Planetary Assaults and Interstellar Transportation

Hey,
I had a question coming to my mind. When there are no spaceships... does this mean, no space ships that can actually fight in space and be maneuvered? Or does it mean no actual spaceships at all? Because I simply assumed you might get planetary ferry system with giant drops ships, that you can send from one planet to another, carrying whole assault battle forces...

Assuming I was wrong in expecting such a mechanic, I will describe in more detail what I had in mind:


Interplanetary troop transport:

To bring your battle forces from one planet to another there are dropships/ transports in different sizes. Small dropships might carry up to 50 tanks (or robots), large dropships up to 300 (or what ever numbers might be appropriate for the game). Dropships land on the surface of planets to load up and deploy troops. You can order dropships to move to a certain location on a planet but not to move to a certain position in space! As transports in SupCom you can order them to ferry units continuously between two points or to drop units at a certain position.
As a second tier of space transportation you could have dropship-carriers, which are needed for interstellar transport (moving your troops to a different solar system), that are much quicker than dropships. Dropshp-carriers are "orbital" units and cannot be ordered anything but “go to this planet” (and maybe have a “halt” button...). Carriers will orbit around planets (maybe you can choose if tationary or not...) when they are not on the way between two planets/ solar systems. Carriers could be built on the ground and then lifted into orbit by rockets in a "contruction complete"-annimation.

As a whole this would make planetary assaults possible (imagine the epicness^^)

So, if I couldn't make clear what I am thinking of, check this out for the dropships:

http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Orca_Dr ... EoW664keTY (of course the size does not match with what is needed for PA)


Also, I made a little illustration:


http://i.imgur.com/Bj2qJ.jpg


So, what do you think?

Edit: Pls don't feel forced to focus on my concept. Bring in your own ideas!

I'd like to see different types of drop ships. Vulnerable lander like you suggest, that can get shot at as it lands, OR a 'safer' drop-pod carrier that sits in orbit and drops swarms single unit pods.

comment @ your image:

you cannot go into geostationary orbit over any body except for earth, as geo is a prefix for earth ^^

thx, fixed.

I had an idea similar to this plus a few support (either powerplant aboard it or cargo for mass/energy) for building a base initially since it is not set in stone yet that if we will have localized economy or global economy.

If you want a technical term for geostationary for not Earth, it's a Synchronous Orbit.

Given the scale of the game I do not think an interstellar transport would be necessary. It may be interesting for the galactic war but it could be abstracted away at that scale.

Aerospace units like the dropship are interesting (and if there are none I hope that they could be modded in), but I have no idea what they devs at Uber are planning as far as interplanetary warfare.

Given the scale of the game (infinitely large), I'd say this would be a nice addition... How come you arrive at the opposite conclusion, if I may ask?

I thought that map=star system. I can see having several close star systems, but then interstellar transportation have no reason to be different from interplanetary transportation, as the distances would be on the same order.
Will there be multiple distant star systems in one map?

Anyway, I would go for plain old dropships, like air transports, as they seem to be simpler, but I don't really care as long as it works.

On the other hand, if you are talking about Galactic War transports, that's another thing. I'd go for interstellar teleporting for the Commander, and if possible interstellar battlestations for games beginning with fully developed planets/battlestation.

Defend/capture a Galactic Gate maybe...

I know this is just a example image and it doesnt even mean anything but, god 14 minutes.. XD

On SupCom's biggest maps some units took longer than 14 mins for a distance not even the max distance on the map, for example t3 ships on World Domination.

I think having a lot of units in interplanetary transit has the potential to become very confusing very fast, unless some type of Homeworld-ish control system is put in place, which the devs have said they are not interested in doing.

Consequently, it would be a good idea to have just a few large carriers to keep track of. These carriers would build and launch smaller dropships which are actually capable of going down to a planet or moon. They could also function as transports about the surface, including shuttling units back up to the carrier.

yup, exactly.

I think one star system is a good size limit for one level. You can still have binary, trinary etc star systems. But distances on the light year scale should be covered on the galactic map. So there's no need to have interstellar transports separate from interplanetary ones.

This.

Heh. I remember someone made a teleportation mod that enabled Quantum gates to allow teleportation from one to the other.

I think there's many methods that could be take, and I especially like the ones given. I think the thing we saw in the introductory video might be good for secretly establishing a base or for moving your commander around, but for moving an army (which is a good idea), larger ships will probably be required. Different models for varying amounts of units would probably be a good idea, depending on the purpose of the interstellar movement.

Gates that require large amounts of energy would be great too. Probably balanced based on the distance from each other.

And, of course, the unit cannon

Carriers would certainly make things easier when planet hopping.

Nice diagram, by the way.

thx :mrgreen:

Carriers could jump through gates for example... or have hyper drive. Maybe hyper drives are super expensive and consume vast amounts of energy, so you cannot have them in simple drop ships.

Dropships are nice for planet hopping, like getting from a planet to the moon.

But they lack the capacity for moving larger forces to other planets, also they are quite inefficient in terms of the time they would require to travel between actual planets (not just between the planet and the moon!). It has already be confirmed, that there will be far more efficient ways to move units between planets, namely teleporting, at least for transporting units between established bases.