Currently: Send a ton of fabricators to a small planet. Build the needed Halleys. Smash the target. There is little to no warning. My suggestion: Halleys build like now, but they aren't ready to go when built. Halleys charge up, similar to bombers. This takes a long time and cannot be assisted. Whenever any smashable planet gets a full set of Halleys, a global warning gets sent out. You have until that last Halley gets charged up to do something about it. (5 minutes?) I'm also thinking maybe Halleys should always be visible to everyone. You won't get an alert about it but you can look around and see if any are built and buy yourself a little more warning.
The devs said they might actually not include those. They haven't made up their mind, but they may not be included. That was said during the 11 hour livestream.
^ Probably because of the problems with planet cracking. The intention is that if you can't take a well defended planet, you blow it up with the game ender. Giving players a means to directly counter the game ender leaves you with a massive stalemate and doesn't punish the person who ignored or failed to secure the orbital body Then again we'll have to see how planet destruction fares when mass dictates how much devastation it causes. When planets eventually able to be blown to bits, I'd imagine there could be some play with anti orbital rockets blowing asteroids into chunks and only destroying a portion instead of the larger whole.
I'm not sure what the issue is here. It is really easy to scout planets nowadays, with the adv orbital sat giving you such massive vision. Just send one of those and an anchor or two. Besides, if you are aware that your enemy controls a halleyable moon, you really REALLY need to stop him from getting halleys. How is that not obvious? It's literally the most cost efficient and most awesome tactic in the game right now. If you don;t know he has halleys, then I feel sorry for you. But it's entirely YOUR FAULT. Not him being sneaky and being minimalistic about it.
If this was true, nobody would ever be able to lock down a planet because we'd all be so good at fighting over them. With orbital transit times being what they are, and particularly in games with more than about 4 planets, the ability to really fight it out over a planet can be lacking, especially if it's small (and therefore 1 catapult can pretty well cover the whole thing). This is part of why I like my Orbital Teleporter idea too. Some way to insert something into orbit and start fighting immediately. I can generally get things into orbit but getting a teleporter on the ground may require a lengthy campaign, assuming it's even possible. Also, Halleys cost 39,000 metal, which sounds like a lot, but with a 3000 metal economy (which is not that hard in a multi-planet game when you can quite possibly get an entire planet, or a chunk of several planets), you can build a Halley in 13 seconds. We need more of a chance to fight over it than that.
I'm responding to your point, which was there's little warning. The fact that they took the moon is your warning. If you want to make this about the difficulty of moon sieges you should probably have written something about that in the OP.
Moon's are the easiest to siege because you can only put so much on such a small area. That also means you can cram in 5 antinukes in such a small area that it is impenetrable, but one nuke is enough to destroy a significant part of that planet anyway. Look, I've learned how to siege people - it's quite simple: Attack, and NEVER STOP. They won't be able to keep up with eco and paying attention to everything at the same time. They make ONE MISTAKE, and it's over.
Your point is irrelevant. When we can potentially build Halleys in less than 15 seconds, knowing that the moon was taken is no help at all. Being able to invade it is no help at all. Interplanetary ballistic missiles and unit cannons and shifting orbits and anchors and megabots and multiunit interplanetary transports are all pointless when Halleys can be built so fast. I think the bottom line for Halleys, and really a lot of things in PA, is that "cost is not a good way to regulate things". We have infinite metal and a real chance for massive income. Until Halleys present a real warning that gives us real time to respond (with real means to respond), they will continue to be a problem. In their present state, I declare that Halleys are Not Very Much Fun.
I agree that "build this and you win" things are never fun, whether your the person executing the strategy or the guy who gets a planet smashed into his face. If the counter system isn't binary, however, then it can actually be quite delicious if you can counter it.
A bit off-topic, but that's something I think should be fixed; income should usually max out at a usable amount so that managing it remains important IMO. I'm of the opinion that T2 mex are currently OP because of this (and for a few other reasons). Cost of moving a planet can now be assigned arbitrarily (which I think is a good thing), so one thing I would suggest is making it more expensive to move planets in your systems. Now for the whole early-warning thing; I don't think they're too hard to scout, and I don't support the idea that there should be audible warnings whenever something is constructed you don't have vision of, ever. It's a bad mechanic, it's not intuitive and it takes away from the decision making involved in scouting. If you want to prevent an attack altogether you should have to scout it, otherwise you're left to defend from it (which should be possible to some extent). I'm not saying that you should have no warning at all though. What I do think is a good idea is reducing their travel speed and providing an audible warning when a planet is seen to change orbit (you already have vision of this, so I've got no problem with it at all). Right now they seem to be just as fast as (if not faster than) orbital units in transit. Slowing them down would mean sending them to a planet is a significant investment (when using the change orbit feature), and would also help give some warning to players of a potential planet smash so they can reduce their losses or relocate, since defending against an asteroid smash should be a pretty costly ordeal. Here I'm assuming that asteroids won't always be complete planet wipes, and that it may be possible to defend from them in some way. I think there should be some disincentive to smash a movable planet, as opposed to using it to invade.
I like that idea, too: simply slowing down the speed of the planet. Like, by a lot. Mainly I just don't like the feeling that the current situation generates which is "MUST RUSH TO PLANET. BUILD HALLEYS. EVAC COMMANDER. SMASH PLANET. ALL OTHER STRATEGY INFERIOR TO THIS." Some people do these maps with 1 big planet and 6+ small, 2-engine planets and I consider those games to largely be a no-skill crap-shoot. Really I think any smashable planet that requires less than about 25 engines is absurd. (2 engines is nothing! You can get one of those things moving in 5 minutes on a pretty weak economy.)
I would like to see halleys activation warning (without target shown) and slow-down boosted planet, so it move like any other craft. I once noticed by accident that boosted planed moved (I go into system view when it started) and I had ordered my commander head to teleporter ASAP (it was length of advanced factory from it) but it couldn't possibly made to it, no chance.
I think the essence of Slamz's post is right. The problem we are having is that we don't recognize when we've pretty much "lost" the game. When someone leaves the planet, if they have any supportive infrastructure left on that planet, they can spread like bacteria everywhere else, and players need to recognize that it's over for them if they were second to leave the starting planet. Once we learn how to pick up on those cues, Uber can decide if they want to change something about how the end-game plays out. I think Uber needs a really good and rigorous definition, or role for the Halleys, instead modeling it around as a vague "game-ender". Once they can say, okay, the proper way to use Halleys is in situation X and in way Y. Then they can make changes that move the game in that direction. If they want the competitive scene to emerge a behavior, then I guess they can balance it such that it isn't the go-to answer for everything, or in other words, no the dominant play, but still happens once in a while.That way we can see what that plays like, what feels the most appropriate, and Uber can come in and reinforce the best use.
I have to agree, as they stand right now they are "I win" Buttons. Perhaps when an objects mass determines how many Halleys you need, and how much damage it does the problem will solve itself. Until then I tend to make only single planet or multi planet systems to fight in. No moons, as it only takes someone to get a slight foot hold on the moon to start the doomsday count down of lameness. On a side note it would also be a bit different if everyone didn't start on the same planet. As far as the anti-asteroid missiles. It was in the trailer I want to see it. Even if it's only anti-asteroid and not anti-moon. Which brings up another point... In trailers we saw asteroids being fired off with 9 Halleys. For a pretty small rock, I think part of the problem we are facing is also that it takes to few rockets to get moons to smash. Factors to look into: Mass of Moon/Asteroids: Damage/how many rockets it takes to move Higher mass = More damage it deals over a larger area = more Rockets to move Anti-Asteroid Missiles: Also dependent on mass of the object. How much damage they can take before breaking up and in how many parts they break. # of Rockets it takes to move a Moon/Asteroid Time between Rockets being built and Firing planet off? Should their be a charge up time? should their be more of a warning .... should big bold red letters flash up * Warning: Stellar object orbital decay!* . All things to think about when figured this problem out.
More mass = Slower acceleration. Then you get a warning proportional to the damage that's going to be done. PHYSICS. Basically the problem with Halleys is that they aren't finished yet.
Excellent point that needs to be added as well. And I agree, it seems to overall problem is they are not finished (at least I hope they are not).
