How to make Planatary invasions more interesting.

[methegrate]

I say add one or two fighter squadrons to fortress buildings. The planet then sends these out on a system-level. It won't make or break any fleet, but it will be a constant annoyance that WILL take back the system unless you deal with it. It's also a simple solution.

I think it makes sense and would be a great addition to a sci fi game.

I think that's the move. Uses an existing building, so you don't have to burn a whole building slot on one, relatively unusual situation, and having the fortress threaten control over the system really would force someone to engage with the ground-based forces.

I might even take it one step farther. Let the fortress add fighter squadrons as time goes on. Once it hits a certain number, it can send those squadrons to neighboring systems. That way your fortress world can actually threaten an entire footprint of space. (It would be even better if there were supply lines to disrupt, but threatening control of outposts is great too.)

 

[Bezborg]

T

I think that's the move. Uses an existing building, so you don't have to burn a whole building slot on one, relatively unusual situation, and having the fortress threaten control over the system really would force someone to engage with the ground-based forces.

I might even take it one step farther. Let the fortress add fighter squadrons as time goes on. Once it hits a certain number, it can send those squadrons to neighboring systems. That way your fortress world can actually threaten an entire footprint of space. (It would be even better if there were supply lines to disrupt, but threatening control of outposts is great too.)

That would be great, but then it ceases to be a simple solution for the devs - which is an element one always has to keep in mind with this game. Nothing except the simplest mechanics will be tacked onto this game anymore

 

[firenze419]

They can sit next to a black hole just find an not be torn apart by the gravity well.. why couldn't they launch from a planet. Plus there is a research option for gravity tech already that's a you need for mega engineering.

Black holes don't work that way. You can sit "next to" one just fine...for a given definition of "next to"

Gravity Sucks / Analysis - TV Tropes

Few people seem to understand that this trope only applies when you're actually in the event horizon, the actual black hole where light cannot escape. Keeping a large distance away from the black hole's centre can, in fact, sustain orbit, as long …

tvtropes.org

 

[krutoi2000]

Endless Space 2. What is the problem to look in other space strategy, understand how their ground combat works and implement this ideas into your game.
Their ground combat works pretty easy. Rock, paper and scissors. Advancing in technology provides with new options and you can change composition of your army. Plus some tactic with bonuses for different types of soldiers. And the last, make it all animated with few sprites and CGI effects.

 

[TheRevanchist25]

This feature existed in a no longer updated mod : At War.

More recently, in Gigastructures the Maginot world combined with another megastructure has this role, it spawn an emergency fleet of slightly boosted corvettes with no FTL as a last line of defense for your system

Those mods are actually still updated, just a different modder maintains them now.

 

[endersaim]

Planetary invasions will only be interesting if armies are interesting. For armies to be interesting they need to be customizable and have slow gradual power creep like ships do. The only way to motivate investment into strong high-tech customizable armies is to impose some sort of cost for not having them.

There are two ways to impose this cost that I can think of. One, have defenses be strong enough that you need super-powered armies to break them. This already basically exists with the ‘turtle world strategy’ and mostly helps Apocalypse sales. Players just blow up fortress worlds or bypass them with jump drive.

A second way would be to implement some sort of manpower system like in EU4 where manpower is shared by the fleet and the army. If you have very weak armies than they will take unsustainable casualties invading worlds. You have to invest in army tech or your fleet will have manpower problems. This solution doesn’t really fit with the Stellaris game vision and would be very hard to implement (how do you quantify manpower for necrophages vs normal empires). It’s very likely armies will remain boring.

 

[TheRevanchist25]

Planetary invasions will only be interesting if armies are interesting. For armies to be interesting they need to be customizable and have slow gradual power creep like ships do. The only way to motivate investment into strong high-tech customizable armies is to impose some sort of cost for not having them.

There are two ways to impose this cost that I can think of. One, have defenses be strong enough that you need super-powered armies to break them. This already basically exists with the ‘turtle world strategy’ and mostly helps Apocalypse sales. Players just blow up fortress worlds or bypass them with jump drive.

A second way would be to implement some sort of manpower system like in EU4 where manpower is shared by the fleet and the army. If you have very weak armies than they will take unsustainable casualties invading worlds. You have to invest in army tech or your fleet will have manpower problems. This solution doesn’t really fit with the Stellaris game vision and would be very hard to implement (how do you quantify manpower for necrophages vs normal empires). It’s very likely armies will remain boring.

lol, you realize how easy it is to counter a Colossus, if basic defense mechanics were in the game? Planetary Shields, Ground to Space defense guns, the reintroduction of Defense Stations and Fortresses for Starbases, that can engage and destroy a Colossus if it enters range. add patrol boats that can be built planetside, that you can deploy as a last line of defense. Your enemy send a screening fleet to occupy your starbase? No problem, deploy your planetside patrol ships to fire on the Colossus along with the Orbital defense guns. The planetary shields double the time it takes for weapon to fire, so your defense has time to stop it. These are not insurmountable problems. They just require the devs to not be lazy. Acting like a Colossus is just a "welp, its pointless" device is just lazy design, and can easily be countered with proper defense mechanics, which would be crucial in a planet invasion rework.

 

[Napoleon1971]

I think a great way to make planetary invasions more interesting would simply to add a little complexity to ground combat.

I mean, there are lots of examples of this from Dune, to the Star Wars prequels, and so on.

It would be interesting if, even if mostly automated (perhaps you pick a strategy on invading which is semi rock-paper-scissors) to see your armies seizing various buildings and districts on the planet.

I think planets having greater capability fire cannons at bombarding ships would be a nice addition too, even if unrealistic.

I doubt they'll do it this deep into the game's development. But, the current set up is pretty much "bring enough troops that you win. if you are going to fail, back-off, bombard while your invading army gets its strength back up, then invade again".

 

[endersaim]

lol, you realize how easy it is to counter a Colossus, if basic defense mechanics were in the game? Planetary Shields, Ground to Space defense guns, the reintroduction of Defense Stations and Fortresses for Starbases, that can engage and destroy a Colossus if it enters range. add patrol boats that can be built planetside, that you can deploy as a last line of defense. Your enemy send a screening fleet to occupy your starbase? No problem, deploy your planetside patrol ships to fire on the Colossus along with the Orbital defense guns. The planetary shields double the time it takes for weapon to fire, so your defense has time to stop it. These are not insurmountable problems. They just require the devs to not be lazy. Acting like a Colossus is just a "welp, its pointless" device is just lazy design, and can easily be countered with proper defense mechanics, which would be crucial in a planet invasion rework.

Everything you say are good ideas, but none of your reasons for why they would get rid of the colossus problem make sense. For one, patrol ships destroying the Death Star only really narratively works in Star Wars. Also, defending against the colossus is 99% irrelevant, as players will be the ones attacking with it not the AI, and I really doubt they would ever leave it without an escorting fleet.

 

[TheRevanchist25]

Everything you say are good ideas, but none of your reasons for why they would get rid of the colossus problem make sense. For one, patrol ships destroying the Death Star only really narratively works in Star Wars. Also, defending against the colossus is 99% irrelevant, as players will be the ones attacking with it not the AI, and I really doubt they would ever leave it without an escorting fleet.

Allow me to more clearly explain. A fleet will most likely get aggro'd by the Starbase, which in theory would have proper defense stations that can put up a real fight, The Targeting Computer Module gives Starbases insane weapon range. While the fleet is aggro'd, you launch patrol boats, from the planet itself, which would aggro onto the Colossus since it would be the closest target. The Colossus has no weapons so they would attack unmolested, combine that, with ground to space defense guns firing up at it, and the planetary shield doubling it's charge up time, you either stop it outright, or you've bought enough time to get your own fleets into the system to finish the job. This works, there's mods that provide these things. The Proof of concept is solid. It just needs implemented in an in depth and properly planned manner.

 

[Dementor4]

One thing I'd like to see implemented in ground combat, and in hostile occupation, is an interaction between habitability and morale.

In short, any habitability penalty is applied to the maximum morale of any armies on that world. If you invade a planet where you've got 20% habitability, your troops will have just 20% of their normal morale. The same would be true for your occupying armies, and I would definitely want to see more of your populace rising up to kill the invaders, so if there's a major habitability mismatch you'll need a ton of extra armies to hold those worlds. As with anything these penalties could be mitigated by technology.

But if I were tasked with developing a whole patch devoted to this, what I would implement is this: each planet has a randomly generated terrain map divided into a grid. City centers would populate the grid organically as the planet grows. There are 1-5 landing sites on each world (based on planet size), areas suitable to infantry pod entry, which is where the invaders armies begin, and from those locations their goal is to move toward the city centers and take control. Capitol-based defense armies spawn in the largest city center while police-based defense armies spawn in other city centers. Fortresses are unique in that you can place them where you like on the grid, so potentially you can do things like defend a choke point between a landing site and a city center.

All of this could be completely ignored by the players. If you don't want to involve yourself in this "tower defense" sort of minigame you can simply invade with overwhelming numbers and most of the time you'll do fine. But every once in a while you'll notice that an opponent has designed a particularly nasty fortress world where his 300 Spartans are holding off thousands of your xerxesmorphs and maybe you should just go ahead and crack that world.

 

[Napoleon1971]

One thing I'd like to see implemented in ground combat, and in hostile occupation, is an interaction between habitability and morale.

In short, any habitability penalty is applied to the maximum morale of any armies on that world. If you invade a planet where you've got 20% habitability, your troops will have just 20% of their normal morale. The same would be true for your occupying armies, and I would definitely want to see more of your populace rising up to kill the invaders, so if there's a major habitability mismatch you'll need a ton of extra armies to hold those worlds. As with anything these penalties could be mitigated by technology.

But if I were tasked with developing a whole patch devoted to this, what I would implement is this: each planet has a randomly generated terrain map divided into a grid. City centers would populate the grid organically as the planet grows. There are 1-5 landing sites on each world (based on planet size), areas suitable to infantry pod entry, which is where the invaders armies begin, and from those locations their goal is to move toward the city centers and take control. Capitol-based defense armies spawn in the largest city center while police-based defense armies spawn in other city centers. Fortresses are unique in that you can place them where you like on the grid, so potentially you can do things like defend a choke point between a landing site and a city center.

All of this could be completely ignored by the players. If you don't want to involve yourself in this "tower defense" sort of minigame you can simply invade with overwhelming numbers and most of the time you'll do fine. But every once in a while you'll notice that an opponent has designed a particularly nasty fortress world where his 300 Spartans are holding off thousands of your xerxesmorphs and maybe you should just go ahead and crack that world.

Aren't Xerxesmorphs just weak clone troopers with wicker shields?

OK, maybe I've been playing Imperator too much recently.

 

[Varren]

Allow me to more clearly explain. A fleet will most likely get aggro'd by the Starbase, which in theory would have proper defense stations that can put up a real fight, The Targeting Computer Module gives Starbases insane weapon range. While the fleet is aggro'd, you launch patrol boats, from the planet itself, which would aggro onto the Colossus since it would be the closest target. The Colossus has no weapons so they would attack unmolested, combine that, with ground to space defense guns firing up at it, and the planetary shield doubling it's charge up time, you either stop it outright, or you've bought enough time to get your own fleets into the system to finish the job. This works, there's mods that provide these things. The Proof of concept is solid. It just needs implemented in an in depth and properly planned manner.

So just kill the starbase before you send in the Colossus. It's already a pretty big risk sending a Colossus into an active combat zone anyway.

 

[TheRevanchist25]

So just kill the starbase before you send in the Colossus. It's already a pretty big risk sending a Colossus into an active combat zone anyway.

Unless you can't kill the Starbase, because it would be a real starbase, with proper defense platforms, and most likely a fleet backing it up. The argument was "Land invasion is pointless, because Colossus". I stated a scenario where, if you had properly overhauled mechanics, that would not be the case. Your point is the exact opposite of the previous, which proves my point about how proper defense mechanics are required to have a compelling planet invasion system. A Fortress System is doing it's job if you have to hold your Colossus back until it's safe. As it currently is in game, that's not really the case. Starbases are toothless and don't do anything, and thus pose no threat, and planets are wholly incapable of defending themselves because illogical design is illogical.

 

[WarriorofMODS]

just an idea I've had for a while. Just couldn't figure out where to post it so dev could see.

I recall reading a dev diary or comment somewhere about trying to make planatary invasions more interesting or needing in game.

Well I had a idea to a new unique building that could help with that. I've had a few campaigns where a larger empire wiped my starbases out, but never landed armies an for many years I couldn't do much. So my idea was to make it possible for planets to have a single land based shipyard. (Like we see in the new star-trek movies.) Sure one single ship yard mite not be helpful but if u have a system with two or three planets that would be two or three ship yards making emergency fleets.

This would also give attackers a reason to invade planets as now the planet could be a threat to there navy.

The idea behind this is we see primitive empires build space craft from there planet an early space stations before becoming space fairing. I think it be cool or kinda realistic to allow us to build a limited amount of ships maybe cheaper but slower than a dedicated space station. As well why couldn't an empire build ships on there planets. Maybe make it a early form ship building early game until you research the tech for orbital ship yards.

This could also become a tactic later on game as wide empires could focus on a centralized ship building industry in the form of space stations. While tall empires could keep there building decentralized as there usually smaller. Or vice versa. Just a really fun idea to make planets worth invading instead of just wiping out the orbital stations. An giving players a back or alternative way of building ships

Side note I've played this game sence it's first year out. An also regularly play it's console sibling on Xbox. An I'm excited to play all the new updates coming to console. While enjoying my PC modes games.

There's already a reason, its called FTL suspension. When you research a certain tech, your enemies are required to take any star bases and invade all planets in each system to progress forward.

 

[Nevars]

Make it longer, buff defence army up and buff ship bombardment against defence army like maybe not only inflicting dmg but also debuff defence army too thus without bombardment assault army will usually lose unless they outnumbered defence army several times over.

Also make planetary shield generator to be an actual shield by providing shield gauge that will soak up orbital bombardment before they can inflict any dmg to planet and defence army.

With all this simple change planetary invasion would become an extension of spacebattle and more importantly it will be more interesting than what we have right now aka let's invade a planet and wait a few sec to victory.

 

[Bezborg]

Also make planetary shield generator to be an actual shield by providing shield gauge that will soak up orbital bombardment before they can inflict any dmg to planet and defence army.

Be aware that this would be totally meaningless, considering how powerful fleets get and how fast time passes.... Unless the planetary shield has millions of hitpoints.


I'd do it like this:

Orbital bombardment does not damage anything, it just puts planetary assets into a certain "state". So a fleet in orbit with bombardment ability* and in a bombardment stance would put planetary defense armies into a state of decreased efficacy.

i.e. their health would be at 80%, their morale would be at 80% and their damage would be at 80%. Percentages adjusted for tech and bombardment stance.
The rest is up to your invasion armies to crack.

Only glassing and similar would have the ability to kill a planet, in time.

*bombardment ability: I'd limit this to battleships only, other ships are just way to small to wreak havoc on an entire planet of highly advanced AND militarized people with shielding technology.

 

[Gyrvendal]

So your idea to improve planet combat is to make planets do space combat instead? I guess it could work, but I'm not a huge fan.
You are already forced to invade planets once they get FTL inhibitors, so I don't think there needs to be a separate mechanic for forcing you to invade. Some kind of planetary cannons or fighter squadron would be fine I guess, but it doesn't solve the blandness of ground combat.

Here's a few ideas to improve actual ground combat:

• Major quality of life: Allow ground troops/transports to be "attached" to a fleet, and add them to the fleet macro builder, so you can build them and reinforce them directly from your fleet. This would eliminate a lot of tedious micro and reduce the risk of transport wipes (especially for the AI).
• Allow planets to have good defensive structures/armies without sacrificing precious building slots (e.g. planetary decisions to build fortresses or other defenses that don't count as buildings, but still have an upkeep). This makes it more viable to have defensible worlds without tanking your economy too much for it, which will almost never be a good option.
• Make habitability matter? I mean oceanic squid assault troops shouldn't do well on a desert world, no? Might end up being too much micro though, up to debate.

 

[Bezborg]

So your idea to improve planet combat is to make planets do space combat instead? I guess it could work, but I'm not a huge fan.
You are already forced to invade planets once they get FTL inhibitors, so I don't think there needs to be a separate mechanic for forcing you to invade. Some kind of planetary cannons or fighter squadron would be fine I guess, but it doesn't solve the blandness of ground combat.

Here's a few ideas to improve actual ground combat:

• Major quality of life: Allow ground troops/transports to be "attached" to a fleet, and add them to the fleet macro builder, so you can build them and reinforce them directly from your fleet. This would eliminate a lot of tedious micro and reduce the risk of transport wipes (especially for the AI).
• Allow planets to have good defensive structures/armies without sacrificing precious building slots (e.g. planetary decisions to build fortresses or other defenses that don't count as buildings, but still have an upkeep). This makes it more viable to have defensible worlds without tanking your economy too much for it, which will almost never be a good option.
• Make habitability matter? I mean oceanic squid assault troops shouldn't do well on a desert world, no? Might end up being too much micro though, up to debate.

Almost all of these have been suggested numerous times over the years. I agree with all of them, it would make warfare much more interesting. it would actually make me excited about the invasion part, not the space battle part (which I find infinitely more boring, in sci-fi).

So yeah, I agree on all points.

For the planetary defenses, allow me to tie into another frequently suggested point: make building exclusively infrastructure projects, limited to one per planet, and move all production to the district side, and keep the buildings as upgradeable large-scale infrastructure projects.

So, in relation to this, one could have a "planetary defense infrastructure" building on the planet, with far-reaching effects and perhaps unlocking special planetary decisions as well.

So much could be done with this game, if there was a will.

 

[Nevars]

Be aware that this would be totally meaningless, considering how powerful fleets get and how fast time passes.... Unless the planetary shield has millions of hitpoints.

*bombardment ability: I'd limit this to battleships only, other ships are just way to small to wreak havoc on an entire planet of highly advanced AND militarized people with shielding technology.

Just let's ship do dmg to planetary shield as fixed dmg equivalent to their naval cap so corvette would deals 1, destroyer 2, cruiser 4 (?), battleship 8(?) so on and so forth.