We need to talk about Orbital

Yeah: Remove the ability to fight orbital.

Yea, we removed its ability to fight orbital.

Sounds good. I'll let you know if I see anything weird.

I'll put gas giants in systems when pure orbital battles aren't just about who can spam the most avengers in the shortest time. Navy just got made a lot more interesting, here's hoping Orbital is next.

Orbital is in a tricky position because orbital-to-orbital combat is really wacky. And it all comes down to Avengers.
There are three main targets for Avengers to deal with:
-Enemy orbital encroaching on your planetary turf
-Orbital factories on an enemy planet
-Gas giant anything

In the first case, you can supplement or even replace your Avengers/Anchors with ground-based defense - doubly so now that missile units can fire upwards.

In the second case, the reverse applies; enemy involvement in orbital combat can disappear if they invest on the ground.

In the third case, however, all bets are off. Avengers can "teleport" directly to their target, and that screws with everything. Phoenixes and Unit Cannons have a similar effect, but they can be hit by multiple layers of defense - umbrellas and anti-air can whittle down targets until few or even all of the attackers are destroyed. Avengers, however, have no intermittent "landing" period in which their teleportation can be mitigated.

Note that I said "gas giant anything" and not "jigs" in the third case. Jigs exploding is a necessary evil to prevent the stalemates of yore, but that's not all we'll ever see. What if there's a meta shift towards less explosive, more secure Anchor/Factory/Solar panel camps on gas giants, with scattered Jigs set up beyond chain-reaction range on a risky pays-itself-off-if-it-lives-X-minutes strategy? Also, we could get new orbital units/structures. If there's anything I'd love to see, it'd be a new orbital weapon - maybe gas-giant-based Unit Cannons, or some form of planet-targeting artillery? Something to defend besides Jigs.

My argument was limited to pure orbital battles, so over gas giants basically where there are no bluehawks to shoot things down. Then it really it Avenger and umbrella spam.

Jigs exploding is not a good thing for the game, in my opinion. It forces folks to expand and spread out in an environment where staying clumped up is the best decision for defense.

Hence my suggestion about using solar panels for tighter, more clumped solar bases.

That's the point, the original idea was to make it easier to attack an entrenched orbital force depending jigs.

It was never difficult in the first place. It was pathetically easy, in fact. It's still really easy to systematically raid someone's jigs unless they place 4-5 anchors around each one individually.

Which I'd exactly what you'd do with the huge economy boost? =/

Actually, no. My team and I managed to stave off an inevitable catalyst death by occupying the enemy on the gas giant. They built at least ten anchors for every jig or orbital factory on the gas. It still didn't stop me from wiping half their jigs. The only reason we didn't take the other half was because they managed to build a *fortress* 6-7 anchors deep around 5-6 jigs and two orbital factories that kept pushing back my advances.

We eventually lost, but it took them thirty minutes longer than it should have. Which is stupid - we were way behind on the orbital game from the beginning and shouldn't have had a prayer on the gas giant. Were we playing the OWOM, the fight would have been more straightforward. It would have been over much sooner because our mistake would have been much more apparent, instead of a slow grindfest between avenger blobs.

That's the thing - depth is irrelevant. You send in a kamikaze squad to hit *ONE* jig and the rest all crumbles. No amount of anchors helps there.

Looking at the replay again, I realized that I did kill off all the jigs inside - they just had so many anchors I couldnt kill the factories.

Also, im not sure if you guys are aware, but all orbital units have the following properties:

1. 3 second cooldown upon entering a new gravity well.
2. They arrive one at a time, no matter how many you sent. A hundred avengers will arrive in quick succession, but still one at a time. This, combined with the above, makes it really easy to lock places down with anchors.