigger one.
Too much realism is a really nasty flu but oversimplification is cancer, and its already spread out over most genres.

You have control over them. You set their orbits. The strategy is planning ahead, setting appropiate orbits and coordinating them with the rest of your troops. Oneclick-moving stuff to its target location, wheres the strategy with that?

My vote remains fake after reading some but I must say perhaps a combination of both.a compromise of sorts, because I do kind of like the intriguing thought of coordinated attacks as all my attacks now are usually carefully coordinated from multiple angles like a smart guy. The extra layer of coordination with some orbital units whose fate is forced into a moving orbit does sound like a totally awesome layer of strategy I would enjoy. From the dev side tho, fake is quite obviously easier.

I would like the orbital units to have an actual orbit around the planet. Like a circle around it.

I think it's possible to combine the orbiting functionality and the low acc/high speed and still have a one click interface.

• Right click orbital unit somewhere.
• Target is not actually an end-point, but defines a vector from the unit's start location to that point
• Vector continues around the planet to create an orbit
• Orbital unit will continue around the planet in that vector until stopped by player, or enemy.
• New orbital path could possibly be made by queueing up two move points to create a new vector (And then maybe abuse the fact that two perfect orbital paths must intersect twice, assuming equal altitude)

Could this work good enough you think?