Stellaris Army update

[XR6SP4RT4N]

Paradox can you make an expansion or an update to improve ground forces and planetary wars, it would be cool to add tanks and space to planet fighters, and it would also be cool to be able to watch your soldiers fighting instead of balls with health bars. add new military buildings like airports for planetary defence fighters, or factory's to make tanks, or an air defense to destroy some enemy soldiers landing on your planet.

 

[Cleaving3]

You fool! Now it’s been delayed for another 3 weeks!


(There’s a joke that the devs delay it every time someone asks)

 

[Cosmic Fishering Fleet]

add tanks

We have tanks in Stellaris. Hunter-killer army (Machine Intelligence starting assault army) is literally tanks.

In seriousness, however, armies do not need tanks (and air force) because they are already implied to be a part of a given army.
Ultimately, it is a matter of scale. In HoI IV, you are confined to a single planet, so you get tank miniatures on your map, like in real world one miniature means a regiment of some size. In Stellaris, planetary conflict is small compared to fighting between the fully outfitted and reinforced Citadel and the titan fleet, so you as a ruler only get info of "these forces are here and they are relatively intact for now".

new military buildings like airports for planetary defence fighters

I liked Master of Orion II because you could make missile bases and fighter hangars on planets. However, with the Overlord DLC you can build planetary rings that fit the same purpose: defense weapons platforms and fightercraft hangars. Orbital rings offer more than just that, however.

I don't think that developers would put a lot of effort into something that doesn't really matter that much. This is not a turn-based game where you can just go from galascape to geoscape to battlescape. Even MoO didn't do that.

 

[GhostDanny]

All armies should have their niche.

And either remove army morale or give all armies the same mechanic, as armies that don't use morale are currently just out right better.
Morale is just another stat, that if reduced just makes the armies take a lot more damge, while doing much less damage in return.
Essentially a die quicker mechanic for the armies that use it...

Maybe turn morale into cohesion, and it effects all armies?

 

[Cosmic Fishering Fleet]

Maybe turn morale into cohesion, and it effects all armies?

Morale seems to be a defensive army thing. While T1 assault armies, both with and without morale perform similarly, defensive armies are not. Both Defensive Army and Fanatic Guardians have higher damage and health than their machine counterparts. Interestingly, though, Matrix Units have higher morale damage than Fanatic Guardians.
In the end, however, it doesn't matter due to the fact that assault armies often have numeric advantage.

 

[GhostDanny]

Morale seems to be a defensive army thing. While T1 assault armies, both with and without morale perform similarly, defensive armies are not. Both Defensive Army and Fanatic Guardians have higher damage and health than their machine counterparts. Interestingly, though, Matrix Units have higher morale damage than Fanatic Guardians.
In the end, however, it doesn't matter due to the fact that assault armies often have numeric advantage.

Assault armies also use morale.
Well the non robotic or special ones any ways.
I just want an equal playing field, either everyone uses it, or no one does.

 

[Normannus]

Honestly I think what would really make ground combat better is some kind of ground battle other than just “battle” as we have it now. Maybe allow strongholds to force a siege, which would drastically reduce the damage that a garrisoned army would take while also reducing the damage dealt, so that a fortress world is still takeable but would be a much longer fight, possibly allowing the planet to be relieved (something like a stronghold could support one army garrisoned in it with appropriate bonuses, with more armies inside as it upgrades). It would also be great if ships overhead were involved, perhaps to include having ships with hangers on them be able to use those fighters to support the ground forces. Likewise, a planet could have more defensive buildings, such as hangers which could support fighters to either fight on the ground or to attack ships overhead, or anti-orbital weaponry to fire back at enemy ships in orbit.

 

[forfor]

imo armies could either use part of your fleet cap or have their own army cap mechanic. This would at least help somewhat balance out the "just infinitely build more armies whenever needed because they're practically free" meta

 

[Normannus]

imo armies could either use part of your fleet cap or have their own army cap mechanic. This would at least help somewhat balance out the "just infinitely build more armies whenever needed because they're practically free" meta

They could just significantly increase the upkeep. Increase the upkeep for bio armies by doubling their energy and adding a food upkeep, increase the upkeep for robotic armies by tripling the energy upkeep. If you really want to increase the upkeep, add in a cost of consumer goods for bio armies/alloys for robotic armies, though for Xenomorphs I would instead just place a heavier food cost.

 

[Dragatus]

imo armies could either use part of your fleet cap or have their own army cap mechanic. This would at least help somewhat balance out the "just infinitely build more armies whenever needed because they're practically free" meta

If armies used naval cap that would encourage bombing planets into submission instead of building armies. Armies also do already have a cap of their own, you can have no more armies of any given species than you have pops. However, that cap is so high that it normally never comes into play, especially for armies of your primary species.

What could be done to make the cap more noticeable is to lower the cap to 1 army per 10 pops (rounded up).

 

[GhostDanny]

All armies should cost alloys, instead of minerals.
With upkeep of energy and for special armies special resources.
Biological armies replace 50% of the energy with food upkeep (or minerals if lithoid)

That would make armies much less throw away

 

[Enero]

Ground armies should be removed from the game

 

[Cosmic Fishering Fleet]

Ground armies should be removed from the game

Water armies are much better. I approve.

 

[jedavis]

All I want from an army rework is for machine intelligences to be able to get xenomorphs...

Honestly, decoupling xenomorphs from presentient RNG would be nice too. Ground combat sucks, so at least let's make it quick, cheap, messy, and low war-exhaustion, and get it over with.

I wouldn't even mind a single-use assault army of like, banelings / grenade quadcopters with 0 war exhaustion, great offense, and like 1HP. Just let me dump minerals into conquering planets fast. I guess maybe another way to put it would be that I'd like to see further exploration of the existing ground combat unit statistics space, but I'm much less interested in more fine-grained modeling of units or "realism".

 

[Cosmic Fishering Fleet]

All I want from an army rework is for machine intelligences to be able to get xenomorphs...

Let me introduce you to Mega Warform, one of the few Tier III armies.

 

[jedavis]

Let me introduce you to Mega Warform, one of the few Tier III armies.

They're fine, but they're expensive, slow to build, and high-exhaustion when you lose them. For the same upkeep and lower build-time, I would usually rather have four xenomorphs than a single mega-warform. I want to be throwing armies away rather than keeping them standing around with upkeep. The warforms do shine in fights with smaller combat width though.

 

[Cosmic Fishering Fleet]

Yeah, they're expensive. However, compress a lot of firepower into small package. Make sure that beaten ones can disengage and rest in reserve and they will serve you way after their third promotion. Before consolidation, I hired a general specifically to manage warforms.

 

[Incompetent]

They're fine, but they're expensive, slow to build, and high-exhaustion when you lose them. For the same upkeep and lower build-time, I would usually rather have four xenomorphs than a single mega-warform. I want to be throwing armies away rather than keeping them standing around with upkeep. The warforms do shine in fights with smaller combat width though.

If you really want elite armies at Xenomorph prices, tier II machine armies with the Ancient Dreadnought and Integrated Weaponry species traits also do comically large amounts of damage, and only cost a regular amount of war exhaustion when they die. (Thankfully for everyone else, Mega/Cybrex Warforms don't get species traits.)

 

[3ishop]

Honestly I think what would really make ground combat better is some kind of ground battle other than just “battle” as we have it now. Maybe allow strongholds to force a siege, which would drastically reduce the damage that a garrisoned army would take while also reducing the damage dealt, so that a fortress world is still takeable but would be a much longer fight, possibly allowing the planet to be relieved (something like a stronghold could support one army garrisoned in it with appropriate bonuses, with more armies inside as it upgrades). It would also be great if ships overhead were involved, perhaps to include having ships with hangers on them be able to use those fighters to support the ground forces. Likewise, a planet could have more defensive buildings, such as hangers which could support fighters to either fight on the ground or to attack ships overhead, or anti-orbital weaponry to fire back at enemy ships in orbit.

Pretty much just build a fortress world. Shield stops enemy fleets from doing much bombardment damage and then you build fortresses and staff them. Can even build some armies and garrison them there.

Issue is if you are losing ground and they are launching successful invasions, there's a good chance you wont be able to counter attack unless it's an extra long drawn out war like the WiH.

Fortresses do that, a hanger that supports the ground is just another defence army with a different name. For attacking ships that's what the starbase and orbital rings are for and with less cost of key building slots and pops.

 

[jedavis]

If you really want elite armies at Xenomorph prices, tier II machine armies with the Ancient Dreadnought and Integrated Weaponry species traits also do comically large amounts of damage, and only cost a regular amount of war exhaustion when they die. (Thankfully for everyone else, Mega/Cybrex Warforms don't get species traits.)

Interesting! Do you know if hunter-killers are limited to number of pops of a particular template of the machine species, like typical assault armies?