Ground force equipment

[Yenzen]

Yea, but defences are immobile. Making them bigger just presents even larger target. Also to deflect the asteroid you would have to posses some kind of presence in the space which isn't the case when hostile fleet is upon you.

The hostile fleet would stay out of range of planetary weapons.

You would have to have all network of bunkers to cover even 1/6th of any planet. Cone of fire ain't everything, you need redundancies and firepower. Not being mobile is hardly an advantage. Size as well.

True on the latter, but if you can afford 3 x 100 laser cannons on your mobile fleets, are 20 super-powered, shield-protected, heavily plated, kinetic-anti-missile having ground lasers out of the question for your homeworld with 60% of your total population, especially considering that it's much easier to power them without the mass/energy constraints of a mobile platform? Keep in mind that the planet also rotates.[/quote]

The best comparison is completely modern navy where we have precision weapons and no land fortifications exist to counter them. The best we have are ground-water or air-water ASM missiles which are actually transported on trucks and aircraft precisely to be mobile. No one even tries to withstand return fire from a ship, you shot what you've got and then run.

Thing is, though, that we only really have missile weapons that prose a real threat to ships. Imagine that we invent long ranged range and very powerful mass-driver kinetic weapons or lasers, which can be turned effectively both at aircraft, missiles and ships and mount them on towers. An island country with enough of these on high towers with 500km range would be very scary and costly to start operations against.

At the same thing, instead of simply being stationary and well-shielded from fleet weaponry, they could also be made to be somewhat mobile.

 

[vyshan]

Ground troops has been here by rejected by the organization of hard-ass fans of hard scifi, since stellaris is clearly going to be a hard scifi(even though the devs said it will be a soft scifi game inspired by Star Trek and other scifi series). We hereby demand that if there are ground troops that they be removed for not being realistic enough. If paradox can't write a 50 page paper how it will work that will be published in numerous scientific journals then it is not a hard enough for the clearly hard sci-fi that is Stellaris.


^That was sarcasm btw

 

[Remoria]

Vyshan if you actually read the thread you'd note we don't object to their presence in the game and know they will be there this started as a debate trying to explain why it is a dumb idea IRL, no one has asked they remove them from the game, scifi fun trumps realism for gameplay purposes.

I apologize that came out way more hostile than I intended it I'm not sure how to reword it but that was meant to be fairly tongue in cheek

 

[Reverend Belial]

Ground troops has been here by rejected by the organization of hard-ass fans of hard scifi, since stellaris is clearly going to be a hard scifi(even though the devs said it will be a soft scifi game inspired by Star Trek and other scifi series). We hereby demand that if there are ground troops that they be removed for not being realistic enough. If paradox can't write a 50 page paper how it will work that will be published in numerous scientific journals then it is not a hard enough for the clearly hard sci-fi that is Stellaris.


^That was sarcasm btw

"Cool factor" will always be a thing. Frankly I'd probably steer clear of this game if ground forces WEREN'T a thing, and the entire concept of actual soldiers becoming obsolete is pretty much any circumstance is just frankly idiotic.

Even in the actual future our wars will almost certainly be fought with boots on the ground, even if for no other reason than the fact that we will likely have a psychological need for infantry.

I was going to put a moderately well crafted rebuttal agains the people who claim that fleets beat everything, but I'm running on no sleep and really the entire idea of it makes me so irrationally angry that I can't keep a coherent thought in my head more than a few seconds.

 

[Yenzen]

Vyshan if you actually read the thread you'd note we don't object to their presence in the game and know they will be there this started as a debate trying to explain why it is a dumb idea IRL, no one has asked they remove them from the game, scifi fun trumps realism for gameplay purposes.

Well, they make sense if you want actual control of the planet and its infrastructure, not just pacify the population with fear of orbital bombardment and be able to use their well-being as a bargaining chip against hostile empires. A non-militant, non-xenophobic race might also feel queasy about indiscriminate bombing major population centers, as many governments on Earth do today.

I like how they handle it in the Crest of the Stars universe, where one of the factions, the "Empire" just... really does not care much about what goes on planetside. They pose a monopoly on anything related to interstellar travel though, including trade, and their Nobility who has the planets as fief's make money taxing the trade. Anything but secession against the Empire is allowed. Generally the population itself decides on a form of government and sends a representative to the Empire and consults with the noble who controls the system. The noble can veto stuff, but rarely bothers to. All in all, after a planet in conquered, there can be some civil anger, but it's kind of subdued by the fact that nothing much changes for them.

Edit: I just remembered this series had the example of planetary defenses being an actual dangerous thing. One of the main character's father became a noble in the Empire by negotiating shutting down their planetary defenses (which would eventually be overcome, mind you) in exchange for becoming the noble in charge of the planet instead of the Empire sending someone to do it.

 

[stumason]

Yeah, I suppose that Japan, after being prepared to fight US to the last men, women and child, even with sharp sticks if needed, surrendered after the use of atom bombs by pure accident.

Yeah, after the 4 years of bitter warfare which enabled the US to even get close enough to launch the attacks in the first place.... And it is the only example you can cite.

You mean all those conflicts where nuclear weapons WASN'T used?

Exactly - that was my point, well done for noticing .. Despite nuclear weapons being available and despite an overwhelming tech and air superiority , ground forces were required.

 

[REDDQ]

The hostile fleet would stay out of range of planetary weapons.

And what planet's forces are gonna to do? If hostile fleet is close enough it most likely means their ships are either dead of far away. And how they gonna deflect the asteroid without being harrased? The further away from the planet, the worse accuracy planetary defence would have.

True on the latter, but if you can afford 3 x 100 laser cannons on your mobile fleets, are 20 super-powered, shield-protected, heavily plated, kinetic-anti-missile having ground lasers out of the question for your homeworld with 60% of your total population, especially considering that it's much easier to power them without the mass/energy constraints of a mobile platform? Keep in mind that the planet also rotates.

What planet's rotation has to do with anything?

Also fleet can focus its fire on one side of the planet, planetary defence, by definition, would have to be spread out. Assumption that costs of one would outweigh the cost of he other is questionable at best. Also, let's have in mind that planet with defences most likely had a fleet on its own which had to be maintained as well.

Thing is, though, that we only really have missile weapons that prose a real threat to ships. Imagine that we invent long ranged range and very powerful mass-driver kinetic weapons or lasers, which can be turned effectively both at aircraft, missiles and ships and mount them on towers. An island country with enough of these on high towers with 500km range would be very scary and costly to start operations against.

At the same thing, instead of simply being stationary and well-shielded from fleet weaponry, they could also be made to be somewhat mobile.

Weapons like that are in development... to be mounted on ships actually. No one wants to developed that costly weapon to just sit in a tower all the time. It invites trouble, always.

Planetary weapons being mobile kind of defeats the argument of them being well shielded and with extreme supply of power.

 

[Reverend Belial]

Exactly - that was my point, well done for noticing .. Despite nuclear weapons being available and despite an overwhelming tech and air superiority , ground forces were required.

Assuming it would have even made a difference anyway. I can certainly imagine scenarios where a nuclear bomb (or equivalent) would end up galvanizing the defenders rather than terrifying them for whatever reason (religious fervor "They use a weapon of evil! Now they surely must be destroyed!", pride "They DARE try to decimate us!?", or just plain trying to go out with a bang "Well if they're gonna kill us anyway, we may as well take as many of them down with us as we can!").

 

[Yenzen]

And what planet's forces are gonna to do? If hostile fleet is close enough it most likely means their ships are either dead of far away. And how they gonna deflect the asteroid without being harrased? The further away from the planet, the worse accuracy planetary defence would have.

They will deflect the asteroid with their normal planetary defenses, if the fleet tries to harass them, the harassing fleet is a secondary target. Note that a specifically useful asteroid needs to be selected, it needs to have a close enough orbit that it can be redirected and hit within at least months, and that accelerating one that is large enough to threaten a planet is probably difficult even with normal transport systems.

The most dangerous idea is of course a warp race accelerating stuff at planets at way above light speed. I have no idea what the natural response to that would be.

What planet's rotation has to do with anything?

Also fleet can focus its fire on one side of the planet, planetary defence, by definition, would have to be spread out. Assumption that costs of one would outweigh the cost of he other is questionable at best. Also, let's have in mind that planet with defences most likely had a fleet on its own which had to be maintained as well.

It'll have to be spread out, but if you can't destroy it in less than an hour, a new system will come in range unless the fleet is orbiting with the planet and only plans to strike area of it.

Weapons like that are in development... to be mounted on ships actually. No one wants to developed that costly weapon to just sit in a tower all the time. It invites trouble, always.

Planetary weapons being mobile kind of defeats the argument of them being well shielded and with extreme supply of power.

It's hard to tell with this level of technology. What if the "planetary defense" is a system consisting of rings suspended 10km above the planet surface, which the space cannons run along?

 

[REDDQ]

Yeah, after the 4 years of bitter warfare which enabled the US to even get close enough to launch the attacks in the first place.... And it is the only example you can cite.

Exactly - that was my point, well done for noticing .. Despite nuclear weapons being available and despite an overwhelming tech and air superiority , ground forces were required.

No, it is the only example YOU can cite. The other guy said overwhelming show of force can win you a war, and he was right. It happened. THE ONLY argument you can raise would be if someone used nuclear weapons and the war would continue... which never happened and thus your argument is doomed. USA used nuclear bombs because the costs of invading mainland Japan would be gigantic. Imagine what would happen if you would have to conquer the whole planet. On the ground. Sending ground troops would be actually way more idiotic.

 

[stumason]

Really because we listed a half dozen wars won either via air or naval actions without the need for land troops that way off the tops of our heads earlier in this thread but do continue to tell us about the lack of historical precedents.....

I have yet to see any examples where a war has been won with air power alone - there are none.

And umm we don't require constant course corrections when were launching probes. For the record your cellphone has more computing power than the computers we used to make the lunar landings calculations. That's one of the beauties of orbital mechanics, account for the masses acting upon a body via gravity and your projectile goes precisely where its intended.

Actually, you do. The fact you don't think they do belays your ignorance. The probe that shot by Pluto required many small corrections to get it's flyby right and you reckon you can land a projectile of the same size, lobbed almost 10 times the distance, to within metres of it's intended target on a planetary surface?

Read - http://phys.org/news/2015-07-horizons-spacecraft-pluto.html .. many hazards in space

Landing troops because you cant get through the defenses with kinetic weapons..... how does this even remotely make sense to anyone are my troops just going to teleport down to the surface with their weapons and the physically walk through these epic invincible shields that don't apparently stop people from walking through them but stop every kind of weapon indefinitely?

Maybe shields don't work against a slow moving solid object? Maybe the shields don't work when close to the ground? Maybe shields don't work against solid objects at all? Maybe you need to land troops because doing so is far easier than having your ships in orbit take a pounding while they fire on the planet?

You're not really thinking outside the box here - in fact, you're stuck in your own little paradigm trying to impose that on a future where you have no idea how anything works.

As for deflecting asteroids.... Why am I shooting you with asteroids am I really trying to remove the planet? I could fire a 10kg bolt (Which for the record has a whopping volume of 32 cubic inches,) and it would glass a city the size of new york....... an asteroid accelerated to these speeds isn't going to leave a planet behind and honestly it'd be a pain in the ass to accelerate it in the first place.

Never said anything about asteroids - I think the idea is banal and boring. Even if I was a Space Emperor and I could fling asteroids, I wouldn't. Where's the fun in that? As you said, it would pretty much chew up everything down there anyway.

And yet again were relying on the erroneous idea that you can damage the fleet what weapon do you think your using to strike back at these distances?

The same weapon you're using to strike at these distances..... Duh... If your lasers can hit me, my lasers can hit you. Simples.

 

[Remoria]

Assuming it would have even made a difference anyway. I can certainly imagine scenarios where a nuclear bomb (or equivalent) would end up galvanizing the defenders rather than terrifying them for whatever reason (religious fervor "They use a weapon of evil! Now they surely must be destroyed!", pride "They DARE try to decimate us!?", or just plain trying to go out with a bang "Well if they're gonna kill us anyway, we may as well take as many of them down with us as we can!").

Logic like that falls flat though when you involve the defenders families, your giving them two options surrender, and you and your loved ones live or resist and everyone you care about dies. In a scenario where the one sides goal is to actually exterminate you yeah it works, but if they want to exterminate you in the first place why are they bothering with anything but glassing the planet?

 

[REDDQ]

Ground troops has been here by rejected by the organization of hard-ass fans of hard scifi, since stellaris is clearly going to be a hard scifi(even though the devs said it will be a soft scifi game inspired by Star Trek and other scifi series). We hereby demand that if there are ground troops that they be removed for not being realistic enough. If paradox can't write a 50 page paper how it will work that will be published in numerous scientific journals then it is not a hard enough for the clearly hard sci-fi that is Stellaris.
^That was sarcasm btw

Funny thing you should mention Star Trek. No ground troops there, everything is related to fleets.

 

[Yenzen]

Funny thing you should mention Star Trek. No ground troops there, everything is related to fleets.

Mass Effect had ground combat. So do many other Sci-Fi universes.

But this isn't Star Trek. Or Mass Effect. Comparing it to other mediums make no sense.

This has become a discussion of what sort of invasion methods a FTL species would use realistically. Stellaris is not realistic, and it has been decided that ground invasion is a thing.

 

[Reverend Belial]

Logic like that falls flat though when you involve the defenders families, your giving them two options surrender, and you and your loved ones live or resist and everyone you care about dies. In a scenario where the one sides goal is to actually exterminate you yeah it works, but if they want to exterminate you in the first place why are they bothering with anything but glassing the planet?

It doesn't mean that they ACTUALLY want to exterminate you, but that that would be the popular perception. You tend to see your enemy as being untrustworthy and likely barbaric, so how do you know that their offer of surrender is sincere or even that life under their rule would be preferable to death? They did after all just nuke your home city from orbit, so how good of guys can they really be? That chance increases when you factor in an alien race. Those guys probably plan to probe us, or turn us into some kind of nutrient paste, or lay eggs in us. Maybe it would be better to just die fighting.


I'm not saying that it would be a guarantee that that event would happen, I'm just saying that it would absolutely not be a guarantee that defenders would always pick surrender as their best option.

 

[Yenzen]

It doesn't mean that they ACTUALLY want to exterminate you, but that that would be the popular perception. You tend to see your enemy as being untrustworthy and likely barbaric, so how do you know that their offer of surrender is sincere or even that life under their rule would be preferable to death? They did after all just nuke your home city from orbit, so how good of guys can they really be? That chance increases when you factor in an alien race. Those guys probably plan to probe us, or turn us into some kind of nutrient paste, or lay eggs in us. Maybe it would be better to just die fighting.


I'm not saying that it would be a guarantee that that event would happen, I'm just saying that it would absolutely not be a guarantee that defenders would always pick surrender as their best option.

I wonder if Empires that have a lot of species inside it and with non-militant ethos will be more likely to conduct more grueling ground invasions, because planetary bombardment would not be popular at home? Interesting idea that good generals would be more important for the non-"EXTERMINATE THE XENOS" factions.

 

[REDDQ]

They will deflect the asteroid with their normal planetary defenses, if the fleet tries to harass them, the harassing fleet is a secondary target. Note that a specifically useful asteroid needs to be selected, it needs to have a close enough orbit that it can be redirected and hit within at least months, and that accelerating one that is large enough to threaten a planet is probably difficult even with normal transport systems.

The most dangerous idea is of course a warp race accelerating stuff at planets at way above light speed. I have no idea what the natural response to that would be.

How exactly are you gonna deflect the asteroid with planetary defences? You would have to do that with significant time in advance and if the enemy will launch it under that threshold there is nothing you can do. And even if you could destroy it, debris would still inflict a lot of damage.

The best course of action would be always to have big fleet and intercpet the enemy before he does anything. And investing in planetary defences stops you from having even bigger fleet.

It'll have to be spread out, but if you can't destroy it in less than an hour, a new system will come in range unless the fleet is orbiting with the planet and only plans to strike area of it.

Well... yes, exactly. Fleet can keep up with movement of the planet.

It's hard to tell with this level of technology. What if the "planetary defense" is a system consisting of rings suspended 10km above the planet surface, which the space cannons run along?

Orbital defences, imho that is practically the same thing as planetary defences but with easier time aiming at ships. Imagine that falling down on your planet.

 

[stumason]

No, it is the only example YOU can cite. The other guy said overwhelming show of force can win you a war, and he was right. It happened. THE ONLY argument you can raise would be if someone used nuclear weapons and the war would continue... which never happened and thus your argument is doomed. USA used nuclear bombs because the costs of invading mainland Japan would be gigantic. Imagine what would happen if you would have to conquer the whole planet. On the ground. Sending ground troops would be actually way more idiotic.

It is quite simply the only example he can cite of a technologically superior force using airpower (my original stipulations) to win a war without ground troops - and even then, it ignores the 4 years of bitter warfare before hand - if you have others, feel free to supply them.

They used two, out of a stockpile of....two! A third was being assembled but beyond that, they had no more. Had Japan not surrendered, which they had considered, the invasion would have been required as they had no more bombs.

As for the planetary invasion aspect sure, if you don't want any of the planet intact or it's surface being livable, go for the orbital bombardment. I'm not against it in principle, I am all for an Exterminatus when the mood arises. But there will always be a need for Ground troops in other scenarios.

 

[stumason]

The hostile fleet would stay out of range of planetary weapons.

How come planetary weapons have a range and spaceships don't? Cheating a bit there to make your argument...

 

[REDDQ]

Mass Effect had ground combat. So do many other Sci-Fi universes.

But this isn't Star Trek. Or Mass Effect. Comparing it to other mediums make no sense.

This has become a discussion of what sort of invasion methods a FTL species would use realistically. Stellaris is not realistic, and it has been decided that ground invasion is a thing.

Mass Effect had nothing, unless you count Reaper invasion then it would be quite funny comparison

If ground invasion is a sure thing, confirmed by developers, then so be it. It still could mean a lot of things. Not full warfare but, for example, taking control over local institutions.