Land Combat enchantment ideas

Fast small Laser bullets? =o)

Reference Imperium Galactica 2. I'd like the entire act of planetary invasion and tile takeover modeled from that game.

That's more of an idea for GC3.

I completely agree. There should be a civilian and military populaton. You could build barracks to forify the military pop.

The military pop would help kill rebellions.

I don't agree. dividing all of your planets in to two different populations adds way too much management at the planet screen. IMHO if anything is changed in planetary combat it should be at the tactical, and not the management, level.

I wouldn't want a blind rock-paper-scissors model like MoO3 had, it was mostly just random but eventually I found out that clicking 'Flank' or 'Ambush' were the only valid options.

Sitting here thinking I thought the most compelling idea might be a way to 'purchase' greater advantage by spending money, and then I realized that system is already in place in GC2 in the form of MiniSoldiers, Tidal Disruption, etc. It might be interesting though if the defender also had tactics they could purchase? Just a thought.

The defender could even have scorched-earth tactics like the attacker has, or maybe a 'go underground' option that diverts say 10% of your advantage away (doesn't matter if you were going to lose the planet either way), but gives you intel and influence on the planet after it's conquered.

I wouldn't want a blind rock-paper-scissors model like MoO3 had, it was mostly just random but eventually I found out that clicking 'Flank' or 'Ambush' were the only valid options. Sitting here thinking I thought the most compelling idea might be a way to 'purchase' greater advantage by spending money, and then I realized that system is already in place in GC2 in the form of MiniSoldiers, Tidal Disruption, etc. It might be interesting though if the defender also had tactics they could purchase? Just a thought. The defender could even have scorched-earth tactics like the attacker has, or maybe a 'go underground' option that diverts say 10% of your advantage away (doesn't matter if you were going to lose the planet either way), but gives you intel and influence on the planet after it's conquered.

Yep, I would LOVE to have the Defense equivalent of Invasion Tactics, but I wouldn't make it completely blind.

One side should know what the other is picking before they pick there own tactic in some cases (if they high espionage level, for instance)

One side should know what the other is picking before they pick there own tactic in some cases (if they high espionage level, for instance)

Now *that* would be cool!

You could Mod barracks as increasing your planetary defense, that functions like your population will be trained for war, in reality when a planet would be invaded, I think the population (the man and woman) who are physical trained (that means in a young age 18-45) would given a weapon to defense their planet.

but to divide planets population in military and civilians will be too much micromanagement in my opinion.

My idea's are that you split the populance but you would have to lessen the amount that a troop transports hold because of unfair advantage.

Also I think that there should be a new addition to the tech tree, consciption for evil civs. and risistance for good civs. Here's the layout:

Conscription:
Basic Conscription- Converts 5% of the population to military before invasion
Advanced Conscription- Converts 10% of the population to military before invasion
Milita- Converts 20% of the population to military before invasion, -5% morale
National Service- Converts 25% of the population to military before invasion, 10% adantage, -15% morale
Socialist Army (only open to socialist)-Converts 40% of the population to military before invasion, 15% advantage, + 5% morale. Super-project: Civilian Command Center(+ 15% morale, Converts another 10% of the population to military before invasion)

Resistance: (units that go underground give influance and eseponage bounuses to the civ. that employes them. Are unearthed at a counter-attack)
Minor Resistance- 5% resistance population bonuses
Advanced Resistance- 10% resistance population bonuses
Auxiliary Units- 15% resistance population bonuses
Underground Terror- 25% resistance population bonuses
Grullia Warfare- 40% resistance population bonuses, -5% morale, 5% advantage. Super project: Underground networking (10% population bonuses, 5% advantage).

What do you think?     

I hate to bring this up but how did MOO2 handle this aspect of the game? Its been so many years since I played it so I cannot remember anymore. Might be that my suggestion below is just the MOO2 system, dont remember really. Yes the system below would increase micromanagement slightly but in my mind it would make the game much more intresting, so bear with me

How about have those barrack buildings enable training of Legions? Legions would take much time to build (they could be in building queue) and cost much. You would just have one more text box in planetary screen telling you in example "Legions on planet: 10" or so.

When you attack civilian only planet with Legions there would be some minor casuality numbers on both sides and you would be presented with moral choice of "exterminate(evil), leave some(neutral), everybody lives(good)". Obviously all these decisions have their ups and downs. Exterminate and you lose all tax payers but have no fear of rebellion etc. Leave all and you swim in money but have leave Legions to guarantee the peace.

In the other hand if that planet had civilians and legions it would be much tougher. There would be much more civilian casualties and the battle would end when other sides Legions run out. After the battle you would get the same kinda moral decision to make, "how to handle rest of the planets population". The transporting system would need a bit change, maybe so that civilians could be transported only with Colony modules and Legions with Troop modules only?

I don´t want to bash the current system too much, but you must admit, slapping billions of citizens into transports with laser guns and send them to conquer alien planet hardly sounds reasonable. I would suggest that SD drops the time eating Epic Generator and focuses their attention to improving the actual gameplay. I think the time could be spent better with improving land combat, espionage, constructor handling, UI etc. This is the best I can come up with Land Combat, please add your own insight about suggested systems or just write your own system example

I quite like the simplicity of having every registered citizen be a taxpayer and a soldier. It does away with a lot of the micromanagement in terms of building armies, garrisoning planets (and not losing track of those), and sorting out which armies are going to board transports to attack another planet. And if you're playing on big maps, this is going to end up eating a lot of your time.

In the current system, the armies build themselves and if necessary, you can boost their efficiency by building planetary defences. It's like those colonies, once you've assigned each square, it upgrades itself and takes care of the overhead it would otherwise create.

All in all, I really like the way in which ground combat is dealt with although I will admit it is simple. Boosting a planet's defences can be done by increasing the number of citizens (farms) or facilities. And once they are in place, you don't need to worry about them anymore.

I do agree that in some ways simple is better. But to be honest I got bored of GC2 because too many things of the game are presented overly simplisticly. Diplomacy, espionage, land combat, space combat are all rather simple. The deepest part of the game was perhaps the ship building, which has runned out of steam, atleast for me. I do like the templates very much!

DA with its improved diplomacy, asteroid fields, espionage and terraforming techs sure are great improvement. But I really would like the gameplay get deeper too. Werdell did mention that he wants to create a game which you can play for years.

edit:

Have to correct that diplomacy is not that simple in GC2. Compared to other games (most reacently MTW2) I have no bad things to say GC2 diplomacy

They should build on Shadowmaster's ideas. Seriously, wiping out a civilian population is crazy. I'm taking an extra transport everywhere just to make sure I have people on conquered worlds.

If we have an opportunity to keep the infrastructure, let's have the opportunity to keep the people as well with a morale hit instead of your people with 80% approval.

Separating military and civilian, along with useful defensive options, has my vote.

In my opinion I feel that during an invasion the very last thing that would be factored would be the ground troops on either side. If said planet knew of the impending invasion, which it would/should, then there would be a decent selection of "planet to space" weapons in which to take out some of the invading fleet. This should not be left to ships in orbit alone.
Only after touchdown and deployment of invading forces would a standing military come into effect for defensive purposes. This would obviously be the second phase, or more of a second chance. One would assume that given the high technology present, there would be various methods of planetary defense to rely on besides actual troops since it is up to the invader to conquer using troops to hold his ground. This isn't the same for defenders, since they already possess the disputed territory (remember the Alamo anyone?), hence they wouldn't necessarily need superior numbers, just superior defenses.
Maybe if there was a way to look at invasions from this point of view, more ideas would come forth?
And forgive me if I'm rambling...  

there would be a decent selection of "planet to space" weapons in which to take out some of the invading fleet.

In Imperium Galactica 2, you could end up losing a good chunk of ships just trying to take out the planetary defenses.

Once you landed troops, you had to fight on a 3D terrain. If you planned out the possibility of ground invasion correctly, your tanks would be in a great position for killing the invasion force.

There was also the possibility that your troops would turn on each other if you weren't governing your empire well. Perhaps we should add "opportunity to crush rebellion" on the list of things to add.

IG2 had a lot of good ideas. They ultimately failed because they abandoned fixing it.

Planet-to-space weapons would be a nice idea as a defensive technology. However, because even planets such as Earth are large enough that you would need a lot of ground-based cannons, there would have to be a limit to how effective these weapons can be. An assault fleet would likely stay out of range of ground weapons while it engaged the orbital defences. Therefore you'd only get a chance to do some real damage against the enemy as he attempts to land troops.

When the assault fleet sends the transports in, it will of course provide covering fire and attempt to knock out any ground-based defences that are detected. This may mean that it will be useful to keep the transports grouped with their escorts when commencing the ground invasion.

If a transport isn't covered well enough (ground cannons > space cannons) then it may crash or not land where it was supposed to land. This results in either a loss of attacking troops, or a loss of advantage.

However, because even planets such as Earth are large enough that you would need a lot of ground-based cannons, there would have to be a limit to how effective these weapons can be.

Kind of far fetched but I guess that could happen. The defenses would obviously be focused on important areas, not scrublands. What invading force in their right mind would want to land in, let's say, a swamp and then proceed two hundred miles towards their target? And let's not forget friction from the atmosphere. What, those invading ships are just zig-zagging their way in?
I wouldn't think thousands of cannons all throughout the countryside would be something that any defending force would contemplate. Now that I think about it, your comment was insulting to armchair generals and strategists throughout the world!  

However, because even planets such as Earth are large enough that you would need a lot of ground-based cannons, there would have to be a limit to how effective these weapons can be.

Even better, let's dust off the trebuchets and ballistas. And sticks, we need lots and lots of pointy sticks... sheesh! CANNONS?!? As you can tell this has me a little bit pissed...    

Yup. Missile launchers would be more realistic, as well as a sattelite defense system.

We have two AMS's built by lockheed right now to defend against all the nukes possible launched at the US...

I would think that an anti air-craft missle system would be just as feasible if not more supposing we're able to research all these other far out techs in the game.
Personally, I would just like to see the planetary defense tech tree grow.

Conscription: Basic Conscription- Converts 5% of the population to military before invasion Advanced Conscription- Converts 10% of the population to military before invasion Milita- Converts 20% of the population to military before invasion, -5% morale National Service- Converts 25% of the population to military before invasion, 10% adantage, -15% morale Socialist Army (only open to socialist)-Converts 40% of the population to military before invasion, 15% advantage, + 5% morale. Super-project: Civilian Command Center(+ 15% morale, Converts another 10% of the population to military before invasion)

I think Conscription is the best idea for improving ground combat that I've heard yet. This would add depth with absolutely no additional micromanagement - in terms of micromanagement, it's no more complex than at present. There would also be little need to rebalance gameplay, other than (as you suggest) making transports have comparatively smaller capacities, or reducing the advantage factor that attackers get.

Some questions to consider if this is implemented: How quickly are troops recruited? In other words, after a successful defense, are casualties replaced immediately on the following turn, or is there a lag time for "training"? Also, on the attack side, could planets only supply attackers equal to the number of troops they could recruit for defense?

I hate to bring this up but how did MOO2 handle this aspect of the game?

I haven't played it in a few months now, since despite not many games being able to replace it, either from being poorly concieved, pporly carried out, or buggy as Hell, but IIRC;

Each planet had up to five ground units slots, based I believe on max pop.
To begin, you have no ground forces (or just militia? I think large pop worlds got militia, can't recall) untill you build a Barracks, when you get infantry. Those infantry can be left to defend the planet or loaded onto transports to invade other worlds. The wepons and armor used by your ground troops correspond to the best ship's armor and best regular-sized ship weapon (ie, not plasma or ion cannons, or Black Hole Generators, etc.). Later, you could replace your infantry for tanks, powered armor or Titans, though truthfully, I've always found it much quicker and more efficient to load up on bombers with Bio-Weapons and scour enemy worlds. But only because the ground combat in that game was uninspiring to witness.

On a side note, many people seem to have concerns over the level of micromangement, in that too-complicated systems of ground combat would create more micromanagement.

I know MoO3 tried and failed with this, but I avoided it, so I'll pitch the idea:
What about Ministers would could take over the micromanagement of areas you didn't want to personally handle? You could give them all very explicit instructions (telling your General to mass and army of x units on SoAndSo World, to prepare for an invasion of That Other World, while distributing out forces to your other planets to ensure they all each have y units, aside from potential targets, which need to be beefed up to z units)

I have the impression the conscript techs are a level of abstraction to the current method. Instead of using your population, you're using your population X conscription bonus. This decreases the amount of soldiers in a combat. Balance this with having transports carry fewer troops and you're essentially back at square one with the exception of having a population left after the invasion was successful. The conscript tech tree is very similar to farming techs in that they boost the amount of soldiers on the field.

The idea could work if you'd want to avoid a genocide every time you invade a planet and you'd have a pretty good idea on how many would survive. As an addittion, subjugation or conversion techs could ease the aftermath of an invasion as the civ learns how to deal with this.

I don't believe it would add much to the game, but it won't create any overhead either so it would leave me somewhat indifferent.

About the minister, if you're creating a deeper system and then letting a minister handle it, the use of creating that system is not really worth it in my humble opinion. MoO3 had a lot of automation and it took me a long while to figure out what they were doing and what I was supposed to do. When I did figure it out, I discovered that the game mostly ran itself, leaving me we moving fleets around and cutting in the gouvernor's plans every once in a while. In the end, the game ended up poorer because it generally became a black box and it played itself mostly.

Perhaps we should add "opportunity to crush rebellion" on the list of things to add.

YES! I would love to slaughter those tree huggers!

I think ground combat should be like space combat. For example, The enemy soldiers have lasers, and you have point defence; who do you think will win the planet?

Planetary defences should be like this too. If the enemy soldiers/ships have point defence and you have Anti-Air missiles you will be at a complete disadvantage.

I think plnatary invasion needs more depth allover.