Orbital Units and Planetary Economies (An In depth look)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnpEU8DPzZ4

While Space Battleship Yamato is an excellent anime, just copy-pasting water battleships into space makes things... weird.

I would much rather have the orbital layer be simulated with a moderately realistic physics system. It would make orbital units "feel" different than land, sea or air, and add an obvious drawback in that they can't sit still. An orbital-to-land artillery unit would only be able to shoot at an enemy base a few times before needing to come around again, and an orbital scout would provide inconsistent coverage of most of the planet. I also see the orbital layer as a "gatekeeper" layer that you would have to spend some effort getting through in order to do a land invasion.

No. I'm afraid you've got it backwards.

I can only speak for myself, but judging from like-minded forum-goers posts, I think I'm in good company when I say we do not want a wet-navy IN SPAAAAAACE. We do want an attempt at Newtonian physics simulating how the satellites move. We want players to select orbital paths, and satellites to move along them, having to deal with the consequences of not "hovering" above a point on the planet's surface (unless they are in a geosynchronous orbit). There are a vast wealth of interesting and emergent game mechanics that come from this system, that require the player to make interesting choices about where they put their satellites. A wet-navy in space approach simply copies the choices that the play makes when they are playing a conventional naval game, and pastes them 200 km higher up.

TA and it's successors have a great heritage of Newtonian simulation for projectiles. The exact same mathematical processes which govern how rounds fly at the moment can be used to govern how satellites move. It isn't the "cost" of implementing Newtonian orbits that concerns me, and others. It's the cost of making large, detailed, space ship models, rather than small, light, orbital weapons platforms. As I have stated previously, space ships are also inconsistent with the goal of not implementing deep-space combat, and they invalidate a lot of the positional play that comes with having to move between planets of different gravity wells.

As I said, I can only speak for myself, but there are a lot of people in this thread who seem to want the same thing.

Bit late here, but yes to global/command economies and no to orbital units. Orbital units don't seem very fleshed out, at least in the OP, and they seem to simply be an abstract layer of complexity for complexity's sake.

The focusing of the different economic layers, however, is simply an extension of how the current model works with a minimal amount of additional structures required to maintain economic links between planets. I like this.

This.

Just replacing wet-navy with space-navy is not interesting in itself. You replace one theater of war with something very similar (and a pain to balance when you have navy that can leave water).

Its much more interesting to add an additional entirely new theatre of war, orbital, that is something that hasn't been done yet.

The game can go a long way with simulation of the orbital theatre especially because its trying to be more grand scale and less micro/unit-hand holding then other games. In Starcraft et al it would be a pain to have units that could only move on fixed pathways like satellites since it relies so heavily on unit control. In a game like this, having fire and forgot satellites or units with fixed orbits is much more appropriate, as it also reduces the need to individually control those units and allow one to focus more on the larger scale.

I want to have orbital buildings, that when I give their construction order (they may be units built on the ground and then lifted up by rockets from the gantry) they game shows me its future orbits and I can simple drag them around until it gives me an orbit that I like (over the enemy base for example) or I could hold the shift key and it would always give me a geosynchronous orbit.

I don't want to have to move around orbital units all the time as with every other unit as it will be pain to do so. Its enough that I have to controll all the ground units, keep my air units patrolling where I need them without having to zoom all the way up to also move a space navy in position.

I may have positioned my geosynchronous orbital lancers over a key area on the map but you move your ground army around that area. Area denial successfull.

Do you build near the equator where geo-orbital units are a high danger or near the poles where geo-orbit units aren't possible?

Ie. I'd like such gameplay that is new thanks to an unique orbital layer, not just, move space battleship there and bombard ground.

what you are describing for the mechanics of the orbital layer is not mutually exclusive to space navy. you can apply those mechanics to the space navy and achieve both.


I still think there is some disparity between what I am imagining and what you are imagining when i say space navy.

I am currently working on a full design doc that explains in detail what i see in my head when i see "Large Scale RTS(like TA) Across Multiple Planets"


I know initial release will be limited and most likely will not completely satisfy my desires. what i am trying to establish is a goal for a final product with all addons/mods/ect, that is exactly what i desire to play. i know i probably wont get most of what i want exactly my way, however i will be working on mods in the future to try and bring my vision about.

i will leave this thread alone and continue to work on my design and will present it on this forum when it is ready.

fouquet WTF, screw that space ship are space ships navy stays in the water.

I still don't think any of the balance propositions for space units would be "arbitrary"... at all. I wouldn't start saying "it's unrealistic" if they were balanced somehow I would on the other hand say "It's Unrealistic!!!!!!" (even though it would be a total excuse for what really bothers me) if it was OP and imba.

Once again we come to the debate of awesome vs./and realism. and I think once again realism here gets the boot. Fck realism, we're here for fun.

that is neither a compelling, nor sound argument. I would recommend a little thought before a post.

I'm not ever sure what you're supposed to be arguing, but it's faulty at best. How something is Implemented has nothing to do with how it's Balanced.

Mike

Adding something in like that don't even sound fun anyway.

The point is to not invalidate other parts of the game, but to add to them.

When I have some more time, more than just enough to skim through the comments I will flesh out the orbital combat a lot more but for the moment I'm focusing on my designs for my college project. I think you can tell from the OP I was running out of time while writing it.

If anyone has any ideas however, please leave them in the thread and I will credit you in the original post if I use those ideas in my fleshing out. (An example being the idea that Orbital Units would descend slightly when trying to bombard which was suggested earlier).

Orbital units should have one crucial aspect; orbits.

For example, you can build huge cannons that would be overpowered, if not for the fact that they have pre-determined orbits (by yourself). There could be a direct relation between speed and range; the faster a unit or building completes one rotation, the shorter its range is.

Transports could also work, perhaps like that unit cannon from Supreme Commander 2, or perhaps more like normal transports (the latter would make them more like drop pods, I suppose - as in, almost guaranteed insertion of the transported units - otherwise they'd be rather useless I'd imagine).

Then there are spy satellites, and perhaps radar jammers, all confined to their orbits of course. Perhaps something like the tactical missile defences, but more useful? Inter-planetary cannons? Random and not very imaginative ideas.

For some reason, I'd like it if navies would be your primary anti-orbital units. Sure, I suppose some anti-air could also be anti-orbital, and a dedicated anti-orbital turret would also be fun, but I'd imagine most ships equipped with anti-orbit weaponry, for some reason. Makes no sense though, but with multiple planets, I see naval units as less useful than others.