War score subtraction for occupying an enemy planet?

[Konstantinov]

So I've got quite a few hours in and I've noticed that in some cases, when I take over an enemy planet, it *seems* that my war score against that enemy goes down, rather than up. This has happened on several occasions and I am pulling on my hair trying to figure out why. Am I missing something? Mistaken, perhaps? Anyone?

 

[stumason]

Yeah, that does happen. Seems the warscore for blockading a planet is higher than occupation, so when you take the world, you lose the blockade score.

Daft, yes. So I go for the homeworld every time - generally gives a big boost to warscore.

 

[Konstantinov]

Thanks for the clarification.

 

[GloatingSwine]

Occupying a planet is worth less than blockading it. Probably because you need to keep forces in place to maintain a blockade, whereas occupied planets stay occupied until the enemy lands an army on them.

 

[Soldaris]

Yes I have noticed this yesterday (26.12.16), it is annoying. I am not sure whether this is a bug or a "great new" feature. I hope the Devs will look into this, you should not get a minus warscore for taking over a planet.

 

[GloatingSwine]

It's been like this since the beginning. You get about 5 warscore for an occupation, 7.5 for a blockade except when the opponent is really small.

 

[GamerSteve]

I think it's this way because there is a fleet cap but not really an army cap. So you can make as many armies as you want to occupy planets, but with the fleet cap you will eventually run out of ships to maintain the blockade. So Paradox apparently thought blockading was 'harder' so they gave you more points for it. It is definitely hard to maintain more than a few blockades, whereas planets, I've held 10 or 15 at a time before while trying to get the warscore to move up.

I'm not saying this is a logical way for it to be. Logically, occupying a planet is much more severe than blockading it. But game-wise it is actually easier.

Maybe if Paradox made the defending armies actually worth a darn it might make occupying more of a challenge. But as it is now... I don't think I have ever been defeated for an invasion once bombardment was complete.

 

[stumason]

Maybe if Paradox made the defending armies actually worth a darn it might make occupying more of a challenge. But as it is now... I don't think I have ever been defeated for an invasion once bombardment was complete.

If Wiz has his way, he'd get shot of ground combat altogether, as apparently once you have a dozen tiny ships in orbit, planets should just surrender as there is simply no way for a planet to protect itself against little spaceships.... (and they are little - even a 5km long battleship is absolutely tiny compared to even the smallest world and I don't buy the reasoning by some that ground combat would be irrelevant in some space war)

Thankfully, he acknowledges this would be unpopular, but as a result we probably won't see any major changes to it for the better either.

Personally, I would like planets to be able to build better defences (guns, fortress etc) and for combat to be a bit better than pound planet unopposed then land armies. Tbh, the way they dealt with Ground combat in Distant Worlds was perfect and it baffles me why they don't adopt it for Stellaris, it wouldn't even be that big of a change tbh. What we have now is lame.

 

[Elothan]

I think it's this way because there is a fleet cap but not really an army cap. So you can make as many armies as you want to occupy planets, but with the fleet cap you will eventually run out of ships to maintain the blockade. So Paradox apparently thought blockading was 'harder' so they gave you more points for it. It is definitely hard to maintain more than a few blockades, whereas planets, I've held 10 or 15 at a time before while trying to get the warscore to move up.

I'm not saying this is a logical way for it to be. Logically, occupying a planet is much more severe than blockading it. But game-wise it is actually easier.

Maybe if Paradox made the defending armies actually worth a darn it might make occupying more of a challenge. But as it is now... I don't think I have ever been defeated for an invasion once bombardment was complete.

I have, but mostly because I tend to invade with about half to 3/4 the numbers of the defending. Even wuth regular assault armies i tend to win. So yeah, defense armies in my games are only in severe casea of rebellion.

 

[stumason]

I have, but mostly because I tend to invade with about half to 3/4 the numbers of the defending. Even wuth regular assault armies i tend to win. So yeah, defense armies in my games are only in severe casea of rebellion.

Thats another thing - why are the Defence armies so much weaker than assault armies? Surely the only difference is one has ships - the rest should be the same, no? Same weapons, same people, same training?

Or are they like the shonky PDF from 40K and the Assault armies like the IG?

 

[Elothan]

I all honesty, I think defense armies should be even tougher than assault armies, they might not have a ship, but they are fighting on known turf.
Or maybe skip defense/assault armies and make it plain multi-use armies and give them more options in configurations, like traits or such.
Means that standing armies would atleast make sense.
Currently they are built in a blitz, and atleast for me, used as disposables.

 

[stumason]

I all honesty, I think defense armies should be even tougher than assault armies, they might not have a ship, but they are fighting on known turf.
Or maybe skip defense/assault armies and make it plain multi-use armies and give them more options in configurations, like traits or such.
Means that standing armies would atleast make sense.
Currently they are built in a blitz, and atleast for me, used as disposables.

Problem with ground combat atm is all the whiners about "micro" - yes it's a little clicky but it could be far worse. And then you have Wiz, the Game Director, openly stating if it was down to him, the game wouldn't even have ground combat at all - ships would just turn up and bam, planet surrenders.

Personally, I have a few mods in use which add some better buildings and bonuses to ground troops but its still lacking.

 

[Elothan]

Problem with ground combat atm is all the whiners about "micro" - yes it's a little clicky but it could be far worse. And then you have Wiz, the Game Director, openly stating if it was down to him, the game wouldn't even have ground combat at all - ships would just turn up and bam, planet surrenders.

Personally, I have a few mods in use which add some better buildings and bonuses to ground troops but its still lacking.

I'll admit that the interface is rather bad, but I would like more armies if they actually meant something, preferably a reason to keep them around.

Not oposed to planetary defense structures either.

 

[GloatingSwine]

Ground combat doesn't need any more interaction.

You could have combat happening on the tiles. For instance:

Defender can build up to 1 army per tile (no need to place them manually, they get autoplaced radiating out from the capital) and each tile autogenerates a garrison as well. Attacker starts at the planetary capital and top army in the invading stack "fights" that tile. If the invading army is killed the next in the stack takes its place, wearing it down until they capture that tile, then the stack lands and one army fights each "side", spreading out across the planet fighting the sides of each tile and capturing the next. As assault armies fall they're replaced from the ones not yet engaged.

Different buildings could give their tile a bonus to defence etc, some could provide an overall bonus to the planet.

Attacker is always at a bit of a disadvantage because they're fighting the defence army and a garrison in every tile.

No more micro, no more clicking, but the player sees the result of their decision of what armies and how many to send have more of an effect, and it tells better stories as a flood of cheap slave armies taking a planet with endless reserves looks different from a couple of elite gene warriors methodically grinding through inferior defenders.

 

[smjjames]

I all honesty, I think defense armies should be even tougher than assault armies, they might not have a ship, but they are fighting on known turf.
Or maybe skip defense/assault armies and make it plain multi-use armies and give them more options in configurations, like traits or such.
Means that standing armies would atleast make sense.
Currently they are built in a blitz, and atleast for me, used as disposables.

There needs to be a stronger version of the defense forces for late game because once you get gene warriors, it's all too easy to drop 12 or 24 of those and you can take a planet nearly all the time without needing to do bombardment first.

Anyway, back ontopic, I've noticed the warscore dropping a bit when I occupy a planet rather than blockade as well.

 

[Seryss]

One thing that's been driving me crazy about war score lately is the defense pact scaling.

They need to either limit how many you can have or how they affect war score. Yesterday i was fighting an empire with 4 defensive pacts 2 of which were on the other side of the galaxy and short of wardecing 3/4 of the galaxy (more defense pacts and federations yay..) they were impossible to reach, making it impossible to reach 100. I had to repeatadley fight them, and negotiate 1-2 planets at a time for ~ 80 years. losing 2 points for occupying the planet is just adding insult to injury when you can only get 40-50 points.

 

[GamerSteve]

One thing that's been driving me crazy about war score lately is the defense pact scaling.

They need to either limit how many you can have or how they affect war score. Yesterday i was fighting an empire with 4 defensive pacts 2 of which were on the other side of the galaxy and short of wardecing 3/4 of the galaxy (more defense pacts and federations yay..) they were impossible to reach, making it impossible to reach 100.

Yes this is highly annoying. And I think it would be easily fixable if they just add the CK 2 style 'ticking war score' to Stellaris. If you war goal 4 planets, and you occupy all 4, the war score should start ticking up at +1 a month or something. So if you are at say 52% and you hold your goals, the other side has 48 months to take at least one of them back from you, or they're yours and the war ends.

This would go a long way toward getting rid of the really silly mechanic that I end up conquering entire empires over and over just to take a few planets at a time. I don't mind taking a few at a time, but it's silly to take 10 planets only to get 2. Then 8 planets to get 2. Etc. Again you don't have to do this in CK2. If ONE county is your war goal, you can just take it and hold it until you win the war. You don't have to conquer all of Ireland to get Ulster, and then give the rest of Ireland back to the Irish king. You just take and hold Ulster and if he can't get it back from you in sufficient time, it's yours.

They really need something like this in Stellaris. It would solve probably 90% of my problems with the war goal/score system. I don't mind taking a few worlds at a time, but I do mind having to re-invade the same insane # of worlds over and over again to just take a couple. It's silly and it just ends up dragging things out while not making them any harder at all.

 

[stumason]

Slightly out of scope as it's a mod, but an interesting thing none the less, but I use the Exterminatus mod.

Now, depending on what particular method of global annihilation you use, this can incur the wrath of other empires or not (there are advanced options which disguise genocide as a global calamity or some weapon you find in an precursor type event which is an untraceable warhead which kills sentient lifeforms), but what I have done before if I have the situation described above about trying to take 1 planet yet having to take the whole empire is thus:

Take required planet as normal, then proceed to annihilate every other world in the enemies empire, forcing the warscore up as well as wiping out an enemy totally. 2 space-birds, one stone

But, as I said, this is a mod. Just thought I'd mention it as an interesting anecdote.

 

[jmpveg22]

If Wiz has his way, he'd get shot of ground combat altogether, as apparently once you have a dozen tiny ships in orbit, planets should just surrender as there is simply no way for a planet to protect itself against little spaceships.... (and they are little - even a 5km long battleship is absolutely tiny compared to even the smallest world and I don't buy the reasoning by some that ground combat would be irrelevant in some space war)

Thankfully, he acknowledges this would be unpopular, but as a result we probably won't see any major changes to it for the better either.

Personally, I would like planets to be able to build better defences (guns, fortress etc) and for combat to be a bit better than pound planet unopposed then land armies. Tbh, the way they dealt with Ground combat in Distant Worlds was perfect and it baffles me why they don't adopt it for Stellaris, it wouldn't even be that big of a change tbh. What we have now is lame.

Distant Worlds really did get ground Combat near-perfect.

I think Stellaris could get it better though:
The inclusion of modern day divisions like Armored, Mechanized, Motorized, Marine, Airborne, and Garrison would be a good start. Each Division has a specific purpose with different attributes.
Among these Attributes are:
Attack (damage dealt)
Defense (Resistance to Damage dealt)
Health (self-explanatory)
Size (How many many troops and equipment are included/cost... this limits how many can fit onto a planet.),
mobility (Time it takes to pack up and move unit into ships)

Armored: These are heavy hitters and expensive assault formations. Can be used in near any capacity but are limited by cost, size, and mobility.
Attack power: 200
Defense power: 200
Health: 200
Size/Cost: 4 planet tiles/expensive maintenance cost
Mobility: 6 months to deploy in space

Mechanized: These are typical all around formations.
Attack power:100
Defense power: 100
Health: 100
Size/Cost: 2 planet tiles/normal maintenance cost
Mobility: 3 months to deploy in space

Motorized: The cheap option, ideal maintaining a minimal security presence and/or quick assaults.
Attack power: 50
Defense power: 50
Health: 100
Size/Cost: 1 planet tiles/cheap maintenance cost
Mobility: 1 month to deploy in space


Marine: One of the two pure assault formations, ideal for long drawn out invasions
Attack power:100
Defense power: 100
Health: 200
Size/Cost: 2 planet tiles/expensive maintenance cost
Mobility: Instant

Airborne: One of the two pure assault formations, ideal for quick capture operations with backup en route
Attack power: 200
Defense power: 50
Health: 50
Size/Cost: 1 planet tiles/expensive maintenance cost
Mobility: Instant

Garrison:
Attack power:100
Defense power: 200
Health: 200
Size/Cost: 2 planet tiles/ Normal maintenance cost
Mobility: immobile

 

[Alencon]

I think ground combat is fine the way it is. It's abstract anyway. I don't like the fact that warscore goes down once a planet is occupied. It's 7.5 for a blockade and 5 for occupation. It really should be reversed.