Balance of power? I have a question about the relative balance of planetary defense and the power of the fleet. In BOTF, the original, I recall that one could just retreat your fleet if the invaders out gunned you. With a developed planet and powered up planet defense it seamed like many attempts to take the planet ended in a planet surrounded by a puff of smoke. Will you be able to pull back your inferior ships and let the planet kill the invaders in the same way? Will the balance of power be different?

I am hoping this is not a repeat questioin. There was only three days availble to read into the posts to see if it was asked before.

hmmm. interesting topic.
To put in my 2 cents, as any orbital that is unpowered would be (floating junk) untill powered up, I would expect that any ship would be able to wipe them out at will.

Since there would be no threat from a non combat ship I could see that any orbital would not attack them as sensors onboard would not detect any type of weapons systems powered up or not.

Just my thoughts.....

Eh, I'd keep the whole cloak-detection thing how it is already decided - via sensor techonology. If your cloaks are better than my sensors, then I'll have issues, particularly if you circle around everything and launch your first-strike against my orbitals from behind.

I imagine each upgrade would improve weapon's range, weapon damage, and durability. However, I do not expect the weapon range of orbitals to surpase the torpedo range of equivilent tech-level ships. At BEST, I'd expect them to match torpedo range, perhaps even slightly lower than torpedo range to give the long-range attack cruiser-types a better edge.

I imagine tech levels at the start of the game would encourage dog-fighting and close combat. So orbital range at the start would be pretty short, and so would the starting ships. As the ships become larger and fleets are more command-based, that's probably when the second upgrade would occur.

Essentially, an upgrade for orbitals would probably occur in each of the major canon Trek eras. You have the initial orbitals in Enterprise. Somewhere towards the later part of TOS era would have the upgrade. And then a final one right around late TNG/early DS9. Probably just before the Soverign is launched.

Also, I think each of the upgrades should utilize *exactly* the same amount of power and construction points. Considering that power and construction will become more effecient, that will allow for more orbitals. And the type 3 orbitals will cost the same as the type 1 orbitals, but be much stronger.

Azh,

I can agree with wht you stated above. BUT! LOL The ships when going for an upgrade will be pulled into a spacedock for refit. thus it is out of business until complete. they have to be done using the docks you havein operation. Sooooo will the same thing apply with orbitals? I think it should actually, otherwise you will have a ton of "junk" floating around your systems. thats why i asked about time frames and such..

I can see them being offline while being upgraded. But I don't expect them to take very long to upgrade. In Sol, for example, with maxed out production, I'd be surprised if upgrading 20 orbitals would take longer than a turn or two.

As I understand it, the Orbital Batteries in BotF 1 went through an automatic 'upgrade' cycle. Their +80 Anti-ship was 80 times your Energy Tech level. They would do that in damage to a ship.

Is it going to remain the same? That system was simple and logical enough.