I've spent the past hour or so looking through the forums looking at several suggestions for ground combat and noticed a few trends that cause them to be denounced by the greater community and even the Wiz himself. Almost every suggestion seems to involve some sort of minigame or player interaction that takes up your micro time and bogs down multiplayer. So I felt the need to try my hand at keeping it automated but making it more complex then spaming assault armies. I hope I've struck a good balance.
The TL;DR is this: Consolidate all armies into two forms assault and defence, while using HOI4 Division editor to create your own custom force. These armies would battle it out on the planetary grid automatically in a similar fashion to the first StarDrive. Buildings would grant terrain modifiers and civilian causalities can happen.
Use Ctrl+F to jump to each subsection
-The Battlefield
-Army Editor
-Policies and Landfall
-Civilian Casualties
-Generals and Traits
The Battlefield
The first section of this post is in my eyes is the crux of my idea, it will either make or break this. Fighting on the planetary tiles is not a new idea, but everytime it is brought up it involves controlling your armies much like you do in HOI or EU4 or CK2 this would just bog down the game and make invasions even more of a chore then it currently is.
Instead Combat would remain largely automated as it is now, the main difference is the scale at which it happens. Each tile would be able to Garrison one army by default meaning larger worlds can have bigger garrisons but have more open ground that invaders can land in uncontested. Troop distribution would be fluid but would centre around the Planetary Admin before setting up in the nearest building or populated tile if no open buildings are ungarrisoned.
Much like Stardrive your units would fight across the planet tiles in realtime fighting only the enemy armies adjecent to it preventing a straight slugging match that currently makes up the current mechanics. Its a simple change but one that can lead to upsets and if it strikes your fancy one that would be more enjoyable to watch. I want that to be clear though you'd only be able to watch, once you commit your troops the only order you can issue is a retreat order.
Being able to only fight adjacent squares would allow for things like quality vs quantity to really shine as a army full of Gene-warrior divisions would gladly chomp through swarms of slave soldiers even when fully surrounded. Speaking of divisions we reach the next subsection:
Army Editor
I think we can all agree that the current army selection is quite two dimensional, you either spam hundreds of assault armies and overwhelm even pure genewarrior garrisons or you spam genewarriors and roflstomp across the galaxy. Instead the current flavours of army should be converted into divisions that you build your army with. Each division you add increases manpower, attack, cost, recruitment time and maintenance.
Manpower: Essentially health, each division of the army adds a certain amount of manpower that will regenerate while not participating in an invasion with one exception. Divisions in an army that hit 0 manpower can only begin replenishment on a friendly world, meaning even if you take a planet by the skin of your teeth your armies will only be so strong to repel any counter invasions.
Armour: Every point of armour adds a 10% damage mitigation to incoming soft attack. Basic Tank divisions often have a rating of 4 and GeneWarriors have a rating of 3. Slaves actually have -1 taking more damage then normal.
Morale: How much fighting spirit the army has, when broken will retreat to planetary admin or to attackers beachhead before reentering the fight. Should they already be on the beachfront or the planetary admin be taken the unit will only break if they are under 50% manpower then they will entering orbit or fight like cornered rats losing half their attack value but gaining a point of armour.
Speed: How many days it takes for the army to move from one tile to an unoccupied tile. The more divisions in the army the longer this takes.
Soft Attack: Base Damage
Hard Attack: Ignores Armour Mitigation
Morale DMG: Damages Morale
Collateral: War is messy business, Collateral is the % chance to ruin the building the target army is on or if the building is already ruined or not present at all killing the pop on the opponents tile. Can be used as a messy and brutal purge option. Raised by divisions like Artillery, Xenophorm Armies, general traits and Rules of engagement policies.
Landing Priority: When assaulting a planet with multiple army templates it would be annoying and wasteful if your squishy artillery army was sent to secure a beach head instead of your crack genewarriors or expendable slave hordes. When giving an Land troops order your troops will land all the troops in order.
Support Line: Current attachments go here and apply to all the division in its row not all the divisions in the army.
Policies and Landfall
Landing your armies will be the most bloody and costly part of any invasion, AA guns, prepared defences and airsupport will do everything they can to ruin your day. New techs will unlock different strategies to assault a planet something that can be set much like fleet bombardment.
Once Troops hit the ground every pop without an army on it's tile will spawn a small Garrison Army of four Infantry Divisions.
Troopships: By default your armies will be ferried down to the surface one at at time at a rate of 15 days each. They will randomly select one of the border Tiles as the designated beach head and all armies will arrive in that tile. Each subsequent armies will attack in a new direction or move into an unoccupied tile. Should the beachhead be garrisoned by a defending army the 15 days spent travelling to the surface will be spent under AA fire but once you reach the surface your softened army will be immune to flank attacks for fear of friendly fire.
Drop Assault: In addition to the troopship coming down to deploy a beach head three additional armies will arrive after a day randomly across the planet to draw away defenders and grant an opportunity for a safe beachhead.
Will Breaker: Four Armies Drop directly onto the planetary admin building and destroy it, killing the pop there and debuffing enemy morale by 25% planet wide. they will then attack outwards leaving the beachhead behind them, additional armies then arrive as per normal. Surrounded on all sides but especially devastating with psionic support.
Policies also play a large part in forming your military doctrine and the flavour of your empire. Things like Recruitment Methods, Training Regime, Equipment Standards and Rule of Engagment all define how your troops will perform and treat the conquered populous.
-Recruitment Methods:
--Forced Conscription: 20% Increase to manpower, 30% decrease in Morale
--Citizen Militia (Default): 100% Garrison Manpower
--Volunteers: 15% decrease in manpower, 20% increase in Morale
-Training Regime
--Die less then them: Given a gun and pointed at the enemy, most don't even know how to use it.
50% Speed Penalty, 20% Soft Attack penalty, 50% Training Time Decrease
--Reservists (Default): Not really expected to leave world, they still know the basics and can be mustered quickly
30% speed penalty, 20% Training Time Decrease
--Regulars: Ready to explore new worlds, even if its over the natives smoking corpses
5% Soft Attack Increase
--Professional Soldiers: Disciplined, experienced and viscous. They'll get the job done right.
10% Soft and Hard Attack Increase, 25% Speed Increase, 40% Increase in Training Time
-Equipment Standards:
--Self Supplied: At best their weapons are venerated Heirlooms, more likely they have grandpa's old shotgun.
50% Maintenance decrease, 35% decrease in Hard Attack.
--Surplus: Found some extra uniforms from the last war, you can use those.
20% Maintenance Decrease, 15% decrease Hard Attack
--State Supplied: Logistics are important, knowing what are troops are using make logistics easier
No Bonuses/Maluses Default
--Experimental: Gravity Guns, Portal Grenades and power armour. Only the best.
25% Maintenance Increase, 15% Hard Attack Increase.
-Rules of Engagement:
--Fire when Fired Upon: This is Provi, NR;DS live that rule
-20% Collateral, 10% hard attack decrease, Diplomatic Bonus with Xenophiles and Pacifists.
--Armed Targets: If they have a weapon, they can have a bullet
no bonus/malus Default policy
--Weapons Free: Nullsec 101, if it ain't blue shoot it till its dead
+15% collateral, 5% hard/soft attack increase, Minor Diplo Malus with Xenophiles and Pacifists
--Extermination: Civilians? Don't you mean practice targets.
+25% Collateral, will continue to trigger collateral tests after taking the world, Major Diplo Malus with Xenophiles and Pacifists
Civilian Casualties
War is messy business and often times noncombatants get caught up in the crossfire. Whether this is intentional or an unfortunate accident is up to you. All armies have a collateral rating and at the end of every month that is the percent chance that the tiles being fought over have their buildings ruined and pops killed.
This Collateral rating is tied directly to your Rules of Engagement policies and what divisions make up the army. Things like artillery, Tank divisions and the undisciplined masses of slaves all drive this percent up. Much like killing pops from orbit doing so from the ground will also incur Diplomatic penalties with sympathetic empires.
Generals and Traits
With this rework new opportunities for traits open up for generals. Generals can specialize in different tactics, for example a Helldiver Veteran can land an additional army during a Drop Assault while an Adept Organizer can land an army every 10 days instead of 15 using troopships. Blitzes can establish a second beachhead while Butchers increase collateral at the cost of speed and moral. Recruiters can increase manpower while humane souls decrease collateral and soft attack.
Ranking your generals would give base bonuses to moral but also increase the effects of traits increasing the value of competent and skilled generals.
MOCKUP
The TL;DR is this: Consolidate all armies into two forms assault and defence, while using HOI4 Division editor to create your own custom force. These armies would battle it out on the planetary grid automatically in a similar fashion to the first StarDrive. Buildings would grant terrain modifiers and civilian causalities can happen.
Use Ctrl+F to jump to each subsection
-The Battlefield
-Army Editor
-Policies and Landfall
-Civilian Casualties
-Generals and Traits
The Battlefield
The first section of this post is in my eyes is the crux of my idea, it will either make or break this. Fighting on the planetary tiles is not a new idea, but everytime it is brought up it involves controlling your armies much like you do in HOI or EU4 or CK2 this would just bog down the game and make invasions even more of a chore then it currently is.
Instead Combat would remain largely automated as it is now, the main difference is the scale at which it happens. Each tile would be able to Garrison one army by default meaning larger worlds can have bigger garrisons but have more open ground that invaders can land in uncontested. Troop distribution would be fluid but would centre around the Planetary Admin before setting up in the nearest building or populated tile if no open buildings are ungarrisoned.
Much like Stardrive your units would fight across the planet tiles in realtime fighting only the enemy armies adjecent to it preventing a straight slugging match that currently makes up the current mechanics. Its a simple change but one that can lead to upsets and if it strikes your fancy one that would be more enjoyable to watch. I want that to be clear though you'd only be able to watch, once you commit your troops the only order you can issue is a retreat order.
Being able to only fight adjacent squares would allow for things like quality vs quantity to really shine as a army full of Gene-warrior divisions would gladly chomp through swarms of slave soldiers even when fully surrounded. Speaking of divisions we reach the next subsection:
Army Editor
I think we can all agree that the current army selection is quite two dimensional, you either spam hundreds of assault armies and overwhelm even pure genewarrior garrisons or you spam genewarriors and roflstomp across the galaxy. Instead the current flavours of army should be converted into divisions that you build your army with. Each division you add increases manpower, attack, cost, recruitment time and maintenance.
Manpower: Essentially health, each division of the army adds a certain amount of manpower that will regenerate while not participating in an invasion with one exception. Divisions in an army that hit 0 manpower can only begin replenishment on a friendly world, meaning even if you take a planet by the skin of your teeth your armies will only be so strong to repel any counter invasions.
Armour: Every point of armour adds a 10% damage mitigation to incoming soft attack. Basic Tank divisions often have a rating of 4 and GeneWarriors have a rating of 3. Slaves actually have -1 taking more damage then normal.
Morale: How much fighting spirit the army has, when broken will retreat to planetary admin or to attackers beachhead before reentering the fight. Should they already be on the beachfront or the planetary admin be taken the unit will only break if they are under 50% manpower then they will entering orbit or fight like cornered rats losing half their attack value but gaining a point of armour.
Speed: How many days it takes for the army to move from one tile to an unoccupied tile. The more divisions in the army the longer this takes.
Soft Attack: Base Damage
Hard Attack: Ignores Armour Mitigation
Morale DMG: Damages Morale
Collateral: War is messy business, Collateral is the % chance to ruin the building the target army is on or if the building is already ruined or not present at all killing the pop on the opponents tile. Can be used as a messy and brutal purge option. Raised by divisions like Artillery, Xenophorm Armies, general traits and Rules of engagement policies.
Landing Priority: When assaulting a planet with multiple army templates it would be annoying and wasteful if your squishy artillery army was sent to secure a beach head instead of your crack genewarriors or expendable slave hordes. When giving an Land troops order your troops will land all the troops in order.
Support Line: Current attachments go here and apply to all the division in its row not all the divisions in the army.
Policies and Landfall
Landing your armies will be the most bloody and costly part of any invasion, AA guns, prepared defences and airsupport will do everything they can to ruin your day. New techs will unlock different strategies to assault a planet something that can be set much like fleet bombardment.
Once Troops hit the ground every pop without an army on it's tile will spawn a small Garrison Army of four Infantry Divisions.
Troopships: By default your armies will be ferried down to the surface one at at time at a rate of 15 days each. They will randomly select one of the border Tiles as the designated beach head and all armies will arrive in that tile. Each subsequent armies will attack in a new direction or move into an unoccupied tile. Should the beachhead be garrisoned by a defending army the 15 days spent travelling to the surface will be spent under AA fire but once you reach the surface your softened army will be immune to flank attacks for fear of friendly fire.
Drop Assault: In addition to the troopship coming down to deploy a beach head three additional armies will arrive after a day randomly across the planet to draw away defenders and grant an opportunity for a safe beachhead.
Will Breaker: Four Armies Drop directly onto the planetary admin building and destroy it, killing the pop there and debuffing enemy morale by 25% planet wide. they will then attack outwards leaving the beachhead behind them, additional armies then arrive as per normal. Surrounded on all sides but especially devastating with psionic support.
Policies also play a large part in forming your military doctrine and the flavour of your empire. Things like Recruitment Methods, Training Regime, Equipment Standards and Rule of Engagment all define how your troops will perform and treat the conquered populous.
-Recruitment Methods:
--Forced Conscription: 20% Increase to manpower, 30% decrease in Morale
--Citizen Militia (Default): 100% Garrison Manpower
--Volunteers: 15% decrease in manpower, 20% increase in Morale
-Training Regime
--Die less then them: Given a gun and pointed at the enemy, most don't even know how to use it.
50% Speed Penalty, 20% Soft Attack penalty, 50% Training Time Decrease
--Reservists (Default): Not really expected to leave world, they still know the basics and can be mustered quickly
30% speed penalty, 20% Training Time Decrease
--Regulars: Ready to explore new worlds, even if its over the natives smoking corpses
5% Soft Attack Increase
--Professional Soldiers: Disciplined, experienced and viscous. They'll get the job done right.
10% Soft and Hard Attack Increase, 25% Speed Increase, 40% Increase in Training Time
-Equipment Standards:
--Self Supplied: At best their weapons are venerated Heirlooms, more likely they have grandpa's old shotgun.
50% Maintenance decrease, 35% decrease in Hard Attack.
--Surplus: Found some extra uniforms from the last war, you can use those.
20% Maintenance Decrease, 15% decrease Hard Attack
--State Supplied: Logistics are important, knowing what are troops are using make logistics easier
No Bonuses/Maluses Default
--Experimental: Gravity Guns, Portal Grenades and power armour. Only the best.
25% Maintenance Increase, 15% Hard Attack Increase.
-Rules of Engagement:
--Fire when Fired Upon: This is Provi, NR;DS live that rule
-20% Collateral, 10% hard attack decrease, Diplomatic Bonus with Xenophiles and Pacifists.
--Armed Targets: If they have a weapon, they can have a bullet
no bonus/malus Default policy
--Weapons Free: Nullsec 101, if it ain't blue shoot it till its dead
+15% collateral, 5% hard/soft attack increase, Minor Diplo Malus with Xenophiles and Pacifists
--Extermination: Civilians? Don't you mean practice targets.
+25% Collateral, will continue to trigger collateral tests after taking the world, Major Diplo Malus with Xenophiles and Pacifists
Civilian Casualties
War is messy business and often times noncombatants get caught up in the crossfire. Whether this is intentional or an unfortunate accident is up to you. All armies have a collateral rating and at the end of every month that is the percent chance that the tiles being fought over have their buildings ruined and pops killed.
This Collateral rating is tied directly to your Rules of Engagement policies and what divisions make up the army. Things like artillery, Tank divisions and the undisciplined masses of slaves all drive this percent up. Much like killing pops from orbit doing so from the ground will also incur Diplomatic penalties with sympathetic empires.
Generals and Traits
With this rework new opportunities for traits open up for generals. Generals can specialize in different tactics, for example a Helldiver Veteran can land an additional army during a Drop Assault while an Adept Organizer can land an army every 10 days instead of 15 using troopships. Blitzes can establish a second beachhead while Butchers increase collateral at the cost of speed and moral. Recruiters can increase manpower while humane souls decrease collateral and soft attack.
Ranking your generals would give base bonuses to moral but also increase the effects of traits increasing the value of competent and skilled generals.
MOCKUP
I believe this can achieve the following after more refinement:
- Create an army composition or have the AI generate one like ship designs.
- Build Army.
- Click invade.
A mock up of the defense/ground tab. Armies can be placed automatically by the AI when built or you can drag and drop.
- Force players to split their fleet or keep their main fleet at bay as they try to secure larger planets.
- If Planetary Shield Generators are changed to make planets secure from orbital bombardment it can allow defenders a chance to hold out, due to forcing the attacker to invade the ground to try and take control of the generator. This could be balanced making it expensive enough to only be worthwhile on a few planets, such as high cost and needed to sacrifice two building slots (One for the Shield itself and a generator that powers it.)
- Make ground combat more engaging than its current from, where spamming assault armies does the trick.
- Gives the players that want more customization/control the ability to do so for armies while not forcing those that don't.
Reference your earlier mockup from HoI4, basically you can build a composition that will be the "army" and name it like a ship design. The army, once built, is assigned a name. (Or you can change it) Armies are composed of up to a set number of actual types, I put three here.
Invasion screen. Landing zones are generated by either you or the AI? But armies land from there and it for you to have more troops on the ground, you need to gain more tiles. Amount of landing zones can be based on fleet size? Or another aspect. As noted in the image, my idea was that pops will generate garrison armies like they do now, but are replaced by real armies if there are enough.
Another mockup of the battle.
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