Space ships and space combat

Yea, but orbital units has allredy been confirmed in PA. So its as set in stone as it can be this early. However that those units will be spacecraftish and that they may be able to move to other worlds is just a assumption.

if you honestly wanted vanilla space ships take an asteroid or moon put some engins on it and use that as a ship!

From what I can gather, the orbital layer will consist of 60's style orbiting satellites and their ideas of orbital warfare between the superpowers rather their our views on ships in space.

And you gather this from where? A dark corner of your imagination? If not, links! xD

More like the reason we use rockets to get to the moon, rather then using a teleporter.

You have to build the other end of the teleporter somehow

Depends on the science fiction!

Well if we are to use TA/Supcom as an example, 1-way teleportation is quite possible. It's just much more expensive and limited than 2-way. In TA the 1-way teleport was stated to take several weeks for one jump, and basically starts the Arm campaign. In both TA and Supcom the 2-way network was much faster, taking perhaps days or hours to move between missions. Maybe minutes if it's already warmed up.

Supcom had a "recall" device, which was never seen in action but presumably brought ACUs back to home base like a town portal. Such a device would be pretty handy in PA, as a "GTFO" card to encourage more risky play with the Comm.

dont even need to go that far, as far as deep space combat goes it all but impossible to rendezvous with a space craft in deep space, especially if it doesn't want to be rendezvoused with, you could chase it for all eternity and never catch up and if you cant catch it you cant attack it, you'd have to wait until it reached its destination ie. orbital environment where it would be slower and more confined to close your range and attack it

I say forget spaceships. This is meant to be a mostly ground combat game so keep it, if a system is a virtual fortress then why land on a planet? Go for an asteroid, it's likely most units will be staged on the planets and moons so you only have to deal with auto-defenses, something that are fairly easy to handle for a commander. After that it's basically island hooping until you can take a moon and lay siege to a planet.

I admit I like the idea of specialized orbital units moving between planets, but maybe they'd be better served as carriers as opposed to battleships, in a sense. But keep it simple, orbital units turned starships shouldn't be the goal of players battling over a single system, more likely they'll be purposed as meteor or nuke defense.

What I'm saying amounts to, be creative. If a system's a fortress, adapt with what you've got and find the weakest point. Don't rely on starships.

The game is going to include ground, air, naval, orbital. Its not nessesarly a "mostly ground combat game" unless you want it to be.

In previous games aloot of commander choose to focus on air, or naval if the map allows it (there will most likely be some that focus on orbital too, but thats new so i cant say yet).

On some worlds grounds units arent even used (Atleast from the information we have been told), for example water worlds and gas giants.

It would be just another option. You argument is the same as saying the following (if the game only used ground units) "If a base is heavily fortified, adapt with what you've got and find the weakest point. Don't rely on bombers (air units)", its not a valid argument.


Why would they allow you to move ground units from one world to the next (Ground unit using a unit cannon) but not orbital units? And if they do allow orbital units to move to new worlds, wouldent the feature suggested here make the most sense? Or should they rather teleport or enter som kind of transport (would look kinda silly for a orbital unit in my opinion)?

He is still correct, naval is based on land, air and orbital (conceptually very similar) are essentially 2d layers that exist above a surface. Space combat is in a world of its own, a 3d shapeless combat arena of arbitrary size.

All I would ask is that a space layer be available to modders. So we can go beyond orbital and add ships if we want.

If were talkign about mechanics: Were not talking about space combat, were talking about orbital combat (as you said, also based on ground combat), and including a feature leeting your orbital units move between worlds (Like for example the commander unit in the video, just that the orbital units has their rockets built in), not fighting in space.

i'm not sure space combat, as in deep space, would.d be possible, even if you created a deep space environment for it to occur in, particularly if it has to work with any form of orbital mechanics, meeting any units in space would be practically impossible unless your going at them head on, and even then the encounter would be so brief as to last less than a fraction of a second, what could be accomplished in that small a time window? in an all up space combat sim you could have preprogrammed attacks, missiles etc.. but i'm not sure it would work in an RTS unless you can somehow explain away the cancellation of the orbital mechanics, this is all on the assumption that they implement orbital mechanics but im hoping thats a given

i'm hoping any implemented space combat will take place in teh ""orbital layers" which is probly the most realistic place for it to occur, and include movement from one orbital layer to other orbital layers

dont really know though will wait to see when alpha / beta / finalised game is released

I like the idea of space combat in theory, if only because it could add the element of something that could be used either in a defensive or purely offensive manner. There are however, as has been raised, inherent problems associated with yet another avenue of units to go along with air/land/naval battles.

Orbital based things could take a number of forms- something that acts as a counter to, say, unit cannons could be useful- even some form of strategic defence against nukes or even asteroids would be interesting.

From what I understand, Uber is more interested in the "fun" or "good gameplay" side of things rather than the intricacies of realism and functional orbital mechanics, so if we were looking at something that could somehow slow down an incoming asteroid, that could have potential. Though I'm sure that idea can be rapidly shot down.

However-as much as I'd like to see some epic bombardments from space, there would need to be a lot of thought put into actual space "units", such as ships or orbital weaponry. If either were to be tried, it would be a risk that players could go the route of mostly forgoing planet-based wars in favour of simply turning the opposition to jam with massed orbital artillery or something similar. We'd need counters, which would then add yet another kind of defence requirement that could complicate matters.

I enjoyed games like Imperium Galactica- where you had the orbital defences that needed to be destroyed before you could invade planets- however I know that particular mechanic isn't going to be seen here. However if we are looking at having that extra "layer" to play with, it'll have to be broached how to go about it. Realistically (loathe as I am to say it) air units would be effectively immune to orbital weaponry, so how it would be taken would, I guess, be solely in the form of bombardment in one shape or another.

I'll be interested to know where the Developers take this layer- I'm sure it'll be fun no matter what it is- but ever since they implemented those damned satellites in SupCom, I've been interested in what space-layer warfare could add to the game. Even if it just means having satellites that are made of paper-mache in terms of defence but are capable of scouting areas of the planet or offering defence/offense in some capacity, I'll still be interested.

Thinking on it- with the apparent mechanic of sending engineers into space- there could always be the opening for placing engineers in orbit- whether they they transform themselves into the appropriate structure/unit or have to build it would be a matter of choice. But still. Space!

Honestly, I don't see an entrenched world ending any other way.

Deep space combat really shouldn't happen. It's easy enough to say that ships in transit can't, or won't engage for any number of reasons:
- They're on autopilot.
- FTL engines don't allow enough ship interaction.
- The window of contact is far too short.
- There's no commander to direct the battle (Autopilot).
- There's nothing worth fighting over.
- The war is moving so much faster than space ships that there's no point.
- Space is just too big for ships to find each other.

If you can send a carrier, you can also send a dozen nukes. Space travel doesn't really make sense beyond small scale skirmishes, or when precision is required.

The units proposed for a space layer(engi/transport/raider/scout) would basically allow Tier 1 warfare across worlds and D-day style space invasions. If that's not enough firepower to establish a good beachhead, then the planet will never be taken alive. At that point, space ships only need enough firepower to break his nuke defense.

Alderaan much?

I agree with much- the only talking point would cover the "not finding each other" part. If, in a somewhat Sins of a Solar Empire style, you could jump to other planets but only had a limited area once there which you could trundle about in, that could minimise the level of travel. At least that way you'd be more likely to find other space units.

But, I digress, I'm not one for the introduction of epic space battles- which although awesome, would need a whole new level of tinkering and debate to even see born, never mind implemented in a gameplay stable manner.

What I meant by ground combat is anything occurring on Terra Firma, I kinda lumped Land, Air and Sea into one term, sorry if that's confusing. As for water worlds and Gas Giants; Sea, Air and Orbital combat would be a given.

You do realize that argument falls apart if the enemy base has a ton of AA set up for such an attack. At that point you cant rely on bombers because it will take a massive land/sea assault to take down enough for them to be effective, assuming by that point the base isn't so wrecked using them is moot.

The same applies to ships. If space ships are implemented you can bet there will be a ton of anti-shipping weapons in orbit to prevent an attack forcing you to consider moon based artillery, NOAHs and nukes as the easier route; by that point the ships will likely be useless like the bombers in my first argument.

This might be why having large scale defenses costing power to fire is a good thing, meaning that a defense's will last as long as there is power for the guns.

Making your economy a asset and a liability for these defenses.