What strategy is there for an imminent asteroid strike?

(Hope you have a rocket garrison to fly your commander out of there?)

Anyway 1st point:
Kind-of beating a dead horse here but this poll is not that great for providing different general options. just to get that out of the way.

2nd point: what some people don't realize is that just shooting the pants off an incoming asteroid just isn't going to cut it, even if you did have enough nukes and did manage to shatter the asteroid there are still a bunch of fairly large chunks of rock coming down at you.

The only way I could see asteroids being avoidable is if you A: shoot out the engines before it locks onto the final vector or B: Board the asteroid with some of your units and destroy/take over the facilities on board so you can stop it or give it a new target.
Or of course C: getting the heck out of there!

But honestly I think that we will just have to wait and see what Uber does with this when asteroids are actually implemented in the game.

Yeah but it's probably one of those things we'll need to play test to see if it needs something like nukes to counter. If asteroids end up being an easy game ender they might be used too often in which case nukes would be a nice option to be able to counter them so they aren't a guaranteed win and without needing to have an additional unit that is only useful as a hard counter to asteroids. But if the engines are difficult enough to build and defend (which is my hope) then just scouting it and sending in the troops to destroy it is probably all that will be needed. IMO it kind of hinges on how hard it will be to assault a fortified planet or asteroid because if it's too difficult to assault a fortified asteroid then PA will just turn into whoever gets the asteroid first wins unless something like nukes can stop it.

I think the size of an asteroid should determen if it can be stopped. Small asteroids cost less to throw at your enemies but are stopable. Huge asteroids cost huge resources to get it moving but it is unstopable.

Maybe not a good counter, but perhaps an option (a last resort?) to try and mitigate some of the incoming damage by blasting chunks off of the incoming asteroid.

What about getting your own asteroid to smash into the incoming one? Defensive asteroids?

Just run for your bot's life ^^

Oh, we have someone here who knows how to use the "I saw it in the kickstarter video" excuse. Sigh.

Well, I think the asteroid should be costly to counter and even then not fully. If it is really last second, there should be nothing really to significantly do of course. If you see it really far ahead of time, shoot it with nukes before the engines are even operational. If you see it en route, then I think the BEST way to counter it is with a smaller meteor of your own.

Reason: The meteor they are launching at your planet can do many multiples more damage to the planet than its own volume. Therefore, it makes sense that a smaller meteor even than theirs, would be enough to destroy theirs, as it is the same proportion in volume YOURmeteor/THEIRmeteor as it is THEIRmeteor/PLANET. A small meteor can smash a large meteor that threatens your planet, just as effectively as a large meteor would have smashed your planet.

SO, at that point, the main thing we will end up with, is a game of who can get more/larger meteors, and use them correctly.

Too many small ones, and you will run the risk of the enemy having enough nukes to stop enough of them to save enough of their own base. Too many large ones, and you will lose 2 meteors requiring 200 jets in a collision with the enemy who used 2 meteors requiring 50 jets while the enemy then proceeds to smash your own planet with 2 more meteors.

It will thus, end up as a game of who can use their meteor/nuke stockpike to counter the enemy meteor barrage and still get a devastating enough hit on the enemy to win the game.

As someone said before, a tactical rock-paper-scissors balance usually makes for some pretty stable-to-play games that dont drive away players with being only-one-tactic-ever. The rock-paper-scissors here, would be smallmeteor-nuke-largeasteroid. Nukes beat small meteors, large asteroids beat nukes, and small meteors beat large asteroids.

Next you are telling me we won't see planets just because we can't expect them as they 'only were in the kickstarter video'.
Nice attitude you have there...

A few lines below you suggest nuking asteroids... "Sigh"

just some thoughts:

im of the opinion that asteroid threats should be fairly slow paced, there needs to be time to react or youre throwing away a lot of strategic depth and the fun of the suspense.

hijacking a weaponised asteroid with an appropriate force, overpowering the occupying force and destroying/capturing the engines sounds like just the kind of new experience that is made possible by the scope of this game's design. it could really make for satisfying and hard fought pivotal moments filled with tension, especially since the whole time the defending player will be wondering whether it will be too late to change course even if they succeed. i cant see uber passing up that opportunity...

as for the specifics, i think orbital nukes should be allowed to target incoming asteroids, but practically only be useful to mitigate the resistance of the occupying forces, and perhaps clear a drop zone to land and collect your troops. of course, i dont think there should be anything stopping the opposing player setting up nuke defenses. that, along with the size and composition of the occupying force, is all part of the "how well prepared do i want this asteroid to be?/how much time and resources do i want to commit to ensuring this hits its target?" question players will have to ask themselves.

i would also like to see asteroids be able to intercept other asteroids. i suppose the maneuverability would be the biggest factor in determining whether an interception would be successful, which would be a function of an asteroid's mass and the amount of thrust it can generate. perhaps this would lead to an emergent element where players may capture smaller, less threatening, but more easily maneuverable asteroids for defensive purposes early on?

also, personally, the "nuclear launch detected" analogue i would love to hear for this game would be:

"a solar body has changed course"

a final thought is an idea for a unit: a specialised, large unit that you can land on an asteroid, navigate to the side of it, and deploy into a thruster of some kind that can significantly alter the course of the asteroid if left deployed. possibly not enough on its own, but in small groups, or if at least some of the engines can be destroyed it would be enough. that would be an issue for balancing anyways. but if an asteroid were successfully diverted in such a way, it would still leave an asteroid to fight for control over before it came around for another pass, which to me just sounds like more fun.

tl;dr - slow paced asteroid gameplay, asteroid hijacking and a deployable thruster type anti asteroid unit pls. also "a solar body has changed course" warning

That's a must have surely.

Love it.

I really like it.
Constructive criticism:
That's a unit that would probably have to be very difficult to get. Its probable size and miniaturised propulsion system and strategic implications should mean that it should be at a T4 or T5.
I'm going to refer to this when I post to the Mega bot thread.

Asteroids are kind of the end all unit... However, building a unit cannon on an asteroid and intercepting the enemy's asteroid might work, and it would be awesome.

hey, glad you like my ideas.

however, im not sure about the tech level and difficulty to build. in the same way anti-nuke structures would be useless if they were not feasibly buildable before nuke launchers, such a unit would need to be more easily accessible than asteroid thrusters, or at least AS accessible to be useful, simply because its a countermeasure.

by "large" i had in mind something maybe half the size of a thruster itself when its "packed up", unpacking when it deploys to maybe increase in size about 50%, but still something that could be launched from a t2 orbital factory.

i dont think it should be more than moderately expensive for a unit designed to be used singly or small groups and heres why: the challenge is going to be landing it along side your invading anti-asteroid task force, and protecting it long enough that it can do its work. its weakness is that it is very vulnerable on its own and most of the cost of the catastrophic impact avoiding mission will be in deploying its escorting units.

as for size, all of the thrusters on the asteroid that we saw in the kickstarter trailer were facing the same direction, (which i think should be the only way you can build them for a number of reasons*) so even a relatively small amount of dedicated lateral thrust applied by this unit i feel would be enough to significantly change the course of the asteroid.

*reasons! (for parallel thrusters on asteroids)
- as said, lateral thrust counter units would be more effective
- the idea of weaponised asteroids is to create a missile with maximum forward thrust
- it would look weird having thrusters facing more than one direction
- adds unnecessary complexity
- i dont think it would be fun
- it feels neater without that option

another option for the thruster unit could be the ability to deploy at any point, not just the side of the asteroid, and after anchoring itself to the ground, rotate its thruster part up to 90 degrees to the surface to steer the asteroid. this would only be effective BEFORE the final vector was locked in though, as otherwise the main engines could just cut out in response and all you would be doing is causing it to spin.

this would work out nicely in terms of gameplay as far as i see it. assuming the back of the asteroid would be the most hostile due to being out of range of nukes, the front of the asteroid would therefore be the safest. so the earlier you land, the less far the unit has to travel to deploy to an effective position, and the more defensible it would be.

While I like having some option for dealing with the incoming asteroid, I think, they need to be options that are pre-planned. By this, I mean that a smaller asteroid that can be used as a KEW interceptor should not be realistically able to do anything if you didn't have it captured and an engine placed on it by the time the incoming KEW was launched. It should be a defensive measure you invested in, and not one you could have time to implement for most threats. Very long range asteroid shots could be an exception, but a rare one.

I also think that there is some point during the KEW's path where the relativistic speed should make interception via any method practically impossible. This should represent the increased difficulty in calculating an intercept point as well as the trouble with how to connect with such a fast object (in the case of trying to land on it).

TL;DR version: defending against an asteroid should be something pre-planned and not a reactive thing, i.e. penalties for not being prepared.

Just also throwing this out there. It would solve itself, if a nuke made a crater, and it was small enough not to destroy large comets, but large enough to migitate damage off large ones, as well as possibly counter the small ones.

Which would also end up being: Keeping a stockpile of nukes to counter a stockpile of small asteroids coming down at you, while having your own asteroids to counter enemy asteroids, and attempting to end up having one of your asteroids actually making it through your enemy's similar defences and landing a critically destructive hit on them.

Don't trust Hollywood on their "nuking asteroids" solutions. Remember that in vacuum the destructive force of a nuke is minimal (not counting the EMP shockwave which is irrelevant in this case anyway).

And if you do manage to rip apart an asteroid then several smaller asteroids are bombing your base so no real benefit. The gameplay visualization trailer shows that quite well.

Since in the latest livestream it was mentioned that Uber is looking into orbital mechanics then you have to change the asteroid's trajectory. How? Well, that's a problem identical to the one how to make an asteroid smash into the planet.

Did no one notice that in the trailer the missiles hit the asteroid when it was practically already on top of the base? If you could shatter it before it reached its terminal vector I could imagine explosives being a more viable countermeasure.

We'll have to see on how much of real physics is going to be there. If there will be a lot of it then you might as well waste 100 nukes and the asteroid might just get a small crater on it. Why? Because nukes (and other explosives) need air to transfer their destructive force. That's why nukes have been proposed as a propulsion system to carry spacecrafts, called Orion I believe, in 1950s or so. The international treaty on forbidding nuke tests has ended the project so that's why its not actually used.

And with orbital mechanics in place: hitting incomming asteroid with another asteroid will be incredibly difficult as well. You would have to make a proper transfer orbit and by the time you actually manage to put something on an intercept course it may just be too late.

The only viable options I can think of right now is to use a unit cannon on a moon to deliver troops on the asteroid as it flies by and take over it. Or some sort of space mines that would destroy the engines guiding the asteroid allowing you to knock the asteroid from its trajectory (because as long as the engines are online then you can try as hard as you want but the asteroid will be put back on track).

Or the simple and fast option: leave the planet (as I mentioned few pages earlier).

EDIT: added a missing word

Just want to say that there probably won't be T4 and T5 seeing as there are only two tech levels and megabots, getting you into T3. Not even SupCom has T5.

Except megabots have not been confirmed yet. It was only an experiment.

The breaking engines before terminal vector option depends on implementation of engines for orbital mechanics they use.

If they go with what is a more traditional real world model (i.e. standard chemical rocket high thrust with limited fuel), the engines fire initially briefly, then they let gravity do most of the work. On occasion you may do course adjustments, but compared to the flight time of these things the engine firings can be considered almost instantaneous. So the engines could fire at the start and then never be needed again.

If they go with a real world electric propulsion model (Low thrust, but fuel is little to no concern) then the engines will run continuously and what you get is a slow shifting of the orbit until eventually you get the course you want. This would allow time for intercept, but is less 'cool' because it would take a long time if scaled correctly. Also makes it vulnerable most of the route, but less so as time goes on.

If we go with fake sci fi engines (hi thrust, no fuel worries) so basically electric if not scaled correctly (in relation to physics). You end up with an accelerated version of the electric drive, vulnerable most of the route, but less so as it gets closer to target, just involves less response time.

"but what if we align far out and then just speed up on the last leg, so breaking the engines doesn't matter?" - If we are assuming mostly realistic orbital mechanics, it doesn't work that simply, you could do that, but what you'd end up with would likely be not much worse a hit than with no engines, because you're forcing the orbit with your engines instead of speeding up as much as possible. More complicated to plan, less 'Bam said the lady' but more robust. In terms of engines used to damage ratio, you're not making the best use of your engines (unless you miss!)