Retreating to a 300 size moon

Discussion in 'Planetary Annihilation General Discussion' started by spazzdla, October 16, 2013.

  1. spazzdla

    spazzdla Active Member

    Messages:
    319
    Likes Received:
    135
    Given 30+ minutes alone(not that rare in an FFA) it becomes 100% un takeable..

    SPACE NUKES plz!
  2. Flatlander

    Flatlander Member

    Messages:
    48
    Likes Received:
    33
    I do agree, there is no answer to "Planet invasions" but I don't think inter-planetary nukes is the whole answer.

    This game has a giant problem at the moment, and yes it will be fixed in the future but the developers have QUITE a task. I design games and systems myself, and I can't even think of a "good" and fair way to do planetary invasions.

    Interplanetary Nukes would (or could) just be blocked by anti-nukes. If you could fly in a ton of units on dropships all they would need is decent anti-air and defenses and you would still have no chance. The "Unit Cannons" is a steady stream of units flying in 1 at a time - easily defeated even if you have multiple unit cannons. Having a foot-hold on a planet even if you don't cover the entire planet, basically makes you invincible to any invasion.

    A fully inhabited planet needs an answer to how to defeat it, what if there are no moons/asteroids to use to "annihilate" the planet?

    Here are some ideas I had but they aren't very good in my opinion.
    1. Building Drop-Pods - Be able to load a "building" into the orbital launcher and make it mobile. This way you could load 4 factories, a few defenses and drop onto the planet all at the same time, making a starting base quickly. - Then use unit launchers to support it.
    2. Doomsday Weapons - The ability to make man-made asteroids to hurl at other planets, Or inter-planetary super-units that can survive on their own and clear a path so you can land on a planet with engineers and other units.
    3. Teleporter Ship - Teleporter Ship lands on a planet and becomes immobile, then you can use a building on your own planet to teleport units onto the new planet.
    4. "Motherships" - Giant orbital ships that have their own factories on-board that create drop-pods. The mothership fires the unit directly onto the planet when it is built (rally point selects landing zone)
    I am interested to see what Uber thinks up to solve this problem, they have many talented people. I hope they continue to impress me.
  3. mistknight

    mistknight New Member

    Messages:
    1
    Likes Received:
    0
    While I know there will be more features later in which to actually invade a planet, I've had a rather successful time outproducing orbital fighters to clear an atmosphere, then sending a group of radars and a group of orbital cannons to clear an area (or continue more of the same).
  4. zaphodx

    zaphodx Post Master General

    Messages:
    2,350
    Likes Received:
    2,409
    Laser platforms, Unit cannon, interplanetary nukes, teleporters, KEWs.
  5. spazzdla

    spazzdla Active Member

    Messages:
    319
    Likes Received:
    135
    I would disagree with being able to protect via anti nukes unless the planets are relatively the same size. On a 300 size moon you have 30ish metal spots, on a large planet you have 200-300. You could just build up an aersanel of more nukes than he has anti. Although that is kind of a boring and really drawn out way to take over the planet.

    An orbital platform you could put into orbit against said planet and lauch units via a unit launcher would be interesting.
  6. spazzdla

    spazzdla Active Member

    Messages:
    319
    Likes Received:
    135

    If they did not litter the ground with umberals/catapults they arn't doing it right.
  7. hanspeterschnitzel

    hanspeterschnitzel Active Member

    Messages:
    191
    Likes Received:
    36
    I would love a dropship that you can launch at an enemy planet, then it digs roots into the planet and becomes immobile. It would be a factory that can produce all ground and air units, or naval units if you fired it at an ocean, it has AA and laser turrets and also an anti nuke. The thing itself would be quite expensive, but not too expensive and around advanced factory sized. It would be able to survive a nuke itself, but otherwise you could simply blow it up quite easily, since after all our commanders also can survive a nuke, yet die to a few tactical missiles.

    You would have to launch multiple of those at an enemy planet to take over it of course.

    The problem with those is.. what if the enemy has build stuff on the whole planet and leaves you no space to land? 8D
    Well, launching a ton of nukes at one spot to overwhelm anti-nukes and blow everything up there could work..
  8. zweistein000

    zweistein000 Post Master General

    Messages:
    1,362
    Likes Received:
    727
    IMO invading planets is not about using any one strategy. Let us presume that we are invading a fortress-planet and no asterids are available. Why you use only one strategy. First off I would bring in 1000-2000 or more orbital fighters to deny enemy fighters and provide cannon fodder, meanwhile a similar amount of self-teleport vehicles/bots (provided we get them) would teleport onto a planet trying to carve a hole in defenses while supported by orbital units (radars, lasers, orbital weapons platforms that descend for orbit, etc). The loses would be huge but we are attacking a fortress planet. When the hole has been carved up Phase 2 would commence - orbital drop pods whose purpose would be to hole the hole until I can set up teleporters and factories. After that - hulkins+teleporter +units is your friend.

    But teleporters are the center of this. If we arent able to bring in instant reinforcements (even in a limited fashion) then invading a planet will really be impossible. The only alternative I can thin if is that drop pods destroy anything they land on.
  9. schuesseled192

    schuesseled192 Active Member

    Messages:
    823
    Likes Received:
    219
    Anti nuke's range is a problem with the defending against nukes issue.

    What's to stop them firing their entire planet's worth of nukes all at one spot, you would have had to built anti nukes everywhere, there's nothing you can do to stop them annihilating a small area (relatively small) then there unit cannons/landers/whatnot can make their landings.
    Murcanic likes this.
  10. mrj90k

    mrj90k Member

    Messages:
    55
    Likes Received:
    9
    I think in ZaphodX latest video of players battling across moons we saw a good start to invasion, admittedly the player was shooed away with nuclear bombardment but come the implementation of teleporters the game could reach new heights.
  11. RMJ

    RMJ Active Member

    Messages:
    587
    Likes Received:
    234
    Droppods for buildings haha :D that would be so freaking awesome. I can totally already picture this in my head.

    Or at least they need to change engines required, its just insane atm. 200 size 3. 300 size 25. its like wtf that scaling there.
  12. superouman

    superouman Post Master General

    Messages:
    1,007
    Likes Received:
    1,139
    I think a kind of experimental-class bot would be useful to create beach heads on planets. They wouldn't come via Landers but crash on the planet in a pod, deploy and then destroy what it can to let engineers create the beach head base.

    From the games i've seen on Zaphod's channel, I found them quite boring because it was all about orbital units, there was absolutely no ground fighting.
    As counter-arguments against myself, ffa games tend to be less active in some moments because everyone waits other people to attack someone else. Also, I think it was one of the first games with a such focus on orbital so no one knows how to play efficiently in this kind of scenarios.
  13. evilotioncr2

    evilotioncr2 New Member

    Messages:
    11
    Likes Received:
    3
    Giant planet destroying lasers which can only destroy planets which are under 400 size.
  14. ehtom

    ehtom New Member

    Messages:
    3
    Likes Received:
    0
    This is the most broken thing in the game right now.
  15. skywalkerpl

    skywalkerpl Member

    Messages:
    95
    Likes Received:
    66
    Krogoth is a solution for breaking through the battle-planets.
    I don't see any reason to re-invent the wheel. In Total Annihilation Krogoth was the unit that you used in huge battles when one side camped itself with enormous stacks of defense towers / Big Bethas and similar. If exactly the same happens in PA, than add exactly the same solution. Bang! Problem solved. Just build a huge jet-pack on it's back that will allow it to be send on another planet and it'll have more than enough firepower to clear a landing zone for follow-up troops before it dies :)

    No need to add some weird motherships or toy with teleportation (IMHO teleportation will bring more bad to the gameplay than good - we already have next to no choke-points in the game, adding any sort of teleportation devices would kill it even further to the point where building any defenses what so ever would be a waste of time as someone can simply blink in a middle of your base uncontested)
  16. tatsujb

    tatsujb Post Master General

    Messages:
    12,902
    Likes Received:
    5,385
  17. garatgh

    garatgh Active Member

    Messages:
    805
    Likes Received:
    34
  18. Regabond

    Regabond Member

    Messages:
    84
    Likes Received:
    5
    Something like this would actually be really awesome. It would need to be quite expensive, maybe around 30k-40k in current balance terms. This would make it rather nonviable to use to colonize new worlds, but still cheap enough for late game invasions. I'd also see it as needing to be +50% to double the footprint of the advanced factory.

    Alternatively, some UI/game mechanic to allow you to strap rockets to structures for single use planting. The rockets would be pricey, but it would let you attempt to land an entire base on another world.
  19. Nasher

    Nasher New Member

    Messages:
    19
    Likes Received:
    1
    We will get asteroid belts eventually right? Once that happens you could fling asteroids at it and since it's so small it wouldn' take many to flatten it.
  20. Quitch

    Quitch Post Master General

    Messages:
    5,853
    Likes Received:
    6,045
    Was this episode 93? Orbital was definitely funky, but you could see the awesome possibilities forming.

Share This Page