Preamble:
Ground Combat, Iteration 2.
Basically, everyone agrees that Warfare is a primary aspect of Stellaris (not THE sole primary aspect, but certainly one of them). And most people will agree that it isn't necessaryly Stellaris' strong suit.
Yet, whilst Space Warfare is occasionally lackluster in strategic depth, Ground Warfare is pretty much lackluster to it's very core. And that's the polite way of describing it.
There's many concepts out there dealing with this, even one of my own, albeit that one focussed on the interaction between Space and Ground (in form of explosives raining from the sky).
This time, we'll focus on the actual ground side.
Current State:
Currently, Ground Combat is minimalistic and was likely only implemented to the bare minimum of what was needed: Some way to make planets switch ownership/occupation (because, duh, that's how all Clausewitz games do it).
But the process in doing so is horribly lacking in depth:
Occupying a planet usually comes down to bombing it to 0 fortification, then sending a batch of armies in unarmed transport ships, which completely annilate the defenders mostly regardless of numbers (or, if you attack against not-0 fortification, get annilated).
A mild change-up is the introduction of higher-tier armies (Gene Warriors i.e.), who can take a planet (guarded by default-tier armies) without prior bombardment.
Technically, there's different subtypes and even a morale-combat focussed Psi army, but in practice none of that truly matters.
Concept:
To remedy this station, we need to build an entirely new concept from ground up, which must fullfill the following criteria:
The best analogue here would, likely, be a naval invasion from one 'coast' to 'another coast'. Instead of naval fleets covering (naval) transport ships, we got our spaceships covering, well, space, to let the (space) transport ships carry troops.
After that, commences some sort of landing phase where the invading armies try to get a foothold on the coast/planet. As history proved (referencing the D-Day here), this is a particularily difficult part where a lot of armies already fail and/or take casualtys.
Next up, is the uphill battle of a technically encircled invader against the defending forces, with latter likely having ample supply, whereas the invaders are either on a time limit of the supplies they brought with them, or dependant on an outside supply route (i.e. a navy keeping convoys towards the foreign coast going).
As the invaders secure more and more territory, supply becomes progressively less of an issue (as they can then start draining said supply from the occupied territory) and the two armies gain more and more equal ground.
With the invasion progressing succesfully (which we assume for this mindgame, as anything else would lead to 'abort invasion'), the defender would then be forced back. Since we're dealing with an invasion against a finitely enclosed area (the planet) here, this means the defender cannot 'withdraw from the border', but will instead face encirclement and likely focus on defending key chokepoints (natural chokepoints, cities, defensive installations).
These would then slowly be sieged down, now the defender being cut off from supply, until the individual 'key locations' fall to either numbers, attrition or capitulation.
Once all key locations are occupied, the invader technically has gained control of the invaded territory, plusminus remaining scattered defense troops and partisans.
Now, the question is how to convert all this into a reasonable concept applyable to Stellaris?
Suggestion:
First off, we start by declaring that planetary combat will be changed to take longer, and be more meaninful. After all, pushing an enemy fleet out of a system means you 'control' a large empty region of space with a few orbital stations inside, but seizing a planet means seizing a large population and (industrial) infracstructure. Taking a planet SHOULD be a significant thing, both in terms of warscore and effort invested.
With that out of the way, we can go and create a new system of 'Invasion Phases'. And there is actually a representation of this already in Stellaris: As one can see in the army screen, the game already differentiates between 'in orbit', 'landing' and 'on the ground', with individual armies being able to move independently between these 'layers'. Of course that won't suffice for our system yet, but it's an indicator that the engine could very well be adapted to handle this.
Starting where the Invasion starts, or maybe even some time before that, we define that a hostile fleet of a specific size being in the system of a planet automatically blockade's the planet. I will simply reference EUIV naval blockades, where it requires X ships to blockade Y provinces on the same coast with the provinces having Z 'value'. Thus, to blockade planets in a system, you need to have some number of ships appropriate to the number, size and productivity of the planets. We could possibly make Corvettes more effective at this to give them a new purpose, too.
Why the change? Because we now designate that any fleet directly orbiting a planet has already commenced the first stage of an invasion: the 'Bombardment Phase'.
The Bombardment 'Phase' (not that this is not just a temporal, but as well a locational designation) represents all ships in orbit of a planet, and the constant exchange of fire in both directions. As currently, bombarding ships will damage to a planet, possibly destroying pops and buildings, but primarily firing at the planet's military defense structure.
However, instead of making an arbitrarily long 'timer bar' tick down, we instead let bombardment damage defending armies. However, at a VERY slow rate, with further diminishing returns (making it possible to wear the defenders down 'some', but never fully, unless you're fine bombarding for decades).
Of course, as I said, we will also implement a way for the planet to 'strike back': Orbital Cannons will be a new structure type which will deal damage to any hostile fleet in orbit of the planet. Some form of 'attrition' effectively.
Each day, a number of 'shots' is fired from the surface and damages weighted-randomly selected ships of the orbiting fleet (naturally preferring large, slow targets). Damage ignores shields (for simplicity of simulation) and armor, instead slowly whittling down health bars and causing ships to be destroyed over (long) time.
Orbital Cannos are NOT meant to be able to gun down fleets bombarding a planet, they are just supposed to punish plopping down fleets in a planet's orbit without actually going through with an invasion. And they will serve a further purpose I'll mention in the following phases.
So, why is the bombardment part of the invasion phases? That is because the phases are, as explained, not just 'time phases' but as well 'locations'. And as it turns out, the 'Bombardment Phase' is effectively the orbit, which is where transport ships carrying armies start their invasion from, too. (This as well implies that parking Transport Ships in a planet's orbit may end up with these ships being shot down by orbital fire.)
Once starting the invasion, all transport ships will now deploy their associated armies; more precisely, into the 'Landing Phase'.
The Landing Phase represents the travel from orbit to ground. Every army launched from a transport (by whatever means avaible) has to spend time in this transitional phase, during which it will take damage from Orbital Cannons, will be slowed by planetary shields and even receive fire from defending armies of the next phase (if they are not otherwise 'busy', read further to see why), albeit at a reduced rate.
However, the amount of armies that can be 'landing' at the same time is limited, depending on a base value, increased by planet size, increased by transportfleet-to-planetsize-ratio and reduced by planetary shields, possibly forcing the invaders to land in several 'waves'.
Once the invading armies have passed the travel time, they move on to the 'Beachhead Phase'. This is where we first introduce the 'Column' system: Instead of each phase being 'planet-wide' (as it is currently), from the Beachhead Phase onwards, the phases are seperated into several columns, representing geographically different parts of the planet.
The number of columns may differ with the planet's size and it's defensive fortifications (i.e. a well-fortified planet, more to that later, may force the invaders to split up and fight at several locations (for most of this concept, assume the system explained for 3-4 columns).
Once landing, invading armies are assigned to a specific Beachhead Column (priorized by factors we will discuss laters) and will then be 'stuck' at the spot until able to move onwards or retreating. On the other hand, defending armies will per default be 'stationed' in these 'areas'. Furthermore, defenders will automatically reallocate themselves in specific intervalls (which could either be a fixed monthly intervall, or something related to the planet's level of military organization).
As this is where the fighting starts, we will now have the two sides fighting 'Ground Combat' as we know it currently from Stellaris, albeit at a local level (aka, armies from a specific column may only engage armies from the same column).
To represent the difficulties of the 'landing operation', there is a limited 'engagement width', aka the number of armies which can actually 'deal damage'. This width can be modified by advantages gained by tech, strategy, defenses, etc. However, it will generally be lower for the attacker (giving the defenders a direct edge if they have the proper numbers to 'staff the defenses'), and furthermore any damage dealt to the actively fighting invader armies will 'bleed through' to 'armies in the back' (at a percentage), implying that a large stack of attacking troops will suffer more damage (logic: the more people clustered at one spot, the more effectively will hostile fire hit).
However, to compensate this, the bombarding fleet will grant a combat bonus to the attacking troops (imagine 'artillery support'), which is diminished by the level of planetary fortifications (and especially so by a planetary shield). Note that if, for any reason, there is a fleet in orbit that is allied to the defender, the bonus will be provided to the defender instead.
Now, what is the goal of this phase? For the defenders, it is to hold their superior position and decimate the attackers. For the attackers, it is to 'push back' the defenders and gain ground.
This is achieved via 'local victories'. If a defending unit runs out of morale, it is forced to fall back one phase whilst recovering a lump % of it's morale instantly (20ish maybe). Furthermore, it cannot 'move back up' to the Beachhead Phase until it regained a specific amount of morale (i.e. 80%), but regenerates morale at a slow rate (thus making it unlikely for the unit to ever recover fast enough, unless the defender has enough units to actually 'rotate' units consistently). Next to morale, the unit can slowly recover strength, too.
If all defending armies in one Column are forced to fall back, a local victory is achieved and the invading armies can progress one phase up (likely running into the previously withdrawn defenders). The same can happen if the defending armies were killed instead, albeit that is arguably less likely.
If invading armies run out of morale, they will cycle to the 'back row', if such one is present, or be forced to continue fighting at the already known 'no morale, -75% damage' malus. If in the backrow, invading armies can slowly regerate morale, as defending armies, but no army strength.
If all invading armies in a Beachhead Column are wiped the defending armies in this column will be able to regenerate slowly, and all armies that have been forced to fall back will move back up regardless of morale. And, very likely, the defending armies will automatically reallocate to columns still under attack. Additionally, they are not considered 'busy' anymore and will fire at whatever invading armies may still trying to land (aka, are in the Landing Phase).
At any point, the invader can retreat individual armies (either manually, or by some automated mechanic we'll not further discuss), or call for a whole retreat, at which point the relevant invading army(ies) will move back to the 'landing phase' and again spend time moving back to orbit, during which they are again fired upon by orbital cannons. Needless to say, invading armies cannot withdraw if there is a hostile (aka, allied to defender) fleet in orbit.
The next phase is the 'Terrain Phase' which represents the step where the invasion forces push from their beachheads and take control over regions, continents, etc, whilst fighting the defending forces.
For flavour, we could apply different combat modifiers here, depending upon the planet being fought on (i.e. desert causing increased morale damage on both sides, jungles increasing army damage, etc).
Per definition, this phase's columns will have larger engagement width's (and no innate advantage to the defender), possibly allowing the invading army to play out it's superior numbers. Furthermore whatever armies the invaders engage here will likely be still at reduced morale from their previous combat, making any fighting in this phase exceptionally short-lived.
Armies of either side which are brought to zero morale have to withdraw into the previous phase and if either side runs out of armies, the enemy armies can advance to the next (or the previous, if the defenders manage to strike back the attacking armies) phase.
However, the 'can' is emphasized here, because whilst the defenders will always want to return to the advantageous (to them) Beachhead Phase, the attackers can instead decide to remain in the Terrain Phase and instead attack 'sidewards' into an adjacent Terrain Column. Per default, for each invader army moving into a Terrain Column, the defenders in the Beachhead Column have to send one army 'back', unless there are already (recovering) armies resting in the Terrain Column.
The defenders in the Beachhead Phase will not directly suffer from this 'two-pronged attack' through explicit mali, but whenever the attacker (considering engagement width) outnumbers the defenders in the Terrain Column, defenders will have to withdraw from the Beachhead, possibly leading to another breakthrough and more attackers pouring through.
Thus, in general, if one Column in the Terrain Phase is lost to the defender, the Beachheads will quickly follow suit. For this reason, the defender can as well (manually or automatically) call for a retreat at any time, 'giving up' phases to the invaders, in the most likely case to try skipping a disadvantageous fight in the Terrain Phase to quickly move on to the following Phase.
The last explicit phase is the 'Siege Phase'.
This represents the defenders last attempt at holing up in well-fortified locations like bunkers, a capital complex, military bases or cities. And, again taking from reality, these locations obviously give the defender a significant advantage in itself.
However, since this stage implies practically all relevant theory but these key locations are taken, this as well implies defenders are encircled.
Therefore, the engagement width now favous the attacker, allowing (+-modifiers) 3 times as many invading armies to engage as the defending ones. On the other hand however, defenders gain a -75% army and morale damage taken bonus. This means, that the invader actually has to bring the afromentioned numerical superiority to have a proper chance at overpowering the defenders.
Albeit it's necessary to mention that if the defenders only consist of armies that have just fallen back from the terrain phase, likely the defender will only have to deal with very few combat-effective units. Because like the invaders during the Beachhead Phase, since defending armies can no longer fall back, they will end up running out of morale and receiving the -75% damage penality (unless they can rotate with another army on the same column's backrow.
Additionally, defenders at this stage cannot, anymore, reallocate to different columns (encirclement, still). However, if the invader pushed past defenders of other columns (aka, only one column was pushed to the Siege Phase, whilst the other's are still busy in the Beachhead Phase), defending armies from the Beachhead column's backrows can reallocate to the Terrain Phase of the sieged column, effectively 'cutting off' invading armies.
Cut off invading troops receive a small morale damage taken and army damage dealt penality (10% ish) and, if forced to fall back from the siege, will end up being engaged again in the Terrain Phase (and thus likely forced to fall back further into the Beachhead Phase). To move back to the Siege Phase, they will then have to fight through the Terrain Phase again.
If all defending armies in a Siege Column are destroyed OR all defending armies are at 0 morale, the invaders seize control of the key location (representing either annilation or capitulation). Once seized, the defensive advantages of the key location are halved for the entire remainder of the invasion (representing the damages to the once-stormed fortress), but, as long as they hold it, provides it's defensive advantages to the invaders.
Defending armies can (now) move in from other key locations (or from the columns Terrain Phase), if not engaged in combat of their own and try to re-take the key location (albeit this will likely be a rarity, since winning a Siege Phase is an effort that will usually only work if the invading army is winning on all fronts anyways).
For each key location taken, damage dealt by defending troops is reduced by 15% and the morale damage they take increased by 15%, representing the 'welp, they breached our lines' mentality that will now certainly take hold. Furthermore, the first key location taken will as well disable Planetary Shields (assuming that it takes a globe-spanning network to maintain the shield, and taking out a single element is enough to create an opening sufficient for the invaders).
If all key locations are taken, the invasion ends with the invaders victory (all defending armies capitulate) and the planet changes ownership.
Now, if you're going to yell at me about how this concept is definitely too much micro, consider the following: The entire invasion does not require any player interaction at all. And the only way the player can even interact with it (so far) is to move around the fleet or call for a retreat.
But who or what does your troops tell how to behave and where to attack? After all, there were a lot of 'the x army can decide to' in that concept, weren't there?
For this, we introduce a new key feature labelled 'Invasion Plan'. The Invasion plan(ning) screen is brought up after the player clicks on the 'Launch Invasion' (aka 'Land Troops') button and is a small interface with a number of settings to define how the invading army is supposed to act. The first time this interface is called up, it's filled with default settings fitting to the empire's ethics, but he can alter the settings as he sees fit and then store them as default via a small save icon in a corner, causing all future invasions to use this plan per default (thus, in most cases, the player will define a specific invasion plan fitting his fluff and playstyle once, then execute it with a single button click each invasion).
The first row of choices is the 'Landing Vehicle'.
Of course, the defensive side gets to set a Invasion Plan as well. Invasion Plans can be set for planets via the Mobilization tab (more to that later), and stored as the default for all planets similar to how Invasion Plans can be set up for the attacker. Obviously, a defensive Invasion Plan needs to be set before the Invasion of a specific planet starts.
The first row contains two choices, defining the allocation of defending armies. However, since the defenders don't decide 'where' the attack happens, they always spread out equally to all columns. The 'allocation' we are talking about is the on-the-fly reallocation of troops in response to the invasion's deployment.
Now, whilst this was the core of this concept, it leaves two new questions to answer: 'What changes about armies?' and 'What the heck is a Mobilization Tab?'.
Let's take on the latter first.
We now introduce a new mechanic labelled 'Mobilization', alongside a side-effect we will label 'Productivity'.
Latter is a modifier designating how productive a planet is at any given moment, ranging from 0 to 100 (%). Energy, Mineral, Research and Food gain are modified 1:1 by Productivity (thus, meaning no minerals or energy are generated if productivity drops to zero).
This new 'Productivity' rating is technically just a 'generalization' of the various planet-wide modifiers we have. Weird hypno drug flowers? Reduce productivity. Recently conquered? Reduce Productivity. Production Edict? Increase Productivity. Unrest? Reduce Productivity.
Most importantly however, is the new relation 'Mobilization? Decreases Productivity.'
Mobilization represents the degree of planetary ressources invested into military infrastructure, military production, orbital (since ships tend to be 99% military) production and fortifications. Oh, finally that word again.
Mobilization ranges from 0 to 100, and has a base 'Mobilisation Productivity Effect' (furthermore known as 'MPE') of 75. This means (per default), 75% of the Mobilization rating of a planet is subtracted from it's Productivity.
Now, what does Mobilization do (past gimping a planet's production) and what does effect it?
The main purpose of Mobilization is to simulate 'manpower' (because currently all armies are clearly just mineral-based robot drones with a minor energy upkeekp), local defensiveness and the effect of war on economy. Which, currently, is exclusively simulated by War Happiness. The base values and limits of Mobilization (within the hard caps of 0 and 100) are determined by your 'Mobilization Law':
Now, since you can see that having a potentially high Mobilization cap appears to be an advantage just as much as having no Mobilization is, let me explain the two-edged sword it is:
Mobilization directly affects ship production speed, with a full Mobilization increasing ship production speed by 300% (in reverse, ship build times shoud be doubled. That way, it will be 0 Mobilization = half of current production speed, 100 Mobilization = twice the current production speed). The same speed bonus is applied to the construction of armies.
Additionally, production costs for military ships and armies are reduced by up to 25% (representing how the ressources spent for the Mobilization 'flow back' into the actual production of ships).
Furthermore, Mobilization increases the base damage dealt by orbital cannons by up to 200% (orbital cannons have a default low-ish base damage and thus only become truly effective on mobilized planets) and grants defenders on the planet an army damage and morale damage taken reduction of up to 40% (multiplicatively to all other modifiers).
And, lastly, Mobilization determines how many 'Garrison Militia' a planet will spawn when being invaded (scaled by population, of course).
This brings us to the next question: How is Mobilization generated past the law settings?
There is three ways of 'generating Mobilization'. The first is by the law settings, which may or may not define a minimum Mobilization planets will always maintain, regardless of the other two factors.
The second factor is 'manual Mobilization', which is a stat mentioned, but not explained, previously. Manual Mobilization is a setting at any planet (plus a sector setting plus a 'mobilize all' button at some interface or tab) that will force Mobilization to a set of avaible values (25/50/75/100) at a rate of +-1 Mobilization per month. The purpose of this is to fortify up border planets you expect to be invaded, or to designate specific 'military shipyard' planets to rapidly produce ships and armies. Albeit the option to perform manual Mobilization may be limited by your laws.
The last factor to this is a form of 'Army Upkeep'.
It always bothered me that armies in Stellaris are created from minerals alone and you can have indefinite and abusrd amounts of them, as long as you can feed them with energy.
Instead, we now define that armies recruited from a planet are actually linked to that planet, representing the more or less steady stream of recruits and reinforcements. As such, any army built on a planet permanently 'locks in' a lump sum of that planet's Mobilization. Thus, if you can go up to a maximum of 50 Mobilization and each army built (example values!) takes up 5 Mobilization, you will only be able to build 10 and doing so will max out Mobilization at 50.
However, in reverse this means having a minimum Militarization lets you have 'free armies', as building them will not affect Mobilization until the 'cost' of the built armies would reach the minimum value. With afromentioned example, if you had a minimum Mobilization of 25, the first 5 built armies would not affect the Mobilization value (since it's stuck at 25 anyways).
The actual 'Mobilization Impact' of a built army would mostly depend on it's type (i.e. Elite Army > Assault Army > Defensive Army), probably scaled by population (thus, 40 mobilization on a 25er world means more armies then 40 on a 10er world).
In combination with the laws, this means a militaristic empire will opt for the military-industrial settings, maintaining an increased minimum of mobilization, in the intent to 'use' that minimum to produce armies (which it needs anyways, because militarist, duh), and therefore profits from the reduced MPE (as, in reverse, a less military-industrial empire could build the same amount of armies on demand, but suffer from a higher MPE). On the other hand pacifistic-law'd empires will want to avoid having any armies, as every single will impact Productivity. And, more importantly, you will be forced to recruit armies from multiple planets, instead of just building them in xxx stacks on a single world.
Of course, we can now define different army types and other factors which influence this Mobilization mechanic and interact with our new combat system.
To summarize, with this concept we would get an overhaul of ground combat, which lets the player define a general strategy and then watch the visually much more appealing onslaught, whilst as well providing an entirely new take on the difference between Militarists and Pacifists, by introducing Mobilization and it's affect on (civilian) economy. And it allows much more depth in term of army type variation, instead of just the current fluff (and the difference between default armies and gene warriors).
And, in all honesty, if you decide that 'Meh, that's way too much effort to implement, just to watch a visual lightshow', then we still have the whole mobilization and army upkeep concept, which would still, by itself, by a (in my oppinion) great addition to the game.
So, what do you think of this? And what kind of unit types would you suggest?
If you enjoyed this concept, you might as well enjoy the previous and next entry of my series:
< Governments, Society, Economy, Military <
> 5by5 - Planet Habitability reworked >
Ground Combat, Iteration 2.
Basically, everyone agrees that Warfare is a primary aspect of Stellaris (not THE sole primary aspect, but certainly one of them). And most people will agree that it isn't necessaryly Stellaris' strong suit.
Yet, whilst Space Warfare is occasionally lackluster in strategic depth, Ground Warfare is pretty much lackluster to it's very core. And that's the polite way of describing it.
There's many concepts out there dealing with this, even one of my own, albeit that one focussed on the interaction between Space and Ground (in form of explosives raining from the sky).
This time, we'll focus on the actual ground side.
Current State:
Currently, Ground Combat is minimalistic and was likely only implemented to the bare minimum of what was needed: Some way to make planets switch ownership/occupation (because, duh, that's how all Clausewitz games do it).
But the process in doing so is horribly lacking in depth:
Occupying a planet usually comes down to bombing it to 0 fortification, then sending a batch of armies in unarmed transport ships, which completely annilate the defenders mostly regardless of numbers (or, if you attack against not-0 fortification, get annilated).
A mild change-up is the introduction of higher-tier armies (Gene Warriors i.e.), who can take a planet (guarded by default-tier armies) without prior bombardment.
Technically, there's different subtypes and even a morale-combat focussed Psi army, but in practice none of that truly matters.
Concept:
To remedy this station, we need to build an entirely new concept from ground up, which must fullfill the following criteria:
- The new concept must be able to simulate Ground Combat and change of Planet Ownership in some form.
- It should have more depth, complexity and/or gameplay then the current system, to make conquering planets more then a repetitive waiting task.
- Yet Ground Combat must remain simple enough not to require intense micro.
- Preferably, it should as well allow different approaches to conquering a planet, with different risk/reward or flavour options.
- And, given it's new mechanics, it should make Ground Combat more impactful and less of a 'confirm that my fleet has been controllin the system for 3 month' flag.
The best analogue here would, likely, be a naval invasion from one 'coast' to 'another coast'. Instead of naval fleets covering (naval) transport ships, we got our spaceships covering, well, space, to let the (space) transport ships carry troops.
After that, commences some sort of landing phase where the invading armies try to get a foothold on the coast/planet. As history proved (referencing the D-Day here), this is a particularily difficult part where a lot of armies already fail and/or take casualtys.
Next up, is the uphill battle of a technically encircled invader against the defending forces, with latter likely having ample supply, whereas the invaders are either on a time limit of the supplies they brought with them, or dependant on an outside supply route (i.e. a navy keeping convoys towards the foreign coast going).
As the invaders secure more and more territory, supply becomes progressively less of an issue (as they can then start draining said supply from the occupied territory) and the two armies gain more and more equal ground.
With the invasion progressing succesfully (which we assume for this mindgame, as anything else would lead to 'abort invasion'), the defender would then be forced back. Since we're dealing with an invasion against a finitely enclosed area (the planet) here, this means the defender cannot 'withdraw from the border', but will instead face encirclement and likely focus on defending key chokepoints (natural chokepoints, cities, defensive installations).
These would then slowly be sieged down, now the defender being cut off from supply, until the individual 'key locations' fall to either numbers, attrition or capitulation.
Once all key locations are occupied, the invader technically has gained control of the invaded territory, plusminus remaining scattered defense troops and partisans.
Now, the question is how to convert all this into a reasonable concept applyable to Stellaris?
Suggestion:
First off, we start by declaring that planetary combat will be changed to take longer, and be more meaninful. After all, pushing an enemy fleet out of a system means you 'control' a large empty region of space with a few orbital stations inside, but seizing a planet means seizing a large population and (industrial) infracstructure. Taking a planet SHOULD be a significant thing, both in terms of warscore and effort invested.
With that out of the way, we can go and create a new system of 'Invasion Phases'. And there is actually a representation of this already in Stellaris: As one can see in the army screen, the game already differentiates between 'in orbit', 'landing' and 'on the ground', with individual armies being able to move independently between these 'layers'. Of course that won't suffice for our system yet, but it's an indicator that the engine could very well be adapted to handle this.
Starting where the Invasion starts, or maybe even some time before that, we define that a hostile fleet of a specific size being in the system of a planet automatically blockade's the planet. I will simply reference EUIV naval blockades, where it requires X ships to blockade Y provinces on the same coast with the provinces having Z 'value'. Thus, to blockade planets in a system, you need to have some number of ships appropriate to the number, size and productivity of the planets. We could possibly make Corvettes more effective at this to give them a new purpose, too.
Why the change? Because we now designate that any fleet directly orbiting a planet has already commenced the first stage of an invasion: the 'Bombardment Phase'.
The Bombardment 'Phase' (not that this is not just a temporal, but as well a locational designation) represents all ships in orbit of a planet, and the constant exchange of fire in both directions. As currently, bombarding ships will damage to a planet, possibly destroying pops and buildings, but primarily firing at the planet's military defense structure.
However, instead of making an arbitrarily long 'timer bar' tick down, we instead let bombardment damage defending armies. However, at a VERY slow rate, with further diminishing returns (making it possible to wear the defenders down 'some', but never fully, unless you're fine bombarding for decades).
Of course, as I said, we will also implement a way for the planet to 'strike back': Orbital Cannons will be a new structure type which will deal damage to any hostile fleet in orbit of the planet. Some form of 'attrition' effectively.
Each day, a number of 'shots' is fired from the surface and damages weighted-randomly selected ships of the orbiting fleet (naturally preferring large, slow targets). Damage ignores shields (for simplicity of simulation) and armor, instead slowly whittling down health bars and causing ships to be destroyed over (long) time.
Orbital Cannos are NOT meant to be able to gun down fleets bombarding a planet, they are just supposed to punish plopping down fleets in a planet's orbit without actually going through with an invasion. And they will serve a further purpose I'll mention in the following phases.
So, why is the bombardment part of the invasion phases? That is because the phases are, as explained, not just 'time phases' but as well 'locations'. And as it turns out, the 'Bombardment Phase' is effectively the orbit, which is where transport ships carrying armies start their invasion from, too. (This as well implies that parking Transport Ships in a planet's orbit may end up with these ships being shot down by orbital fire.)
Once starting the invasion, all transport ships will now deploy their associated armies; more precisely, into the 'Landing Phase'.
The Landing Phase represents the travel from orbit to ground. Every army launched from a transport (by whatever means avaible) has to spend time in this transitional phase, during which it will take damage from Orbital Cannons, will be slowed by planetary shields and even receive fire from defending armies of the next phase (if they are not otherwise 'busy', read further to see why), albeit at a reduced rate.
However, the amount of armies that can be 'landing' at the same time is limited, depending on a base value, increased by planet size, increased by transportfleet-to-planetsize-ratio and reduced by planetary shields, possibly forcing the invaders to land in several 'waves'.
Once the invading armies have passed the travel time, they move on to the 'Beachhead Phase'. This is where we first introduce the 'Column' system: Instead of each phase being 'planet-wide' (as it is currently), from the Beachhead Phase onwards, the phases are seperated into several columns, representing geographically different parts of the planet.
The number of columns may differ with the planet's size and it's defensive fortifications (i.e. a well-fortified planet, more to that later, may force the invaders to split up and fight at several locations (for most of this concept, assume the system explained for 3-4 columns).
Once landing, invading armies are assigned to a specific Beachhead Column (priorized by factors we will discuss laters) and will then be 'stuck' at the spot until able to move onwards or retreating. On the other hand, defending armies will per default be 'stationed' in these 'areas'. Furthermore, defenders will automatically reallocate themselves in specific intervalls (which could either be a fixed monthly intervall, or something related to the planet's level of military organization).
As this is where the fighting starts, we will now have the two sides fighting 'Ground Combat' as we know it currently from Stellaris, albeit at a local level (aka, armies from a specific column may only engage armies from the same column).
To represent the difficulties of the 'landing operation', there is a limited 'engagement width', aka the number of armies which can actually 'deal damage'. This width can be modified by advantages gained by tech, strategy, defenses, etc. However, it will generally be lower for the attacker (giving the defenders a direct edge if they have the proper numbers to 'staff the defenses'), and furthermore any damage dealt to the actively fighting invader armies will 'bleed through' to 'armies in the back' (at a percentage), implying that a large stack of attacking troops will suffer more damage (logic: the more people clustered at one spot, the more effectively will hostile fire hit).
However, to compensate this, the bombarding fleet will grant a combat bonus to the attacking troops (imagine 'artillery support'), which is diminished by the level of planetary fortifications (and especially so by a planetary shield). Note that if, for any reason, there is a fleet in orbit that is allied to the defender, the bonus will be provided to the defender instead.
Now, what is the goal of this phase? For the defenders, it is to hold their superior position and decimate the attackers. For the attackers, it is to 'push back' the defenders and gain ground.
This is achieved via 'local victories'. If a defending unit runs out of morale, it is forced to fall back one phase whilst recovering a lump % of it's morale instantly (20ish maybe). Furthermore, it cannot 'move back up' to the Beachhead Phase until it regained a specific amount of morale (i.e. 80%), but regenerates morale at a slow rate (thus making it unlikely for the unit to ever recover fast enough, unless the defender has enough units to actually 'rotate' units consistently). Next to morale, the unit can slowly recover strength, too.
If all defending armies in one Column are forced to fall back, a local victory is achieved and the invading armies can progress one phase up (likely running into the previously withdrawn defenders). The same can happen if the defending armies were killed instead, albeit that is arguably less likely.
If invading armies run out of morale, they will cycle to the 'back row', if such one is present, or be forced to continue fighting at the already known 'no morale, -75% damage' malus. If in the backrow, invading armies can slowly regerate morale, as defending armies, but no army strength.
If all invading armies in a Beachhead Column are wiped the defending armies in this column will be able to regenerate slowly, and all armies that have been forced to fall back will move back up regardless of morale. And, very likely, the defending armies will automatically reallocate to columns still under attack. Additionally, they are not considered 'busy' anymore and will fire at whatever invading armies may still trying to land (aka, are in the Landing Phase).
At any point, the invader can retreat individual armies (either manually, or by some automated mechanic we'll not further discuss), or call for a whole retreat, at which point the relevant invading army(ies) will move back to the 'landing phase' and again spend time moving back to orbit, during which they are again fired upon by orbital cannons. Needless to say, invading armies cannot withdraw if there is a hostile (aka, allied to defender) fleet in orbit.
The next phase is the 'Terrain Phase' which represents the step where the invasion forces push from their beachheads and take control over regions, continents, etc, whilst fighting the defending forces.
For flavour, we could apply different combat modifiers here, depending upon the planet being fought on (i.e. desert causing increased morale damage on both sides, jungles increasing army damage, etc).
Per definition, this phase's columns will have larger engagement width's (and no innate advantage to the defender), possibly allowing the invading army to play out it's superior numbers. Furthermore whatever armies the invaders engage here will likely be still at reduced morale from their previous combat, making any fighting in this phase exceptionally short-lived.
Armies of either side which are brought to zero morale have to withdraw into the previous phase and if either side runs out of armies, the enemy armies can advance to the next (or the previous, if the defenders manage to strike back the attacking armies) phase.
However, the 'can' is emphasized here, because whilst the defenders will always want to return to the advantageous (to them) Beachhead Phase, the attackers can instead decide to remain in the Terrain Phase and instead attack 'sidewards' into an adjacent Terrain Column. Per default, for each invader army moving into a Terrain Column, the defenders in the Beachhead Column have to send one army 'back', unless there are already (recovering) armies resting in the Terrain Column.
The defenders in the Beachhead Phase will not directly suffer from this 'two-pronged attack' through explicit mali, but whenever the attacker (considering engagement width) outnumbers the defenders in the Terrain Column, defenders will have to withdraw from the Beachhead, possibly leading to another breakthrough and more attackers pouring through.
Thus, in general, if one Column in the Terrain Phase is lost to the defender, the Beachheads will quickly follow suit. For this reason, the defender can as well (manually or automatically) call for a retreat at any time, 'giving up' phases to the invaders, in the most likely case to try skipping a disadvantageous fight in the Terrain Phase to quickly move on to the following Phase.
The last explicit phase is the 'Siege Phase'.
This represents the defenders last attempt at holing up in well-fortified locations like bunkers, a capital complex, military bases or cities. And, again taking from reality, these locations obviously give the defender a significant advantage in itself.
However, since this stage implies practically all relevant theory but these key locations are taken, this as well implies defenders are encircled.
Therefore, the engagement width now favous the attacker, allowing (+-modifiers) 3 times as many invading armies to engage as the defending ones. On the other hand however, defenders gain a -75% army and morale damage taken bonus. This means, that the invader actually has to bring the afromentioned numerical superiority to have a proper chance at overpowering the defenders.
Albeit it's necessary to mention that if the defenders only consist of armies that have just fallen back from the terrain phase, likely the defender will only have to deal with very few combat-effective units. Because like the invaders during the Beachhead Phase, since defending armies can no longer fall back, they will end up running out of morale and receiving the -75% damage penality (unless they can rotate with another army on the same column's backrow.
Additionally, defenders at this stage cannot, anymore, reallocate to different columns (encirclement, still). However, if the invader pushed past defenders of other columns (aka, only one column was pushed to the Siege Phase, whilst the other's are still busy in the Beachhead Phase), defending armies from the Beachhead column's backrows can reallocate to the Terrain Phase of the sieged column, effectively 'cutting off' invading armies.
Cut off invading troops receive a small morale damage taken and army damage dealt penality (10% ish) and, if forced to fall back from the siege, will end up being engaged again in the Terrain Phase (and thus likely forced to fall back further into the Beachhead Phase). To move back to the Siege Phase, they will then have to fight through the Terrain Phase again.
If all defending armies in a Siege Column are destroyed OR all defending armies are at 0 morale, the invaders seize control of the key location (representing either annilation or capitulation). Once seized, the defensive advantages of the key location are halved for the entire remainder of the invasion (representing the damages to the once-stormed fortress), but, as long as they hold it, provides it's defensive advantages to the invaders.
Defending armies can (now) move in from other key locations (or from the columns Terrain Phase), if not engaged in combat of their own and try to re-take the key location (albeit this will likely be a rarity, since winning a Siege Phase is an effort that will usually only work if the invading army is winning on all fronts anyways).
For each key location taken, damage dealt by defending troops is reduced by 15% and the morale damage they take increased by 15%, representing the 'welp, they breached our lines' mentality that will now certainly take hold. Furthermore, the first key location taken will as well disable Planetary Shields (assuming that it takes a globe-spanning network to maintain the shield, and taking out a single element is enough to create an opening sufficient for the invaders).
If all key locations are taken, the invasion ends with the invaders victory (all defending armies capitulate) and the planet changes ownership.
Now, if you're going to yell at me about how this concept is definitely too much micro, consider the following: The entire invasion does not require any player interaction at all. And the only way the player can even interact with it (so far) is to move around the fleet or call for a retreat.
But who or what does your troops tell how to behave and where to attack? After all, there were a lot of 'the x army can decide to' in that concept, weren't there?
For this, we introduce a new key feature labelled 'Invasion Plan'. The Invasion plan(ning) screen is brought up after the player clicks on the 'Launch Invasion' (aka 'Land Troops') button and is a small interface with a number of settings to define how the invading army is supposed to act. The first time this interface is called up, it's filled with default settings fitting to the empire's ethics, but he can alter the settings as he sees fit and then store them as default via a small save icon in a corner, causing all future invasions to use this plan per default (thus, in most cases, the player will define a specific invasion plan fitting his fluff and playstyle once, then execute it with a single button click each invasion).
The first row of choices is the 'Landing Vehicle'.
- Initially, empire's can only chose 'Planetary Transports', which are effectively trans-orbital transport vessels stowed aboard the actual spacefaring transport ships (think amphibious landing craft here). It's the default choice for all empires and the only one avaible at the start of the game.
- As tech progresses, new options are unlocked, i.e. 'Drop Pods', which increase the speed of the landing by 200%, and grant a +25% morale damage bonus for 7 days to each freshly landed troop, but as well costs x minerals per deployed army (consumed upon starting the invasion) and reduces the speed of retreating armies by 75% (since drop pods are only designed for one direction, really).
- 'Armored Landing Craft' is another option unlocked later, which reduces landing (and retreat) speed by 25%, but reduces damage from orbital fire during the landing phase by 75% (making them ideal for the 'slow, unstoppable' approach agianst heavily fortified planets).
- Lastly a late-tier rare tech is 'Teleportation', which costs x energy per army upon start of the invasion, but lets invading armies skip the landing phase. However, if the planet has a defense shield, this transportation bonus only takes effect if there are already invading armies at the Beachhead Column new armies want to deploy to (representing the need to set up some sort of counter to shield interference). During the initial landing, troops will default to Planetary Transports. Furthermore, the use of this very powerful landing method can be prevented if there is a planetary shield AND the defender has researched a rare followup 'Teleporter Disruption' tech.
- 'Full-Line Assault' is the default setting and will simply try to deploy armies equally to all columns, effectively fighting the defender on all fronts at once.
- 'Centered Assault' will reserve half of the invading armies exclusively for an attack at a single column (preferably the center, albeit in case of even column count, a random of the two middle one), and spread out the remaining armies to the other columns. This as well grants invading armies in the 'center of attack' +10% army damage, whilst reducing the army damage in all other columns by -5%. Once the key location of the center column is taken, the focus defaults to Full-Line Assault.
- 'Pincer Attack' will seperate the invading armies into three equal parts, and will aim to deploy one to the outmost columns each, and the third part equally across all remaining columns (for 5 columns, this would be a 33-11-11-11-33 split). Invading armies at the pincer columns will gain +10% morale damage, whilst the other columns cause -5% morale damage. If a key location is taken, the 'pincer' shifts 1 column closer to the center, effectively closing in on the center from both sides.
- 'Reckless Mass Assault' simply sends all (or, as many as possible, depending on planet landing width) armies to the planet as quick as possible. Naturally, this will cause invading armies to 'pile up' in the Beachead Phase, which means the invaders take more bleed-through damage total, but will always have their full engagement width, regardless of losses. The engagement width on both sides of the Beachhead Phase is increased by 1. Additionally, sending as many landing units at once as possible will minimize the time orbital cannons can fire at landing craft.
- 'Continous Stream' will send only 'one width worth' of armies initially, minimizing bleed-through damage. Once an army is brough to 33% morale, another army will be deployed to land at the former army's location to provide 'reinforcement', taking over it's position and pushing the damaged army to the back-row. If the new army then drops to 33% morale, it will again switch with the other army in the back-row. If one army is destroyed or both are below the morale threshhold, a third army is sent from the orbit, etc until either the Beachhead is taken (at which point all armies allocated to the column are deployed) or all armies have landed. Needless to say, this way of repeatedly sending smaller (even single) landing armies will increase the total damage dealt by enemy orbital cannons.
- 'Cycling Troops' is the third setting, which will work similar to Continous Stream at first, but instead of leaving the injured armies in the back row to regain a few % of morale before being engaged again, any army replaced by a fresh one will instead retreat back to orbit (where it can regain morale faster and recover army health). However, injured armies regenerating (prior to recovering fully) will only be deployed again if an army on the ground is actually destroyed, which will leave a column temporarily understaffed. And, needless to say, the constant back and forth will draw a lot of orbital defense fire and against a heavily fortified location, this may end up killing the armies trying to cycle out. As compensation, it does grant the invading force a +10% morale boost ('Just this one assault, and then we can go back for some RnR').
- 'Charge Ahead' makes any column that pushes past the beachhead beeline for their respective key location, regardless of the positioning of hostile troops or the situation at other columns. This forwardness increases army damage dealth by 10% and army damage taken by 5% and will bring down the planetary shield, if present, in the most direct way.
- 'Wide Siege' is a variation of former, in which columns that pass the beachhead will move into the Terrain Phase of other columns, 'switching assignments' with any undeployed or back-row armies of other columns (i.e. 2 armies push through a beachhead and move sidewards to column X, now 2 armies from column X (either assigned, but still in orbit, or in the backrow of their fighting beachehad) will land/rotate to the original column of the former 2 armies), effectively causing as many armies as possible to 'pour' into the Terrain Phase and then move forward to siege as many key locations in parallel as somehow possible. This strategy grants +10% army damage to all invading units in the Siege Phase.
- 'Step by Step' will ensure that all Beachheads are taken, before moving in for the Siege. Any invading armies that secure their Terrain Column, will not push further, but instead spread out and draw defenders from the Beachhead into the Terrain Phase (as described previously). Only if the Beachhead Phase in both adjacent columns is won, will a column proceed to siege a key location. This grants +5% morale damage to all invading units.
Of course, the defensive side gets to set a Invasion Plan as well. Invasion Plans can be set for planets via the Mobilization tab (more to that later), and stored as the default for all planets similar to how Invasion Plans can be set up for the attacker. Obviously, a defensive Invasion Plan needs to be set before the Invasion of a specific planet starts.
The first row contains two choices, defining the allocation of defending armies. However, since the defenders don't decide 'where' the attack happens, they always spread out equally to all columns. The 'allocation' we are talking about is the on-the-fly reallocation of troops in response to the invasion's deployment.
- 'Dug-in Static Defenders' grants -10% army damage taken to all defending armies, but effectively locks defending armies in place, not reacting to how the enemy troops are distributed. However, casualtys in one column will still be replaced by another column if free armies are avaible.
- 'Reactionary Doctrine' will allocate half the defending armies statically to the columns, and keep the other half 'flexible', moving them around in between columns to match whatever ratio the invader is throwing at the planet (but grants no defensive boost).
- 'Beachhead Line' grants an additional -10% army damage taken to defending armies in the Beachhead Phase and allocates all troops in a column to the foremost Phase that is being engaged, going by 'if we give them any ground, we lose'. As a downside, once a Beachhead is lost, it's very well possible that defenders will be pushed back to their key locations and probably even overwhelmed there before the other columns can respond.
- 'Last Reserve' will instead set up a security buffer of armies stationed in the key locations. 30% of the defending armies, but at least 1 army each, will stay in the Siege Phase, regardless of how the Beachhead fares. Alongside ensuring there is always at least someone to prevent Key Locations from being rushed down, this grants -5% army damage taken (stacking with the default 75) in the Siege Phase.
- 'Defense in Depth' will set up armies in a 50-30-20 split, ensuring all phases and columns contain armies (as possible). This split will (deopending on the static/dynamic) setting adjust to losses in the Beachhead, but armies allocated to the Terrain Phase will never move to the Beachhead to replace armies falling back. Whilst this makes Beachhead's less well-defended, it guarantuees any invaders breaking through will encounter ready troops in the Terrain Phase, which allows other Terrain Phases to rotate over as needed and eventually even force invaders back into the Beachhead Phase.
- 'Hold your Position' will reduce army damage and morale damage dealt on both sides of the invasion by 15%, drawing out the entire invasion as long possible. As well, defenders will never try to recapture lost phases, but just stick to defending their assigned beachhead or key locations.
- 'Flexible warfare' is the default setting, in which a defending army at a key location will move out to re-engage the Terrain Phase once it has fully recovered and has a surplus of units and can fill the Terrain combat width without ending up outnumbered. Additionally, if these conditions are fullfilled, defending armies will as well try to cycle over to other terrain phases to cut off invading armies in the Siege Phase.
- 'Make them Bleed' is the reverse of the first setting and makes defending armies behave as aggressively as the invaders themselves. It increases army damage dealt by 20% on the invader and by 30% on the defender side, making the whole invasion a bloody onslaught. Additionally, defending units will always try to re-engage any lost zones if they have enough units in a key location, even abandoning the key location in their reckless counter-offensive.
Now, whilst this was the core of this concept, it leaves two new questions to answer: 'What changes about armies?' and 'What the heck is a Mobilization Tab?'.
Let's take on the latter first.
We now introduce a new mechanic labelled 'Mobilization', alongside a side-effect we will label 'Productivity'.
Latter is a modifier designating how productive a planet is at any given moment, ranging from 0 to 100 (%). Energy, Mineral, Research and Food gain are modified 1:1 by Productivity (thus, meaning no minerals or energy are generated if productivity drops to zero).
This new 'Productivity' rating is technically just a 'generalization' of the various planet-wide modifiers we have. Weird hypno drug flowers? Reduce productivity. Recently conquered? Reduce Productivity. Production Edict? Increase Productivity. Unrest? Reduce Productivity.
Most importantly however, is the new relation 'Mobilization? Decreases Productivity.'
Mobilization represents the degree of planetary ressources invested into military infrastructure, military production, orbital (since ships tend to be 99% military) production and fortifications. Oh, finally that word again.
Mobilization ranges from 0 to 100, and has a base 'Mobilisation Productivity Effect' (furthermore known as 'MPE') of 75. This means (per default), 75% of the Mobilization rating of a planet is subtracted from it's Productivity.
Now, what does Mobilization do (past gimping a planet's production) and what does effect it?
The main purpose of Mobilization is to simulate 'manpower' (because currently all armies are clearly just mineral-based robot drones with a minor energy upkeekp), local defensiveness and the effect of war on economy. Which, currently, is exclusively simulated by War Happiness. The base values and limits of Mobilization (within the hard caps of 0 and 100) are determined by your 'Mobilization Law':
- Purely Civilian Industry (only avaible to Pacifist)
Maximum Mobilization is capped to 25. MPE increased to 200 (aka, at a 'maximum' Mobilization of 25, you lose 50 Productivity). +5 Productivity on all planets whilst at peace. - Civilian Industry
Maximum Mobilization is capped to 50. MPE increased to at 100. - State Military (not avaible to Fanatic Pacifist)
Minimum Mobilization is 10, maximum is 100. Allows manual Mobilization to 50. - Mobilized War Industry (never avaible to Pacifist, requires either Authoritarian, Militarist or being at war (in latter case, reverts to State Military once back at peace))
Minimum Mobilization is 25, maximum is 100, MPE reduced to 60. Allows manual Mobilization to 100. - Permanent Military-Industrial Complex (only avaible to FanAuthoritarian/Militarist)
Minimum Mobilization is 40, maximum is 100. MPE is reduced to 50. Allows manual Mobilization to 100.
Now, since you can see that having a potentially high Mobilization cap appears to be an advantage just as much as having no Mobilization is, let me explain the two-edged sword it is:
Mobilization directly affects ship production speed, with a full Mobilization increasing ship production speed by 300% (in reverse, ship build times shoud be doubled. That way, it will be 0 Mobilization = half of current production speed, 100 Mobilization = twice the current production speed). The same speed bonus is applied to the construction of armies.
Additionally, production costs for military ships and armies are reduced by up to 25% (representing how the ressources spent for the Mobilization 'flow back' into the actual production of ships).
Furthermore, Mobilization increases the base damage dealt by orbital cannons by up to 200% (orbital cannons have a default low-ish base damage and thus only become truly effective on mobilized planets) and grants defenders on the planet an army damage and morale damage taken reduction of up to 40% (multiplicatively to all other modifiers).
And, lastly, Mobilization determines how many 'Garrison Militia' a planet will spawn when being invaded (scaled by population, of course).
This brings us to the next question: How is Mobilization generated past the law settings?
There is three ways of 'generating Mobilization'. The first is by the law settings, which may or may not define a minimum Mobilization planets will always maintain, regardless of the other two factors.
The second factor is 'manual Mobilization', which is a stat mentioned, but not explained, previously. Manual Mobilization is a setting at any planet (plus a sector setting plus a 'mobilize all' button at some interface or tab) that will force Mobilization to a set of avaible values (25/50/75/100) at a rate of +-1 Mobilization per month. The purpose of this is to fortify up border planets you expect to be invaded, or to designate specific 'military shipyard' planets to rapidly produce ships and armies. Albeit the option to perform manual Mobilization may be limited by your laws.
The last factor to this is a form of 'Army Upkeep'.
It always bothered me that armies in Stellaris are created from minerals alone and you can have indefinite and abusrd amounts of them, as long as you can feed them with energy.
Instead, we now define that armies recruited from a planet are actually linked to that planet, representing the more or less steady stream of recruits and reinforcements. As such, any army built on a planet permanently 'locks in' a lump sum of that planet's Mobilization. Thus, if you can go up to a maximum of 50 Mobilization and each army built (example values!) takes up 5 Mobilization, you will only be able to build 10 and doing so will max out Mobilization at 50.
However, in reverse this means having a minimum Militarization lets you have 'free armies', as building them will not affect Mobilization until the 'cost' of the built armies would reach the minimum value. With afromentioned example, if you had a minimum Mobilization of 25, the first 5 built armies would not affect the Mobilization value (since it's stuck at 25 anyways).
The actual 'Mobilization Impact' of a built army would mostly depend on it's type (i.e. Elite Army > Assault Army > Defensive Army), probably scaled by population (thus, 40 mobilization on a 25er world means more armies then 40 on a 10er world).
In combination with the laws, this means a militaristic empire will opt for the military-industrial settings, maintaining an increased minimum of mobilization, in the intent to 'use' that minimum to produce armies (which it needs anyways, because militarist, duh), and therefore profits from the reduced MPE (as, in reverse, a less military-industrial empire could build the same amount of armies on demand, but suffer from a higher MPE). On the other hand pacifistic-law'd empires will want to avoid having any armies, as every single will impact Productivity. And, more importantly, you will be forced to recruit armies from multiple planets, instead of just building them in xxx stacks on a single world.
Of course, we can now define different army types and other factors which influence this Mobilization mechanic and interact with our new combat system.
- With global food, we could have armies consume food instead of energy for upkeep.
- We could have armies recruited from War Thralls (the new slace type) generate only half the usual Mobilization.
- A rare militarist tech could further reduce the MPE.
- Robotic Armies could be changed to have only a minimal impact on Mobilization, in exchange for a 'high' energy upkeep.
- 'Elite' armies (i.e. exoskeletons or mechanized) could be more powerful, but as well consume inefficiently more mobilization (i.e. 1.5x the stats, 2x the mobilization).
- We could design specialized army (attachments) which excel at specific phases of ground warfare.
- The destruction of a unit could impact planetary happyness, whilst slowly letting the 'locked' mobilization tick back down, meaning that a loss of xx armies from one planet will prevent that planet from instantly rebuilding the armies until mobilization has 'recovered'
- In reverse, loss of a planet (to war or, more likely, rebellions) could lead to the armies associated with the planet to be forced to disband (or join the rebellion).
- And. So. On. Unlimited possibilities.
To summarize, with this concept we would get an overhaul of ground combat, which lets the player define a general strategy and then watch the visually much more appealing onslaught, whilst as well providing an entirely new take on the difference between Militarists and Pacifists, by introducing Mobilization and it's affect on (civilian) economy. And it allows much more depth in term of army type variation, instead of just the current fluff (and the difference between default armies and gene warriors).
And, in all honesty, if you decide that 'Meh, that's way too much effort to implement, just to watch a visual lightshow', then we still have the whole mobilization and army upkeep concept, which would still, by itself, by a (in my oppinion) great addition to the game.
So, what do you think of this? And what kind of unit types would you suggest?
If you enjoyed this concept, you might as well enjoy the previous and next entry of my series:
< Governments, Society, Economy, Military <
> 5by5 - Planet Habitability reworked >
Last edited:
Upvote
0
