Planetary Assaults and Interstellar Transportation

Please explain what you're getting at? I am pretty sure by now that people know my views on galactic gates.

Saying drop ships should be slow enough to discourage their use for long distances pretty much sounds like made up just to have an argument against drop ships as means of transport for longer distances, while there is no motivation for the proposal drop ships should be slow enough to discourage their use for transportation over longer distances as (1st) nobody has the slightest clue of how long distances between planets are going to be and (2nd) the speed limit would be arbitrary.

I don't think anyone is arguing for landing asteroids on planets, but KEWs aren't the only things Engines are good for, it's been said that sending an asteroid into orbit around a planet is planned(and/or hoped for) so....yeah.

Also Interplanetary unit cannon is realistic, but as I said I think that is an instance where gameplay needs to trump realism.

I'll be frank, I just don't like the idea of the Galactic Gates, I don't like how it removes all kinds of Macro from the game, I'm just not in favor of a one thing solving several issues like that.

I also do see alternate ways to get units off a planet, kinda like a Teir2 Rocket Gantry that can Launch Shuttles from Surface to orbit, but the Dropship would still be the only way to bring units TO and FROM a planet's surface.

I feel that just getting the speed right would be enough, think about large maps in SupCom, sure you could rush for 6 T1 units in a T1 Transport, but by the time they get to/find the enemy chances are they won't be very effect or just get shot down. I don't like the idea of fuel, in SupCom it was alright because you could build the refueling pads 'anywhere' but you won't be able to do that in PA...

Mike

People keep talking about interplanetary transport and assigning arbitrary times to balance things. I think this assumption is not very good.

If things are going to use orbital mechanics, like the asteroids appear to be. There should be two options for every type of transport (cannon, dropship, one way what evs.). Cheap and fast.

The cheap way is you let gravity do the work for you, it will be the same speed for everything.

Fast way, also known as direct transfer, should cost more for larger things (maybe an energy cost? or a small mass cost (fuel?)).

So to move your single engi is cheap to most places quickly for fairly little, but the assault force you have in some type of transport, you have to either invest in getting it there "now" or wait for it to get there (now being much smaller than waiting, but not zero).

You also could consider a basic cost for the cheap transit. These transit options and cost would vary based on relative location of planets/moons/rocks, transports that can do more things (drophips? reusable? armed? landing? pickup?) are heavier than same troop number simple transports and result in higher cost. Everything has the same speed options, the question becomes how much you want to spend for your speed. Do I really want the swiss army knife transport or the lighter one way transport?

BTW, a unit cannon isn't that unrealistic, if you've heard of a mass accelerator (satellite gauss rifle), that's basically it.

No, I doubt that's basically it... I assume, if you would accelerate any object other than massive lumps of rock or so, that much that you could traverse the interplanetary medium in a reasonable pace with a single impulse, it would completely smash it. So much for interplanitary unit cannons as I see it. If you can, prove me wrong.
(and don't dare bringing the realism vs. awesome argument this time - I said IUC would kill the suspension of disbelief, so this argument is not valid this time

They have artillery shells with electronics, that's 10000's of g's of acceleration. And nothing ever said it had to be a momentary brief impulse, if it was spread from .001 second to a second and you have much more survivable conditions.

Please don't be snarky about realism, if you read my post the basis for it was for more consistent realism

refs:
Mass Driver
Electronics in artillery

OK basically my argument is this...

In fact, before I start I just want to go down on record as saying that I don't want to use galactic gate or any other similar method to solve multiple issues as has been suggested in other topics. It is not a one size fits all solution to any number of problems. It simply solves one, albeit key, issue.

The way I have been brought to understand the game plan is that initially players will share a planet. To keep things simple let us use this theory: in a 8 v 8 match we will have 8 planets, each with 2 players to a planet. Planets will be arranged in a stationary standard solar system kind of layout. Think mass effect galactic map. In fact the fact that they may be stationary or not is pretty irrelevant.

When the two players on each planet have fought their battles each of the four planets has a commander on it. The fighting then continues on an interplanetary level between the remaining commanders. Let's keep it simple and say we still have a 50:50 ratio.

As commanders win and lose the galaxy finally ends up divided equally, each with 4 planets and multiple moons and possibly asteroids etc.

Now see how your fighting force cannot be divided between eight planets and still be effective? There needs to be some kind of mechanism that allows for the player to move his units about in response to threats and developments around the solar system. Dropships should be effective for this purpose using conventional travel perhaps at a distance between adjacent planets. I use "adjacent" just as a phrase for a relative proximity. Notice I also use the term conventional travel - meaning rockets or such like.

In order to respond to developments at the extremities of your territory you need to be able to move large quantities of units quickly. It's not a difficult concept to understand that if your enemy collects all his units into one large group and attacks your most remote planet... That by the time you know this is happening and load up a dropship full of units and get under way, all hope of defending it is gone.

Now I just use galactic gates as a ready made solution. Mainly because it already exists in previous games and it fits the bill perfectly. You need a gate at each end and therefore you can't use them for planetary assault. Unlike teleport or similar. If you start getting into things like faster than light travel using dropships then it becomes messy because reacting to something like that from a defensive point of view is pretty unbalanced. Plus you can use FTL to go anywhere without the need of an existing gate at the destination. Also when would you introduce FTL? It's not like you can research it so is it a higher tech level dropship? If so, why not just use the more balanced galactic gate idea?

I have already discussed the use of factories solar system wide to be building units for the front line. Now I'm not against having hundreds of dropships ferrying these units around to wherever you want them, but surely having them complete a move order into a gate and emerge at a predetermined gate is just so much more simple, involves less micro and reduces the unnecessary burden on the unit cap or if you have removed that frees up resources for actual combat units.

I am not against dropships. But I don't think that they are a one size fits all solution either.

I trust my last post quantifies why I feel that dropships should have restricted speed?

When I say this, I'm actually thinking outside the box slightly. I'm talking about meta game play. I'm talking about full galactic scale strategy. When I say send a thousand single robot rockets, I'm talking about sending them to a thousand different planets. Odds are good that your enemy has not spent the resources necessary to guard every single asteroid and moon in the system. He certainly has not spent the resources to guard every single planet moon and asteroid in the entire galaxy. The point here is to establish a bunch of bases cheaply and easily. Expansion is winning.

This strategy applies best at the galactic scale, but it also applies pretty well in your single or multi system maps as well. Why bother sending a full scale invasion to every planet, moon, and asteroid when you can just send your one cheap little probe to each of them to establish a base on unoccupied planets. Worry about invasion later.

Once you've started to build up from your mass expansion tactics you can start building cannons to attack your enemy. You can build cannons to launch paratrooper units onto other planets. You can send entire asteroids (KEWS!) down to smash difficult targets. I don't know about you, but all that stuff sounds extremely AWESOME! to me. I'm not so sure we need dropships.

And my biggest concern here with dropships, is that logic alone dictates that a dropship, is likely to be cheaper than an inter-system cannon. It will certainly be cheaper than a KEW. If it is cheaper than all that other cool stuff, that other cool stuff will never be used.

But there isn't a kind of "galactic scale", Galactic War(from what I've read) is at it's core only something to tie together a series of skirmishes, and sure, maybe in one match 10 units may not amount to much, but what about the 10 on his other planet? or the 10 5 minutes earlier? If you go in with the mind set that 10 units aren't enough to matter, you'll lose far more than 10 units.

Mike

@ doctorzuber: ??


@ wolfdogg: Okay, what makes you think drop ships would take longer to go from planet to planet than air transports in SupCom take to travel across one of Setons water areas? If you didn't play supcom it takes like 25 seconds (well at least in my memory it feels like that^^). So, assuming drop ships don't take more than 3 minutes for the largest distance you have on a map (what would make them relatively much faster than air transports in supcom), why would you need gates then?
Also: Having an instant travel wonder machine like a gate removes some big portion of the overall strategy form the game -> you no longer need to be combat ready on all fronts/ planets in danger of an invasion because you can go there in no time when you are being attacked. Even in SupCom where maps were not as big as whole solar systems (and yes also maps in PA are not as big as real solar systems, but you get the idea), remote bases had to be defend themselves. The fastest way to transport y big land forces were transports, BUT they were not big enough for large amounts of land units, too fragile against anti air units (especially ASFs) and too slow for really long distances to be of any use (which in my opinion is a shame… would have been great if there had been reasonably large transports for carrying lots of t3…). Hence you had to have local stationary units for remote bases to defend those. Why would you want to take that part of strategy out of PA by giving the possibility to transport entire armies in a few seconds? I think that is not a good idea.

I like the idea of carriers and dropships, but it conflicts with the "no spaceships/space combat" thing. Obviously huge army transports moving around in space are massive strategic targets, and other players *should* be able to do something about them rather than just sit back and watch them come.

Ground based AA doesn't feel like a legitimate or complete answer either.

That's what the Orbital Layer is for.

Mike

Hmm. What is that? Units/structures that exist in a tight orbit around the planet(like Earth's satellites)? Or can they swing out pretty far(like our moon and beyond)?

The point I was trying to make is that it would feel silly if weren't able to threaten or disrupt huge supply-lines in space simply because there there is nothing capable of attacking very important targets like that.

Hard to say, I imagine it'll be more like a satellite layer, seeing as you can build stuff on moons there wouldn't be much point to satellites way out that far.

I don't think the inability to harass those kinds of supply lines will be that big of a loss so long as you can have a method to defend yourself from Dropships/transports/whatever.

Mike

Actually that argument on space supply lines has some weight to it. But that would not be an issue that comes with space transports (synonym for drop ships in this case... the word is getting on my nerves a little) exclusively. Also, and even more so, gates would cause that problem.

I dunno. I think it's a case of balance. Which is basically what everyone is talking about.

I've almost said everything about G Gates that I can be bothered with and I am just going to end up repeating myself. I think you're all tired of it too so either it's a terrible idea or no one wants to listen to reason. It's my opinion at the end of the day and Uber are the most experienced people to know what to do with these suggestions so I am prepared to leave it to them.

I guess really the thing with the gate idea is that it means that you allow for more scope in the gameplay by having interplanetary transports that move at a reasonable and albeit believable pace. Much like taking a direct route to your enemies base and dropping your troops at the front line, you always had the option of taking the long way around and trying to sneak the troops in via the back door. This could still work in PA but there needs to be sufficient time involved to make it balanced as the pay-off could be massive.

I'm thinking from a reactionary point of view and taking the number of units in to account when I talk about gates as a solution to long distance transport between friendly planets. I'm not saying that dropships shouldn't be included and I have voted as such.

I can see every planet needs a garrisoned force. I can also appreciate that the main fighting force has to be dynamic. If an enemy hits you with everything he has there needs to be a way for you to respond otherwise you're never going to hold on to any of your territories. You'll just lose them all to lightning attacks.

Sure you could move them via dropships. But the scale of this game makes that a bit of a moot point IMO. Your enemy might not have anywhere near as far to travel and your response time could regularly be inadequate when you factor in that your not going to have your troops ready and waiting in dropships the whole game.

What I am proposing is that there should be a mechanism by which a defending commander could move his units from one world to another in a reasonable time. I'm not talking instantly. For argument's sake a que a bit like the unit cannon and the gate can only handle 2 small units or 1 large unit (or commander) at a time could be employed. And there could be a cool down time between transports to make it balanced. This way, the defending commander could drip feed reinforcements through the gate to aid in the battle without damaging the balance of the game. More gates = quicker reinforcement but would obviously be more expensive to build or gates could be limited to 1 gate per planet. Moons and such like should not be allowed gates.

Furthermore a retreating commander could use a gate to escape to a "safe" world in order to stay in play. This gate could also be used by the attacking commander as a portal directly onto the next planet to chase the enemy commander down. Until it was destroyed and the path closed.

This also adds the dynamic that if you catch the enemy napping you can snipe the gate and cut off the defending commander's reinforcements and strand him on that planet so he can be taken out.

I think it's workable. As I said it's my opinion. If you disagree I respect that. I think the game could work without the gates or some other similar solution. But I don't think it would be dynamic or as fast paced and that gameplay would suffer as a result. I don't think I have anything more to add on the subject now. If I do I'll be in touch lol

One problem I have with G Gates as you described in this thread is that you expect the attack to still build dropships to attack you with "everything" but allow the defender a much easier way to deal with it.

IMO if he's foolish enough to attack you with 'everything' at one spot, you should punish him by counter attacking in multiple spots.

G Gates should like if the home team in a soccer/football match always got more players or a smaller goal than the away team.

Mike

Maybe, though I feel that if a commander occupies a planet, to a degree he should have some kind of home field advantage. It's really just like the factories in your base the way I would expect it to work. You use it to reinforce your forces, only it's coming from other planets.

The main reason I think something like that needs to be worked on is that not everyone can play in massive battles with thousands and thousands of units across several planets. It would be like having to build an army for each planet when what you really need is a garrisoned force and a main fighting force that is mobile and flexible. That's how it works IRL after all. It's just not financially viable to have combat ready units gathering dust while you fight wars elsewhere. On top of that:

1. Basically some players will need to use a unit cap due to not having up to the second hardware. So by using gates they can still fight on multiple planets effectively - allowing them to play a similar game to everyone else. The big game shouldn't be restricted to those who can afford powerful computers.

2. Why build a thousand units on every planet you own anyway? Maybe only a fraction that will suffice for a garrison and the others could be attacking/defending elsewhere. Idle units seem like a waste of time and resources to me. Employ them elsewhere.

3. Yes, point 2. could be accomplished by dropships, but you would need a great many of them and that also increases the burden on unit numbers needlessly. Plus building transports and setting up ferry points and such like to move your units around is fine but while you are doing that you might as well just build a gate anyway. Also, after you have done moving you end up with a load of redundant dropships taking up resources/unit cap points.

4. By simply limiting speed or capacity of dropships it adds a dynamic to the game and gives the player a choice about how to move his units around the solar system. Quicker and more expensive vs slower and cheaper. It also gives the attacking commander more strategic options and targets and it gives the defending commander a critical structure to defend.

5. Interplanetary travel by conventional means should be conducted at a reasonable speed. For it to work in game it already has to be many, many times faster than what is currently acceptable in terms of technology. Baring in mind we are still talking rockets and unit cannons here. Transports exist in all the previous games and travel at a believable speed. Why not just maintain that and use something else that exists in the previous games like galactic gate to fill the gap?

This is a moot point. It doesn't really make any difference if there are gates or not since we aren't talking about such a huge mass movement of units that you could instantly counter any attack at any place or time.

Gates or not you would still be foolish to make that move for exactly the same reasons.