What can be done to ground combat?

[D Inqu]

This is not a trick question. At this point in time, ground combat is probably the weakest part of the game. So let's try to being together some ideas on how it could be improved.

First, the problems:
1. Mousecklicks. Building armies, clicking on each one individually to give them attachments (most of which are quite similar) is way too much pointless clicks. Attachments need to either be removed, or turned into something more meaningful. A "auto-attach" or some other QoL option would help too to reduce clicks, as well as sectors automatically building the "neo-concrete" attachments for their defensive armies to reduce maintenance.

2. Lack of defensive options. There really is nothing. Fleet shows up, bombs, dumps troops. If your troops have a bigger numbers, you win. Army recovers and can move to next target. There is literally nothing else. There is no difference between invading a desert world, some tropical world filled with hallucinogens and vicious wildlife, a world with titanic lifeforms or with underground cave aliens. There is so much variety in the planets, and it's not used at all.

3. Lack of troop variety. There is no real variety, you have one troop class: the attack one with straight up superior versions appearing later on. Garrisons become irrelevant by mid-game. Defensive armies become irrelevant a little later. This results in no real army planning other than "build stack of identical units".



Why do we want good ground combat? Because it can be very fun! The best 4x I have played with ground combat is MOO3, which unfortunately was plagued the whole game's "interface from hell" problem. Neverthless, it has been years, but I still remember:

I was playing as Humans (who are totally terrible in ground combat), and was fighting Meklar (who are quite decent). Victory in space was achieved, but to progress further, I needed to actually take the planets. And that's where problems started. The Meklar fortified every major world with lots of armies. Since these worlds were well delopped I wanted them relatively intact so bombing them to extinction was not an option. Additionally, combat stance had to be set to "low collateral damage". That, combined with the humans' poor combat ability made conquest difficult. My armies got stuck in attritional warfare, where I was slowly edging the planet one region at a time. One planetary invasion failed to land and was destroyed, another did not receive reinforcements in time and was overrun.

I needed to actually plan carefully for the ground war. I went and traded techs to get better defensive equipment for my troops. I had to cancel production on worlds which had non-human population and focus them on producing only troops (since they were better). I had to organise new model armies (MOO3 had a neat army designer from small units, with different troop classes) with more more frontline troops and less support (as my armies already on planets still had their support, but were running out of actual grunts. I had to put a new generation of transport ships into production to get my troops to the fight in less turns.

So, this was fun, it was, well, strategic. And it was so so rewarding to watch the very MOO3-ugly interface turning the planet map into my color as I was sweeping the enemy troops.

 

[MutantPixel]

I agree that the ground combat, if you can call it that, needs to be improved. If not a physical representation, which would take a lot of resources to create, then why not a better meta game for preparation? I think being able to design armies would be a neat step, equip them with different weapons and armors, enhancements that will effect their different stats and let your armies if victorious level up and get better. I don't think that would be to much to implement on a future update.

 

[Rubidium]

I agree that the ground combat, if you can call it that, needs to be improved. If not a physical representation, which would take a lot of resources to create, then why not a better meta game for preparation? I think being able to design armies would be a neat step, equip them with different weapons and armors, enhancements that will effect their different stats and let your armies if victorious level up and get better. I don't think that would be to much to implement on a future update.

Steal HOI4's division planner in the same way that they're stealing Victoria II's factions?

 

[Magnificent Genius]

I want to eliminate transports. As well as remove the tediousness of having to add attachments manually to each army individually. Have the armies attached to the fleets themselves and have the army list have the option to build them with the attachment.

If we must have ground combat, I want it to be "fire and forget".

 

[MutantPixel]

Steal HOI4's division planner in the same way that they're stealing Victoria II's factions?

I guess so, lol. It's only natural to have a system that lets us enjoy the building of armies and using them to subjugate the screaming Xeno masses.

 

[Shermanator]

If we must have ground combat, I want it to be "fire and forget".

I think your in the minority here.

I like a lot of these ideas. I see no reason why armies shouldn't be just as customizable as fleets are.

Another thing I'd like is a way to represent land vehicles. Tanks rule, and any FTL society could surely engineer some pretty naurly ground combat vehicles. Along with building land armies, I think we should be able to build and customize land vehicles. Perhaps air support to, though I think your fleet could handle that. Speaking of which, corvettes and fighters could perhaps help your armies fight in a direct way, along with bombing their fortification.
I'd also be interested in an sort of "global map" perhaps cities and population centers could be represented somehow on the map, based on where the pops are centered, and you could actually tell your armies which region to go on (each region could represent a tile) I know that may sound boring, but I think it could be made interesting if flanking, centers of control, looting, and fortifications, and collateral damage were taken into account.

And for the record, we should be able to just nuke them into extinction if we desire. (and have purging)

 

[Cagliostro]

I think your in the minority here.

I think there are a lot of players who don't want too much complexity in ground combat. But I think there is a difference between making something complicated and making something interesting. Like, making it so you have to actually pay attention to army techs, or have to spend resources on building some sort of specific attack or defense, is interesting. Making someone click a few dozen times on every planet they take in a galaxy-wide war is just complicated.

 

[MutantPixel]

I think there are a lot of players who don't want too much complexity in ground combat. But I think there is a difference between making something complicated and making something interesting. Like, making it so you have to actually pay attention to army techs, or have to spend resources on building some sort of specific attack or defense, is interesting. Making someone click a few dozen times on every planet they take in a galaxy-wide war is just complicated.

Another neat little addition could be marines to board enemy ships and take them over, imagine playing a nomadic empire that plays sort of like pirates and pillages fleets? Dunno if this would even be realistic or fun in the game, but sounds cool.

 

[Mitchz95]

One change I'd like to see is that right now there's no way to do an "assault". You send in a fleet, they blow up the defenders, and then they spend a few months bombing the planet relentlessly, and then you send in the transports to finish it off. Something more organic would be nice, a way to invade the planet while the ships are still fighting in space. That's generally how these things work in sci-fi.

 

[MutantPixel]

One change I'd like to see is that right now there's no way to do an "assault". You send in a fleet, they blow up the defenders, and then they spend a few months bombing the planet relentlessly, and then you send in the transports to finish it off. Something more organic would be nice, a way to invade the planet while the ships are still fighting in space. That's generally how these things work in sci-fi.

Honestly mass bombardments don't work that well against an entrenched enemy, look at WWI. OR the "Softening" of D-day. So I agree, I think the bombardment should happen while your army invades to simulate a more authentic battle. Y'know, armies calling in coordinates and such.

 

[ISitOnGnomes]

One change I'd like to see is that right now there's no way to do an "assault". You send in a fleet, they blow up the defenders, and then they spend a few months bombing the planet relentlessly, and then you send in the transports to finish it off. Something more organic would be nice, a way to invade the planet while the ships are still fighting in space. That's generally how these things work in sci-fi.

Once i get gene-warriors, this is how i play. No amount of defence armies can hold off a full stack of Master Chiefs. Granted i do wait until after the fleet battle to bring in my transports, but i don't bother with bombardment.

 

[alphamikefox]

That sounds awesome, for the record, but doesn't sound like something the devs are looking at doing for Stellaris. I'm more inclined to bed they'll take pages from EU4 and CK2 in their ground combat interfaces. If they do it well, I wouldn't mind that so much either, I think EU4 does rather well at making combat modifiers interesting and have a meaningful impact. We've already got the mechanics leaning in that general direction anyway, we could just do with a more diverse array of combat modifiers to work with to make different combat unit types feel distinct and allow for things like one gene-warrior army taking on ten slave armies in a more palpable way. Things like combat tactics, discipline, army moral and land warfare R&D should make an enemy realize that you've made some effort focusing on ground combat

I think a more streamlined delivery method for troops would help too. For starters, I think that ships should have a troop utility slot in a specialized troop transport hull module. Essentially, Corvettes with a troop transport hull module are the new transport ships, but larger class ships can also take them and still bring guns to bomb the planet (and fight, albeit less effectively) with. You can also work a combat boarding mechanic in with this

Work in an extra layer to land combat that has armies controlling parts of the planet. Consolidate the army screen with the pops screen and have each tile able to have a defender army built in it. The attacker can land troops from orbit onto any tile, and if it has a defending army on it attack it directly drop-pod style (but at reduced effectiveness). Or land on a tile without a defending army and attack from it without penalties. As long as an invading army is on that tile, it produces no resources. Next, give more love to moral damage and make armies harder to kill. Then when an invader loses and retreats, they retreat to an empty tile or back to the ship and as long as the invading fleet is still in orbit their health and moral regenerate until you want to attack again. Moving between tiles takes time based on variable speeds of different armies. However individual battles should be changes to go much quicker. I think also that there should be a one army per tile limit, so one one attacker engages one defender over a tile. Quantity vs quality of an army (i.e. a gene-warrior army vs a slave army) can be represented by a combination of combat modifiers and hit points

P.s. if micromanaging a ground battle is not your thing, I highly recommend an "auto-engage" button with a suitable ai program to do that for either or both attacker and defenders

 

[D Inqu]

I think there are a lot of players who don't want too much complexity in ground combat. But I think there is a difference between making something complicated and making something interesting. Like, making it so you have to actually pay attention to army techs, or have to spend resources on building some sort of specific attack or defense, is interesting. Making someone click a few dozen times on every planet they take in a galaxy-wide war is just complicated.

That is what I mean. By "complex" I mean something like SE5, which was just unnecessarily micro-intensive, although it had decent ideas, like "skyfire" special units to shoot at warships orbiting the planet. Much better to have no direct control, but various options on army behaviour + impact of techs, terrain, planet type.

 

[Ixal]

Remove it in favor of a siege mechanic. Taking planets, even when they become much more important than they are now which I hope, is such a small part of the game that a ectensive and complicated mechanics are not warranted and would be distracting.

I do not have to micromanage the nomber of miners, battering rams and ladders in EU4 and the game wouldnt be any better if you had to.

 

[mighij]

Honestly mass bombardments don't work that well against an entrenched enemy, look at WWI. OR the "Softening" of D-day.

We have learned a lot since then. Look at the liberation of Kuwait. The Iraqi army was completely demolished before the invasion.

About ww1. Although most bombardments lacked coordination and therefor precision and strength was severely lacking. Probably the most important problem was the difficulty in repositioning and supplying the artillery to continue supporting the advance. Communication and transport have improved massively since then. From pigeons to satellites.

About dday. Most bombardments , in combination with subterfuge, were quite a succes especially in reducing the Nazi's tactical and operational capabilities . Only the one on Omaha beach failed massively. Combined with other unfortunate errors this would would make this beach the deadliest of all 5.

Now not to derail the thread too much.

Some suggestions: a planet should have several defensive stats.

Some natural like how habitual it is for your species and local phenoma.

Some general stats like population and infrastructure. Both of these should have some effect on the invasion.

The most important though would be the defensive measures of the planet. It would be great to have pds which protect the planet from bombardment and invasion. Strike craft which protect against invasion chance and support ground combat. And finally combat troops who must be defeated in several stages.

Stage 1: securing landing zones
Stage 2: disabling the pds, extending the fronts, conquering the cities
Stage 3: Clean up resistance.

For stage 1 and stage 2 you would need a fleet. Preferably one that's equipped to deal with planetary invasions. Carriers would be superb finally giving them a role in stellaris . A fleet would be less effective in stage 3 but withdrawing the fleet might lead to counterinvasions. Bringing the battle back to stage 2. In a nutshell a more complicated siege system then eu iv

This would require several changes to stellaris.

- siege effectiveness and support ground combat stats for fleets.

- army specialisation for establishing landing zones, terrain etc.

- moving way from the concept that every building/improvement should be placed on a tile.

Especially the last one would improve the game greatly and would allow more specialisation of the planet's . These improvements shouldn't be only military ones.

I'll come back to this later but I got to go now.

 

[MutantPixel]

We have learned a lot since then. Look at the liberation of Kuwait. The Iraqi army was completely demolished before the invasion.

About ww1. Although most bombardments lacked coordination and therefor precision and strength was severely lacking. Probably the most important problem was the difficulty in repositioning and supplying the artillery to continue supporting the advance. Communication and transport have improved massively since then. From pigeons to satellites.

About dday. Most bombardments , in combination with subterfuge, were quite a succes especially in reducing the Nazi's tactical and operational capabilities . Only the one on Omaha beach failed massively. Combined with other unfortunate errors this would would make this beach the deadliest of all 5.

Now not to derail the thread too much.

Some suggestions: a planet should have several defensive stats.

Some natural like how habitual it is for your species and local phenoma.

Some general stats like population and infrastructure. Both of these should have some effect on the invasion.

The most important though would be the defensive measures of the planet. It would be great to have pds which protect the planet from bombardment and invasion. Strike craft which protect against invasion chance and support ground combat. And finally combat troops who must be defeated in several stages.

Stage 1: securing landing zones
Stage 2: disabling the pds, extending the fronts, conquering the cities
Stage 3: Clean up resistance.

For stage 1 and stage 2 you would need a fleet. Preferably one that's equipped to deal with planetary invasions. Carriers would be superb finally giving them a role in stellaris . A fleet would be less effective in stage 3 but withdrawing the fleet might lead to counterinvasions. Bringing the battle back to stage 2. In a nutshell a more complicated siege system then eu iv

This would require several changes to stellaris.

- siege effectiveness and support ground combat stats for fleets.

- army specialisation for establishing landing zones, terrain etc.

- moving way from the concept that every building/improvement should be placed on a tile.

Especially the last one would improve the game greatly and would allow more specialisation of the planet's . These improvements shouldn't be only military ones.

I'll come back to this later but I got to go now.

Absolutely, not stating that they aren't ever effective. And as you said D-day was a very combined effort, with a lot of coverage coming the day of the landing and during. Kuwait was another instance of combined arms and a highly advanced air-power taking out a huge swath of enemy combat able weaponry, and they were using old defensive tactics that don't work against smart munitions. But still, it was a showing of a successful bombardment campaign none the less. Also, the places you're going after in Stellaris have no anti-ship weaponry but do have huge energy shields, it makes no sense lol.

Any ways, not meaning to derail although I kind of just did. I agree with your statements though.

 

[SadeRat]

I'd like to see some visuals added to ground combat, specifically to the city view of a colony. It doesn't have to be anything fancy either, just a little bit of animation in the same style as the city art. Explosions, tracers/lasers zipping back and forth amongst the buildings, lights flickering and going out, that sort of thing.

I also find it odd that enemy civilians are perfectly happy to hold and occupy their own planet for you during your war against their people. The concept of army maintenance is trivial right now because of this; you only need one smallish fleet of transports to conquer the entire galaxy. You bombard each planet, land your troops, embark all your troops, plop a fortress to prevent back-capping, and move on to the next system.

Idea:

Rather than forming friendly garrisons at the end of an invasion, enemy pops with high happiness or ethics matching their government's generate "guerrillas", while enemy pops with low happiness or ethics closer to yours/more distant from their government's generate friendly garrisons. Guerrillas are enemy armies which take no damage and only deal damage if they have a higher total damage output than the friendly troops. As long as the guerrillas are outgunned, the planet shows as occupied. A simple slider on the armies screen shows who has the upper hand, so you can tell how many troops you need to leave behind. If you embark too many of your troops and the guerrillas get the upper hand the game would give you the typical "planetary invasion" warning and the defenders would take damage until ground down or reinforced (again, the guerrillas themselves take no damage). Once reinforced to above the threshold combat would cease and the planet would show as occupied again.

So, a particularly rebellious enemy population might generate a lot of friendly garrisons after you invade so that the planet could "occupy itself" for you, seeing you as a liberator rather than an invader, but most planets would require you to leave behind at least a few troops to hold it throughout the war. As is proper. Because it is based on pops, heavily populated worlds would need a larger investment in troops to hold than sparsely populated backwaters.

It isn't a perfect representation, in that guerrillas in real life aren't indestructible, but they are really here more to represent the constant restiveness of the enemy population, not actual units. If you don't leave enough troops behind or have enough turncoats on your side to keep the population in check it would naturally rise against you.

 

[dying0d]

I'd prefer a moo3 style system. That seemed more organic, and let armies have a life of their own. No more attachment clicking, you build your army units comprised of whatever types and populations you have, and new unit types in place of the attachment slot to support them.

The combat itself was fun too, variety of options and the effects of collateral damage depending on aggressiveness of the attack. You could also partially Slag the world with nukes and bio weapons from armies.

Building them from a pool would ease some micro with them, as they can stand up where you select them rather than having to queue the boring attack type on every planet and then get them to the front we have now(or build dozens over time and just forget about it completely, invade, restore, repeat).

Tactical overlays would be nice flavor, but having it be automatic progression is probably best. Dunno how it would work in a real time environment vs turn based, as it seemed to fit naturally in the latter and may be too complex for the former. Adding a stage system would probably merry the two up well enough. But this is an issue needing to be overcome

 

[mighij]

@MutantPixel Cool, a civil discussion on the internet where we didn't derail the thread completely with massive posts.
+ 1internet for both of us

Back on topic.

If paradox would change planetary invasion to a more advanced eu iv system perhaps something like this could work:

Preinvasion: siege weaponry of the fleet versus Planetary Defense System.
Negative Outcome -> ships can get damaged, in extreme cases destroyed but the last one is very unlikely.
Positive outcome -> PDS is reduced, fortification lvl is reduced, armies ,pops and buildings can get damaged. The last one is more likely if you go for full orbital bombardement. I do think there should be a more severe option which I'll dubb genocidal bombardment. This one allows for a nearly complete depopulation of the planet but is considered a war crime. It should also, perhaps, require specialized siege ships.

stage 1Invasion: foothold

Attackers: siege stat of fleet, strike craft modifier and invasion value of troops.

Vs the defenders: PDS, strike craft modifier and defensive value of defenders modified by fortification, natural phenomena and a negative modifier of there aren't enough armies to cover the entire planet.

Positive outcomes:
Option 1 minor/marginal victory: different levels of PDS reduction, army reduction, strike craft reduction, fortification reduction and/or pop reduction. Both sides loose strength but depending on the results the attacker's or defenders lose less.
Option 2 major victory: landing zone established, proceed to phase 2.
Option 3 massive victory: multiple landing zones, proceed to stage 2. This would be the case when a siege fleet with a decent army invades an almost defenceless planet.

Negative outcome:
Option 1 marginal/minor defeat: massive losses to the attacker, minimal losses to the defender. Depending on PDS lvl ships can get damaged or destroyed. Similar for strike craft.

Option 2: invasion repulsed. Massive losses for attacker. Invasion ends.

Stage 2: conquest of the planet.

To keep it short. Similar to stage 1 but strike craft and troops are more important then siege or PDS. Attackers get bonuses for every landing zone (like breaches in eu iv) and if the planet is still blockaded.
You need several victories to proceed to stage 3. A victory can give an additional landing zone. A major defeat though makes you lose a landing zone. If you no longer have a landing zone the invasion is defeated.

Stage 3: subdue pockets.
Fleet siege stat is no longer important. A few more victories and the planet is subdued. If a relieve force lands return to stage 2.
Each stage would take several ticks. 1 tick is 10 days. The fastest you can subdue a planet completly is 3 ticks. A well defended planet could easily take up to 4 or more.

 

[dying0d]

Cool, a civil discussion on the internet where we didn't derail the thread completely with massive posts.
+ 1internet for both of us

Back on topic.

If paradox would change planetary invasion to a more advanced eu iv system perhaps something like this could work:

Preinvasion: siege weaponry of the fleet versus Planetary Defense System.
Negative Outcome -> ships can get damaged, in extreme cases destroyed but the last one is very unlikely.
Positive outcome -> PDS is reduced, fortification lvl is reduced, armies ,pops and buildings can get damaged. The last one is more likely if you go for full orbital bombardement. I do think there should be a more severe option which I'll dubb genocidal bombardment. This one allows for a nearly complete depopulation of the planet but is considered a war crime. It should also, perhaps, require specialized siege ships.

stage 1Invasion: foothold

Attackers: siege stat of fleet, strike craft modifier and invasion value of troops.

Vs the defenders: PDS, strike craft modifier and defensive value of defenders modified by fortification, natural phenomena and a negative modifier of there aren't enough armies to cover the entire planet.

Positive outcomes:
Option 1 minor/marginal victory: different levels of PDS reduction, army reduction, strike craft reduction, fortification reduction and/or pop reduction. Both sides loose strength but depending on the results the attacker's or defenders lose less.
Option 2 major victory: landing zone established, proceed to phase 2.
Option 3 massive victory: multiple landing zones, proceed to stage 2. This would be the case when a siege fleet with a decent army invades an almost defenceless planet.

Negative outcome:
Option 1 marginal/minor defeat: massive losses to the attacker, minimal losses to the defender. Depending on PDS lvl ships can get damaged or destroyed. Similar for strike craft.

Option 2: invasion repulsed. Massive losses for attacker. Invasion ends.

Stage 2: conquest of the planet.

To keep it short. Similar to stage 1 but strike craft and troops are more important then siege or PDS. Attackers get bonuses for every landing zone (like breaches in eu iv) and if the planet is still blockaded.
You need several victories to proceed to stage 3. A victory can give an additional landing zone. A major defeat though makes you lose a landing zone. If you no longer have a landing zone the invasion is defeated.

Stage 3: subdue pockets.
Fleet siege stat is no longer important. A few more victories and the planet is subdued. If a relieve force lands return to stage 2.
Each stage would take several ticks. 1 tick is 10 days. The fastest you can subdue a planet completly is 3 ticks. A well defended planet could easily take up to 4 or more.

This seems like a compromise between the 2 systems that is both easily doable, and doesn't add micro complexity (or removes the army click fest and forget mechanic)

Adds a reason to watch combats in case bad things happen, and also ties it up for a length of time and sounds fitting of space battle.

+1 for this type of implementation