The purpose of this post is to outline what I see as the major pros and cons of CastelloNova's proposition, and see if anything can be done about the cons.
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The pros first:
Pro #1: Fleshing out the little things in larger-than-life games can and does breathe life into them. It makes game moments more emotionally impactful and gives games a longer lifespan.
Pro #2: His army design screen would vastly reduce the tedium involved with equipping hundreds of armies with hunter-killer drones (or other attachments), or the droll of having to recruit dozens of armies by simply recruiting two or three divisions consisting of several armies.
Pro #3: His ground invasion system provides content for those looking for it, but does not punish players who just want to get along with their empires. (you don't have to watch the combat)
Pro #4: Some of the code and design could be readily borrowed from HoI4 for easier implementation.
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Now the cons:
Con #1: Notwithstanding HoI4 experience and code, this is an entire game mechanic to code and generate artwork for.
Con #2: For such a large investment of development time, this does not meaningfully impact balance, or fix the existing problems with fleetless defensive wars, or offensive grinds.
Con #3: Real planets do not have borders to "beach" at. They are spherical and armies could land or begin an invasion anywhere.
Con #4: Arbitrarily selecting a time-span (15 days) for armies to land could result in planetary invasion taking too long.
Con #5: Attack AI could get bogged down with landing on zones blocked off by tile blockers.
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Addressing the simple cons:
Cons #3, #4, and #5 can be addressed simply and immediately:
Correcting Con #3: Simply allow armies to "beach" at any tile. Allow armies to move directly from one edge of the planet to the opposite edge, simulating spherical geometry.
Correction Con #4: While developing this feature, simply fine-tune the time-span for landing a new army during invasion so the whole planetary invasion process takes the right amount of time.
Correction Con #5: Simply allow soldiers to walk on and past tile blockers. 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.
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Addressing the complex con:
Con #2 is a complicated nut to crack. On page 5 of CastelloNova's thread, I presented a solution:
Anti-Space Howitzers
Here's the basic idea:
At the moment, the following two claims are true:
1) Fleets are the only truly offensive unit.
2) The only effective way of destroying fleets are with fleets.
The first claim is how it will always be and should be.
The second claim is the problem here. It's turning war into a death-ball single battle that decides the fate of the whole war, making defense pointless, and turning offense into a painful grind.
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Anti-Space Howitzers would fit perfectly with CastelloNova's design, and solve Con #2.
In order to avoid a bad implementation of Anti-Space Howitzers, let's examine the possibility of their implementation within CastelloNova's design.
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Topic #1: Existence
Possibility #1) Anti-Space Howitzers could be a defensive unit that you can add to a division and train within armies.
> On this account, they have a specific location on the combat map provided by CastelloNova, and so they can help solve Con #2 to his design.
> A large con to this option is the amount of micro-management it would require.
Possibility #2) Anti-Space Howitzers could be their own unit type, automatically spawned by the AI when an invasion starts, with a number of them proportional to the fortification of the planet.
> This also solves Con #2, as they fit on the combat map.
> A large pro to this option is how little micro-management it would require, while making good use of the already existing system of planetary fortification.
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Topic #2: Effectiveness
Possibility #1) Anti-Space Howitzers could deal targeted, direct damage to orbiting ships.
> This helps to solve Con #2, but has its own problem: this would force attacking players to use only large fleets to minimize overall fleet damage incurred from howitzers.
Possibility #2) Anti-Space Howitzers could deal small AoE damage to all orbiting ships per howitzer.
> This also solves Con #2, and has the pro that it actually punishes large, death-stack orbiting fleets.
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Topic #3: Counter-play
Possibility #1) Anti-Space Howitzers have a chance of being destroyed during bombardment each month, based on the degree of the bombardment. Once an army moves onto a tile with an anti-space howitzer, it is destroyed.
> Simple, default design.
Possibility #2) Possibility 1 + they cannot be destroyed until planetary fortification reaches 0.
> Has the advantage of providing a real, tangible reason to drop a planet's fortifications as fast as possible. Right now, there's almost no advantage to having bombardment policy above light.
Possibility #3) Possibility 2 + planetary shield generators entail that Anti-Space Howitzers can
never be targeted by orbiting fleets. Either the fleet has to bombard the shield generator first, or land armies are the only way to destroy anti-space howitzers.
> Provides a tangible reason to build shield generators: even more fortification for stronger planetary defenses, plus anti-space howitzers can hit orbital targets for effectively much longer.
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Personally, my preferences are:
Topic #1: Possibility #2
Topic #2: Possibility #2
Topic #3: Possibility #3
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This just leaves Con #1.
At this point, you really have to weight the pros of a more in-depth ground invasion system and more balanced defensive wars against development time.
