Space Battles

now before you jump down my throat about they are avoiding them for the planet side battles i get that (granted i do think it would be cool to be able to call in orbital bombardments or activating planetary defense guns but anyway) my question is would it be possible for some happy modders to add in said space combat stuff later? (im not a modder so im just curious to know if its possible)

Probably, eventually. First mods will likely just be Ships in orbit, as that capability would already be built in due to the existing orbital units, deep space combat will be far trickier, it's possible if there is a good, dedicated team they might be able to work with Uber to fix up the engine to allow that kind of thing.

Mike

For homeworld like space battles we will need pathfinding in space, which doesn't exist in PA engine, so it is mostly likely impossible.
But space battles in a higher air layer is certainly doable.

It would require a hugely complex level of modding akin to regular game development, because uber will not have any infrastructure in place to support it. There aren't many people who can do that, and fewer still with the time to do it. You could probably work some pseudo-space warfare into the game with the engine, I imagine though it would just not be very good.

It has been said a million times (and will be said a million more, right up till release) that this game will be focusing on ground based combat, with interplanetary elements, like space weapons, asteroids engines, space cannons, rocket transports and possibly teleporters and maybe death star like weapons. In order for them to get space combat to the level they want ground combat, it would require more people, money, time.

And for what? Slow moving space ships that beat everything shooting each other? Because once you have the enterprise why do you ever need tanks, boats, planes, nukes or any other form of warfare. Unless they can't attack planets. Which makes them pointless to have, just like having them attacking planets would make everything else pointless.

Just give me my end game interplanetary death star laser and call it a day.

just a stab in the dark, but seeing as you have to launch from planet to planet anyway, couldn't u just have a "jump" drive and only do combat in orbit while increasing the orbital radius (more sins of a solar empire style thing) like i said i have no idea how to mod im just hoping that maybe if enough of these kind of posts are made some modder out there will go ooh thats a good idea lets do it

Then you end up with situations like this;

Mike

Perhaps, but that's the beauty of making balance mods. People can play PA the way they want to, even if others don't think something is worth doing or playing.

This would go way beyond being just a balance mod.

Mike

Not everything can be fixed with mods, nor will everyone want to mod their game, nor will everyone use the mods if they want to play games with other people. People need to realize mods can only support a game, they are not a band-aid for short comings. Personally I'd like people to stop talking about mods until the end of beta.

"Just mod it in" easy way to doom a game to failure. Most people will not ever use a mod and would sooner abandon a game entirely before looking into alternative community solutions.

This is a fact of the gaming industry. People like Uber and CDP-Red are exceptions to the rule. Mods should receive all the support in the world, but only a TINY amount of mods are worth the time it takes to install, and any mod that is used be everyone is something the developers should have been looking at post launch, and should have been on it faster then any single modder or small team.

A strong post game feedback and post launch development will keep players a lot longer then a mod scene. Developers > modders, generally, not always, but generally.

Balance mods are terrible in all cases. Any mod that adds gameplay effecting content should ALWAYS be balanced AROUND the current build, not the other way around. On the topic of orbital bombardment, it's totally fine if you can see it coming and there's a way to prevent it.

Example: Laser death exterminate black-hole implosion kill-battlespaceship detected on space-radar.

Response: Nuke it, launch rockets filled with KBots at it, move the planet so the killship misses its rendezvous and flies into the sun, huck an asteroid or two at it a la Starship Troopers.

As a programmer who has developed games, I may be tempted (due to my love of homeworld and spaceships) to create a spaceship mod in one form or another. When the game is fully released I'll get back to you about that =)

ya for debate, it was just a simple idea/question lol and as for balance in the ships that seems kinda simple to me either make them fire slowly or have horrible accuracy against planet based objects (due to gravity and planet rotation or what ever) couple that with planetary defense guns with the same issue against small craft (ie the troops being launched from planet to planet) which personally would bring in a new level of strategy, because if you didn't have troops as well you couldn't really do anything against a planet accept attempt to destroy some buildings. but it always fun and interesting to see peoples ideas and reactions to said ideas

And I, good sir, will play your spaceship balance mod and am looking forward to it!

Should you need help building it (not that you do), I'm sure there are others like myself who are interested in what you propose to do and will lend a hand where we can.

Well, I can easily understand why deep space combat is way out of scope for a game that is called PLANETARY annihilation. Combat should be planet focused. Orbital combat on the other hand is something I would like to see, eventually.

Considering the major selling point for this game is about destroying planets, it seems odd that orbital combat and hence orbital bombardment by orbiting ships would be left out. This is a classic SciFi trope for planetary destruction.

I also find it odd that balance is used as a reason for orbital ship combat's exclusion. First, we already have air units, and these would basically be air units on a higher plane. Second, they are already allowing players to make giant KEW to destroy entire enemy planets. Not to mention NUKES. Surely that's a wide enough net already cast that we can figure out how to balance it.

Planetary Defense Cannons...

..Just saying...

exactly

a common counter argument to the orbital navy is the balance factor but simply make anti orbital ground based weapons that can cost effectively (not overly so but enough) scare away/counter enemy ships. this would make water locations safer overall for ships to "park" over.


also you could balance orbital to surface attack by modifying the range values and making it so orbital bombardment requires you to be almost over the target area making defenses very strong.

it also opens up the potential for some planets being orbital only (gas planets)
and IMO would be a better use of time/resources than water navy (if they have to choose between them i would rather have both i think there was confusion here in my last thread about this)

My impression on why it was not going to be included was driven by usability concerns more than technical (though the technical may have arisen out of the resulting lack of implementation).

When doing a homeworld type game, it needs a different interface, because you have a lot more information that needs to be dealt with, both displayed to player, and gotten as input from the player. Now my impression was that Uber felt it would make for a poor game to have basically 2 games UI's in 1, a space game UI and a ground game UI. There are also issues of whether to include orbital mechanics, and if so, how do you get the user to input the orbit information?

I'm not trying to be a hater, just trying to give some food for thought. I'd love to talk about ideas to some of these issues.

As Neutrino sad, Space Battles can be implemented later after the release. I hope so.

PS: Stargate Mod would be awesome

I don't think a completely separate interface is necessary for orbiting ships, since the player can at any time almost instantaneously zoom out to a wider planet view and would be able to see the ships. From there the player can click the ships the same way they can click on units, moons, asteroids.. ect...What would be needed is a marker on the ground to notify a player (zoomed in on the map) that a ship is orbiting over head (assuming the player has the proper radar to detect the orbiting ship).

Something like the picture below. Basically its the outlined "shadow" of the ship plus its own graphical marker.

That's assuming that orbit height doesn't matter and it's planet centric, which depends on exact implementation of spaceships

Well that is what I am assuming.
I said earlier that deep space combat is out of scope for a game called Planetary annihilation, but orbital combat focused around planets is definitely something the devs should implement, eventually. Basically orbital height would be its own combat layer right on top of air units.