Ground Combat IS Science Fiction

[Cordane]

I think the major reason why we don't have a marginally realistic planetary invasion/defense setup is that there is No Sense Of Scale, in virtually anything in this game. The defensive armies for a moderately developed planet should number in the millions, if not tens of millions. Assuming any decent level of investment in defense, the defensive "armies" should not be just infantry, but mechanized and armored ground forces, air interdiction forces, and surface-to-orbit space fighters (and SFs should be available much earlier than current).

Fixed defensive armies (ones that cannot transport to another planet) could be built out like multi-tiered space stations, being placed on a tile in a secondary "plane" over the existing production tile. Each army tile or "base" would start off with just the first unit of troops, etc., along with basic fortifications for their equipment - if the base is completely "defeated", then the army would have more difficulty stopping invading forces. But while it's intact, it can have systems installed to help defend the planet. Install surface-to-orbit weapons, with shields and armor similar to military ships (protects the weapons and the troops). Add VTOL transports for extended range from base for the army to respond to invasion forces (e.g., a Tier 0 "empty" transport slot would only be able to immediately defend the next tile over, while a Tier 3 would cover the entire planet (even 25 tiles) from one corner, allowing more armies to immediately respond to any landing). Add space fighter booster launchers for pre-bombardment defense support, or aero-fighter hangars to start invader casualties during the insertion phase (bombardment fleet carriers can have their hangar craft run counter-interdiction to keep losses down here). Until you can build the larger bases, each army would have to establish their own base on a separate planetary tile.

What do you do with tenant assault armies? One possibility is that assault armies are based on a given planet, using the same type of bases as defensive armies, but with a larger army slot required to account for the transport launch facilities and/or logistics stockpiles. Assault armies can re-base to another planet, especially if you're training them on an academy planet, with the re-basing taking a number of months and requiring a compliant base on the new planet. They can also bivouac to another planet in a defensive role, putting down a temporary base, with (at first) minimal counter-attack fortifications and supporting installations - advanced technologies and additional home-base modules would allow for transporting more extensive facilities (possibly including defensive S2O weapons) through space.

Invading assault armies use similar systems to attack a planet. First is the initial "beachhead" phase, where the first tiles are attacked (default to the least defended - fortifications and aero-transportable armies elsewhere on the planet). Once those bases are defeated, the invasion force establishes their bivouacs and starts bringing in additional forces that launch out attacks like a defensive army aero-transports to support other tiles (or even counter-attack the bivouacs). Assault armies can even upgrade their bivouacs to include police forces that are more accomplished at pacifying occupied planets without resorting to overly aggressive tactics (i.e., less discontent during occupation). If a given bivouac isn't big enough to support the number of armies you want planet side, you will probably have to do another landing under fire or you might be able to route them through the initial bivouac (takes longer but safer).

How much should these armies and bases cost? The different sizes of military ships and (modded?) stations set a decent standard for the improved bases, so the army would cost probably close to what it does now, but with a fully kitted-out Tier 1 base costing probably the same as a comparably equipped Corvette or Destroyer and going up from there. But a Tier 1 base can take more than one defensive army and higher-level bases taking even more. I would probably set up some standard base designs, but I would want to avoid too strict of an upgrade path, to allow for some of the individualized improvements (e.g., maybe move the planetary shields or military academies here). I admit I haven't really used the army attachments, so I can't speak to how my modules would compare to attachments in pretty much any way.

Would it be easier to start the game with "armies" that are closer to Earth/human army divisions (approximately 10-20,000 human-like soldiers)? And then have either a consolidation unit (combine similar type/size units) or a larger starting unit like a "corps" (several divisions, 30-60,000 soldiers) or even an actual "army" (multiple corps, 100-150K), for ease of management? The smaller assault units would likely fit into one Colony Ship-size vessel (once they're appropriately sized), with larger units taking more vessels or even bigger ones.

Bombardment fleet ships could include accessory modules to improve their bombardment effectiveness with their regular weapons, or possibly be outfitted extensively with bombardment-class weapons. Pure bombardment ships would be well suited to that duty, allowing open-space fleets to move quickly onto other targets, but might be ill prepared to defend against a counter attack without an escort fleet.

That's all I've got for now - I apologize for the infodump. Please let me know if you have any counter ideas, and I'll see if I have anything more on this subject later.

 

[TheArchduke]

If the current technological progression is any hint of the things to come, a dedicated space fleet with weaponry could probably atomize Earth into the Stone Age in mere seconds. Even now we can easily destroy our planet over and over.

The reason why we have any sort of ground combat in Scifi is that it is more interesting from a dramatic and cinematic viewpoint. In a dedicated real war (not guerilla actions) the one with the bigger airforce is at a massive advantage.

I for one think that the current approach in Stellaris is actually semi-decent, although I would just prolong the duration of ground combat a bit more.

What I do miss however is the option to build Bulrathi style marine ships which have no weapons but transport troops over to other ships, that is more realistic if you want ground combat in the game. We should have man to man combat but not on planets but in space.

Making the ground combat portion of the game any more micromanagey is a bad, bad idea and only sounds good on paper.

My 2 cents.

 

[Aotrs Commander]

If the current technological progression is any hint of the things to come, a dedicated space fleet with weaponry could probably atomize Earth into the Stone Age in mere seconds. Even now we can easily destroy our planet over and over.

The reason why we have any sort of ground combat in Scifi is that it is more interesting from a dramatic and cinematic viewpoint. In a dedicated real war (not guerilla actions) the one with the bigger airforce is at a massive advantage.

You still can't capture anything without ground troops. "Do what we say or we'll raze the planet" only goes so far (and even less if you happen to be morally opposed to that sort of thing). You have to keep your starships in order permenantly, for one, and at some point, someone is going to call your bluff, at which point you have to destroy the thing you're trying to capture or you've made an empty threat.

A starfleet backed by a large (but not necessarily ludicrously large) ground force which captures all the strategic infrastructure is a much more feasible way to capture a planet. With the assumption being, by the time the starships have helped pick off all the major enemy troop concentrations (i.e in the Stellaris abstraction, you have "won" the battle), your dudea will have nicely fortified all the important bits to retain control until cultural sway eventually has the world pretty much under your thumb or whatever.

Otherwise, if you say relatively small numbers of ground forces can't do that, your ground forces need to be significantly larger than... Pretty much any space fleet seen in popular scifi and probably in most scifi, requring the aforementioned tens of millions of troops (and by "troops" I mean, as Cordane says, proper combined arms ground armies), the huge numbers of transports to carry that and a supply commitment to match. And conquering a planet as heavily populated as Earth would likely take decades to hundreds of years of battles and police actions (see: Crusader Kings II, Europa Universalis IV, Victoria II, Hearts of Iron IV...) I don't think anyone really wants to play even a mini-game of any one of those aiming for WC, every time you try and take a planet, even if there's only one opposing nation and permenant war! But in reality the actual time it would take to conquer a planet that thoroughly would't change, regardless of how good your technology is, because that all comes down to the number of physical bodies having to physically go places and physically do things. (Even technology like the Culture would only get you so far in that regard.) As Corane says, scale is important.



So yes, we should be able to raze a planet to an unihabitable tomb world quite easily, but that is the extent of "capturing" a planet a starship fleet alone will be able to do.

 

[Louella]

someone earlier mentioned the possibility of a cap or other limit on the number of armies you can have. I'd disagree with that, based on my post much earlier in this thread, about the nature of most of the ground armies, as being disposable.

Each pop generates 1 army if the planet is invaded, so it might seem reasonable at first, that there would be some kind of ratio - like a cap of 1 or 5 or 10 armies per Pop. Now that'd be OK for some of the army types - the basic defence and assault armies for example, which are recruited from the citizens.

But, most of the army types - clones, robots, droids, xenomorphs, slaves, are all ones that are disposable, and, in the case of robots and droids in particular, could be produced in numbers only limited by the upkeep. They're not recruited from the citizenry, and as such, a limit on their numbers doesn't really make sense to me.

 

[BlackUmbrellas]

If the current technological progression is any hint of the things to come, a dedicated space fleet with weaponry could probably atomize Earth into the Stone Age in mere seconds. Even now we can easily destroy our planet over and over.

Please tell me you're not quoting that tired old "we have enough nukes to eliminate all life on the planet" factoid- it's bunk. Even some quick research on google can turn up some very nice examinations on why that's such an exaggeration.

 

[TheArchduke]

Please tell me you're not quoting that tired old "we have enough nukes to eliminate all life on the planet" factoid- it's bunk. Even some quick research on google can turn up some very nice examinations on why that's such an exaggeration.

For all life to be eliminated we would need to cover every square inch. Not really feasible

What I did propose however, that if and that is all speculation we could advance tech (propulsion and especially energy production - which is the main source of devastating weaponry nowadays, by an instant release) sufficiently to leave the Solar System, I am pretty sure our bomb technology would be a lot more scary and enable us to make the world inhabitable for humans. I don´t care about "life" itself sorry, but "our" life.

You still can't capture anything without ground troops. "Do what we say or we'll raze the planet" only goes so far (and even less if you happen to be morally opposed to that sort of thing). You have to keep your starships in order permenantly, for one, and at some point, someone is going to call your bluff, at which point you have to destroy the thing you're trying to capture or you've made an empty threat.

A starfleet backed by a large (but not necessarily ludicrously large) ground force which captures all the strategic infrastructure is a much more feasible way to capture a planet. With the assumption being, by the time the starships have helped pick off all the major enemy troop concentrations (i.e in the Stellaris abstraction, you have "won" the battle), your dudea will have nicely fortified all the important bits to retain control until cultural sway eventually has the world pretty much under your thumb or whatever.

Otherwise, if you say relatively small numbers of ground forces can't do that, your ground forces need to be significantly larger than... Pretty much any space fleet seen in popular scifi and probably in most scifi, requring the aforementioned tens of millions of troops (and by "troops" I mean, as Cordane says, proper combined arms ground armies), the huge numbers of transports to carry that and a supply commitment to match. And conquering a planet as heavily populated as Earth would likely take decades to hundreds of years of battles and police actions (see: Crusader Kings II, Europa Universalis IV, Victoria II, Hearts of Iron IV...) I don't think anyone really wants to play even a mini-game of any one of those aiming for WC, every time you try and take a planet, even if there's only one opposing nation and permenant war! But in reality the actual time it would take to conquer a planet that thoroughly would't change, regardless of how good your technology is, because that all comes down to the number of physical bodies having to physically go places and physically do things. (Even technology like the Culture would only get you so far in that regard.) As Corane says, scale is important.

So yes, we should be able to raze a planet to an unihabitable tomb world quite easily, but that is the extent of "capturing" a planet a starship fleet alone will be able to do.

By that logic Japan wouldn´t have capitulated during WW2.

 

[BlackUmbrellas]

For all life to be eliminated we would need to cover every square inch. Not really feasible

The realistic view is "maybe, given an absolutely optimum spread of our nuclear weapons, maybe we could kill off most of what was on the surface... but the oceans would basically be fine and would eventually repopulate the world", from what I've gathered.

What I did propose however, that if and that is all speculation we could advance tech (propulsion and especially energy production - which is the main source of devastating weaponry nowadays, by an instant release) sufficiently to leave the Solar System, I am pretty sure our bomb technology would be a lot more scary and enable us to make the world inhabitable for humans. I don´t care about "life" itself sorry, but "our" life.

Fair enough.

The game isn't terribly consistent about this, sadly- it tells us that you can create dinosaur-killer impact craters by crashing a ship at full warp into a planet, but allows no mechanical means to take advantage of this.

Ultimately, though, the ability to turn cities into gravel from orbit is irrelevant to actually occupying and controlling a population, for reasons already elaborated on. Just because you can doesn't mean you have the will- and if you're called on it, you either have to carry it out and lose whatever you were interested in controlling or you need to back down.

 

[TheArchduke]

For quite good SciFi in regards to Bombardement I recommend the The Expanse Series which actually touches upon the issue, what if we had FTL flight.

It also does away with the obnoxious progress means peaceful cooperation and Unification on Earth meme.

 

[Almond_Brown]

Buffing defense just means we have to micromanage offensive armies more.

The scope of this game justifies sidelining ground combat in favor of naval combat. I can't wait for the day that we don't even have to build armies.

Buildings Armies is easy. Equipping your Armies, now that is some serious tedium right there. Ouch X alot.

 

[Almond_Brown]

There is a game out (name escapes me) that has a quasi mini-game for the Invasion phase. You land troops, then fight via Turns, that allow movement via (squares/hexes) per troop element, and allows for the always exciting "pew pew", Win or Lose via troop tech and some spicey, as always, RNG.

At first glance it looks Cool, but quickly becomes such a time hogging chore that it ultimately results in a player ALWAYS hitting the auto-resolve button for Ground battles and moving on to the next planet to be annexed.

Unless the Dev decide to make a Game (Ground Battle) inside Stellaris it is unlikely any solution short of that will suffice. Given that a "Game inside a Game" idea will not fly, further discussion or argumentation is simply pointless. But this is the Internet after all.

 

[Fawks]

In a dedicated real war (not guerilla actions) the one with the bigger airforce is at a massive advantage.

Guerilla warfare *is* warfare. If your idea of a "real war" does not include the "hold the territory you have taken" part then you aren't really imagining a "real war," you're imagining an action movie. In modern times, the fighting doesn't even really start in earnest until one side has beaten the other's standing army (this part is usually resolved in hours now).

 

[Aotrs Commander]

By that logic Japan wouldn´t have capitulated during WW2.

Japan surrendered. It was not conquered. There is a difference.

(Without knowing how Heart of Iron mechanics work to make the exact anaology, by the other game's standards, that last attack pushed them to 100% warscore and the Allies forced them to peace out or something. Heck, by Stellaris standards, that was clearly the allies winning a defensive war.)

And again, it is worth noting that the tacit threat was "surrender or we'll raze the country" because the Allies were not interested in CAPTURING Japan.

Like I said, you can bomb something back into the stone age with increasing ease with advanced technology, but that means absolutely diddly-squat in terms of actually controlling territory. There is, at the end of the day, simply no substitute for having to send ground troops in.

(Note that the hoped-for reliance on nothing but air power did not, in fact work in the wars fought by the West in wars subsequent to WW2. You can't win a war without boots on the ground, and any nation (or space power) that refuses to learn from history is goong to just keep making the smae mistakes.)

So yeah, you ought to be able to wage a war of extermination where you simply bomb enemy planets to oblivion, but in doing so... You can't then have the planets you destroy. (And likely everyone else ought to gang up and come and wipe you out if you do it very much.)

At the very best, if you force a psychological surrender, you're only going to keep control exactly as long as you keep your gun trained on them.

In a dedicated real war (not guerilla actions) the one with the bigger airforce is at a massive advantage.

Yes. But that advantage does not equal automatic victory. Or even victory at all.



(In fact a point to make is bombing people back to the stone age more or less garentees you have absolutely no control over the populace BECAUSE there are no longer any significant points to attack. An example, indeed, is how the US were unable to stop the supplies routes in Vietnam because a B-52 is not a counter to a man on a bicycle. That pretty much commits you having to send chaps in to find the other chaps, unless you have, in fact destroyed everything to thre point of unihabitablity; but once again, you can't them take that for yourself.)

 

[Dalinski]

The fundamental problem with more in-depth ground or space battles is that it will vastly increase the required micromanagement for optimal play. Stellaris is meant to be about macromanagement and very high-level decision making, which will all be lost if every single space battle and planetary invasion requires personal attention.

I'd rather the interesting decisions be about strategy, not tactics, given that this is meant to be a grand strategy game. Warfare should be made more interesting by making the strategic level more interesting (such as by adding a meaningful logistics system).

There could be no more pressing matter in the history of your nation than to mull over both the ground and solar defence of your own or the enemies capital planet or industrial primus or grain super yield nutrient focal or gaia super populous jack of all trades core world.

 

[TheArchduke]

Japan surrendered. It was not conquered. There is a difference.

You seem under the illusion that at that moment Japan or Germany would have any say in the matter. The U.S. could have easily made them client states or states of the U.S. quite easily. Public opinion was not in favour of going easy on them.

 

[Kinkness]

You seem under the illusion that at that moment Japan or Germany would have any say in the matter. The U.S. could have easily made them client states or states of the U.S. quite easily. Public opinion was not in favour of going easy on them.

Uhh not to break away from the topic, but no America couldn't have "easily made them into a client state" or any part of the United States. The fact of this, is that Great Britain, France, and other Allied countries were forced to give up the colonies, and quasi states they controlled. Germany was forced to give back land they conquiered (of course they lost the war, but still), and Everything was set back to the "status quo" of how the world was before the war, minus all the extra nations that popped up due to the Allies giving up a mass amount of land in India, Africa, Middle East, and parts of South America.

 

[mudcrabmerchant]

There could be no more pressing matter in the history of your nation than to mull over both the ground and solar defence of your own or the enemies capital planet or industrial primus or grain super yield nutrient focal or gaia super populous jack of all trades core world.

You could also say that there is no more pressing matter for the USA in Vicky II than the assassination of Abraham Lincoln (at the time it occurred), but there are no mechanics to allow you to stop John Wilkes booth via a short action sequence.

That's an extreme example, but the point is that important things are left out of a game based on the scale. Yes, the land battle for your capital world is important, but that importance is already represented in game by the significant warscore loss or gain for losing or taking a capital world. There is no need to personally oversee the details of each battle.

Uhh not to break away from the topic, but no America couldn't have "easily made them into a client state" or any part of the United States. The fact of this, is that Great Britain, France, and other Allied countries were forced to give up the colonies, and quasi states they controlled. Germany was forced to give back land they conquiered (of course they lost the war, but still), and Everything was set back to the "status quo" of how the world was before the war, minus all the extra nations that popped up due to the Allies giving up a mass amount of land in India, Africa, Middle East, and parts of South America.

Japan WAS our client state for the better part of a decade after we won the war. However, I think you and the other guy are just disagreeing over which definition of "conquer" to use. Japan and Germany both ultimately surrendered unconditionally, which is the most complete defeat you can suffer short of total annihilation.

Like I said, you can bomb something back into the stone age with increasing ease with advanced technology, but that means absolutely diddly-squat in terms of actually controlling territory. There is, at the end of the day, simply no substitute for having to send ground troops in.
...
So yeah, you ought to be able to wage a war of extermination where you simply bomb enemy planets to oblivion, but in doing so... You can't then have the planets you destroy. (And likely everyone else ought to gang up and come and wipe you out if you do it very much.)

The thing is that in Stellaris, very often we would prefer to annihilate all pops on the planet, even if it meant destroying all tile improvements. At least for militarist empires, there is 0 concern for the civilian populace, which is the main reason air superiority does not automatically ensure victory in modern wars.

If the USA was evil enough to systematically murder entire cities from the air, there wouldn't be any non-nuclear country in the world that we couldn't conquer and pacify. We would just vaporize city after city until the rest decided it wasn't worth it to fight on. Now, the US isn't that evil, but you certainly can be that evil in Stellaris.

 

[BlackUmbrellas]

If the USA was evil enough to systematically murder entire cities from the air, there wouldn't be any non-nuclear country in the world that we couldn't conquer and pacify. We would just vaporize city after city until the rest decided it wasn't worth it to fight on. Now, the US isn't that evil, but you certainly can be that evil in Stellaris.

If there's one thing the last 15 (going on 16) years have shown, it's that "bomb them into dust" doesn't actually work as a means of destroying resistance.

 

[TheArchduke]

Uhh not to break away from the topic, but no America couldn't have "easily made them into a client state" or any part of the United States. The fact of this, is that Great Britain, France, and other Allied countries were forced to give up the colonies, and quasi states they controlled. Germany was forced to give back land they conquiered (of course they lost the war, but still), and Everything was set back to the "status quo" of how the world was before the war, minus all the extra nations that popped up due to the Allies giving up a mass amount of land in India, Africa, Middle East, and parts of South America.

Decolonization was pretty much part of the plan for the U.S. to ensure that those guys were small and willing allies without any delusions of grandeur anymore (imo a bad idea).

Status Quo pre war was a conscious decision and not something that had to be done. The Soviet Union very happily redraw the map big time on the other side. The U.S. could easily have done the same in 1945.

 

[Aotrs Commander]

If there's one thing the last 15 (going on 16) years have shown, it's that "bomb them into dust" doesn't actually work as a means of destroying resistance.

And further back than that, even. Heck, WW2 itself proved that (on both sides of the conflict) that bombing alone could not break a country, even when specifically targeting civilians: didn;t work for the Germans against Britian, and it didn't work for the British against Germany.

(Japan was pretty much already beaten by the point the US dropped the bombs; a land battle would have been messy, but a foregone conclusion.)

 

[mudcrabmerchant]

If there's one thing the last 15 (going on 16) years have shown, it's that "bomb them into dust" doesn't actually work as a means of destroying resistance.

Because we don't actually bomb people into dust. Thankfully, even our most crazed warhawks don't actually believe in systematic mass murder as a method of pacification, but if they did, they would be more than capable of doing it (bombs and bomb targeting have advanced a lot since WWII).

But a militarist or collectivist empire in Stellaris DOES view systematic mass murder as a perfectly acceptable political tool, and we're already capable of doing this in war via prolonged bombardment.