We need to talk about Orbital

Actually, we need to have a heated discussion with lots of ideas so we can clarify what orbital really is and why it should be more important.

And the things that are broken about it.

Here's what I've got so far:

As of the current build (77443), the SXX can be classified as a general purpose ground attack weapon. That is, we use it for more than just sniping comms - it can be used for raiding unprotected economy and armies due to it's cheaper cost and improved DPS/metal. They are actually useful now, thankfully.

The Anchor has been improved to a straight trade of 18 Avengers per, with diminishing returns for the anchor the more Avengers are grouped together. It's the same for the Anchors - the more anchors, the more avengers they can kill before dying.
Essentially, the bigger the fight gets, the less useful Anchors become. Once you hit around a hundred avengers, Anchors become paper. Even stacking anchors doesn't work, since avengers can stack more in a smaller space.

Anchors are pretty much the same as before against ground units, except they are cheaper and can actually hit moving air units.

Jigs are a disaster. The resources they give are completely out the wazoo. If there is a gas giant, you don't have a choice - take it or die trying. If an enemy can get two -three jigs out, they can almost forget about building extra energy for the duration of the game, so long as they dont go overkill on a rush for superweapons.

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I would throw out my own ideas, but I've found there are few solutions as well-thought out and thorough as the one already presented in the Orbital Warfare Overhaul Mod. It's almost exactly what orbital needs and it would be fantastic if it were implemented into vanilla.

Ah but many players can all fit comfortably on a gas giant.... and zones of control can sort of be set up, it shouldn't be over easy for just one player/team to dominate. PLUS - nukes destroy jigs, obitol without any counters so its a fragile advantage, and they now chain reaction death so even more fragile - its far from the do or lose scenario you paint, it might even be the opposite IMO - unless you capitalize on your econ advantage quickly enough you will almost certainly loose when one nuke takes it ALL away.

As for the anchor vs avenger scenario I'd like it to work differently ideally, that is I'd like anchors to slaughter avengers even more ruthlessly and SSX platforms be able to turn horizontal and target orbital. Avengers would make quick work of SSX and SSX would decimate anchors, factories and jigs. This is in leu of a more fleshed out orbital layer perhaps. Also, orbital mines please.

Why on earth would you not make the effort to boot anyone else on the gas giant off of it? Nukes can no longer work on gas giants can they? What is this "Obitol" that you speak of?

You should, but it shouldn't be easy to accomplish (it likely is and should change) and...you could lose your com, and thus the game if you focus too hard there (it should take effort to secure a giant). Secondly, if their field is not well defended you could always take away what defense are there and build your own jigs close by; they take yours out they lose theirs - mutually assured destruction. You could even just build one and let them blow it by mistake and destroy their eco. the point is it ISN'T i do or win, its a gambit. and even if you take it all, you will likely lose it all with minimal effort of their part a while later anyway... nukes, avenger swarm pop in etc = chain reaction = poor
edit: saw nuke no work, is this true, haven't palyed for a bit, sad if is, should be addressed, and I tend to agree with you more if so...

I really think that jigs need a rework. This is my idea-

Make jigs much, much larger. Like enormous, maybe 1/32 of the surface of the gas giant. Small moon sized.

Make them consume quite a bit of energy.

Make their mass income ramp up constantly over time, from a lower initial value to a very, very high value (2000 or more, maybe?)

So at first, a jig would provide very little metal for a large constant expenditure of energy. Eventually it would produce a truly massive amount of metal, but only after a player can defend it for a while. It's strategic value as a target would increase over time, creating a dynamic that really doesn't exist in PA right now.

Its death explosion would kill everything on the gas giant.

So what if another player builds one on the same gas giant? I think that the total income should be split among all jigs on a gas giant, so the only reason you would want to build more is to out-consume your opponent. At the same time, you don't want to actually destroy his jigs, because that would destroy yours too.

Tell me that wouldn't make for epic-ly tense cold war play on gas giants, where you want to stop your opponent from growing without actually blowing them up.

god, no, please no, oh god

I do agree that the way to fix jigs is to make it so that only a fairly limited number of the things can be stuffed onto a gas giant. You'll probably see this implemented into BettahBalance.

Why not? Maybe not that massive, how about the size of 2 catalysts or something. Big enough that they are obviously something special.

There needs to be a downside to using Jigs that can be firmly counted - and it should be legitimatized as a way to gain eco just as the other avenue, mex, has been since alpha. We'll need diverse ways to defend our bases and diverse ways to attack them.

Just as there should be a reason to use jigs, there should also be a reason NOT to use them. Hence, the downside.

In the orbital warfare overhaul mod we altered the jigs so that they chew up power but produce metal (Dont remember the exact values atm). So you need to have a decent power farm going either planetside or have a decent set of stationary solar arrays in the gas giant structure mix. Honestly in my opinion this is how they should work in vanilla. They should not be able to produce a crazy amount of everything for no cost whatsoever other than the original setup cost.

The problem with being able to produce metal with no limit, even if it costs energy, is that its an exponential feedback loop with no realistic upper limit. If you make jigs just consume energy, then all you are doing is essentially raising there mass cost.

I think giving them a large upfront cost with a delayed return AND an energy cost, you have a very distinct disadvantage. They have to be defended before they even start paying for themselves. Limiting the number (or the total mass that a gas giant can produce, divided between active jigs) prevents that endless exponential growth too.

Making its death explosion catastrophic also changes things. I think it would need a lot of health to prevent snipes, though.

I wonder if I can mod in a slow increase in metal production? It would be interesting to play with, just to see if it works.

Currently, jigs make solar panels redundant, at least in my mind. So reworking them as metal producers does sound intriguing up to a certain point. However, what about reducing the cost of solar so that players who can't establish control on the gas giant can at least try to keep up by producing solar panels?

All mex already have this feature built in - they take a certain amount of time to pay off before becoming profitable. For T1 mex, it is a mere minute, but for T2 mex and Jigs it is closer to three minutes, which introduces the risk.

Also in the Orbital warfare mod, Avengers are much faster, so they can take out jigs very quickly.

But, they have reduced DPS and can be countered with Frigates and/or tons of anchors.

Btw, does anchor outrange umbrella with the new patch? Didn't play a lot yet, but in one game i did i was unable to counter anchor built on top of my base with umbrellas and lost due to it.

Agree to the general stuff, but want to add a few thing:
1. I like the current stuff going on between Catapults and Anchors! Anchors can defend Catapults and Catapults can defend Anchors! (the same applies to Bluehawks and Anchors/ Stingrays and Anchors!)
2. Do you know that one jigdeath in the current build results into all Jigs on that Jig-Block die?!
(the Jignuke triggers all other nearby jigs to go of!) Yes, within the FREAKING STANDARD BLOCK PATTERN!
3. It´s pretty obvious that only one Orbital Unit that can attack orbital isn´t enough!
So yes, we need more Orbital Fighters/ Whatevers!
4. The SXX currently does a great job, it´s pretty much Ultra-Awesome but balanced at the same time!
5. I love how synchronous attacks can overwhelm an enemy now. I mean Unit Pods+ Bluehawks+Avengers result in a very nice dynamic, as the enemy just cannot defend against all of them at once!

Something else I want to note: The T2 Fighter is actually in a good spot right now. The way the OWOM does it is actually really, really unbalanced.

The Umbrella was buffed some time ago - it outranges anchors.

For the love of -

NUKES CAN HIT ANY ORBITAL STRUCTURE ANYWHERE ON ANY PLANET.

Just hit an attack move on that unit and the nuke will fly off to a blaze of eternal glory.

Yea, giving the T2 fighter the ability to go into orbit didn't work out quite as well as I thought it would. Any suggestions on how to balance it but still keep the ability to fight air and orbital?