Questions and discussion: Armies & Ground Combat

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nuke4

Flamboyant Schemer
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Jun 21, 2012
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With multiple ground combat threads already I apologise for making another. I was planning to type in
"We've seen ground combat, we want better - who agrees?" but I don't agree with the topic.
VgIOxqO.jpg

Now that we've seen ground combat what really interests me to know is what decides which unit fight which or do they all just contribute their stats to one big battle. Units seems to take damage with ticks but then what decides which unit takes damage and eventually dies. Do injured units contribute less? I wish they would had talked more about the mechanics during the battle.

Some analysis.
The battle lasted for about 40 days which seems alright, it went by quickly since speed was on fast and there seems to be only 3 defending armies. The build army screen showed that swords are assault armies and shields are defense armies. I would guess the others are militia from how easily beaten they were? There were 10 "militia" and 9½(1 growing) POP's so maybe the "miltias" number is decided by that.

Is there some equivalent to an attack width? The more numerous seem to be packed tighter indicating a no which is good I think. A combat width for a planet seems strange.

Overall I think ground combat feels good enough for the time but I wouldn't mind seeing it revisited in a future dlc.
 
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I think there's a reason the combat was over quickly... remember, blorg had soldiers in power armor, recently researched advanced assault infantry, had laser against a fairly young space faring empire. Blorg had had 20 years to research better weaponry... that's huge in standard military terms. Think about if in modern time one military stopped researching weapons for 20 years... yikes!
 
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It almost seems to me like space is where the real battles happen, and ground combat is more comparable to sieges in other paradox games. Ground combat is there to make sure that you have to invest some more resources in order to turn your battle victories into captured ground.
 
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I think there's a reason the combat was over quickly... remember, blorg had soldiers in power armor, recently researched advanced assault infantry, had laser against a fairly young space faring empire. Blorg had had 20 years to research better weaponry... that's huge in standard military terms. Think about if in modern time one military stopped researching weapons for 20 years... yikes!
I might have missed something but the only research I recall seeing that improved ground combat was Powered Exoskeletons(powerarmor). So unless I missed reading something I don't think the other techs like lasers affected ground-combat or had any modifiers. While it might not be "realistic" I think that's how it works, they unlock ship-componants not ground weapons. "Militia" is almost guaranteed to be pretty poor fighters compared to trained armies, like peasants in total war.
 
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I might have missed something but the only research I recall seeing that improved ground combat was Powered Exoskeletons(powerarmor). So unless I missed reading something I don't think the other techs like lasers affected ground-combat or had any modifiers. While it might not be "realistic" I think that's how it works, they unlock ship-componants not ground weapons. "Militia" is almost guaranteed to be pretty poor fighters compared to trained armies, like peasants in total war.
If I recall correctly, they also unlocked Lance Assault Infantry, which was a ground combat tech. I might be wrong though...
 
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Additionally, the Blorg fielded 10 assault armies against 3 defense armies and 10 militias (?) which I assume are not great combat units considering that they're militias. Then the Blorg had a +5% Army Damage general and as already said, the Blorg were ahead with their research around solid 20 years and had a fleet in orbit which may or may not has granted support. So I guess that was an overwhelming victory by the Blorg there, bigger invasions where both sides are equal might take much longer than 40 days like bigger battles in EU4 between equal armies also took longer.

I personally have no problem with this rather simplistic approach regarding ground combat We've also got to consider that the layer between ground and space has not been touched yet. I don't mind if Paradox releases a DLC/Patch which overhauls ground combat but until then, this version will serve me well enough regarding that I don't want to micro (sort of) multiple invasions that can very well happen in the mid or late game. And while this field definitely has potential, I don't consider ground combat a core-element of Stellaris. I'd actually have been fine with fleets having to siege the planets like armies having to siege forts in EU4 etc. But maybe I only have low standards ;)
 
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Something i just noticed in that picture. It look like there are layers to the ground combat. One for infantry/tanks, one for aircraft, I wonder what the third one is..?
 
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Something i just noticed in that picture. It look like there are layers to the ground combat. One for infantry/tanks, one for aircraft, I wonder what the third one is..?
Nice observation, maybe the middle one is air support from ships with carrier modules.
 
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The ground combat is pretty standard for space 4X, I think they've spent most of their energy on internal empire management mechanics which is the wisest choice imo since that's what we will be spending most of our time on anyway.
 
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It looks good.

I'm hoping that with the right build, my defending armies and militias can hold out until relieving fleets arrive. That would not only feel good, but also be a wonderful bit of emergent story.
 
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I'm content with ground combat being fairly basic. We already have ships as the army analogues, and unlike in previous Paradox games you can actually meaningfully influence their composition; making ground combat thought-intensive would probably be too much. Maybe if there was a manpower system I could see a distinction between light infantry, mechanized infantry, armor, and purely drone forces as compromises between manpower efficiency and mineral efficiency, but with just mineral efficiency to worry about there's only so much you can do.

I will say this: I'm not sure if the fleet was actually bombarding the planet. According to that interface, it didn't look like they were participating.
 
I will say this: I'm not sure if the fleet was actually bombarding the planet. According to that interface, it didn't look like they were participating.

I agree. It looks like you need to press blue orbital bombardment button to actually bombard anything. And third bombardment button is greyed because only limited bombardment is allowed by his polics
 
The fleet bombardment probably made the enemy's unit's weaker.

Also, I think the two other layers are going to be new types of "armies" (more like aircraft and small space fighters) that comes later in game.

Also, good catch on the militia.

I think as we see more gameplay we will see how combat is much more complex than it seems now, which is good.
 
It almost seems to me like space is where the real battles happen, and ground combat is more comparable to sieges in other paradox games. Ground combat is there to make sure that you have to invest some more resources in order to turn your battle victories into captured ground.

I agree, I feel seeing as it is a 4X space game then far more emphasis will be on space combat rather than ground invasion. Plus it'd be far easier to model space combat, seeing as a detailed invasion of a planet would be tedious and take months to years in game.