Do the various orbits have any advantages or disadvantages?

[PAX]

Basically is there any reason to not build a habitat in Low Earth Orbit (to take advantage of the Interface bonuses)

I know that you also don't want to build in the medium orbit which sits in the Van Allen belt.

Are there any benefits to building in Synchronous Orbit or any of the various stable Lagrange points?

[NeoG]

You want to build your fleet shipyards on the Earth-Moon lagrange points because they have the lowest dV required for transfer orbits to other bodies in the solar system.

All yuor research stations you want to place in the 2 interface orbits for the bonuses.

[=(FGR)=Sentinel]

To add to this, one thing I've realized after a lot of thinking, the planetary (ie, Sun-Earth, Sun-Mars, etc) L3, L4, and L5 points are good staging points for interplanetary support fleets. From what I remember about the demo in the early game you generally want 2-3 types of fleets: planetary patrol/defense fleets with high acceleration, interplanetary support/interceptors able to travel between planets, and colonization ships meant to travel extreme distances. Due to the fact that early engines either have high acceleration or high deltaV, but not both, you usually end up having to specialize these fleets. Your patrol fleets will have extreme acceleration, but low endurance that restricts them to a single planetary system. Your interplanetary interceptors will have decent dV, but low acceleration that make them less useful at dealing with "faster" craft in spite of their much greater range.

The big thing about the interceptors is, because of their low speed, they generally need to be in a fairly optimal position to be able to intercept interplanetary fleets or reinforce planetary patrol forces, which means transfer windows are a problem for them. The most basic solution is to build staging bases at the L3, L4, and L5 Lagrange points, which will each have their own unique transfer windows, and have a fleet attached to each if you can afford it. What this allows is pretty straightforward if you think of these fleets and stations as a net. If you control Earth space and the L points listed in its orbit, you can more easily react to fleets moving towards the inner system, while also having more opportunities to reinforce the Martian defenses in the event of an alien attack.

On the other hand, the planetary L1/L2 points are a bit more subtle, but can theoretically get your ships a greater operational range early on. For instance, there's generally a lower fuel cost to go from the Earth L2 to the Mars L1 than to go directly from Earth Orbit to Martian Orbit, depending on the exact orbits you're aiming for. This means you can set up a refueling base in these locations to get a lower-endurance ship to Mars when they might normally not be able to do so.

Lastly, the Van Allen Belt. The demo indicated that antimatter can be generated in certain locations (the big ones I remember being medium Earth Orbit and Jupiter Interface Orbit) which implies you'll want to do that at some point in the game.

[ArcticISAF]

Originally posted by =(FGR)=Sentinel:

Lastly, the Van Allen Belt. The demo indicated that antimatter can be generated in certain locations (the big ones I remember being medium Earth Orbit and Jupiter Interface Orbit) which implies you'll want to do that at some point in the game.

Ahh, thank you for that. I was wondering what that orbit was for. I was just thinking "Ok, why would you build there?". Maybe an 'if you're desperate' orbit. Also about Jupiter too, as I sent probes out there and I think saw the radiation, but never thought more about it.

Edit: Also about the colonization ships. I saw there was kits you can put on the ships, but I was locked into the mindset - Send a probe, wait until it arrives, pick your site, send your outpost, mining setups to be delivered... and that's it. I suppose still not sure what would be good to do that for - maybe some moons on the outer planets, or Pluto or something. Maybe more late-game, not sure. Good food for thought though.

[=(FGR)=Sentinel]

Originally posted by ArcticISAF:

Ahh, thank you for that. I was wondering what that orbit was for. I was just thinking "Ok, why would you build there?". Maybe an 'if you're desperate' orbit. Also about Jupiter too, as I sent probes out there and I think saw the radiation, but never thought more about it.

Edit: Also about the colonization ships. I saw there was kits you can put on the ships, but I was locked into the mindset - Send a probe, wait until it arrives, pick your site, send your outpost, mining setups to be delivered... and that's it. I suppose still not sure what would be good to do that for - maybe some moons on the outer planets, or Pluto or something. Maybe more late-game, not sure. Good food for thought though.

It's important to note that not all radioactive orbits and sites produce antimatter. For instance, every location around Mercury has radiation, but none produce antimatter. Jupiter's an interesting one since, if memory serves, the two closest asteroid moons of Jupiter are better antimatter production sites than Jupiter's interface orbit.

As for colony ships, the hab kits they come with include the hub, a construction module, and one power module of the stated type. The construction module means, if you have the resources for it, you can build new habs and hab modules (as well as upgrade existing ones) "locally" so long as a hab with the construction module exists in that planetary system. This means if you have one on the surface of one of Mar's moons, you can build habs on or around Mars so long as you have the resources and the module is powered. Generally speaking, colony ships are better as "first in" craft to an unexplored planetary system since you can equip a fairly small ship with a prefab hab and a science lab, send it to a planetary system, deploy the hab wherever you want (unless it needs to be a surface one in which case it needs to be surveyed), and then use the same ship to do a prospecting survey of the nearby bodies. Naturally, until you get enough resources to not use boost, construction modules don't do much, so there's no benefit to colony ships before your economy is set up since the module doesn't do anything until the mines are operational.

[Zuul]

It should also be noted, that ships in different orbits can have VASTLY different times to “get underway” as it were. Each orbit has an associated acceleration. If your ship is under that acceleration it means it needs to slowly spiral out of the gravity well to reach higher orbits/depart the body. If the ship is over the listed acceleration it can immediately depart/adjust orbit.

Originally posted by ArcticISAF:

Edit: Also about the colonization ships. I saw there was kits you can put on the ships, but I was locked into the mindset - Send a probe, wait until it arrives, pick your site, send your outpost, mining setups to be delivered... and that's it. I suppose still not sure what would be good to do that for - maybe some moons on the outer planets, or Pluto or something. Maybe more late-game, not sure. Good food for thought though.

Essentially when you send stuff from Earth the way you’re doing it, it’s all loaded onto transports and sent out. The stuff isn’t represented on the map, but it is by technology (certain techs decrease time for hab module delivery). The custom ships you design with those modules can be “much” faster than what launches from Earth, so you can set up significantly faster.

[=(FGR)=Sentinel]

Definitely, yeah. Like I said, there's also modules that allow a ship to survey a body over a 28 day period, essentially serving as a reusable probe. Combining that module with a hab module will likely be a must for a "full" colony ship in the full game.

[Insane Rogue AI]

Really great and informative posts!
Care to share what was the loadout on your colony ships?(or any ships you have used for that matter)
engine, powerplant, rads, armor, etc.?
I've held off building ships until I had high power high efficiency nuclear drive, but clearly that was dumb. I've built a few mars base but it was a very slow process. My game crashed before I had the chance to play with the ship mechanics.

[PAX]

Originally posted by =(FGR)=Sentinel:

To add to this, one thing I've realized after a lot of thinking, the planetary (ie, Sun-Earth, Sun-Mars, etc) L3, L4, and L5 points are good staging points for interplanetary support fleets. From what I remember about the demo in the early game you generally want 2-3 types of fleets: planetary patrol/defense fleets with high acceleration, interplanetary support/interceptors able to travel between planets, and colonization ships meant to travel extreme distances. Due to the fact that early engines either have high acceleration or high deltaV, but not both, you usually end up having to specialize these fleets. Your patrol fleets will have extreme acceleration, but low endurance that restricts them to a single planetary system. Your interplanetary interceptors will have decent dV, but low acceleration that make them less useful at dealing with "faster" craft in spite of their much greater range.

Does it say anything about this in the game anywhere? I'm just wondering when building my habs which areas to prioritize.

Personally for me I hadn't even considered sending ships to mars as instead I just used probes and build facilities directly on earth, although I was going to refine my playstyle later to put a platform into mars earlier to accelerate establishing a presence there.

For a station focused on just defending a planet, does that mean putting it in low or synchronous orbit is best?

[=(FGR)=Sentinel]

Originally posted by PAX:

Does it say anything about this in the game anywhere? I'm just wondering when building my habs which areas to prioritize.

Personally for me I hadn't even considered sending ships to mars as instead I just used probes and build facilities directly on earth, although I was going to refine my playstyle later to put a platform into mars earlier to accelerate establishing a presence there.

For a station focused on just defending a planet, does that mean putting it in low or synchronous orbit is best?

The various Lagrange point bits are mostly from observations and a bit of understanding of interplanetary transfers: slower ships have to "loop" around to reach their destination, while faster ones simply take a direct path. Since most early drives with high dV have low acceleration, they have to "slowboat" it to their destination or target in interplanetary space. This is why having a wider net is useful: If one can't reach the target in time, another might be able to get there earlier. As for the L1 and L2 points, this is mostly something I noticed when trying to find the best spots to launch a ship from Earth to Mars. The Earth L2 to Mars L1 requires the same amount of thrust as Earth Extreme to Mars Extreme, so there's not much (if any) net gain beyond the fact that a station at these points will always be at that general spot at all times, which means a ship that barely has the fuel to go from Earth Extreme orbit to Mars Extreme has a higher chance of actually getting to Mars via the Lagrange points by virtue of a guaranteed refueling stop on arriving near Mars. Presumably it'd be easier to link up with that hab with low fuel than it would be to try and do a direct transfer to a station that might be on the other side of Mars when you actually arrive in orbit.

As for planetary defense stations, the things you need to remember are that defensive modules, irrc, can return fire against bombardment on top of assisting in defending the hab in space combat and Marine modules not only make a hab harder to take over by enemy forces, but also allow certain councilors to use the hab's Marines to launch assaults on nearby habs if a surface hab or at any point on a planet's surface with if the hab is in interface orbit. This means two things: first, you generally want your most important habs on a planetary body to have either defensive modules or their own dedicated defensive fleet to help protect against bombardment. Second, you want vital orbital and planetary habs to have a Marine garrison attached to them to deter invasion.

Likewise, other quirks of planetary bodies should play a part in what you place where. For instance, a fleet can only destroy a hab fully if it's docked to it, but ships can't land at locations that have a higher gravity than their acceleration since they would be unable to return to orbit. This forces fleets with at least one of those ships to rely on orbital bombardment instead if they want to destroy a planetary hab. This makes planetary bases on most larger bodies a bit harder to destroy if they have good anti-orbital defenses and can buy you time to get a fleet of reinforcements to them. There's probably other implications, but those are the ones I can think off off the top of my head.