Two things that must happen for balance

I only skimmed the original post, and ignored the replies (normally I read them all). But this whole thing seems kinda moot because it presupposes that players start off on separate planets / asteroids and only later have the means for space travel to attack each other.

I see no way thats going to happen. People need to be able to attack each other almost immediately after starting the game, if thats their choice (and most often is). You can't do that if you have to "tech up" to invade another players planet.

While there might be a game starting option to split players up, I highly doubt it will be the default. Or even desirable. It seems more likely two players will face off on a single planet, probably not directly on opposite sides, and later when they gain the capacity to jump off-planet and acquire asteroids, that would be like gaining the high ground.

Also, since PA will not have space ships, there isn't any real "space travel". I don't expect massive transit times, or units becoming obsolete while they wait. I would imagine it would be more like its done already; transports fly in units and drop them off in a strategic location, and thats about it for space travel. Or maybe a giant cannon launches units straight to a beachhead, past all the orbital defenses.

And... "slowing down escalation"... thats solved by bigger maps.

I think this is the pink elephant in the room. I doubt that this would happen from a competitive stand-point. While it's true that we certainly could have early, inneficent space travel be a means to move around (probably excluding the commander, as that might get annoying on assassination type games), I doubt that this will bea standard occurrence. Perhaps on the galaxy wars it might happen, but in this case, it definitely sounds like an 81x81 island map. If you don't start on the same island, your going to have to wait a while.

On that note, though, although I'm not sure if this directly correlates, in that same sense there were island maps that were much closer, such as 40x40. Perhaps we'll have planets that are in a matched orbit that remain close by indefinitely, in which case early space travel could in fact be an option.

Ok, first off, lets look at the information we have been given so far.

1. Gravity wells are real and escaping large ones is expensive. Everyone saw the Kickstart promo video. It took a massive rocket to get a single engineer and transport off the planet on to the moon.
-note the transport on standby to pick up the engineer was not part of the rocket... looks complicated

2. Some gravity wells are smaller or bigger than others. It's going to depend on the gravity well of the planet you start on to determine what its going to cost you to get to get off planet.

3. I might expect space traveling transports to be experimental level units with very hefty price tags. I would also expect them to have teleporter for loading units similar to SC2 transports or as seen on StarTrek.

Beam up my Krogoth Scotty! Long pause... I really can't commander! I don't haf the powa!

4. We may need space towers if we aren't going to assemble a space transport on the surface of the planet. Maybe it's kind of a gantry.

5. Planet to planet teleporters may be a viable option.

6. Peewee Cannons may be able to pierce the gravity well with enough energy.

7. There may be other considderations such a super rockets with multiple unit payloads.

8. Planet to planet may be more ballistic. I don't know how realistic we want to be but if we were fighting with other planets, the IPBM Inter Planetary Balistic Missiles seems like a very viable option.

I simply can't believe how scattered the topics get on this forum. Is it a reading problem, or a comprehension problem, guys?

I made it clear in my original post that the idea of starting on different planets is the PREMISE of the scenario I'm questioning the balance of. THEREFORE, any conversation related to starting on the same planet is irrelevant. Nobody is suggesting that THAT needs discussing. And where did all this "Units need to be relevant throughout the game" discussion spring up from? FOCUS, people!

For the ADHD crowd... The TLDR version of the topic at hand:

FOR games when you start on different planets, IF space travel is a late game or difficult/expensive ability, there WILL be no encounters until everybody has teched up, thereby removing any and all early/mid game raiding skirmishes, and FORCING the scenario where you have a 20 minute (or whatever) build time playing sim city before the fighting starts.

IF space travel is an early game, or cheap/easy ability, there WILL be serious consequences nullifying the impact that terrain obstacles (ridges, lakes, ramps, hills) have. This is because you can launch your units into space and land them wherever you want, bypassing anybody's natural barriers to land unit movement.

Also... IF you place a vulnerability in space travel, such as making incoming units easy to shoot down, then you will QUICKLY enter into a scenario where everybody has impenetrable bases.

What I'm addressing in this thread is this dilemma only, guys. And its an important one because I wager starting on different planets is going to be fairly common. If you all start on the same planet, then you have an entirely different set of issues, such as the advantage a person gets when he wins "the space race" and gets into orbit first. That's not the subject of this thread. Please keep focused on the topic and don't devolve the thread into general balance discussions. If you want to discuss general balance make your own thread.

Recon

I hope you agree that my thread though slightly wimsical is both logical and on topic.

I will address your points by quoting supergooglefrog:

Ok, so if you just build anti-army stuff I hit you with my giant space rock. If you try to build a giant space rock I will fight your asteroid bots tooth and nail. If you plan to nuke the living turd out of me, I will build anti-nukes and eventually either rock you or deliver some ground forces. If you have a moon, plan on me building a beach head there to launch bots and plasma down on you.

The fact is, terrain plays a big part in whether someone has time to build up to end game level units. Having thousands of miles of empty space without even air molecules between you and your enemy tends to lend to late game development.

Who says late game has to be over quickly? I am pretty sure you have played the map Corvana Chasm. If starting on separate planets isn't more late game then that; there is something genuinly wierd going on. The main difference will be that price will be the primary restriction technology, because unlocking tech 2 with no one hounding you for the first couple minutes of the game will be a piece of cake.

Oh and yeah, guys please read the threads you want to post in, and if you aren't sure ask.

Recon is correct, there is no point in challenging the premise of starting on different gravity wells. The purpose of this discussion is to consider the implications of starting on different gravity wells, and asserting players would start on the same planet sidesteps the issue by refusing to consider the possibility.

I am of the opinion that we need multiple types of space transport for exactly this reason. Convenient, or high capacity transports are going to need to be more expensive (or higher tech if tech levels are used). However if there is absolutely no method for being able to cross open space, then there is no player interaction until a significant amount of development has taken place, which is undesirable.

There must be a way to get players to interact relatively early in the game, and not in a decisive manner. They might gain an advantage from doing this, but it would not typically end the game.

Perhaps rockets are one-way trips, single use only, and can be obtained for cheap, but are incapable of moving extremely large or heavy assets. By contrast, ships would be capable of many trips, and might keep going until destroyed, but at much greater cost to construct. Large ships would also be capable of moving very large assets, or much greater quantities, than rockets.

Some other possible methods of getting into orbit would be a launcher, such as a very large railgun, which could be extended to increase its power, enabling a sufficiently long launcher to escape from any gravity well. Or a space elevator, a cable with a counterweight on the end, so its center of mass at geostationary orbit. Disposable climbers lift even very heavy objects directly into orbit for little cost, but do so very slowly. Such a megaconstruction would be very expensive to construct, and would drastically reduce the cost of lifting assets from that planet into space. These would make late game space interaction much less expensive, making it more convenient to stage operations on other planets, while still keeping early game space ops expensive.

Early game space interaction is going to be challenging to get right. Too little, and it's like every game on different planets is no rush (insert time to get spaceflight here). The option should be available, especially on multiple-planet systems, where sending one engineer to start building a presence on a world, moon, or asteroid which will be contested later could have a massive impact on the game.

I'd say without a doubt that starting on the same body or on separate bodies, should both be playable, fun and balanced right from the get-go. Doesn't matter how many players there are in the game either, both kinds of starts must be interesting.

Also when starting a game where you share a planet with an enemy, space travel should be reality in most games before you finish this opponent. Of course, can easily be changed by map design if wanted - just don't put much anything else worth visiting out there.

If these conditions are not met then I'd question the whole sensibility of going for more than a single plane to play on.
It's easy to see why. It's a game focused on interplanetary warfare, so it'd be quite weird that the most basic gametypes would regularly forego the main thing of the game.


And I do see a game with different start positions in relation to each other as quite varying. If you both start on the same planet, there clearly will be a main focus on ground combat on that planet, no matter what kind of offshoot bases both have. This does not change if space travel is available (which does not guarantee its use though) early. This gametype mustn't necessarily have much likelihood of all the massive asteroid-crashing **** happening, but you should have good chance of still having both early ground combat and space colonization in the same game.
Now if for example both start on different moons of the same planet, probably conquering said planet will be instrumental for resource gain in most games. And choosing between attacking the enemys colony on his moon or on the planet, and so on (a scenario in this vein seems the most interesting to me, btw - it emphasizes the need to choose where and when to travel, and guarantees multi-front ground combat).
Or if both have their own planets with moons, asteroids etc. orbiting and starting the fight from there - this should definitely be possible, a game where you might be quite likely to reach the planet-crashing phase and such, that simply must be possible in every gamesize. But still, the early game must not be stale and consist of purely ecoing up for minutes on end.

Picking up a big gamesize too, same considerations apply - if you have your own planet to start on in an FFA, the early game must be interesting and interactive just as well as in a 1v1. Or if you start on a shared planet in FFA, it's dull if only a winner of inital ground conflicts on each planet gets to experience the interplanetary war part.
Or say a 2v2 where there's 2 starting planets, with 1 player of each side on each. Easy-ish interaction between the planets is crucial if it's to be a real team game where coordination matters. Or if both teams have their own start planet or two, the early game must not be boring.



So naturally space travel must be relatively easy and available almost or straight off the bat (which of course won't guarantee it'll be used instantly, still gotta define your spending priorities). On any normal map type you should be able and encouraged to at the very least scout your opponent inside a small timeframe (say, 1-3 minutes mark), so you've got something to build your strategy around instead of just going at it blindly (are they all out on eco, are they building transports, do they have AA to stop your transports, or units to kill your attack force... Then should I drop on their base or outside it? etc).
Dropping military onto their planet is the most obvious type of early aggression, but shouldn't be the only one. Landing on their homeworlds moon for example, to build a Moon is a Harsh Mistress-style cannon for example, comes to mind - even if they manage to stop it from building, they had to build the transports and the attack units, which are now stranded on a moon for the time being. And so on.

And for the concern of having terrain on a single planet not matter, isn't the solution pretty simple? Same as to any RTS with transports, allow to build AA capable of shooting them down so one must drop somewhere else. Now that the strike force is there in one piece - you must deal with the terrain. As long as the planets are big, there will always still be somewhere to land without too heavy casualties.
And by both the laws of realism and of awesome, if you're able to launch units to another planet, launching similarly sized bombs should also be possible. From this it's easy to determine that one MUST be able to have the means to guard their base from being dropped on, and blow the incoming **** in orbit instead.



TLDR version:
When the game is based around interplanetary travel and interaction, it should be (potentially) present in all stages of the game, including the very early game. Otherwise the whole game is likely to have a very limited set of map types it'll play amicably on.

Look, I don't think many people here are sidestepping the issue of whether or not 1v1 will start on separate planets (at least I'm not), I think this issue more stems from a feeling that games like those will need to be fast, or that something needs to be rectified so that they aren't tech races. That's what I'm taking issue with.

These maps are going to be inherently slower than other maps. That's all there is to it. You're starting on different planets, and you're going to need to set up the infrastructure necessary to get to the other planet. So, as has already been suggested in this thread, have a T1 space travel component that can take, what, one unit? That seems fair. Take an engineer over to their planet and set up a war machine there on the other side. Hell, set it up on the moon that orbits their planet, if that makes you feel better. Boom, done. It's not a whole hell of a lot different from cautiously airlifting one unit around the map, which has been in TA and SupCom 1 and 2 already anyway. Can there be other ways to speed it up? Sure, probably. We'll know more as the game is being made.

Artificially slowing the tech progression through some means or another is inherently a balance issue -- a big one -- which is why people have been discussing balance. Don't bring up balance and then complain when people on the thread start talking about balance. Sure, some of it has been off topic, but what do you want? It's a forum. Besides, it's all just words out of our asses anyway; the devs may be watching, but they have final say, because they're going to be the ones making it and testing it (with help from the players). If you get the game and think it's screwed up, then feel free to put up a thread with your gripes.