Planetary Invasions

I do like that idea. Moveable celestial bodies shouldn't have near the amount of metal that they currently do.

I do like the metal distribution on the large planets though.

All we need are spaceships! Like a transport space ship followed by frigate ships. Maybe have a construction space station. Maybe even mass should be on a per planet bases so that you have to bring resource transport ships to with you or have the capital ships have built in finite storage no more having all your resources instantly available on the new planet. Planetary invasions should be hard but with enough balancing and the right units I can see each player starting on different worlds. Also there should be ships or units that can attack in orbit spaceships and a frigate for orbital bombardment like space battleships!

Yeah, or you could do something like Ork Roks from Warhammer 40k!

For those of you who don't know what they are, they are essentially small hollow asteroids filled with orks and guns, that have rocket engines attached. Basically massive destructive drop pods. Which, now that I think of it, might actually be quite an interesting idea...

Also google this warhammer40k.wikia.com/wiki/Rok

damn thing wont let me post links... : (

That is why we have unit cannons, so you infinitely para-drop troops.

Except, as I mentioned in my original post, Uber has said Unit Cannons will not be placable on large celestial bodies and they will have limited range.

That is why you put them on asteroids with factorys to provide constant reinforcements.

I think there are just simply too many contributing problems to talk about this entire topic at once. It really is a multi-layered problem;

First we have the plain old issue that currently we don't have all the interplanetary tools implemented nor do we even fully know the actual implementation planned really. This makes it really tough to move on but we do some some vague clues at least.

Second we have the issue of the current Orbital implementation, with its cost even if we had the missing interplanetary tools they might still be not nearly as accessible as they might need to be.

Third we have to fact that we don't technically have Asteroids yet, yes the small moons are functional, but there are quite a few ways that Asteroids could be differentiated from moons that could be beneficial.

From there there is a lot of smaller related issues connected to all of those, maybe of the things mentioned already are part of that, I just think we'd have a real hard time covering such an extensive topic when skipping around all over the place.

Mike

Again, as my original post mentioned, what if there's no astroids in the system? Or what if all the astroids are controlled?

PA needs to not be "First to get to X wins." And if the only way to invade a planet is with a Moon, then first one to control the moons wins.

I agree with the point that, if an opponent has had time to fill up a moon with their units, it SHOULD be difficult to invade. Perhaps if you had invaded sooner, usinga unit cannon or single comm drop wouldn't have been such a suicidal task...

I like and dislike placing the unit cannon on small celestial bodies only.

First, it makes sense from a lore/realism standpoint. We can't build a giant cannon on earth and shoot things into space. This is why we have rockets. However, we could build a giant cannon on the moon and break orbit with that.

It also introduces a bunch of strategic elements into PA. It greatly rewards invading and controlling moons. Also, even more importantly, it gives us a very valid reason not to smash the moon. Using the moon as an invasion platform for multiple planets means we don't always want to just smash it.

Having the unit cannon have limited range and can only be placed on small celestial bodies allows the unit cannon's build costs to be reduced, increasing the strategic value of moons and subsequently, increasing the amount of strategy involved in PA.

All in all, I think it's a good thing that the Unit Cannon cannot be placed on large celestial bodies.[/quote]
Not to nitpick... But it doesn't make sense from a lore/realism standpoint.

The reason why we don't build a giant cannon on earth is because

a) we want to send humans into space, and humans are squishy
b) we want to send scientific equipment into space, and scientific equipment is kind of fragile.
c) It requires a vast amount of energy to run
d) it's less efficient than conventional rockets due to air friction. And squishing people.
e) It's much more expensive a system than conventional rockets.
f) It's not commercially viable in terms of return on investment..

It's not that we can't build a giant cannon, it's that we haven't yet.

In the future when we need to send cargo and stuff into space, it's a decent idea.

On topic:

If the unit cannon's range is related to the strength of the gravity well of course.. that means on a planet it would act as an artillery transport, but on a celestial body you could use it to send units off planet.

The Egg as invastion unit
I don't think it's a good idea to use The Egg as an invasion unit. It already has it's roll as early game booster. But I do agree with the idea of having an "orbital drop invasion" unit (Invader Egg).

Asteroids
Asteroids, asteroid belt(proper ones), YES! not moons.

Portal unit
Recieving Portal unit, good idea, I like it. Maybe make it single use or something to balance it out.

Astereus, single use
The Astraeus should stay like it is, but I agree that there must be a single use transport. Also multiple unit transports need to be added.

Defence agains artillery and catapults
I agree that there should be away to not get killed by Catapults and artillery(Holkins) when trying to invade. Sounds a bit like shields... . Or maybe the Invader Egg should have anti radar cloak, or .
An Satelite that stops missle and artillary shell is a good idea. Maybe an satelite that causes radar cloak.

Unit cannon
Interplanetary capabilities when on moon and limited ranged unit transport when on planet.

Less metal on moon
This should be customizable in the system creator.

Orbital laser
A bit off topic but the orbital laser doesn't have a front or back,(all sides are the same) but it still moves like it does.

Anything that stops incoming projectiles can sound a lot like shields.

There's a key difference between this unit/structure and shields though.

Shields stop all incoming projectiles, missiles, bombs – everything.

These units would only stop Catapults and Artillery projectiles.

They'd still be susceptible to bombers, nukes, ants, and doxes.

Very key difference which makes them not overpowered like shields, but a viable counter to catapults and holkins.

Very true, and I absolutly agree with you.

Still "shields" where the first thing that popped up in my mind. Not because it's the best solution, it is just the option that is most common.

General statment:
I know shields will not be in vanilla PA, it will probably be modded in thou. For better or worse...

Except Nukes and Asteroids

If someones spent alot of time and metal investing in static ground defences then their orbital must be lacking, if their orbital is strong then the ground defences must be lacking. Trick is finding a weakness and exploiting it, of course we need the tools to be able to do this.


If they have had enough time to build up everything then what have you been doing the last 1/2 an hour to let them do that!

There should be more diversification than just ground and orbital. With just two dimensions, balancing to create minimal weaknesses becomes very possible even with relatively inefficient defenses.

Instead, each type of defense should be quite efficient at its particular dimension, but with more dimensions creating more types of weaknesses.

I envision a planetary invasion having a wide variety of different types of tools to attack with. Unit cannons, orbital bombardment, aircraft, dropships, inserting units by drop pods, nukes, and of course including the planetary annihilation option of using an asteroid if all else fails. And each type of attack, and even subtype, should require different assets and techniques to deal with most effectively, but the wrong types can still work, especially if you play your cards right.

And even different dimensions should have subtypes. Ground units and ground defense should be divided into antiswarm, anti-heavy, skirmishers, assault, and so on. Even if you have a large amount of ground defense constructed, it should be possible to break it by using the right ground units in the right densities in the right places. Same for aircraft; different types of anti-air would have different levels of effectiveness against strike craft, strategic bombers, gunships, and so on. Sure, a giant SAM will obliterate a small, cheap bird. But because it is cheap they will be very numerous and you would be better off with a large quantity of cheap anti-air guns, or flak, etc.

A planetary invasion should be a culmination of all the gameplay in Planetary Annihilation, potentially including all types of land, air, and orbital units and other types of weapons. With the planet-killing asteroid impact being the ultimate ticking clock on the planetary invasion as the maximally inefficient, ridiculously expensive game-ender.

With every type of a large roster being potentially in play, there is a huge potential for diversity in planetary invasions. No two planetary invasions will ever play out in exactly the same way, even on the same map.

we defenitively need big cargotranports either
those put on and launched by a orbital rocket or in orbit transports that can carry ground and air units ... or both
added with mobile antimissile and antiartillerydefence like brian proposed should make for intresting invasion gameplay
... the only thing that must not happen is adding surfaceshooting ships to orbital turning it into a naval 2.0
that is likely to make surfacebattle with groundunits or naval redundand imo
the beamsatalite should be the only weapon to attack ground from orbit

I agree there shouldn't really be spaceboats, but I disagree that the current laser satellite should be the only thing able to fire at the ground. I also think there should be far more than the umbrella that could fire back.

When somebody tries to invade my planet, I want it to feel like the fricken normandy invasion. There should be massive shells flying both ways, sirens going off as units descent onto the planet with flak and rockets going up to greet them, not some puny sounding laser shots from a miniscule selection of units trying to pinprick each other.

Id like an orbital AA weapon.

A lot of players are conceptualizing orbital as a very air-like medium. Even Uber seems to be tending in that direction such as the "orbital fighter" design.

I don't think a pure orbital design that acts like air units is a good idea. Gameplay similarities between the air layer and the orbital layer detract from the uniqueness of both. In fact such a design could even make it difficult to tell the difference between the two layers in a crowded environment.

People say "space navy" as if it were pejorative, but honestly I think that is a better direction to take the extremely expensive interplanetary-capable units. A fleet of orbital units in space, where such a fleet has an immense cost to construct actually seems more reasonable than having a huge wing of smaller aircraft-like orbital units.

In addition, I think aircraft should be a huge shared focus for both surface and orbital units, allowing the two layers to interact. Air units can be produced on the surface and can land and interact there. And I also think that orbital units should be able to launch, and perhaps even potentially produce, air units. It makes a lot of gameplay sense to allow orbital and surface players to interact through the medium of aircraft, especially due to the obvious fact that the airspace above a planet is directly between the surface and the space in orbit around the planet.



Uber is on the right track in creating some separation between the surface and orbital units. However the orbital units currently have a much easier time reaching across that gap than the surface player does. The only mitigating factor here is cost. Which essentially means that players need extremely powerful economies before they can crank out large numbers of very-dominant orbital units.

Suppose instead that orbital craft are very difficult to reach, but it is actually very difficult to just directly attack a planet from orbit. Instead, most of the time you are going to be launching aircraft and units from these orbital fleets to act on the planet on your behalf. A player defending the planet might be able to fight and win against your attacks against the planet, and thereby remain in control, but still might not be able to destroy your orbital ships.

This. Very much this.