Space ships and space combat

Rather than hijack some other thread, I figured I'd start a new topic here. What is space combat? What should it do, what shouldn't it do, and how can it fit within the game?

First, let's start with how space combat worked in older games. Oh that's right, it didn't. But let's say it was there. Total Annihilation covered the end of a thousand year war, of endlessly escalating tech and destruction. To say that space ships didn't fight over asteroids and space junk at SOME POINT inside those thousand years would be a complete joke and break disbelief. So what happened? I think it's reasonable to say that space combat became OBSOLETE.

"That's dumb", you say. "Space combat is the pinnacle of warfare". For a time, perhaps for the bulk of the war, that might have been true. But Quantum Teleportation changed the face of warfare entirely. It was suddenly possible to send units or saboteurs across hundreds light of years, INSTANTLY, with no possibility of detecting or intercepting them. But there was a hitch. Teleportation became exponentially more difficult with scale, so only a few hundred tons could travel at once. That's barely a handful of units, absolutely worthless for waging a full war.

This brings us to the creation of Commanders and the events of Total Annihilation. The Commander was created for the express purpose of Teleportation Warfare. It was outfitted with the best and most exotic technologies that could ever possibly fit in a few hundred tons. Many of these options were impractical for typical units: the D-Gun could kill ANYTHING but was too expensive to mass produce; the Antimatter power core likewise was too expensive and fragile for standard combat. But those details didn't matter for a Commander. His job was to Gate to a planet and build the infrastructure for planetary war within MINUTES of landing, and leaving a gigantic crater in enemy territory was just a perk of failure. The Commander was, in effect, the Teleportation War's equivalent of an "army in a can". Just add energy and mass.

Space combat died out at the same time that Commander warfare rose to power. It was simply TOO SLOW. Traditional warp travel meant slogging through hundreds of light years of space, tying up huge amounts of resources in deep transit. The fastest space ships in the galaxy (mind you, these are warp 9.99 ships that cross the galaxy in HOURS) would arrive at a planet only to find that a Commander had teleported in, built an army, glassed the planet, and moved to the next objective. Space ships could no longer keep up pace with the war.

Which brings us back in time a bit, to the events of Planetary Annihilation. Frigates and space cruisers have been recalled and decommissioned. Their massive fusion cores have been cannibalized to develop an even faster 2-way gate network capable of sending small skirmishes. Gigantic planet killer vessels lay abandoned in deep space, doomsday machines of a former time. Their ancient systems have been ruined by countless Commander battles for control(or destruction) of the ship. Scouts patrol the stars in an endless search for enemy Commanders to destroy. The age of space warfare has all but ended.

What does this mean for gameplay?

The devs don't like the idea of major space battles, and in this area I think they're right. Space combat has too much potential for making stupid death balls and overshadowing the ground combat in game. A full space interface would be more complicated and the endless void has no planets to blow up. However, it would be a mistake to remove space ships entirely.

When would a space ship be needed? For the most part, their value is in exploiting less important objectives like small moons or asteroids. They would be too distant to capture with normal units, too small to waste gating your Commander on, but too valuable to ignore. Space ships would be very expensive compared to ground units, and would do a poor job of protecting your Commander from battle. Perhaps the only time a star fleet would make sense is to assault a nearby fortified system. A Commander could not attack such a system alone, and for that reason alone, there needs to be some way to break its defense.

To be honest, I don't see space ships as being anything more than a special class of aircraft, which can move between worlds. In deep space they'd be too far away from a Commander to perform all but the simplest of commands (thus keeping the space interface simple). Attacking a planet without your own commander present leaves them only good for dumb planet bombing (to limit commander sniping). Their slow travel time means that enemy commanders could gate away from danger, or fortify an even more devastating defense (to keep space spam from dominating the game). Their best use would be instead as scouts and as the vanguard of a major invasion. In a sense they'd be strategic support units, useless in a skirmish but a critical defensive screen for sending transports or clearing a landing for your Commander. As such they'd be used to mostly project power between worlds within the same system, with the potential to harass nearby sectors. Galaxy crossing travel would still only be possible through teleportation, and only the Commander is really suited for that.

Besides, no enemy is too entrenched that a few asteroids can't soften him up.

Why build space ships when you can send a nuke?

Good analysis and explanation of the realities of space combat in the TA/FA/PA universe. From now on, when people beg for space combat, we can point them here.

Space combat wont be included, its set in stone (as much as it can be this early), so theres no need to discuss that part.

There will be a orbital layer (orbital units) that may fill the roll you have described, they may be able to move between worlds in a simple matter, we dont know yet.

Astroids will most likely have a counter (not confirmed, but it would suprise me if they dont).

For example the missile lunchers in the trailer (nukes perhaps), i assume enof of those breaks down the astroids to small pieces that burn up when entering the atmosphere.

So i fail to see the reason why everyone sees them as a "can take down every defense" solution.

Asteroids are a "can take everything down"-solution if used properly. That means equiping your asteroid with SMD so it is protected against nukes to a decent level.

We dont even know if you can build nuke defenses on the astroid or how the anti astroid missiles will work (They look nuke'ish in the trailer but who knows), you guys assume to much (I do too, but atleast i try to make it clear that it is assumptions).

There will probably be a point that, you can send more asteroids to kill a planet, faster than a turtle can destroy the asteroids.

However, there will probably be asteroid defences, that you can try to take down a single ditch effort with. If the enemy has enough time to weaponize several asteroids, you don't deserve to have defences capable of saving yourself anyway, thats some servere turtling.

The problem with Commander-only warfare is, you can't attack a system and hope to win if an enemy Commander is there for more than a few minutes. After a few days, the entire solar system is an impenetrable fortress of doom that nothing can approach from 500 AU.
So you need starship fleets. Slow, massive starfleets, each one being the result of an entire star system recycled into starships. A few of those can attack an occupied star system, because they have the same absurd firepower than a star system recycled into a fortress.
But Commanders will never approach those starfleets or fortress systems, they would be swatted like flies if they did. Instead, Commanders always fight for unoccupied systems, to seed their own factory systems and prevent the enemy to do so. So Commander battles will never see those starships.

So starships should exist (in addition to the old metal worlds), but only in the Galactic War metagame, in the form of influence you fight for in each galaxy sector.

Though those battles could be modded for fun, with fully developed metal world fleets vs fully developed metal world systems.

If you can build a space ship, you can build a ground based defense that will never be beaten by a space ship, the space of a spaceships is limited, planets are huge.

Defending from big things is easy, nuke the crap out of it and just keep shooting until its stops, you won't run out of nukes before they run out of anti-nukes, but something as small and insidious as a commander is very hard to stop.

The 'need' for spaceships is base on the idea that planets can be made invulnerable to attack, which is simply not true.

You can't shoot what you can't see, and if you can, then you have spent too much money and will be destroyed by an asteroid.

There is no impenetrable defense.


And all this is sidestepping around that we don't know how the FTL travel works in PA, so what can and can't be used is unknown, if you can send more mass then a commander then why not send a nuke?

See what i want to see is a way to transport armies across space. like some sort of interplanetary/stellar landing craft of sorts.

Commanders ARE nukes. I don't see the difference.

Kidding aside, teleporting nuke bombs sound like a very expensive weapon. However there are some problems. First, you need a good enough target to pay off. Second, a single nuke isn't going to do much to a full sized planet. If there are any survivors, they'll just rebuild like some kind of mold, and nothing really happened. Without completely dusting the planet, you'll need SOME kind of assault to clean up the rest of the units.

A commander could warp in, build a force, and eventually clean everything up. Superweapons would also work. No planet means no problem. The only other solution is to bring in real units. That's where space ships come into play. Soften the planet with some arty, establish a foothold from space, and purge the land with your own units.

Like I said before, the only space power that makes sense is light, cheap and slow in the grand scale of things. Transports, scouts, engineers, raiders with limited reach. Basically it's air power with space travel. Big and slow just can't work when the fastest way to get something on site, is to just build it on site!

I view space travel in this game as an inter-planetary travel system; it's too expensive to warp everywhere. In face, just the fact that the commanders seem to always arrive at the same time indicates that they all must harness a common source of enery to be able to warp over a very long range, such as a pulse from the center of a galaxy.

I'd see the ACU as the only real permanent unit, with anything else really being disposable in the long run. They use less advanced technology so that they can be mass-produced, and this means that travelling between planets must also use a rather old tech, which are rockets. Actual space combat doesn't even exist much, because they've had their time. Using ballistic weapons is impossible because orbital combat would be very long range, and a change of even 0.0001 m/s would get you kilometres away from the missile when it reaches you. Using targetting systems would still have a very low success rate, considering everything.

The only plausible way to fight in space would be to use large laser weapons, but you'd need a vastly sized rocket to even get into orbit. I imagine they'd be treated as experimentals might be, but with even more time and energy wasted in. They'd need massive reactors to power a laser powerful enough to get past any shielding from satellites, and then after that their uses would be very limited. The laser couldn't reach all the way down from space to the ground, as the atmosphere would be in the way, and even moving it to attempt to weaken the orbital control of over planets would require a heck of a lot of energy. I imagine that the satellite in supcom was a lot like this, as it was really very weak, obselete tech being used where it could.

I concur that the idea of space ships are obsolete. All threads seem to converged on the mega turtle commander. If a commander wastes resources creating the so called death star instead of actively attacking the enemy. The enemy will simple launch one K.E.W at the death star and the commander will be force to flee. Thousand points in metal are now obsolete. Eventually most planets will be destroyed and the two commanders will converge on the last remaining land mass. Who ever has had better map control, in this game galaxy control will win. Who has had the better economy and blown up all the enemies planet forces them to land in neutral territory and sent their mob to clean them up will win. Or whoever manages to be sneaky and kill enemy commander. I do not see much conflict after a commander has achieve total victory of a planet, it will be impossible to take over. The real heart of this game will be the t1 scrimages on tens of planets simultaneously. I don't for see space ships, space drops, silos of intergalatic nukes just landing pods of t1 eng and the lone commanders.

The space surrounding a planet is huge, if you fill it up with space ships that would outmass the planets defenses easily. Why in hell would you use ONE space ship? Btw i dont want space combat, but they might include a feature to let the orbital layer units move between worlds (And the orbital layer is likely to be something space craft related, just that you cant control them out of orbit).

Fail to see why, a couple of missiles and it tends to explode. The ONLY reason to send a commander is because its cost effective (One unit that builds a army, yay).

Thats based on the assumption that the defenders wont be able to counter astroid projectiles or anything else trown of them, its wrong to present a assumption as fact.

I completely agree, theres just those defenses we cant beat. (Just becuse a human cant beat it dosent in any way mean that its impenetrable). But i doubt they would let players make such a defense either. How they will solve we dont know yet (They might just make the astroid a super counter to any defense as you guys have said countless times, but we dont know enof yet to know for certain, so stop presenting it as fact).

You do realise that the commander unit most likely has MORE mass then a nuke right? And (if its the same as in supcom the commander) is nuclear powered and will blow up with a nuclear explosion when destroyed.

One nuke wouldent make much of a difference, and the reason they arent sending 100's of nuke is most likely cost related.


P.s i see the commanders transportation between worlds and a ships as something different, the commanders in supcom basicly teleports using a huge amount of resources, im not sure how the commander in PA will reach new worlds.

The ships could have other options to reach FTL speeds that dosent involve teleport and is less expensive (but still expensive) and takes more time.

So you agree with what I kinda meant to say, just not what I did.

Fair do's buddy.

I would think that the speed that commanders can build up factroy's with the support of some in system but off world resources would allow them to launch a 'flash invasion' before an opponent even detects them, in the average game this might mean that even with a full on planetary fortress you could get swarmed by basic unit within minutes, leaving your response to be delayed as you deal with all your radars being blown away.

With stealth and speed you could black out most of an enemy's world before they even notice, leaving me with the assumption that planets will actual be hard to defend from a commander infiltration.

As for the galactic war, it might be a case that players won't get called to defend a system until the attackers are detected, giving attackers a chance to gain a foothold via a subtle means.


This is why I feel commander based warfare is superior to a space invasion, and why such ideas together would remove the need for efficient world to world transport.

But when talking about the most advanced unit in the galaxy, silly notions like mass and volume become kind of fuzzy. Rest assured that if there was a way to cheat mass on the gate system, it would have most certainly been cheated at ANY cost.

The TA commander was unique in that it was an antimatter powered unit. Breach that, and going nuclear was the LEAST of your concerns. Basic units used some kind of fusion, which is much more stable and mass produced.

It's size effective. No other unit can pack so much firepower and utility into such a small scale, a scale that is demanded by the nature of TA teleporting. It's most certainly not cost effective (on par with a Krogoth in the data files), which is why you never see any built. It may even be too complex to build with a nanolathe.

That's probably a good direction for the game. But when your enemy has, say, a 5 minute head start on taking the planet, how are you going to ever take him out? If you brought your commander and he didn't, it might be possible. But that's assuming players can expand without using their comm. So which is it going to be? Letting only comms make landfall, now and forever, limiting expansion to only one direction towards uncontested worlds; or getting a little help along the way? Space ships definitely make the latter possible. At the very least, some sort of interstellar transport will be needed to support an invasion.

When gating around the galaxy it would be NICE to know if the target world is barren or a death fortress. Making the mistake of going to the latter is a pretty quick game over. Some form of interstellar scouting is going to be needed.

A system may have a pile of asteroids that could be used as resources or weapons. The resources may be considerable, but it's just not worth sending your comm there over grabbing another full sized world. Some form of system traversing engineer is going to be needed.

Heavy fortified worlds will always be at the mercy of some kind of superweapon. It'll definitely be possible to crack an enemy defense, so that large assault ships will pretty much be pointless. But what about attacking those minor asteroids and tiny outposts out in space? They're way too small to waste your comm on, but they're so lightly defended and worth so many resources to the enemy. That demands some kind of system traversing raider. Even the simple threat of raiders will encourage more asteroid infrastructure, so you can finally justify some nukes on the target.

That gives 4 types of units well suited for space. Perhaps they might be realized in alternative ways, but that's space combat in a nutshell.

I didnt mean to say that the commander is cost effective as a unit, my meaning was that the process of sending it would be cost effective (Assuming that transporting mass costs aloot, and this one unit can build a army on arrival, as you said size effective).

and considering the power of the Giant Powerful Gun that will hopefully live up to the power of the D-Gun, It stands to reason that the commander is also the most powerfully compact weapon ever developed.

Possibly using a weapon assimilated from the metal worlds but being the only one that can be taken to another world due to the restrictions.

I like the idea that space combat was deemed inconsequential, or just inefficient enough to not be worth the effort. At one time, battleships were the pinnacle, but were replaced by carriers. At one time cannons, then replaced by the bolt-action rifle.

We still have battleships and artillery, but they aren't the game-changers that they once were.

Space fleets require supply chains, but a Commander builds their own supply chain.

The longer the supply chain, the easier to disrupt, and I get the feeling that there aren't a lot of well-established factions with healthy supply lines that can support space combat, so it ends up being the Commanders fighting over the last remaining rocks in the universe and just moving on when the planets are gone.

That said, the "last remaining rocks" are still staggeringly numerous. Since we think there are at least 100 billion planets, even destroying 1000 a day, it would still take around 274,000 years to go through them all, and that also doesn't take into account any travel time or the natural process of planets being destroyed and reborn affecting the total number.

When planets are so cheap, why fight in space?

Orbital craft capable of interplanetary movement would make things interesting. Insofar as lore, there could be a multitude of reasons that craft in interplanetary space cannot fire upon each other, which would get rid of space combat altogether.
As for the gameplay, one could still have a primary focus on land combat by having ships capable of only attacking orbital and/or aerial units, leaving their primary duties to recon, transport, and/or air superiority. By making them slow behemoths in air, one could further narrow their utility to defense and/or interplanetary-only transport.

Generally, however, it boils down to having spaceships so you can say you have spaceships. It would likely be easier to transport units by means of, say, the unit cannon or the one-use trailer rocket (I know it's technically a spaceship) than by a large and reusable craft.

A space-warship's niche would most likely be too narrow to be feasible, there's not much that they can do you can't do with other tools, and they'd likely have too high a risk/reward ratio to see much use.

That said, just look at Orbital Wars for FA. You'll inevitably get spaceships eventually. Glorious, game-breaking spaceships.