Why is this community seemingly against visualized ground combat?

[Lucius Confucius]

^ As topic asks. Why?

It could bring cool new fireworks to watch. Wouldn't need to be complicated. Could only render when zoomed in on a battle, like the space battles. Not much would necessarily change when it comes to calculations.

So why does it seem like people are against it?

 

[prismaticmarcus]

to make it interesting the army system would need an overhaul, and people don't care about overhauling the army system. it's stellaris, not HOI in spaaaace.

 

[Oculument]

Waste of time. Space Navy rules the void and determines whether planets are even permitted to continue existing.

 

[MrParadux]

Waste of time. Space Navy rules the void and determines whether planets are even permitted to continue existing.

This is it for me. It would be cool to have, but there are things that are way more important. I can live without getting more added to ground combat, be it visually or mechanically, but dealing with the terrible ai has become old a while ago.

 

[exi123]

The current system works and is doing the job, but its a bit boring and to much micro.

In the current situation i wouldnt mind if they scrap the ground combat fleets and put them on the normal ships as modules. But cutting away "content" is always unpopular. A rework is not on the horizon, i bet the system will stay as it is. Other systems really need more attention right now.

 

[Aepdneds]

The current system works and is doing the job, but its a bit boring and to much micro.

Is it really too much micro? All I do is clicking randomly on some of my planets, build 5 fleets with 30 random army guys (sometimes I scroll down to the good soldier types, the list should be upside down, but this is not really necessary because the AI has rarely more than 6 soldiers on a planet, except fallen empires), set these fleets to aggressive and they start conquering planets on their own when they feel they are strong enough. The planetary bombing is usually done by the vassals.

 

[Bezborg]

Is it really too much micro? All I do is clicking randomly on some of my planets, build 5 fleets with 30 random army guys (sometimes I scroll down to the good soldier types, the list should be upside down, but this is not really necessary because the AI has rarely more than 6 soldiers on a planet, except fallen empires), set these fleets to aggressive and they start conquering planets on their own when they feel they are strong enough. The planetary bombing is usually done by the vassals.

The "too much micro" gets pulled out for anything these days, as well as "the devs' time is so stretched to do anything", or "it takes too much work". Not sure how that came about, but I see it as part of this forum's culture. It's fully internalized.

I for one would like a nice invasion visualization in a game that has interstellar wars with planetary invasions. I like that sci fi, the books, the movies, the shows... I like a good sci fi invasion, and I would like it in Stellaris as well.

I mean, what else do I have to do? Watch pops get assigned to correct jobs by the algorithm? If we have to choose which "micro" to do away with, and which to keep, I'd opt for a fun one. Not min/maxing my mineral production, or such nonsense.

 

[Cat_Fuzz]

I think @exi123 gets it about right - there’s not necessarily a resistance to changing it, but most suggestions I’ve seen surrounding this often are asking for effectively HoI in Stellaris, which seems like way more micro than required.

But I agree that there are far more pressing features and bugs that need fixing. As boring as it may seem, it’s one of the few features that actually functions as intended.

 

[prismaticmarcus]

"the devs' time is so stretched to do anything", or "it takes too much work". Not sure how that came about, but I see it as part of this forum's culture. It's fully internalized.

in relation to armies a dev has said pretty much exactly that i.e. that the work involved wouldn't produce a corresponding increase to the funness.

 

[HugsAndSnuggles]

Is it really too much micro? All I do is clicking randomly on some of my planets, build 5 fleets with 30 random army guys (sometimes I scroll down to the good soldier types, the list should be upside down, but this is not really necessary because the AI has rarely more than 6 soldiers on a planet, except fallen empires), set these fleets to aggressive and they start conquering planets on their own when they feel they are strong enough. The planetary bombing is usually done by the vassals.

Sure, it works... until you run into a planet that is still in the process of colonizing and have your entire army trapped there for years

 

[Millbot]

I don't know about others but I didn't pick up stellaris because I wanted ground combat. I picked it up because I wanted space things, be that exploring the galaxies mysteries or blowing things up with spaceships. Though to be frank, I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one with that mindset and it's probably most players. I suspect this is one reason why the devs feel that a ground combat overhaul of any sort wouldn't add to the fun factor because most players didn't purchase the game with ground combat in mind.

I'm not going to say there are other games that could fill the void. I mean sure if you solely care about ground combat, there are plenty of better choices. If you want to invade systems, clear them out of hostile navies and then do in depth planetary invasions with in depth ground combat. Then I could probably agree we don't have that kind of game, but IMO stellaris's format is likely awful for that. This is where the micro complaint comes in, the more complex and involved you make planetary warfare, the less attention a player is going to be able to give to the rest of the map. Taking Potato Prime after extensive hands on ground combat isn't going to be a shallow victory, if your attention spent meant you didn't realize another empire was chipping away at your territory because you couldn't pull away from your invasion of Potato Prime or you capital world successfully bails on you because the combat is so involved that you didn't get a chance to address economic issues within your empire.

 

[prismaticmarcus]

Taking Potato Prime after extensive hands on ground combat isn't going to be a shallow victory, if your attention spent meant you didn't realize another empire was chipping away at your territory because you couldn't pull away from your invasion of Potato Prime or you capital world successfully bails on you because the combat is so involved that you didn't get a chance to address economic issues within your empire.

and just 18 planets to go...

 

[currylambchop]

to make it interesting the army system would need an overhaul, and people don't care about overhauling the army system. it's stellaris, not HOI in spaaaace.

Hot take, if Stellaris could be like the HOI4 Star Wars mod in terms of ground combat with the planets each having a the same number of provinces as the number of districts that would be great. The navy is fine it’s just the army.

 

[Lykus Cerebros]

Ground combat as it stands at the moment is just boring. The only thing you need to do is to spam armies, set them to aggressive and then let it follow your fleets.

Having the current t system be more visually appealing is in my opinion just a waste of resources. I wouldn't mind having it replaced by something more interesting and then making them prettier to look at.

Don't really need the prettier visuals though. Am probably more of a special case since for me also the actually good looking space battles are a waste since I don't look at them.

 

[Bezborg]

in relation to armies a dev has said pretty much exactly that i.e. that the work involved wouldn't produce a corresponding increase to the funness.

I beg to differ with the dev in question then

 

[hart30]

Not the community is against an army overhaul - the devs are. And i can understand the reason. Fixing bugs and expoits, improving performance and the ai behavior in order to make the game more fun would be a higher priority for me too. And an army overhaul seems like an massive work not really worth the returns (and also wont grant dlc money). For army fights play age of wonders planetfall parallel. It is way better than anything the devs could implement into stellaris.

 

[Strangedane]

Because armies are busywork and should just be removed completely.

There are absolutely 0 interesting decisions to be made concerning armies, neither movement or deployment, so please just get rid of them.

 

[Lykus Cerebros]

Because armies are busywork and should just be removed completely.

There are absolutely 0 interesting decisions to be made concerning armies, neither movement or deployment, so please just get rid of them.

I wouldn't put it that extreme.

There is no difference between armies yes. If they were called A-Z no one would really care.

I remember using armies and defensive buildings to stop and invading player in a MP game to give my fleets time and once I snipped someones armies using jump drives so I don't feel like removing them is the best option.

They just need something to make them stand apart. Even just different resources costs and meaningful combat differences would at least give them something.

 

[thinkcrazyhorse]

There's the strategic element of ground combat and there's also the visualisation of it.

If people are leaning towards the strategic element and not too fussed about the visuals, then I'm sure there's a way of creating some sort of mini-game, utilising the current ground combat engine, which could be engaging.

The first question is what's the point of ground combat and how does it benefit the wider game?

The obvious answer is to limit the destruction of districts, buildings and the population when assaulting a planet; I'd rather have all that stuff intact so I can quickly utilise the planet's economy and resources, once the invasion is over. A defender, on the other hand, has the choice of destroying key infrastructure so it doesn't fall into enemy hands, or perhaps retain it and try to fight off the invasion.

With that in mind, any mini-game could be built around these areas; you could even have an 'evacuation' protocol if you're the defender, where you're trying to get your population off the planet before the invaders land. Of course, if you're the invader, you're trying to stop the defenders from doing that; they're taking away your workers! But how do you stop ships in the void, if you don't want to destroy their population-cargo? There could be a dynamic for this, or perhaps you just have to stop them from taking off!

Population is one of the most valuable resources in Stellaris, so instantly the stakes are raised.

And of course, all of this would be planned out decades before an invasion begins, by spending resources, building units, buildings and ships, etc, etc.

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Anyway, there are interesting things that could be done with ground combat without going overboard on graphics or the like. There are loads of really simple, creative and fun boardgames and videogames out there that the devs could get ideas from.

I mean look at a boardgame like 'Blitzkrieg'; you basically fight WWII, across the whole globe, on one 25cmx25cm map, in 20 minutes. It sounds ridiculous, but it works really well

 

[Androbey]

As in ALL SF genres, holding space is holding the high ground. If nothing else, you can drop rocks on targets. There goes your cities and SPACEPORTs so you cannot get back into space. Then you are effectively an agrarian society again. Ground combat is only needed if the planet has a unique resource that you want.

The mechanic of Starbases as only 1 per system sort allows ground combat to occur. One idea is to have the SB defense platform be allowed to be placed in orbit around selected planets, thus controlling that planet.