although if it could be coded in with galaxy forge it could be an awesome discoverable artifact type thingy. DEATHBEAMOMEGA launches massive beam of doom at incoming spacecraft...

Quoting Kitkun, reply 10

If you gonna drop bombs or rocks at a planet, then you could also chuck missiles/slugs at the ships from the ground, no?Exiting the atmosphere and entering it are two very, very different things. It's kind of like the difference between taking off and landing an aircraft.
 

End of Kitkun's quote

I'd say more like climbing up the cliff face versus falling down it.

And now, I will turn the time over to Isaac Newton...

Also, aren't we forgetting that a capital ship is about the size of the moon?  (At least, judging from scale. :P)

There was a guy who designed a supercannon which could launch shells, or other payload, into orbit.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Bull

1. How big would it have to be?
2. How easy would it be to destroy from orbit?
3. Count how much energy would be wasted as the shell fights its way through air resistance and gravity.
4. Think how easy would it be to intercept a projectile like this.
5. Consider how easy would it be to actually hit something in orbit.

Send a satellite to the orbit - maybe.
Hit a spaceship and not be an easy target at the same time... well.

easy target isn't as important actually.

As presented by the site Atomic Rocket, something that is immobile will have to have much more shielding (this is easily available on a planetary surface, MUCH more room for shield generators, armoring area, and ammunition storage), and much bigger guns.

Whatever.

Either way, as I said, this would render siege frigs useless. They would get shot down in seconds.

True, I can only think of a few ways to avoid that. 

One would be to make the siege frigates have a longer range than the defenses, which would make the defenses useless against them so we would almost be back where we started.  There might be a way though if the range is tied to a deployment 'mode'.  The ability would give siege frigates a much longer range than a planet's defense system but would make them unable to move.  Then add a 30 second or more time delay when changing modes(can't fire for 30 seconds after deployed, takes 30 seconds before it can move again when ability is turned off).

The second way would be to give a planetary defense its own hitpoints that can be damaged by any ship.  This would let a fleet destroy the planetary defense and then bring in siege frigates when the threat is gone.  It would however be much harder to implement than the first way.

I'm not saying it's an impossible technology, once you can control systems that let you move at relativistic speeds launching missiles into a ship, or a planet, or a moon, or just some dude floating in space probably isn't terribly hard. I'm just saying I can understand why the initial design didn't take ground based defenses into consideration. This may be something we could look into for the future, but for now diplomatic additions are probably going to be our primary concern.

Cool that you will consider it. BTW, could the possibility of this scenario be considered for a future of the game:

The faction which has been annihilating the Vasari finally reaches Trader space, and all three other factions then have the necessity of joining forces in alliance to combat the mutual enemy?

i still think a lone dead asteroid is perfect for a built in SB.

"Unrealistic" I love that it must be the best statement Ive ever read on this forum...

So tell us which planet did you last see firing weopons into orbit against an invading fleet? cause I havent seen anything like that in my telescope  as of late

I'd love to find out how people can deem stuff like this realistic or unrealistic when no one has even gotten past the moon in real life lol

What about making a planetary upgrade that allows planets to send interception weapons to destroy the siege weapons? Like, having a surface-to-space missile that has a chance to intercept and destroy the siege weapons fired by siege frigates? Obviously, this wouldn't work against the Vasari with their siege beams, but that'd just give them a neat advantage.

And of course, these interceptor defenses wouldn't always work, but just another means to help defend a planet against the TEC and Advent nuclear/kinetic weapons.

For Sins 2, the whole planetary system needs to be looked at.  I want to see planets become more interesting in general, not just in terms of defense, but in development, too.  A seperate tech tree of planetary development would be a good place to start.  It could include habitation, defense, even political techs to research.  And while they're at it, add some sort of ground war invasion option, too.  It's such a big list of possible changes that it needs another major overhaul, as with Diplomacy.  Hence, I doubt it will apprear until a full expansion or sequel is announced.

As for planetary defense missiles, Sword of the Stars has them.  Basically, a planet fires a handful of harrassing missiles evey so many seconds.  It doesn't really accomplish much except to possibly destroy an already weakened vessel.  If that is all that is to be added, it really wouldn't add much to the game except to chase off some very weak planetary assaults (really, an orbital defense platform accomplishes the same thing).

Has anyone considered the possibility that a civilization in the future may be advanced enough to solve the thermal blooming problem?

I mean, consider a proton beam. Not an effective weapon. To begin with, protons are a non-penetrating partcile. Secondly, for atmospheric use, if fired form psace, by the time it reached the ground, it would have dissipated in power by perhaps 8 orders of magnitude.

Of course for realism, we wouldn't have gauss cannons with limited range. IN space, there's no atmosphere to stop the projectiles or build friction!

Thats a good point,,,though you have to consider targeting, there is no range limitation (save for any obsticals that may be in the way) but keep in mind that a ship as in sins would be a very small target in the vastness of space, at a certain distance range is likely to become a major problem since hitting small targets is never easy evenn with a big gun

Plus accounting for the motion of recoil for each shot. Conservation of momentum on an orbital rail gun...

... hope it has thrusters for maintaining orbit.

After reading all the "it's unrealistic and not energy efficient", I have to say one thing.

Novalith. It shoots a gigabomb between solar systems to blow the living hell out of a planet.

Kostura. It causes a planet and gravity well wide EMP burst.

If these guys can do that, then surely they could do such a measly thing as punt a missile into orbit?

Cadalancea

Yes, they could punt a missle into orbit, but only if Chuck Norris is on their football team.

I think a weapon based on each race history would be cool.

Tec big ground based beam weapon.

Advent how about a Pychic wave making some "crew" go beserk and trash the ship till it self destructs? 

Vasari ground based phase missiles.

They should be like beam defence damage wise and take up a decent amount of tactial space just like a space based weapons do. One big thing could be they do is attack a ship no matter what postion they are in orbit around the planet.

Maybe a limit of one or two max that you can build. With a Tech line to increase target count by one or two and a increase in damage.

Isn't there also the slight problem that, given planets rotate, a ground based weapon is going to be pointing the wrong way at least half the time? You might have a fancy-pants rail gun set up in Europe, but that's not going to help if aliens are orbiting over Australia...

Technical issues aside, there's also the problem of whether or not it's feasible from a lore perspective. Given all three races are space-centric - either through trade, nomadic culture or crusade - it could well be that they're simply not geared up towards developing terrestrial weaponry from scratch when they're already got prior expertise at making space vessels.

considering how the TO went from nothing more then a policing action against Pirates to Stalling out a Race of Aliens with God knows how many millenia conquering less experienced races..........Im pretty sure TEC, Advent and Vasari are more then capable of creating a planetbased anti starship weapon.

to Frozen_chips- well, there is also the fact that there is likely to be multiple weapons emplacements around the globe.

For implementation (at present) in the game, I think that a simple 'ApplyBuffToTargetsInRadiusWithTravel'-style ability would work very well, and simply have the buff do some damage, or disable an enemy ship group.

If this was that way, then there would (of course) need to be a target cap on said ability.

Talk to -Ue_Carbon about that, he is trying to build a mod that does it

Projectiles don't fly in a straight line, even if their velocity is greater than escape velocity. Gravity curves such trajectories, and with a rail gun, you can, with the right digital, analog, or software control systems, alter the muzzle velocity to the necessary amount for the trajectory desired.

fine dont....

but can u at least allow planets to have active abilites that can target other objects (ships, structures, etc)?? modders like me can fill in the rest