I was going to post this in the "unit ideas" thread, but I think this might be larger than that. This isn't my idea, of course... instead, I'd like to point to the KS trailer, at about 0:50. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=FhEYvOYceNs#t=51 Currently, interplanetary play has a high chance of ending in a stalemate. It's very easy for a player to establish total ownership of a planet - radar, artillery/Catapults, orbital fighters - such that, short of a moon drop, there's no meaningful way to damage an enemy-held planet. And since many people can't handle more than 2 or 3 planets reliably, moons are in short supply. There needs to be an intermediate step short of planet collisions to encourage interplanetary play for reasons beyond "I've lost, better flee" and to make it possible to attack "fully owned" planets in some way. Once this stage of play reaches a close draw, moon drops become the tiebreaker - or a panic option if your moon base is about to be compromised. With that in mind, here's what I'd suggest. 1) Orbits and Range: To keep the unwelcome subject of starship fleets off the table, this class of weapon should only work at a short range - that is, when the planets are near each other in their orbit around the sun. More importantly, since these weapons would be built as stationary cannons on the ground, they also only work when facing the target planet - and since they're constantly rotating, that's hard to guarantee. These two factors combined means that these weapons will have brief, explosive windows of opportunity, rather than being a continuous extension of dominance. There will be blind spots where the defender (or counter-attacker) has time to prepare and respond. 2) Satellites Used For Targeting: As a balancing mechanism for bits to be mentioned below, interplanetary firing would require a Satellite (or Adv. Satellite, whatever's balanced) paired to the weapon in question to do its trajectory math. This prevents players from getting interplanetary weapons before they achieve orbital/planetary dominance, so that their enemies won't be shot down or bombarded to death before they reach space. Having said satellites stop providing planetary targeting data is also important for reasons listed below. This also means that Orbital Fighter raids would have far more importance; much as swarms of competing AA Fighters battle to clear the skies for ground forces and bombers, Orbital Fighters would be duking it out to shut down or protect interplanetary guns. The blunt numbers-game nature of current Orbital Fighter mechanics does need some looking at, but this expands the importance of fighting in orbit. 3) Unit Cannons: As seen in the trailer, and very likely on Mavor's drawing board already, a means to chuck troops between worlds and make beachhead assaults on owned planets. The short windows of opportunity mean that these raids would need to hit hard and fast at vital structures and/or free areas to be secured, possibly sending builders to build a foothold to defend until the next wave can come. Ion Cannons would be able to shoot down Unit Cannon drop pods, but landing out of their range and marching into their tender flanks (or just firing more than they can shoot down) would suffice to counter them. 4) Nukes & Ion Cannons: This is sketchy, but hear me out. Ion cannons firing between planets would be far weaker, and would only temporarily disable/power down enemy orbital units. This fills an important anti-radar role, which helps provide cover for Unit Cannon beachheads (which might otherwise get fragged by radar/Catapult combos on landing), enables scrambling of interplanetary Nukes/Anti-Nukes and Unit Cannons, and provides an avenue for disrupting orbital dominance without just blowing stuff up with impunity. Ion Cannons might need their power intake increased, however, to make carpeting a planet in them less of a sure thing. Nukes (and anti-nukes) being fired between planets can be seen in the trailer, and may likely be needed as a partial countermeasure to asteroid attacks. It may end up being that a single nuke-grade impact gets dissolved into a carpeting of mineral mortar fire, with only slightly less devastating results, but it's still important to have SOME countermeasure for asteroid attacks. In a similar vein, a nuke which loses its satellite support (or is shot by a satellite-assisted Ion Cannon) might hit somewhere else on the planet, making them something of a crapshoot - a deadly one, but still less omnipotent than they are at a planetary scale. Anti-nukes would also be able to have satellite support to shoot down interplanetary nukes, but would go haywire en route if they lost satellite support (or were shot by Ion Cannons.) If you're at all confused, I am too. But that's what you get when you wage war between planets. If you ever want things to be simpler, you can just strap some engines on a moon and press "ANNIHILATE".
