Planetary Assaults and Interstellar Transportation

Okay I was going to wait until tomorrow for this, but I just came up with some interesting thoughts on it, so I'll just push on through and get it done now xD

So basically I want to revise my Earlier breakdown on transport options, I've been thinking about it and had some changes come up.

I won't be giving any kind of concrete numbers for things like travel time, speed, capacity ect ect because it's way too early to tell what will be relevant or applicable at this point.

Overview:
Transport
Rocket
Unit Cannon
Dropship

Transport
Just your super basic Air Transport, Loads up the units and flies them around on whichever planet they were built on. They cannot be loaded up into any other transport*

Rocket
As Launched by the 'Rocket Grantry' seen in the KS Visualization launching the commander to the moon. This would be a low capacity transport option, used mainly just to get things rolling off planet, it wouldn't be used for transport long term(for my thoughts on the Rocket Gantry and extending it's use past the initial transport phase check out this post)
At this point I want to say the Rocket would only be used to travel to the moon of a given planet, but that comes up as awkward if a planet doesn't have a moon. The alternative is basically saying it can go anywhere and use it's large(at least in early game standards) upfront cost, tiny capacity to make it not attractive for long term use.

Unit Cannon
I see the Unit cannon(or similar method) as being a very efficient method to move lots of units quickly, but with a few basic restrictions;
1 - When built on a planet it would not be able to send units to other planetary bodies, but it would still be able to send units a fair distance across the planet it was built on.**
2 - When build on a Moon or Asteroid it can send units to other planetoids, but only those it is currently orbiting around.**

Dropship
The Jack of all trades, the Dropship would be able to travel between and planetoid anywhere as well as being able to land and take off from any planetoid as well.

* I see this as a balance consideration, landing air transport laden with units leads to the actual drop zone not being important at all when you can just move your units anywhere you want afterwards.
** Again a sort of balance consideration, as I have said before in this thread, I accept that it is realistic for a unit cannon to be able to send units much farther than from orbit, but I feel it would be very one dimensional and boring, not to mention it doesn't offer a way to retrieve units either.

This is Dependant on a few other things as well;

Orbital Early Warning System
In Short, something that when built, would allow the player to see when units have your planet marked as a destination and allowing you to track the progress. This aims to help reduce the surprise in orbital landings, allowing you to take action of your own as transporting units will take time. It would only show a radar blip, so you couldn't be able to know who(in a game with more than 2 players) or specifically what(in my set up it could only be the Dropship and Rocket, but their cargo would not be revealed either) so it wouldn't be a perfect answer, heck it could even be some empty Dropships as a feint!

Orbital Defense Satellites
In short a Satellite placed in a geostationary orbit that would allow the player to defend specific areas from units trying to land on the planet, the geostationary orbit is important for balance and planning so as to allow you to land outside the area protected by the ODSs at the cost of taking more time to travel on the ground to the target.

Rocket Gantry
As I lay out here I feel the RG should be able to place Satellites around the planet they are built on in addition to the transport rockets, this allows you get start on Satellite placement prior to fully establishing yourself in space, or even if you don't WANT to go into space you can still defend yourself from it.

And that's all I got right now, kinda burned out and it's late! xD shoot any questions my way and I get to them in the morning.

Mike

Sounds like a working concept so far. I am still not convinced of air transports not being transportable, for the simple reason that I think it is a small balance issue – before restricting the transport mechanic and the game artificially I would first check if it is necessary to do so… anyways. Apart from that your concept looks good.


@ doctorzuber/ sorynarkayn:

would you two be as kind as to [actually read the thread or understand what you read and consider the things you read in context] OR otherwise shut your unproductive babble please?

I think you raise a good point, Mike. The rocket gantry is a bit of a strange unit - critical to the game but in danger of becoming obsolete if not carefully designed.

I would like to put forward a couple of suggestions about the RG for your thought.

I propose that the RG should be an upgradeable unit. Much like the Cybren shield generator in SC and FA. This removes the need to replace it with a structure that essentially is the same thing and will provide the same function.

Furthermore, in order to stop the RG from becoming obsolete I agree that making it multifunction is important and I would suggest furthering your idea. Rather than just satellites, I think it should be a mechanism for launching anti asteroid missiles. After all, why have a separate building just for that purpose when you already have one? I certainly wouldn't suggest that a nuke launcher should fulfil this role.

Anti-asteroid rockets are in my view basically the same rocket used to launch the commander into space, just the payload is a warhead rather than the commander. The unit should only be capable of building anti-asteroid missiles at higher a tech level. And, as with nukes and anti-nukes, the missile should cost an amount relative to the cost of the threat.

Regarding everything else you said on transports, dropships and unit cannos etc., as you know I agree with the general scope and proposed utilisations you have laid out. All thoughtful considerations for these units.

I think that it is worth commenting about satellites briefly. Perhaps the ability to detect incoming dropships should be down to the players to launch a satellite. Kind of like if a player doesn't bother with radar for some reason, then they deserve to be surprised when a transport drops a bunch of units behind their lines. Certainly some kind of ODS network would also be applicable. I think some more concepts for satellites would be a healthy thing. I'd certainly like to see some kind of satellite WMD.

To summarise, I think the RG needs to be a pivotal structure in the game. Something the player cannot afford not to build and something they need to defend down to their last unit if they are to survive. In order to justify the expense of the structure it needs to reflect it's high cost by providing a range of capabilities - making it valuable to the player.

Using the RG for anti KEW is not a god idea, because anti KEW rockets would be stored like anti nukes. But you want to have the RG to launch satellite every now and then. But you cannot do so, if it is occupied by an anti KEW rocket.


Edit: Apart from that I agree with what you said.

While this is true if we consider that it might only be able to perform one action at a time, I see no reason why it could not build multiple rocket types like the TML/SMD or SML/SMD silos in SC2.

Anti-KEW or AKEW rockets could in theory be built alongside satellites and simply be launched when appropriate. In the case of the silos in SC2 both missile types were built simultaneously. They were even capable of launching both at once. In this case I do not see simultaneous launch as appropriate if maintaining the design of the RG in the concept visualisation and it is probably not 100% necessary anyway.

EDIT: SML = Strategic Missile Launcher. SMD = work it out for yourself.

Nukes and such in Supcom2 were terribly set up and just bad.

I also don't agree with the RG being a Weapon/tool combined, frankly KEWs are likely to be a lategame thing and there is no reason it's defense shouldn't be a separate building, we don't want to end up with a situation like in the Original SupCom where you could not build the SMD until the Nuke Launched and just powerbuild it and the Missile itself to defend yourself IF you needed it. Obviously there are ways to fix that issue, in FA they made the SMD have a HUGE amount of Build Power(and raised the Missile Build Time proportionally) so that assisting it just wasn't effective at all really. But just the fact you can be ready aside from the missile I don't like.

Frankly as I expressed in the thread I linked, I don't like the idea behind a RG being a tool and weapon combined, it will be much harder to figure out exactly what the opponent plans to do with the RG can do 5 different things.

Mike

Glass houses...

Could you be any more of a hypocrite?

Your ludicrous expectation that we need to read every single post in the 13+ page thread to have the right to participate in the discussion is BS. Especially considering that for that last several pages this thread has turned into a back and forth between 3-4 people, and the summation of it seems to be:

It seems to me that the OP just wants his way, which has only gotten MORE complicated and convoluted since the start, because now he wants a Carrier ship loaded with Dropships loaded with Air Transports loaded with Units. So he has three different types of unit carriers crammed inside each other like Russian Nesting Dolls. It's absurd!

Considering that there isn't going to be space combat in PA, and therefore no control of starships travelling through space, the need of a Carrier deploying Dropships from orbit is unnecessary, because the player cannot control units in space. As seen in the KS trailer, the player can launch units from "planet" to "planet", but the player can't control them in-between.

In a way it seems like 3D Chess: multiple combat planes that units can travel between, but nothing in-between. The analogy is that the OP is suggesting that 3D Chess needs special pieces to allow units the travel between planes. That is absurd and unnecessary, but the OP apparently doesn't recognize that.

I more or less agree with all of this. The only thing I take issue with is the term "Dropship" being used for the Interplanetary Transport ship, because that's not what a Dropship is. As the name implies, a Dropship is literally a ship that is dropped from orbit and lands on a planet. There are plenty of examples of this type of ship in sci-fi:

Aliens: Cheyenne Dropship
Starship Troopers: Dropship
Halo: Pelican Dropship
(many others)

In all of those sources, the Dropship can takeoff and land on a planet, but it doesn't have the range to transport units from planet to planet or between solar systems; it requires a Carrier starship to transport units from planet to planet.

My suggestion is scrap the Dropship, it's unnecessary and inappropriately named. Only the Carrier ship is necessary to transport units from planet to planet. There's no reason why a Carrier cannot takeoff and land on a planet. They'd basically be like the Acclamator Assault Ships and Venerator Assault Cruisers in Star Wars: AotC, TCW, and RotS.

So just substitute "Dropship" with "Carrier". Done.

A Carrier should be fairly large and carry between 50-100 small units, like Mechs and Tanks. (I don't know if there are any larger units in PA.) A Carrier should be larger than any single building seen in the KS trailer, but not so large that it blocks the player's view of the units and buildings below it. It only needs to be as big as the Experimental Transports in SupCom2. (I know that the XTs couldn't realistically carry multiple Exps, but that's a minor quibble.) And a Carrier shouldn't need to land to deploy units to the surface; just drop them or "teleport" them down. (Because loading/unloading animations would be a nightmare.) A Carrier should be able to transport air units, such as fighters, bombers, and even Air Transports. But ATs cannot be pre-loaded with units when they're loaded on the Carrier. (If the player tried this they'd automatically be unloaded aboard the Carrier and unloaded individually at the destination.) As OrangeKnight said, it's a game balance issue, so the player can't immediately fly units anywhere on the planet, thereby rendering the planet's landing zone strategically unimportant. Besides, it would probably only take 10 seconds or so to load units onto an AT anyway, so what's the BFD?

@ sorynarkayn:

If you had actually understood the discussion we have – and it is not a ‘back and forth’, as it is more a discussion about a “what” rather than about a “how” (it might not have been like that since the beginning of the discussion though) - you wouldn't have written what you did. We almost all agree that we need a transport mechanic apart from unit cannons. So, I am proposing drop ships, some others are proposing galactic gates I have made my points why I prefer drop ships, other have made their points why they prefer the gate solution. We have criticized both concepts, carefully considering the effects the two models might have towards gameplay. We have invested quite some time in this, to find a good solution, for a basic problem in the game – that is travel between different astronomical objects. And now you come in, ignorantly treading on our efforts by writing such blatant nonsense, not having grasped the actual matter, talking to the public, rather than to me who you are actually addressing, by referring to me as ‘the OP’, obviously well knowing that I am the OP, almost like a snitching child? On top of that wasting my time by effectively forcing me to an off-topic response… How dare you?! Either participate in the discussion peacefully and constructive or get lost!


Also: have look at the poll – the majority of the apparently tend to agree with my proposed solution.



Edit:

Oh please no... that looked so awkward in SupCom2... firstly I don't want messed up scales in PA and secondly dropping units with an animation was done in SupCom as well and it went quick.

Apart from that i can agree, that word dropship was going on my nerves anyway... let's agree to ST for space transport, everybody ok with that?

Well frankly it's just a name, and while I don't disagree that 'Dropship' isn't quite correct based on the sources you've quoted(but frankly there's nothing saying we can't redefine the term) and for all intents you can only 'fully' control the dropship when it's doing it's dropship tasks.

For a term used only to describe the general purpose of the unit Dropship works fine. I could also point out that 'carrier' brings with it a lot of other assumptions based on our modern day carriers(and the numerous Sci-Fi interpretations) that wouldn't be true in the PA setting as well.

I prefer Dropship of Carrier because to me the Carrier implies more so that it deploys units under thier own power to the planet, while Dropship implies it physically lands and lifts off, which it will actually be doing.

Mike

So you admit that Dropship isn't the right term, but we can't use "Carrier" instead for the same reason?

What about "Assault Ship" or "Assault Transport", because that's what the military calls their amphibious assault ships that they use to rapidly deploy invasion forces to beachheads. But the problem with assault ship is that it sounds like a warship, not a glorified freighter. (Besides, the military just chose "assault" as a PC pseudonym for "invasion" ship, because they don't want to portray themselves as "invaders".)

I think "Interplanetary Transport Ship" or "IP Transport" or "IPT" would be the most appropriate name, because that's exactly what it is and what it's for.

But I prefer "Carrier" because its short, self-explanatory, and it's a term that everyone is familiar with. Even the OP calls it a Carrier. And he admitted that he doesn't like Dropship anymore, so let's agree to scrap the Dropship.

No I said neither was fully correct, in fact they both depend on each other, Dropships need Carriers in order to travel between planets, but Carriers need Dropships to transport units to the planet.

What I'm saying is that the Landing/Liftoff/Transport aspect of the is more important than the interplanetary travel.

I'm saying Dropship is still the better term for it because it's short, easy to understand(lots of prior use) and descriptive of it's Main Purpose.

There are other options that might be more technically correct, but I feel this is a case where breaking realism is good to lead to a better game.

It's not like we'll be dealing with realistic planet distances anyways, took us 2 months(I think) to get Curiosity from Earth to Mars(at the closest point in our respective orbits) and takes the radio/data/whatever signals 7 minutes to cross that distance(at a constant speed no less) so I think we need to focus on the units main purpose when it comes to naming it.

Mike

@thelambaster:

Whether I refer to you by name or as "the OP", is irrelevant because you're one and the same. Your quibble about me "daring" to speak to "the public" as opposed to directly to you is indicative of how petty and pretentious you are, because it offends you that anyone else enter in the discussion, especially pointing out the blatant irrationality of the OP. Obviously, you desperately want this thread to be all about YOU, instead of the actual topic of interplanetary transportation, which is an important one worthy of discussion.

Get your head out of your a$$, thelambaster!


I'm familiar with this thread's ideas and arguments, because I posted my original opinion much earlier in the thread -- that was a week ago. Since then, this thread has dragged on and on, and in the last 4-5 pages it has devolved into a convoluted back-and-forth about the minutiae of interplanetary transportation. BTW, the last time "galactic gates" were even mentioned was back on Page 9, and YOU didn't "win" the argument against them -- their advocates simply moved on.

Your poll proves nothing, because it doesn't even include the option of only large Interplanetary Transport Ships (or Carriers), instead smaller Dropships. That would be the simplest solution to move armies from planet to planet -- ironically, one that you completely overlooked when you created the poll.

"Messed up scales"!? Have you seen the size of the planets in PA? They're only a few kilometres in diametre! And you're concerned about SCALE!? That's ludicrous, and a perfect example of how laughably irrational your arguments are.

Apparently you demand everything be to scale, which means that a 500-unit Carrier ship would have to be at least the size of the ASTEROID in the KS trailer in order to fit all those units inside it, plus the Dropships. That's idiotic.

I mostly hated SupCom2, but the Experimental Transports were fine. They were just large enough to serve their purpose, no more, no less. Anyone that complained that they were "awkward" looking and demanded they be larger so they could realistically fit multiple Exps inside them was an idiot.

Besides, it's irrelevant because I wouldn't want 500-unit Carrier ships anyway. 50-100 unit Carriers should suffice. A Carrier wouldn't need to be much larger than the factories seen in the KS trailer. Because the factory footprint seems to be about 3-4 Mechs wide by 6-8 units long. The Carrier would have to be at least 2-3 units tall. So the Carrier's capacity would be between 36-96 units each. That seems perfectly reasonable.

A Carrier would be fairly tough, but not invincible. I don't want to delve into HP versus DPS, etc. Basically, for a successful planetary invasion, you'd need 5-10 Carriers to deliver 500 units, and if the enemy has well-prepared with orbital defences, aircraft, AA defences, you could predict to lose maybe half of them before they deployed their units to the surface. Such an invasion force would probably be adequate to secure a beachhead, and allow the invader to hastily build a FOB -- but would probably require follow-on reinforcements before a successful base assault could be executed.

That's preferrable to smaller Dropships ferrying about 20-50 units each, which would probably be blown out of the sky by modest planetary defences.

Well that would depend on how the defenses are balanced no? I mean, it also depends on the kind of defenses as well, the context for my setup includes the potential for an Orbital Defense Satellites;

Meaning that it would be very expensive to try and protect an entire planet sufficiently, but still allowing you to adequately protect areas you want(like say your base) and maybe putting up enough satellites to stop small raids on the greater majority of the planet, this is also in the context of not allowing air transports to be transported between planets as a means to make the choice of where you try to land important, as the land units need to be able to get there on their own, so landing on the opposite side of the planet from the base is safe, but they will have plenty of time to intercept your force or you might not be able to even get to it do to water.

It's dependent on a lot of other things so we can't be so quick to dismiss an idea due to an assumption about the balance of directly/indirectly related game elements.

Mike

Do you not understand what QUALIFIERS are?

Because I purposefully used them to acknowledge the variable effectiveness of planetary defences.

My point was that large Carriers would invariably be more robust than smaller Dropships, thereby granting the former greater survivability, whereas the latter would suffer worse casualties against the equivalent defenses.

I believe it is self-evidently more practical to produce and control 5-10 Carriers, as opposed to 20+ smaller Dropships, to deliver the same number of units.

In the start post I wrote:

and

firstly: 'Do you not understand what Subjunctive moods are?'

secondly: To paraphrase what I wrote in the start post:

'You could have 'Interplanetary Transport Ships', capable of operating on their own, without the need of carriers.' This option is also included in the poll: "dropships sound good, but no need for carriers". As I defined dropships to be possibly fairly large and able to operate without carriers I suggested exactly what you describe in the quoted excerpt of your post, and that right in the start post.


I will not respond to your other assertions as they are pretty much of the same quality as the quoted one and therefore not worth being addressed.



If you want to have a personal argument with me, go ahead, but please via PM, so you don't further pollute our discussion with your personal and groundless personal attacks. Apart from that, I welcome you to constructively further participate in the discussion.

a single transport capable of carrying 500 units is going to cause me to be physically ill. I cannot stress strongly enough how much I disagree with this idea. The MAX I would possibly consider would be a 50 unit transport, and even that seems too large to me.

WTF ARE YOU GUYS THINKING!?

Sounds fine to me. If armies are 10,000 units in size you'd need twenty transports.

Just saying, complaining about the capacity of these ships is just semantics at this point. It depends entirely on the intended pop caps of PA, which is something we know nothing about at this point. Lets just assume that the different sized transports would be scaled appropriately for the unit cap.

@thelambaster:

Like OrangeKnight, you're misusing "Dropship", which is unbelievable, because you've obviously lifted your "ideas" from Aliens and Halo, so you should know exactly what a dropship is, including its capabilities and limitations.

DROPSHIPS ARE NOT CAPABLE OF INTERPLANETARY TRAVEL.

I don't understand how it's possible to misunderstand their purpose, because it's right in their name: Drop-ship. As in a ship that is dropped from a larger space ship in orbit.

As opposed to a Space-ship, which is a ship that travels through space (ie. between planets). It's not rocket science.

There's even a Wikipedia entry that explains exactly what a sci-fi Dropship is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dropship_(science_fiction)

By emphasizing the "could" regarding dropship-carriers, you only made it worse, because that opens the possibility of there not being carriers, which would be necessary for transporting dropships between planets.

What really destroys your argument is what you conveniently chose to omit:

So without carriers, you would have dropships that can't go anywhere.

"Paraphrase." Suurrreeee. In other words, correcting the mistakes you originally made, which -- in your mind -- suddenly makes you right in this argument.

It doesn't matter if a Dropship carries 50 or 300 units, because a Dropship cannot travel between planets. It's a glorified space shuttle that is limited to atmospheric and orbital flight. It doesn't have the range or provisions to travel between planets.

And your poll option to only have Dropships and not Carriers just makes your misuse of "Dropship" worse, because that option implies that Dropships would be used for interstellar travel -- otherwise how will units travel between solar systems?


It doesn't matter what you supposedly meant to write. It only matters what you did write. And because you used the wrong words to try to express your ideas, that lead to this argument. Had you known the correct names and words, this all could have been avoided.