Satellite Ninja Robot Aliens - or, are Phasal Transporters OP?

[alpaca]

I am somewhat bothered by the way the military satellites work, in particular in combination with the weak city defenses. Here's how it goes:

Depoloy a Phasal Transporter near an opponent's city. You can immediately drop up to 7 units into it, up to 5 of which can theoretically reach the city on the next turn. But we don't need to do that, 2 units are plenty.

Use your internal trade route-boosted super city to build an Orbital Laser or Planet Carver in a single turn. Hit end turn. Next turn, tank your Phasal Transporter (chances are, your enemy will have shot it down anyways), deploy your shooting satellite, immediately use orbital bombardment on the city and take it with a single attack. Cities are almost always completely destroyed by orbital bombardment. Deploy the other unit defensively so that the city isn't immediately flipped back, but even if it is, you have still caused very severe destruction of property in the city.

The problem I have with this approach is that it's very hard to defend against. Orbital coverage can easily reach 5 or even 7 tiles in the later stages of the game. This means you can very easily use a Phasal Transporter-launched attack to deploy an army behind enemy lines and either sneak-attack an underdefended city, or take it the conventional way.

The only way to defend against this is, somewhat ironically, to deny coverage of the city by spamming other satellites in your territory so the attacker cannot deploy the Phasal Transporters and Orbital Lasers without first moving an artillery there to take down your satellites. The only satellite that is not prohibitively expensive to use for this is the Solar Collector, however, which is only on your tech path if you go for Harmony (so the AI will often not have it).

This seems by far the fastest way to cause huge damage to your enemy's economy without needing huge armies. Since you are currently more limited by availability of strategical resources than production, the throw-away nature of this approach fits the game's workings quite well.


The main culprit, of course, is the ability of your satellites to perform their function on the same turn they are launched. If you had to wait a turn before using them, this would at least give the opponent a chance to shoot them down before it's too late. A side problem is the large range of the Orbital Laser, which often means your city cannot shoot it down on its own (unless you go for Rocket Batteries and choose the right quest reward, which the AI doesn't).

 

[Bandobras Took]

1) Does the Orbital Laser do that if the opponent has been rigorously building city defenses?

2) I don't have my game open; I seem to recall that Phasal Transporters aren't a win condition tech. Is it much of a detour?

3) Largest problem I see:

Use your internal trade route-boosted super city to build an Orbital Laser or Planet Carver in a single turn.

As soon as you say this, it obscures the problem, since trade routes are too strong. Once there are sane build times, perhaps the hammer cost will be as much of a deterrent.

 

[Soffacet]

I agree that Satellites should not be able to activate on the same turn they are launched. There are also other problems, such as that the AI does not understand defensive orbital coverage, rarely builds defensive structures, and definitely does not understand how meaningless the "front line" becomes once certain techs are unlocked. Defensive structures should probably be buffed since they can't keep up with high affinity units right now, anyways. City anti-orbital strikes should have more range (either naturally or through Rocket Battery or similar) so that it should be generally unfeasible to launch a satellite in enemy territory. Make satellites part of the defender's advantage.

 

[xamlop]

2) I don't have my game open; I seem to recall that Phasal Transporters aren't a win condition tech. Is it much of a detour?

If you're going for a supremacy or especially a purity win you just need the phasal transporter to win as quickly as you can, so I don't see how it could be considered a detour. Also, you can easilly use the institute free tech to get that (and if you're Elodie or the slavs you can also get it by turn 100...).

 

[sylvanllewelyn]

A game does not function unless there is a built-in mechanism that forces it to end eventually. This is a basic requirement. Good games make this mechanism fun.

Attackers must have an advantage over defenders eventually. It can be nuclear weapons, anti-matter bombs, artificial black holes, bubble fluctuations from alternative multiverses, something.

Phasal transporters might not be to your liking, but there has to be something.

 

[alpaca]

1) Does the Orbital Laser do that if the opponent has been rigorously building city defenses?

2) I don't have my game open; I seem to recall that Phasal Transporters aren't a win condition tech. Is it much of a detour?

3) Largest problem I see:



As soon as you say this, it obscures the problem, since trade routes are too strong. Once there are sane build times, perhaps the hammer cost will be as much of a deterrent.

1) Even then the cities will only have like 60 defense and the orbital laser will still take out a big chunk, certainly bigger than anything else at the time. It may not go down in a single shot, perhaps, but since the orbital laser can stay out of the city's range, it's not such a big deal.

2) There are a harmony and a supremacy leaf tech unlocked by it (Autogyros giving you CARVRS, the level 7 UU for sup, the harmony tech is crap but if all you care about is the XP...), and if you go for purity you probably still want them to shift your earth colonists as Soffacet mentioned - even if not, they're just one tech out. Also, if you want to wage war at all, Phasal Transporters are super-useful even if you don't use them offensively but only to shift units from one end of your realm to the other.

3) We should be careful not to attribute every problem in the game to trade routes. While, yes, they exacerbate the problem a little, that is true for essentially any game system. Even without trade routes, this would still be a good tactic. It's not as inefficient considering nuts as you think. The satellites are cheap, at only 130 nuts each, a CNDR costs 155. The artillery unit you get at level 9 costs 270 nuts. It's not unreasonable to expect losing a unit or two if you have to go through the front-line, approach then bombard the city. The Orbital Laser is dispensable, it's just useful to avoid having to attack the city over more than one turn.

 

[alpaca]

A game does not function unless there is a built-in mechanism that forces it to end eventually. This is a basic requirement. Good games make this mechanism fun.

Attackers must have an advantage over defenders eventually. It can be nuclear weapons, anti-matter bombs, artificial black holes, bubble fluctuations from alternative multiverses, something.

Phasal transporters might not be to your liking, but there has to be something.

There are several peaceful victory conditions. Domination should not dominate them so easily.

 

[Xenotitan]

A single turn between launching the satellite and it being usable would solve this problem, give the defender a chance to shoot it down before it does it stuff.

 

[Aethervapor]

If the AI does a good job of filling up it's own orbital space, they you wouldn't be able to get your transporters/carvers up until you managed to get an artillery unit within striking range of their satellites.

 

[Empedocles]

The best way to defend against this is to actively control your orbital layer, which is kind of the point of the orbital layer. The best satellite for this is the tactical satellite, available to anyone from communications much earlier than the offensive satellites are. They are cheap enough that it is easy to spam them along your border, and they are useful to have if you are being attacked.

 

[Eji1700]

Actually i'm sorta shocked at just how limited end game win conditions are, although I agree the "build/insta deploy" satellites are....boring.

I'm not that great so that AI was keeping pace with me in one of my later purity games, and the "surprise planet carver" didn't actually do that much to their larger cities, which made it feel pretty meh for the purposes of game ending, especially when compared to a nuke in older civ's. For all the tech and effort, it would've just been easier to wail on the city with my standard units to get about the same result.

With that out of the way though, I foresee the "insta deploy" nature of satellites not only as poor flavor, but a potential future balance problem. I'd like to see carvers boosted in power to nuke level(actually able to remove/harm a city beyond HP), but have satellites take a turn or two to "position and come online", with ways to actually defend the setup. As it stands, it's pretty all or nothing, and the biggest worry to me is the ability to just shoot down one enemy satellite, and then teleport your army there, which is currently vastly more powerful than the somewhat gimmicky carver.

 

[Carl_Bar]

1) Does the Orbital Laser do that if the opponent has been rigorously building city defenses?

Massivvl;y. Late game cities can reach over a hundred defence . Had a game, (still got the saves on one side if anyone wants to see it), where Pure Angel's where bouncing because between double garrisoned arty + lev tanks and the sheer combat strength of the cities it took several hard hits from anything to knock them down, and any non-fortified angel got one shotted, i resorted to taking advantage of phasal transporters to quick move ships round, (i could have done it the long way mind), and using like 5 ships over 3 turns to wear them down. Even planet carvers bounce for only 20% damage done or so.

The transporters are certainly strong, but if your separated by a continent their kind needed to move stuff cross continent effectively. Hot dropping if you can pull it off can be really nice, but strong enough defenses will wreak that really hard.

 

[Elz Majesto]

Massivvl;y. Late game cities can reach over a hundred defence . Had a game, (still got the saves on one side if anyone wants to see it), where Pure Angel's where bouncing because between double garrisoned arty + lev tanks and the sheer combat strength of the cities it took several hard hits from anything to knock them down, and any non-fortified angel got one shotted, i resorted to taking advantage of phasal transporters to quick move ships round, (i could have done it the long way mind), and using like 5 ships over 3 turns to wear them down. Even planet carvers bounce for only 20% damage done or so.

The transporters are certainly strong, but if your separated by a continent their kind needed to move stuff cross continent effectively. Hot dropping if you can pull it off can be really nice, but strong enough defenses will wreak that really hard.

I had that in a couple of my games (city defense). The problem seems to be, your lack of faith in SABRs, they would have made quick work of the city

 

[Roxlimn]

"Can Move After Attacking" for level 3 Supremacy ships basically means that they're immune to city attack. I mean, they're range 3 anyway, but it makes them more immune. Phasal transporters and SABRs are friends. At full level, SABRs hit from 4 tiles away and ignore terrain restrictions.

 

[GeoModder]

There's nothing that stops a defender from deploying an orbital laser or carver and do the same thing to the invading army.

 

[Roxlimn]

You can't deploy an Orbital Laser to shoot things that are already under a Phasal Transporter. You have to get rid of the Transporter first.

 

[GeoModder]

Or deploy the laser/carver around the 'phasal area'. In the case of retreating Vindicators its even easier. Its unlikely they can retreat out of orbital deployment range of the targeted colony. Unless they bombarded an isolated city.