An unobtrusive yet compelling Ground Invasion System

[LastLeviathan]

Which in this system it'd be micro free as well. All that's done is designing the army, giving an attack order and possibly one for retreat. Its at its core the same as the current system but with more substance.
Im looking forward to seeing that!

Alright, I whipped up a visual series that best described what I imagined. Feel free to add in what you imagined differently or what could be changed.

The intent was to minimize the clutter and work really needed into building the system. Wiz has made it clear he doesn't like ground combat, and there's no need to overly complicate it. All that's needed is something a little more engaging without sacrificing automation. Essentially once you press land, your armies would assault the planet, automated as it is in vanilla, and fight their way through the tiles. Rather than a single musket line battle, your armies would do a similar battle but per tile.

All the player has to do:

• Create an army composition or have the AI generate one like ship designs.
• Build Army.
• Click invade.

I believe this can achieve the following after more refinement:

• 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.

A mock up of the defense/ground tab. Armies can be placed automatically by the AI when built or you can drag and drop.

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. (EDIT: We've agreed that there's no reason for blockers to stop an army, perhaps crossing it causes attrition, but nothing more)

Another mockup of the battle.

 

[CastelloNova]

No, sorry. Time alone doesn't mean anything, as I mentioned in my first post. An intelligent player, once naval superiority has been achieved, will not let the opponent rebuild. Also, if you have naval superiority, you can easily afford to break off a few smaller fleets to deal with such raids while still having a large fleet to deal with actual dismantling of the opponent.



You're right. The more I think about it, the more I see a punishing war exhaustion mechanic to be not just a good addition, but a necessary one for making ground combat matter. Combine that with some kind of manpower pool (where max/replenishment rate is based on the number of pops) and it's possible to aim for a draw in war by focusing on planetary defenses.

However, we now have a secondary issue to deal with, something I also mentioned in my first post: Aiming at minimizing micro for planetary invasions is good, because there are hundreds of planets in a galaxy and having to make deep tactical decisions about how to invade or defend each one is pretty indefensible. But the OP's suggestion - or any suggestion that aims to flesh out ground combat - must inherently increase the amount of micro a player does. If we accept that the OP's suggestion with a workable war exhaustion mechanic would let planetary defenses actually impact the course of the war, we still need to decide whether that's worth the cost of the micro purely for the subjective gain of those who want more in-depth ground combat.

It seems to me that the thing that makes the difference here between a ground combat mechanic that is useless to the overall war and a ground combat mechanic that has an impact on the war is not the actual implementation of the ground combat. It's war exhaustion, which can be implemented entirely independently and equally in an abstract or an in-depth mechanic. I still don't see an advantage to the OP's proposal over a more simplified approach. More complexity is not the root of the problem in what needs to be added to make ground combat good and meaningful.

You know what? That's actually fair. Without war exhaustion ground combat even in this form is just a speed bump. I do reserve the right to say that with this system at the start of the war even a smaller empire has a chance to kite and take planets through a hit and fade style of warfare. That being said once you lose your fleet you're still ultimately boned. Thankfully stellaris so far has had a trend of big updates, so IF this system was every implemented we can almost garentuee it would not be alone and would be accompanied by a doomstack fix and a war exhaustion mechanic.

That being said I strongly disagree that this system adds anywhere near enough micro to distract a player or that a even more simplified ground assault mechanic would be better. This would literally add just as much or realistically even less micro then the ship designer and bombardment stances. If you are saying this is too much then we might as well get rid of custom ship designs.

Way too drastic of a step right? Well as this thread shows, for a good majority of forum and reddit dwellers, ground invasions are just as important to a 4x scifi game as space battle. The ability to form a narrative around it even when not directly controlling the action is a core tenant of stellaris as a whole.

 

[CastelloNova]

Alright, I whipped up a visual series that best described what I imagined. Feel free to add in what you imagined differently or what could be changed.

The intent was to minimize the clutter and work really needed into building the system. Wiz has made it clear he doesn't like ground combat, and there's no need to overly complicate it. All that's needed is something a little more engaging without sacrificing automation. Essentially once you press land, your armies would assault the planet, automated as it is in vanilla, and fight their way through the tiles. Rather than a single musket line battle, your armies would do a similar battle but per tile.

All the player has to do:

• Create an amy or have the AI generate one like ship deisgns.
• Click invade.

I believe this can achieve the following after more refinement:

• 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.

A mock up of the defense/ground tab. Armies can be placed automatically by the AI when built or you can drag and drop.

View attachment 242454

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.

View attachment 242455

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.


View attachment 242456

Another mockup of the battle.

View attachment 242457

FANTASTIC!

Seriously thank you! that is almost exactly what I had in mind, nearly 99% really. The rest is semantics and art stuff that I can't reasonably expect from a mock up. Would you mind if I qoute your post and add it to the OP?

 

[LastLeviathan]

FANTASTIC!

Seriously thank you! that is almost exactly what I had in mind, nearly 99% really. The rest is semantics and art stuff that I can't reasonably expect from a mock up. Would you mind if I qoute your post and add it to the OP?

Go ahead, glad it helped.

 

[Zwollenaer]

I'd absolutely HATE a system like stardrive. A planetary invasion should never be dumbed down to checkers in space. Manually shuffling our troops over a bunch of neat squares just doesn't do it for me. It's too distracting from the more important aspects of the game and doesn't make the combat more immersive for me.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=865642475

I'd rather see a more in-depth replacement for the current combat screen with the OPTION to manually tinker with the tactics that are used. The way HOI4 handles combat with weather modifiers, commanders, supply considerations, etc would be good enough for me. I also kinda like how the game REALPOLITIK does it, which lets you manually pick a strategy IF YOU WANT TO. For example researching a tech called "Drop Pods" would allow picking that from the list.

 

[LastLeviathan]

I'd absolutely HATE a system like stardrive. A planetary invasion should never be dumbed down to checkers in space. Manually shuffling our troops over a bunch of neat squares just doesn't do it for me. It's too distracting from the more important aspects of the game and doesn't make the combat more immersive for me.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=865642475

I'd rather see a replacement for the current combat screen with the OPTION to manually tinker with the tactics that are used. The way HOI4 handles combat with weather modifiers, commanders, supply considerations, etc would be good enough for me. I also kinda like how the game REALPOLITIK does it, which lets you manually pick a strategy IF YOU WANT TO. For example researching a tech called "Drop Pods" would allow picking that from the list.

The idea, at least from my perspective, is not disagreeing with you. In fact, each battle between an army is essentially what you are describing, it's just that it's done for each tile as you take the planet. It's automated, like other Paradox games and requires no checkers style playing, you don't even have to zoom in if you don't want to. All he really compared to StarDrive I believe is how he wanted it to visually look. (Correct me if I'm wrong OP)

 

[CastelloNova]

The idea, at least from my perspective, is not disagreeing with you. In fact, each battle between an army is essentially what you are describing, it's just that it's done for each tile as you take the planet. It's automated, like other Paradox games and requires no checkers style playing, you don't even have to zoom in if you don't want to. All he really compared to StarDrive I believe is how he wanted it to visually look. (Correct me if I'm wrong OP)

You have a talent for nailing things on the head.
It's exactly as he said mostly as a visual interpretation.

 

[Hertzila]

However, we now have a secondary issue to deal with, something I also mentioned in my first post: Aiming at minimizing micro for planetary invasions is good, because there are hundreds of planets in a galaxy and having to make deep tactical decisions about how to invade or defend each one is pretty indefensible. But the OP's suggestion - or any suggestion that aims to flesh out ground combat - must inherently increase the amount of micro a player does. If we accept that the OP's suggestion with a workable war exhaustion mechanic would let planetary defenses actually impact the course of the war, we still need to decide whether that's worth the cost of the micro purely for the subjective gain of those who want more in-depth ground combat.

It seems to me that the thing that makes the difference here between a ground combat mechanic that is useless to the overall war and a ground combat mechanic that has an impact on the war is not the actual implementation of the ground combat. It's war exhaustion, which can be implemented entirely independently and equally in an abstract or an in-depth mechanic. I still don't see an advantage to the OP's proposal over a more simplified approach. More complexity is not the root of the problem in what needs to be added to make ground combat good and meaningful.

This is less of hard facts and more of my speculation, but I don't think the real problem is the amount of micro but where and when it happens. Some of the ground combat suggestions fall in the trap that the player has to babysit and micromanage the invasion rather than leaving it to the AI Generals, similar to how some people still want to micromanage fleet engagements.

I think the real problem is that instead of leaving all the micro to be done before the engagement at the player's leisure when it's convenient, those fallen suggestions force it to happen in the middle of the engagement when the player would rather focus on the overall strategy. Whether or not there's a lot of micro going on at that point, any amount of micro during an engagement is bad and counter to the grand strategy paradigm.

This suggestion very explicitly attempts to avoid it, and in my opinion succeeds in avoiding it. The micro you do are the army designing (which you can leave to automatic designs like with the ship design system if you want), the army specific policies (very few clicks required, same as the general war policies, though I do think four is too much) and the specific invasion strategy. Only the invasion strategy might qualify as annoying micro, but it could very well just add a single click to the invasion process: when you press "invade", a menu opens up that shows you the possible strategies, you pick one and then proceed to focus on other things, just like you do now.

Edit: Forgot to add the possible manual positioning of defensive troops before invasions. It still happens before any engagements and I'd assume there would be a checkbox that automatically shifts them around when it is needed (eg. a new POP is born, migrants arrive, a new building is constructed, a new army is formed, etc.) if the player would rather leave it to the AI rather than micro it.

 

[Artigo]

This suggestion very explicitly attempts to avoid it, and in my opinion succeeds in avoiding it. The micro you do are the army designing (which you can leave to automatic designs like with the ship design system if you want), the army specific policies (very few clicks required, same as the general war policies, though I do think four is too much) and the specific invasion strategy. Only the invasion strategy might qualify as annoying micro, but it could very well just add a single click to the invasion process: when you press "invade", a menu opens up that shows you the possible strategies, you pick one and then proceed to focus on other things, just like you do now.

Should also point out that CastelloNova also explained that army templates would be apart of the features for this implementation. Building individual units and equipping them with items is some of the most tedious micro the game has to offer. That alone would be worth adding as a feature.

On that note though, why are we so micro-averse? Look, I get this isn't StarCraft II, I'm not Korean either, but you micro your science vessels to explore systems and constructors to build mining stations. How difficult is it really to assign a battle plan and design your invasion forces which is only necessary if you want to get 100% benefit.

From what it looks like to me, if you want to avoid the "micro" you don't even have to do anything, literally just play the game and forget that this aspect of it exists.

edit: with regard to your garrison armies, if you don't care enough to position them, then you probably don't design your species or prioritize your tech around their benefit enough for it to matter anyway.

 

[HisHemroids]

Where is this increasing micro so much as to be called micro heavy? It's entirely automated outside of designing your own army and clicking on policies once or twice a game. I specifically set out to make it as hands off as possible without being dull and 2 dimensional.

You are adding several things i now need to do. And as you just said your self: It's automated. You are not even adding an engaging meachanic here. You simply add more buttons that in the end do nothing because we will still be landing an absolute overkill to simply overmatch the defender. Before any of the things you suggest can be added, the game first needs to actually get such an involved ground combat system to make this sort of micro fiddling viable.

Heck, this sorta detail management would only really come to fruition if:

The game would actually create semi-randomized maps, cut into little territories ala EU4/Hoi for which you would have to wage a complete ground war, planetary military infrastructure vs the "imported" logistics of the attacker.
You would have to curtail the attackers ability to just drop a hundred times the force the defender has.
You'd have to scatter logistics around the battlefield in a logical rather non random manner, and victory points and then wage war until one side "breaks". This would likely turn any invasion into a tedious procedure.

There really is zero point to a more involved army creation or control sheme if the basic combat still boils down to "oh look, i have 200 doods eating your 20."


An army, right now, i assume simply consists of all the hardware needed to do an invasion. Why the need to fiddle with it?
Orbital bombardment kinda implies the ruination of military infrastructure, so a detailed ground combat system simply seems like a waste of time.

He who holds the High Orbitals wins. By default. By force of "Oh look who sits down there, being hit by the trash i just dump on em!"


Perhaps you should first develop the idea and lore for the circumstances that needs to apply for an involved ground combat to make any sense at all.

Any good mil-sci-fi usually employs plot devices to make orbital siege unpallatable. So that ground war has room to be viable.


Start there. Because right now i win by force of fleet and overmatching the defenders in numbers.

Cool, so you'd like this system then, I take it?

No. As my post clearly stated. No.

 

[CastelloNova]

You are adding several things i now need to do. And as you just said your self: It's automated. You are not even adding an engaging meachanic here. You simply add more buttons that in the end do nothing because we will still be landing an absolute overkill to simply overmatch the defender. Before any of the things you suggest can be added, the game first needs to actually get such an involved ground combat system to make this sort of micro fiddling viable.

Heck, this sorta detail management would only really come to fruition if:

The game would actually create semi-randomized maps, cut into little territories ala EU4/Hoi for which you would have to wage a complete ground war, planetary military infrastructure vs the "imported" logistics of the attacker.
You would have to curtail the attackers ability to just drop a hundred times the force the defender has.
You'd have to scatter logistics around the battlefield in a logical rather non random manner, and victory points and then wage war until one side "breaks". This would likely turn any invasion into a tedious procedure.

There really is zero point to a more involved army creation or control sheme if the basic combat still boils down to "oh look, i have 200 doods eating your 20."


An army, right now, i assume simply consists of all the hardware needed to do an invasion. Why the need to fiddle with it?
Orbital bombardment kinda implies the ruination of military infrastructure, so a detailed ground combat system simply seems like a waste of time.

He who holds the High Orbitals wins. By default. By force of "Oh look who sits down there, being hit by the trash i just dump on em!"


Perhaps you should first develop the idea and lore for the circumstances that needs to apply for an involved ground combat to make any sense at all.

Any good mil-sci-fi usually employs plot devices to make orbital siege unpallatable. So that ground war has room to be viable.


Start there. Because right now i win by force of fleet and overmatching the defenders in numbers.





No. As my post clearly stated. No.

So you must let the AI design your ships right? Because that's what micro this adds and if that too many things you 'now need to do' then I don't see how you get through the game as is. It's also obvious you haven't read the OP or even looked at the Mockup that was so kindly created otherwise you know that you can't overwhelm a defended planet quickly, simply because each tile can only hold a single army, your 200 armies dont have enough space to fight the 20 defenders at the same time. It's not like in space you have any control besides oh my 200 ships willl now eat your 50.

You also seem to think that every empire is a fanatic militarist or xenophobe because the pops with other ethos are going to have issues with you bombing civilian targets and destroying entire planets. Other empire will call you genocidal ruining diplomacy for over a decade.

And your alternative falls into the trap of micro hell, you're suggesting to a mini game of HoI4 for every planet. So what the hell do you want? More micro or less?

 

[SS Boss]

I fully agree with the OP.

And I really want a DLC focused on ground combat. So people that don't want more things about it simply don't purchase the DLC.

 

[LastLeviathan]

I fully agree with the OP.

And I really want a DLC focused on ground combat. So people that don't want more things about it simply don't purchase the DLC.

Ground combat is a base mechanic, it's something they would add in an update accompanying a DLC. Some content might be reserved for the DLC only, as per, but I doubt we'll see any major change for at least 1-2 more DLCs/updates. Then again, depends how much work it takes to implement an idea like this.

 

[CastelloNova]

Ground combat is a base mechanic, it's something they would add in an update accompanying a DLC. Some content might be reserved for the DLC only, as per, but I doubt we'll see any major change for at least 1-2 more DLCs/updates. Then again, depends how much work it takes to implement an idea like this.

Yes this would most likely accompany a rework to fleet mechanics and a war exhaustion mechanic at minimum.

 

[speckbretzel]

...
And I really want a DLC focused on ground combat. So people that don't want more things about it simply don't purchase the DLC.

This is a very crude logic, because such a DLC wouldn't at all be cosmetic. You had to change the game for all players.
Just make a Mod for groundcombat. There you can make it as complex and disturbing as you like.

Stellaris is all about space and not some HOI in Space.

 

[CastelloNova]

This is a very crude logic, because such a DLC wouldn't at all be cosmetic. You had to change the game for all players.
Just make a Mod for groundcombat. There you can make it as complex and disturbing as you like.

Stellaris is all about space and not some HOI in Space.

No one in this thread, outside of HisHemroids, is asking for anything even close to HoI4. We just want something that resembles the space combat and has more value outside of 'flood them with clones'

 

[HisHemroids]

So you must let the AI design your ships right? Because that's what micro this adds and if that too many things you 'now need to do' then I don't see how you get through the game as is. It's also obvious you haven't read the OP or even looked at the Mockup that was so kindly created otherwise you know that you can't overwhelm a defended planet quickly, simply because each tile can only hold a single army, your 200 armies dont have enough space to fight the 20 defenders at the same time. It's not like in space you have any control besides oh my 200 ships willl now eat your 50.

You also seem to think that every empire is a fanatic militarist or xenophobe because the pops with other ethos are going to have issues with you bombing civilian targets and destroying entire planets. Other empire will call you genocidal ruining diplomacy for over a decade.

And your alternative falls into the trap of micro hell, you're suggesting to a mini game of HoI4 for every planet. So what the hell do you want? More micro or less?

1.) The Ship designer actually is pointless as well since we all fit the same stuff anyway. And the Space warfare is the thing i would want to be worked on first, over any ground war. Because spacewar is more fun by default.

2.) More micro or less?

I want this:

If you add more invovled planetary invasions, i want the full goddamn orcehstra. Not the closet fiddler.

Your mockup is a mockery. It adds zero gameplay value. Its just a layer of stuff inow need to watch at, without getting the satisfaction i get from the front lines shifting in hoi4.
I will still be having 200 troops at the world ready to replace losses and the planet will still succumb to sheer force overmatch. You added nothing. No gameplay value can be extracted from your setup and no amount of echo chambering is going to change that.

I do not need a half assed ground invasion sheme. The game does not need it.

Either give the full Opus, or let it remain a "dump all my troops here" affair.

And if you really take a step back from "defending" your proposal and re-examine it you will come to the conlcusion that indeed, it adds nothing of gamepaly value. An Hoi like, semi RNG based monstrosity like i hinted at is ultimately also raising the same question: Does the game really need that? The answer is: no. not at this time. The whole intergalactic interaction and space war has so much more value to be worked on.




Space 4x planetary invasion is a puzzle yet to be solved in a good way.

One might argue that imperium galactica 2 had the best effort so far. It displayed the colonies as they were built, the attacker had limited ground forces and the games lore supported the whole idea of ground invasions. It was rather engaging as a mini tactical rts.


EaW however demonstrated how quickly you can ruin such a component by half assed refinement and retarded design decitions.


Star drive made it clear that abstraction only does its job when you actually abstract. Its half assed attempt at displaying a planetary invasion with a few units exchanging fire was laughable.

MoO2 probably had the nicest abstract cobmat to be had: pixel people gunning each other down after the die was cast.



So you see: Neither you, paradox or me are the first people having to think about it.
I think you would do good to take a braoder look at how this vexing topic has been handled so far.
Never forget: an involved ground combat component will always distract from the grander picture, which is empire management and deployment.

So you have to make it good or simply leave it as a quick affair to get over with.


I certainly prefer quick and simple over half measures.

 

[CastelloNova]

1.) The Ship designer actually is pointless as well since we all fit the same stuff anyway.

This really kills any credibility you have for arguing against this. Seriously the ship designer is pointless?

And the Space warfare is the thing i would want to be worked on first, over any ground war. Because spacewar is more fun by default.

As has been stated multiple times in this thread, once half an hour before you replied, that based on the size of updates in stellaris thus far the most reasonable expectation is a fleet rework would also be accompanied by a ground rework and most likely even more then that.

Your mockup is a mockery. It adds zero gameplay value. Its just a layer of stuff inow need to watch at, without getting the satisfaction i get from the front lines shifting in hoi4.
I will still be having 200 troops at the world ready to replace losses and the planet will still succumb to sheer force overmatch. You added nothing. No gameplay value can be extracted from your setup and no amount of echo chambering is going to change that.

Once again proving you have neither read the OP or looked at the mock up. I'm going to bold this so you answer it. WHAT SPECIFICALLY DO YOU NEED TO WATCH? What in this system is taking up your attention so much?

With this system we get just as much gameplay value as space battles. Dead Stop. You get to desing your armies like you design ships and the you engage in a fight with them just like ships. theres no layer of tactics you have direct control over in the entire game.

As for grinding through with 200 armies go for it. You better have a strong fleet to guard 200 armies worth of resources while they land one by one otherwise there goes your armies. and if you do dedicate most of your fleet well look at all your world open to attacks by smaller but more numerous strike fleets.

If you add more invovled planetary invasions, i want the full goddamn orcehstra. Not the closet fiddler.

Either give the full Opus, or let it remain a "dump all my troops here" affair.



Never forget: an involved ground combat component will always distract from the grander picture, which is empire management and deployment.

I'm sorry I am incapable of taking you seriously when you flip flop from one paragraph to the next every single post, you want a minigame of HoI4 but see any form of involved ground mechanic as a distraction. Seriously stop trolling and get out or figure out what you're trying to say.

 

[Larknok1]

I'd like to offer just three simple points, of which I think you could iron out some of the problems involved with such a system.

----

1) There is no reason tile blockers should prevent armies from passing.

Implementation explanation: There is no need to make the task more difficult on the attack AI.

Lore explanation: Tile blockers are meant to make it difficult for settlement. Space armies should have no problem climbing a mountain, walking through territory with a few scary predators, across algae beds, or around volcanoes. Real armies do as much, and these are sci-fi armies we're talking about.

----

2) Armies should be able to beach-head wherever, and armies should be able to walk directly from one edge to the opposite edge (implying a spherical geometry.)

Implementation explanation: If the worry was that the enemy would be able to encircle your capital quickly, this is just as true for border landings. After all, you can put your capital near the border.

Lore explanation: As long as the land isn't shielded, planets are spherical and armies can land anywhere. Read the Red Rising Trilogy's Iron Rains.

----

3) There should be a risk to fleet strength involved with staying in orbit around a planet for longer. That is: planets should, as long as their fortifications remain strong and the planet remains uncaptured -- they should shoot back.

Implementation explanation: At the moment, there is no meaningful way to come back from a war without a fleet, and this is just because fleets are the only offensive unit and fleets are the only thing that can destroy fleets. The first is acceptable and makes sense. The second isn't, and harms gameplay, making long, drawn out wars feel pointless.

Essentially: there is no meaningful gain to be had from successfully defending a planet. Just less loss. This is a problem for game design.

Lore explanation: There doesn't seem to be any reason planets wouldn't have an arbitrary number of planetary defense cannons, surface-to-space howitzers capable of blowing up ships in orbit.

Implementation Concerns: I think the simplest manner of doing this is simply the AI generating a number of space howitzers proportionate to the planet's fortification capacity, and randomly placing them on tiles with pops. When an invading army takes the tile, the space howitzer is destroyed. Sufficient orbital bombardment on un-shielded planets can take out howitzers once fortification reaches 0.

 

[LastLeviathan]

I'd like to offer just three simple points, of which I think you could iron out some of the problems involved with such a system.

----

1) There is no reason tile blockers should prevent armies from passing.

Implementation explanation: There is no need to make the task more difficult on the attack AI.

Lore explanation: Tile blockers are meant to make it difficult for settlement. Space armies should have no problem climbing a mountain, walking through territory with a few scary predators, across algae beds, or around volcanoes. Real armies do as much, and these are sci-fi armies we're talking about.

----

2) Armies should be able to beach-head wherever, and armies should be able to walk directly from one edge to the opposite edge (implying a spherical geometry.)

Implementation explanation: If the worry was that the enemy would be able to encircle your capital quickly, this is just as true for border landings. After all, you can put your capital near the border.

Lore explanation: As long as the land isn't shielded, planets are spherical and armies can land anywhere. Read the Red Rising Trilogy's Iron Rains.

----

3) There should be a risk to fleet strength involved with staying in orbit around a planet for longer. That is: planets should, as long as their fortifications remain strong and the planet remains uncaptured -- they should shoot back.

Implementation explanation: At the moment, there is no meaningful way to come back from a war without a fleet, and this is just because fleets are the only offensive unit and fleets are the only thing that can destroy fleets. The first is acceptable and makes sense. The second isn't, and harms gameplay, making long, drawn out wars feel pointless.

Essentially: there is no meaningful gain to be had from successfully defending a planet. Just less loss. This is a problem for game design.

Lore explanation: There doesn't seem to be any reason planets wouldn't have an arbitrary number of planetary defense cannons, surface-to-space howitzers capable of blowing up ships in orbit.

Implementation Concerns: I think the simplest manner of doing this is simply the AI generating a number of space howitzers proportionate to the planet's fortification capacity, and randomly placing them on tiles with pops. When an invading army takes the tile, the space howitzer is destroyed. Sufficient orbital bombardment on un-shielded planets can take out a few howitzers automatically as well.

I agree with all your points. Honestly the tile blocker thing I didn't put much thought into, and the reasoning makes sense that it shouldn't block anyone. Not to mention if sections are blocked off by several tile blockers, it would mess up the system.

Edit: Perhaps the armies going through tile blockers would simply take small attrition damage.