I have four small changes I would like to suggest for ground combat as currently ground defenses can never hold out to even a small attacking force. Giving a -75% damage negative to defenders once fortifications are down, having a cap, and planet fortifications not being able to shoot ships in orbit, is just horrible for defenders.
1st: No cap on ground units defending. Since attacking forces have no limit don't give a limit to the defenders. You have a whole planet to station troops on. Doesn't make much sense that we would be limited with hundreds of millions of square miles on a planet for us to station troops. Also planets should have at least 1 militia per pop to defend.
2nd: With fortification up it should stay about the same, 90% reduction to damage (reduced as it goes down) and no loss of buildings, military personal or pop. But once it gets to 0 the following bonus should replace the flat -75% damage modifier to defenders, based on what level of bombardment you have:
Light bombardment should only give attacker a +10% or so damage bonus. Shouldn't kill pop, military or destroy buildings. (Pacifists maybe don't like this?)
Limited bombardment should give a 10-20% bonus to damage for attacker, 10% or so per month chance to kill a military defender, and a 5% or so chance to destroy buildings, and same for pop killing (Pops that are Xenophile, Pacifist or Individuals should hate this)
Full Bombardment should give a 30-50% bonus to damage for attacker, 20% or so per month chance to kill military, and 10-20% chance per month to destroy buildings and and pop. (Your pops should hate this if they are not Authoritarian or Military edicts)
3rd: Fortifications fire back while still up. something like a space stations worth of damage firing up to the ships in orbit. (This would make techs that boost forts hp actually worth something more then 10 more seconds of bombardment, and many more techs can be added in the future to improve this damage/hp)
4th: Little to no war score for bombarding a planet. Currently it can be better to bombard then to actually invade which is silly (this depends on planet size) but really you should get maybe 1 or 2 points worth (depending on size of empire) of war score for bombarding a planet and once you have successfully invaded you get the full amount the planet is worth.
I feel this small change could allow defenders to actually defend a planet with ground combat, where with the current system there is really nothing you can do (accept space combat to keep out or remove the bombardment) to defend a planet from a ground assault. This would also give people who are losing a bit more time to build back up (there other issues with this that I will not get into in this post, like doom stacks and defense stations not really mattering after mid game). I understand Wiz doesn't like ground combat but barring a massive overhaul to ground combat (or removing it) I feel this is the KISS (keep it simple silly) way of fixing ground combat that could possibly be added in this free update. At the very least please remove the cap on planet based ground troops considering attackers have no cap and its just silly to think you would have a cap on military personal on a planet when an attacker can bring and land 100s of units but you can only have a dozen or so on planet.
By the way I love this game and have 800 hours of game play in currently and I look forward to 800+ more hours after the expansion is released.
Thank you for your time,
1st: No cap on ground units defending. Since attacking forces have no limit don't give a limit to the defenders. You have a whole planet to station troops on. Doesn't make much sense that we would be limited with hundreds of millions of square miles on a planet for us to station troops. Also planets should have at least 1 militia per pop to defend.
2nd: With fortification up it should stay about the same, 90% reduction to damage (reduced as it goes down) and no loss of buildings, military personal or pop. But once it gets to 0 the following bonus should replace the flat -75% damage modifier to defenders, based on what level of bombardment you have:
Light bombardment should only give attacker a +10% or so damage bonus. Shouldn't kill pop, military or destroy buildings. (Pacifists maybe don't like this?)
Limited bombardment should give a 10-20% bonus to damage for attacker, 10% or so per month chance to kill a military defender, and a 5% or so chance to destroy buildings, and same for pop killing (Pops that are Xenophile, Pacifist or Individuals should hate this)
Full Bombardment should give a 30-50% bonus to damage for attacker, 20% or so per month chance to kill military, and 10-20% chance per month to destroy buildings and and pop. (Your pops should hate this if they are not Authoritarian or Military edicts)
3rd: Fortifications fire back while still up. something like a space stations worth of damage firing up to the ships in orbit. (This would make techs that boost forts hp actually worth something more then 10 more seconds of bombardment, and many more techs can be added in the future to improve this damage/hp)
4th: Little to no war score for bombarding a planet. Currently it can be better to bombard then to actually invade which is silly (this depends on planet size) but really you should get maybe 1 or 2 points worth (depending on size of empire) of war score for bombarding a planet and once you have successfully invaded you get the full amount the planet is worth.
I feel this small change could allow defenders to actually defend a planet with ground combat, where with the current system there is really nothing you can do (accept space combat to keep out or remove the bombardment) to defend a planet from a ground assault. This would also give people who are losing a bit more time to build back up (there other issues with this that I will not get into in this post, like doom stacks and defense stations not really mattering after mid game). I understand Wiz doesn't like ground combat but barring a massive overhaul to ground combat (or removing it) I feel this is the KISS (keep it simple silly) way of fixing ground combat that could possibly be added in this free update. At the very least please remove the cap on planet based ground troops considering attackers have no cap and its just silly to think you would have a cap on military personal on a planet when an attacker can bring and land 100s of units but you can only have a dozen or so on planet.
By the way I love this game and have 800 hours of game play in currently and I look forward to 800+ more hours after the expansion is released.
Thank you for your time,