Satellites.

In the topic Planetary Assaults and Interstellar Transportation I began talking about satellites. To avoid going too far off topic in the thread I have decided to create a new topic here for the discussion of satellites.

Now, regarding satellites I want to be pretty open minded. There are a large number of things that are covered by the term satellite. I want narrow this down by saying I really want to focus on artificial satellites as opposed to natural satellites. However, I am not going to limit the scope of the topic if it goes off in that direction.

Hopefully you have all done the required reading so we can start. The basic premise is that the rocket gantry (RG) should be at the heart of the commanders galactic campaign and is the first unit that you can build that will permit travel between moons and planets. The concern is that once this event has passed that the RG will become a very expensive, redundant unit.

Now as far as the RG is concerned, there's another topic for that and I don't want to discuss the RG unless it's topic related. What I want to discuss here is the ability for the player to use the RG as a platform to launch satellites and how this could be implemented. I also want to discuss the kind of satellites that the player could potentially launch.

Here's some suggestions:
1. Intel Satellites, divided into two distinct types:
A. Geostationary surface intel types. As a top tier replacement for radar granting large area map reveal.
B. Geosynchronous space intel types. Providing intel on incoming threats from outside the planet - like dropships and asteroids.
2. Orbital Defence Satellites (ODS), provides area-of-effect protection against incoming dropships or rockets.
3. Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs) Pretty self explanatory? - Anything you can think of, including orbital to surface lasers (Ion cannon style), orbital bombardment artillery or possibly anti-asteroid arrays.

Well that's my ideas so far. Please discuss.

Hm what about optical satellites that provide visuals from small areas - taking away the fog of war - like the eye of the Aeon in SupCom, just less expensive and not as powerful. This might be used in combination with artillery for example.

Fantastic idea. I want to believe that things similar to this will be included when they talk about orbital units.

Seeing as you're basically using all my ideas (;p) I don't really have more to add to this atm.

Aside from not being sure how I feel about some kind of WMD Satellite, it'd depend greatly on how the orbital layer is fleshed out in terms of counters and such.

Mike

In light of OrangeKnight's concern I had an idea.

If the WMD's were an issue in terms of countering they could be payload limited? say if a Rod from God satellite were a moderately devastating and expensive weapon to put up but was spent after it delivered its payload.

With asteroids currently you have a choice of using it as a resource/staging post and there has been talk of mounting artillery on them to fire on planets/other asteroids; OR you can smash them into a planet and trade the resource for massive damage. Perhaps WMD satellites could be similar in that they provide intel, but once you fire off the payload you lose the satellite (explained by losing orbit from throwing the projectile).

This way you you would have a mini KEW vs intel tradeoff and it would prevent a player from wailing on another (whilst still punishing them for not having whatever planet to orbit counter is proposed?)

There again maybe this is too micro - just throwing ideas atm and seeing if any of them work. I like wolfdogg's classifications for satellites, there isn't really much I can think to add atm (I just like the idea of dropping telephone poles from orbit )

It's an option for sure, but the idea of a Satellite WMD(however it was balanced) just feels kinda weird to me, I mean, it's only usefull if either;

A] you both spawn on the same planet, but if there was a land based anti-orbital thing then you couldn't place one over his base anyways, not that it'd be useless as you can intercept armies and what not.

B] Ward off enemy units that make it onto your planet if you spawned on separate planets.

All in all it just feels kinda situational as I picture it, still gonna keep an open as it's like I said, we know next to nothing of Uber's plans so it's hard to say how it might work out.

Mike

Very true, I am looking forward to hearing more details about how the stretch goals like orbital units and metal planets are going to be implemented

In terms of countering orbital weapons, I'd assume that the Asteroid Interceptor Missiles seen in the KS trailer could be used to shoot down satellites and orbital weapons too. After all, three missiles weren't enough to obliterate the asteroid -- they only disabled its engines, but it still had enough inertia to annihilate the base, and apparently devastate the entire planet.

But a single Interceptor Missile could probably shoot down a satellite. So there's your counter to orbital weapons. And I presume there will be other counters, such as orbital units, which have been confirmed from the $1.3 million Stretch Goal: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/659 ... sts/293648

I predict that Orbital Defence Platforms will be essential for defending against KEWs, because they should be able to detect and intercept asteroids before it's too late, as seen in the KS trailer.

As an old school CnC fan I love the ion cannon idea

I never liked the remote "line of sight" from the "The Eye of Rhianne" I like to keep my base a bit more secret, unless you get some thing like a "Gap Generator" (CnC) to undo it.

I think with WMDs in orbital is not much difference from them any where else, with cheaper counters they are seldom a threat to the primary base, and a bit of a waste of time, just a good way to mop up the map after you have basically won

I could not see anyone mention orbital factories to build the orbital units for gas giants this would probably not make use of the rocket gantry. but the RG could help put the orbital engineer up in space like this guy

forced reference (it was just not right that I have not seen this referenced before)

I don't see how a satellite WMD is different to a strategic missile. you can't launch it into space, so really it's just another planet based weapon, along with long range arty and the like.

Anyway, so while I have been commenting on other threads I thought of a couple of ideas:

Strategic missile defence (to replace ground based) Kinda like the USA's StarWars program.

Orbital staging facility. Like the air staging facility in SC, but obviously for orbital units.

Someone mentioned in another thread about satellites as solar arrays. Another great idea as they would return much more energy due to the light not having to travel through an atmosphere first. I suppose on some planets this would make no difference if there was no atmosphere. Something else for consideration elsewhere I think.

I like TheLambaster's eye of the Aeon idea. Taking it one step further and making it into a targeting facility is a brilliant idea too. It could be used to more accurately position units on the radar or to track enemy movements. An actual LoS revealing satellite would be extremely valuable.

EDITED: Typos

Yeah, I imagine one possible way to get into orbital area will be using a launcher like the RG to put an engineer into orbit.

After that who knows. Will we have satellite factories? Will they be built on orbital platforms? Will the player have to build these platforms? Is an orbital platform technically a satellite too? Will there be platform (for platform read land) based orbital units or will they all be 'air' types? Will the player be able to transit units between orbital and land if there are indeed land types?

That's more than enough questions. It's all speculation for now anyway.

I think satellites should have a ground control center and they should not be able to be targeted from the ground. If this is possible what difference would there be to normal air units?
Acceleration? Weapon Power? Ability to change direction?
These are properties used to make air unites differ from each other,
but here we are talking about an orbital layer and I do not want to place for example on the beach a torpedo cannon, a antigroundunit cannon, an antiaircraft cannon and oh yes an anti satellite cannon.

To build in an orbital layer it has to differ in a key element and the only thing I can think of is the inability to attack it directly and therefore it would be a vital threat only to counter if you take the enemy base.

And here comes the idea ... if this is a planetary wide combat game (which it is) than there should be the possibility to reduce the whole planet including orbital layer to ash in a kind of suicide act with some kind of building which can be build in the main base without any rare resources.

Under this threat this would force every player to expand to other planets if you cannot counter the orbital layer apart from giving up your own base which will lead to many bases on different planets giving the opportunity to not having a primary base but many bases.

I think you should be able to send up chunks of planet to act like a moon.

It would fix the question "what if there is no moon on that particular planet".

Easy, you just create a moon or two. Send up 2 large hunks of rock or metal or whatever, ones that you can then go up and build on like it were a natural moon.

My thought on Orbit too Ground weapons was that you could have some step ups. So maybe a Tactical Missile from space and a strategic weapon from space. I would also imagine there are defenses against these, so maybe a light space artillery satellite(not 100% convinced on this) or laser sat?

As for counters, I could see anti-satellite satellites (orbit), A-sat missiles (something available to air sea or land?) that cost comparable to a satellite, so that the interaction is not just one way.

There could be a point defense satellite, but it needs to be expensive, and beatable some how. Maybe if the different methods of satellite killing are implemented differently you could have different styles of defense satellites.

What actually is interesting me the most right now is what the gas giant not-orbit layer will look like. I wanna see a hybrid of underwater/air, but that is a different discussion.

Whelp it's another satellite thread, lets see......

The orbital layer should feel different (gameplay wise) than the other layers. I like how in SupCom aircraft swooped around making strafing runs, and naval craft felt like floating weapons platforms. In a lot of other RTS games aircraft just felt like tanks that happened to be floating in the air. So maybe satellites could have a very long range, and an amazing top sped but a very low acceleration, deceleration, and turning radius.

Satellites will probably fall into three categories: Satellites that just gather intel, satellites that shoot at the ground, and satellites that shot other satellites.

I imagine you could build space bases by getting an engineering satellite up in space. They'd just be giant space stations locked in orbit with no maneuvering jets.

If satellites can shoot at the ground then there should be some sort of structure that can shoot back at space.

Love this idea. It basically harks back to how the NOVAX satellite control centre in SC:FA worked. Perhaps a limit to how many satellites can be controlled per control centre would be wise.

It's hard to know what to say about the orbital layer, as no information has been released yet. But where I agree it certainly does need to feel different to the other layers, I'm not really willing to speculate on how they are going to do it as there are so many different ways they could do it.

The reason I am talking about satellites is that they were in the previous game and I think they would be an obvious choice for PA to perform the functions I described.

I like this idea, i'm just not sure about the not attacking satellites from the ground, i can get being normal ground, se, air and anti air unit snot being able to attack from the ground but shouldn't we have an anti satellite missile facility, capable of covering a certain area?

i'm also feeling that satellites would be extremely useful as a radar point source as a local world radar station

Yeah, anti-satellite missiles launched from tactical missiles silos, anti-nuke silos, nuke silos and possibly missile ships and carriers should be a thing.

Indeed the more powerful a satellite could be, besides costing more and obviously increased build time - the opposing force must be able to counter it with a mechanism(s) that are proportionately costly. Case in point - SML vs SMD.

This is the reason that the NOVAX satellite was so useless. It was made weak because destroying it meant entering the enemy base to get to the facility - which was the only way to bring it down. I still think though, that this is a viable way for satellites to operate. I would get extremely annoyed if it was so easy to take out my intel satellites just like that, so having them impervious to anything outside of the orbital layer is a must. That said, using units in the orbital layer to destroy satellites however, should be possible and relatively easy. Satellites aren't tough after all.

I disagree, your spy satellite shouldn't be immune to surface targets otherwise rushing to them would give you a distinct advantage.

While I don't thing army's and aircraft should be able to combat them, larger capital ships and long-range base defenses should, otherwise there won't be much of a point to using conventional weapons and radar.