Why is this community seemingly against visualized ground combat?

[thinkcrazyhorse]

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.

What about the population?

Isn't that a resource?

 

[methegrate]

^ 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?

As others have said, because ground combat currently doesn't matter.

If you win the space battle, you will always (eventually) win the ground battle. If you don't win the space battle, you never even get to armies. You could replace the entire mechanic with a timer system for flipping planetary control with no impact. That's not necessarily the case. (Edit - Rather, that doesn't have to be the case.) There are ways that ground combat could matter (mostly by bottlenecking how many armies you can build).

But unless they really overhaul how combat works, you'll always have to win the war in space first. So it will always be a kind of tacked-on mechanic.

 

[thinkcrazyhorse]

As others have said, because ground combat currently doesn't matter.

If you win the space battle, you will always (eventually) win the ground battle. If you don't win the space battle, you never even get to armies. You could replace the entire mechanic with a timer system for flipping planetary control with no impact. That's not necessarily the case. There are ways that ground combat could matter (mostly by bottlenecking how many armies you can build).

But unless they really overhaul how combat works, you'll always have to win the war in space first. So it will always be a kind of tacked-on mechanic.

I agree that combat (and probably other things in the game) would need to change to make sense, but I think it could be call.

There needs to be genuine stakes and some tension, perhaps triggered by a race against time dynamic.

 

[thinkcrazyhorse]

So what about technological research as a resource to be captured by land armies?

Currently, science/tech in the game is fairly abstract; even though the scientist pops and buildings exist, it's only the rate of development that is impacted if a player loses them.

But in real life, scientific development is split into abstract theory, experimentation on a smaller scale and the large scale technological projects, where the 'rubber really hits the road' so to speak.

Certainly the large-scale technological projects occur in a geographical location (e.g. the Manhattan Project or the LHC at Cern).

Perhaps armies would want to take planets to steal or stop technological advancements?

And of course the defenders need to think whether they want to destroy their research, or let it fall into the hands of their enemies.

It's just another way to up the ante; make the stakes worth it.

PS Depending on the combat and planet functionality/dynamics, you could also have commando raids to scope out a planet, go into a system, locate the tech on that planet and bug out again. It certainly develops the covert-ops side of the game.

 

[Lucius Confucius]

All this talk about making ground combat more complex, when really all some people want is just nice fireworks.

I wonder if they did an in-game survey asking a lot of Stellaris players if they would like visualized ground combat, what that survey would say.


I've recently played Endless Space 2, and I like the ground combat there. Just wish it was as cinematic as the battles in that game.

 

[methegrate]

So what about technological research as a resource to be captured by land armies?

Currently, science/tech in the game is fairly abstract; even though the scientist pops and buildings exist, it's only the rate of development that is impacted if a player loses them.

But in real life, scientific development is split into abstract theory, experimentation on a smaller scale and the large scale technological projects, where the 'rubber really hits the road' so to speak.

Certainly the large-scale technological projects occur in a geographical location (e.g. the Manhattan Project or the LHC at Cern).

Perhaps armies would want to take planets to steal or stop technological advancements?

And of course the defenders need to think whether they want to destroy their research, or let it fall into the hands of their enemies.

It's just another way to up the ante; make the stakes worth it.

PS Depending on the combat and planet functionality/dynamics, you could also have commando raids to scope out a planet, go into a system, locate the tech on that planet and bug out again. It certainly develops the covert-ops side of the game.

I think this still returns us to the same problem though.

The issue isn't motivation on the part of the defender. The problem is that you can build armies in virtually limitless supply. The two bottlenecks on building armies (pops and minerals) don't have any functional effect. You can build more armies than you'll ever need without bumping into either cap.

So once you win the space battle and take the system, you can wear down any planet through sheer attrition. Ground mechanics like army composition, number of defenders, etc. don't matter in the face of numbers. You can throw your army at the planet, lose them all, then just rebuild. Rinse and repeat until you win.

The front line system of galactic geography emphasizes this because it makes it almost impossible to intercept transports. Except in rare circumstances, a captured system will always lie behind the front line of battle. So it's not like you can stop the transports or cut off the planet. (Because the proper model for naval combat in space was clearly WWI-style trench lines. No other model was even conceivable.)

Right now the only way to stop that process is to take the system back. Which brings us back to the fleet. If you can win in space, you can take the system back and prevent them from taking the planet. If you can't win in space, they can keep the system and spam armies until they take the planet too. So the space battle is the only part that matters not because losing the planet is unimportant but because keeping the planet is impossible if they can hold the outpost.

War exhaustion was supposed to push back on this, but in practice WE is also almost exclusively based on fleet strength. I've had many games where I literally held every one of the enemy's planets and star bases, but the AI refused to surrender because I hadn't yet annihilated the fleet. So you can toss armies into the meat grinder with little downside.

That's what needs to change though. If they want to fix ground combat, they need something that changes the basic logic of: Take the system, spam armies, win through attrition.

Personally, my vote would be:

- Implement a much harder cap on armies. The current system says that each pop can only support one army at a time. Give each pop a cooldown so that it's also X years until that pop can support a new army.

So if I build an army, it might get linked to Pop Alpha. Right now I can't build a second army until the first one dies because Pop Alpha can only support one army at a time. Maybe Pop Alpha should also have a three year timer, so that I also can't build a second army until Pop Alpha's cooldown has expired. To prevent micromanagement, you could have a simply tooltip saying "No available soldiers. X Days until next recruitment."

That would prevent the endless army spam. A defender could invest in real defenses, knowing that it's actually possible to win a defensive battle if they hold out long enough.

- Also fix war exhaustion and war score. These are two separate values (for some reason) that control white peace and surrender. Both are almost entirely defined by the fleet and shouldn't be. At least for many ethics, losing lots of armies should at least spike WE and should probably heavily influence WS too.

 

[thinkcrazyhorse]

I think this still returns us to the same problem though.

The issue isn't motivation on the part of the defender. The problem is that you can build armies in virtually limitless supply. The two bottlenecks on building armies (pops and minerals) don't have any functional effect. You can build more armies than you'll ever need without bumping into either cap.

So once you win the space battle and take the system, you can wear down any planet through sheer attrition. Ground mechanics like army composition, number of defenders, etc. don't matter in the face of numbers. You can throw your army at the planet, lose them all, then just rebuild. Rinse and repeat until you win.

The front line system of galactic geography emphasizes this because it makes it almost impossible to intercept transports. Except in rare circumstances, a captured system will always lie behind the front line of battle. So it's not like you can stop the transports or cut off the planet. (Because the proper model for naval combat in space was clearly WWI-style trench lines. No other model was even conceivable.)

Right now the only way to stop that process is to take the system back. Which brings us back to the fleet. If you can win in space, you can take the system back and prevent them from taking the planet. If you can't win in space, they can keep the system and spam armies until they take the planet too. So the space battle is the only part that matters not because losing the planet is unimportant but because keeping the planet is impossible if they can hold the outpost.

War exhaustion was supposed to push back on this, but in practice WE is also almost exclusively based on fleet strength. I've had many games where I literally held every one of the enemy's planets and star bases, but the AI refused to surrender because I hadn't yet annihilated the fleet. So you can toss armies into the meat grinder with little downside.

That's what needs to change though. If they want to fix ground combat, they need something that changes the basic logic of: Take the system, spam armies, win through attrition.

Personally, my vote would be:

- Implement a much harder cap on armies. The current system says that each pop can only support one army at a time. Give each pop a cooldown so that it's also X years until that pop can support a new army.

So if I build an army, it might get linked to Pop Alpha. Right now I can't build a second army until the first one dies because Pop Alpha can only support one army at a time. Maybe Pop Alpha should also have a three year timer, so that I also can't build a second army until Pop Alpha's cooldown has expired. To prevent micromanagement, you could have a simply tooltip saying "No available soldiers. X Days until next recruitment."

That would prevent the endless army spam. A defender could invest in real defenses, knowing that it's actually possible to win a defensive battle if they hold out long enough.

- Also fix war exhaustion and war score. These are two separate values (for some reason) that control white peace and surrender. Both are almost entirely defined by the fleet and shouldn't be. At least for many ethics, losing lots of armies should at least spike WE and should probably heavily influence WS too.

Some good ideas in there; ultimately the system needs to change

I like your suggestion about caps on army recruitment over a period of time. It would make the armies themselves more valuable and perhaps even allow for the military industrial complex in the game, to equip armies with better weapons and armour. If your armies are going to be valueable, you may as well equip them with the best gear, so they survive!

 

[Fenris_SE]

Not sure why so many people seem to hate armies tbh, a lot of my empires use them extensively. For planets I want to take over they are much quicker than wasting time bombarding a planet then sending in a small force once the planets army is gone. Great for empires like Driven Assimilators, you get a workforce relatively quickly and a planet with very little damage. I use them for almost all my empires I create and they make the wars go so much faster. Even if I want to depopulate a planet and abandon it, using armies to take it over is faster than waiting on the slow ass colossus to catch up. I really can't even begin to list all the reasons they make the game easier. But as much as I like having armies, having to micro manage one more thing in Stellaris (such as detailed ground combat) is not something I want.

I do remember one time years ago the devs ... or a dev anyway (can't remember who) said they didn't really like the concept of army transports following a fleet around and that the armies were going to be included in the combat ships somehow. This was many many updates ago (may have even been as far back as tiled planets), so I'm guessing they abandoned that idea. But still, it shows they have thought about armies, so something may change in the future,

 

[Scyobi_Empire]

How would portraits work? Plam16_Baol (Baol portrait) doesn't follow the normal body pattern nor des Status_Being from Necroids.
Don't get me started on modded portraits...

 

[Coconut_Cookie]

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.

I've said this multiple times too. Either they need to cut it out and merge it with the fleet combat or expand on it. I think it would work better as a ship module too because then you would need to reserve some of your naval cap on 'troop transport' ships. This would be a higher cost than whatever energy upkeep is paid for the individual armies now. It is really strange that after all the updates it's still as micro intensive as it has always been. Reducing the army micro has been a goal of some updates but it never got anywhere beyond just spam a bunch of armies when you need them and make sure you have a big enough blob of them.

 

[exi123]

I think this still returns us to the same problem though.

The issue isn't motivation on the part of the defender. The problem is that you can build armies in virtually limitless supply. The two bottlenecks on building armies (pops and minerals) don't have any functional effect. You can build more armies than you'll ever need without bumping into either cap.

So once you win the space battle and take the system, you can wear down any planet through sheer attrition. Ground mechanics like army composition, number of defenders, etc. don't matter in the face of numbers. You can throw your army at the planet, lose them all, then just rebuild. Rinse and repeat until you win.

The front line system of galactic geography emphasizes this because it makes it almost impossible to intercept transports. Except in rare circumstances, a captured system will always lie behind the front line of battle. So it's not like you can stop the transports or cut off the planet. (Because the proper model for naval combat in space was clearly WWI-style trench lines. No other model was even conceivable.)

Right now the only way to stop that process is to take the system back. Which brings us back to the fleet. If you can win in space, you can take the system back and prevent them from taking the planet. If you can't win in space, they can keep the system and spam armies until they take the planet too. So the space battle is the only part that matters not because losing the planet is unimportant but because keeping the planet is impossible if they can hold the outpost.

War exhaustion was supposed to push back on this, but in practice WE is also almost exclusively based on fleet strength. I've had many games where I literally held every one of the enemy's planets and star bases, but the AI refused to surrender because I hadn't yet annihilated the fleet. So you can toss armies into the meat grinder with little downside.

That's what needs to change though. If they want to fix ground combat, they need something that changes the basic logic of: Take the system, spam armies, win through attrition.

Personally, my vote would be:

- Implement a much harder cap on armies. The current system says that each pop can only support one army at a time. Give each pop a cooldown so that it's also X years until that pop can support a new army.

So if I build an army, it might get linked to Pop Alpha. Right now I can't build a second army until the first one dies because Pop Alpha can only support one army at a time. Maybe Pop Alpha should also have a three year timer, so that I also can't build a second army until Pop Alpha's cooldown has expired. To prevent micromanagement, you could have a simply tooltip saying "No available soldiers. X Days until next recruitment."

That would prevent the endless army spam. A defender could invest in real defenses, knowing that it's actually possible to win a defensive battle if they hold out long enough.

- Also fix war exhaustion and war score. These are two separate values (for some reason) that control white peace and surrender. Both are almost entirely defined by the fleet and shouldn't be. At least for many ethics, losing lots of armies should at least spike WE and should probably heavily influence WS too.

Toggling the issue with connecting armies to pops is a good idea. But this stil does not solve the general problem: Armies operate behind the fleet and are an extra system we have to manage during war, as you described very well.

Connecting the army to the fleet opens a complete new field on how to play the game. Fleets need to stay in orbit to operate in ground wars, the armies are bond to their ships. You can attach them to the warship itself or as an extra unit bond to the fleet, rising in numbers with the fleet cap.

You need a decent fleet with good ships and armies to capture a planet, we could buff defending armies, let battles last longer to bind even more fleetcap for invanding planets. Bigger ships support more army strength with them, so some corvettes are not able to capture a widely settled and/or fortified planet in the lategame. Binding real fleetpower to ground battles opens windows for the defender to counter attack.

The way Stellaris shows ground battles is absolut fine, for me there is no need for extra details. Battles are fought with fleets in the void, ground combat could be a brake for snowballing and stil a good roleplaying aspect of the game.

 

[thinkcrazyhorse]

Another idea could be to have rebel groups/allies/sympathisers on the beseiged planet to cause problems once the attacking fleet enters orbit.

This could be even more immersive, if the planet once belonged to the attacker and there are still pops from their empire on the world.

And of course the defender would have to start thinking about this in advance and take steps to combat it.

I think ultimately, if planets and systems were a bit more immersive in the first instance - if it felt like there was more going on in the cities and remote areas of worlds - then players would be more invested in how armies operated in this environment.

It's a balance though, because you don't want to be creating busy-work and needless micro-management, but on the other hand too much high-level abstraction negates immersion.

I suppose if the AI auto-management of planets (and other aspects of the game) was better, then that could afford the player more granularity for the sake of immersion whilst not making the game feel like a job.

 

[prismaticmarcus]

Another idea could be to have rebel groups/allies/sympathisers on the beseiged planet to cause problems once the attacking fleet enters orbit.

This could be even more immersive, if the planet once belonged to the attacker and there are still pops from their empire on the world.

And of course the defender would have to start thinking about this in advance and take steps to combat it.

I think ultimately, if planets and systems were a bit more immersive in the first instance - if it felt like there was more going on in the cities and remote areas of worlds - then players would be more invested in how armies operated in this environment.

It's a balance though, because you don't want to be creating busy-work and needless micro-management, but on the other hand too much high-level abstraction negates immersion.

I suppose if the AI auto-management of planets (and other aspects of the game) was better, then that could afford the player more granularity for the sake of immersion whilst not making the game feel like a job.

well, maybe an occupied planet can get totally retaken by a Resistance? if you don't retake it by the end of the war it leaves your empire?

 

[Lykus Cerebros]

Another idea could be to have rebel groups/allies/sympathisers on the beseiged planet to cause problems once the attacking fleet enters orbit.

This could be even more immersive, if the planet once belonged to the attacker and there are still pops from their empire on the world.

And of course the defender would have to start thinking about this in advance and take steps to combat it.

I think ultimately, if planets and systems were a bit more immersive in the first instance - if it felt like there was more going on in the cities and remote areas of worlds - then players would be more invested in how armies operated in this environment.

It's a balance though, because you don't want to be creating busy-work and needless micro-management, but on the other hand too much high-level abstraction negates immersion.

I suppose if the AI auto-management of planets (and other aspects of the game) was better, then that could afford the player more granularity for the sake of immersion whilst not making the game feel like a job.

While I like the idea of improving ground combat this sounds like it would result in exactly the amount of unnecessary micromanaging that you fear.

It will also just lead to more army spam since I don't see why more armies wouldn't solve the problem of resistance.

If you combine it with an army creation rework sure it increases the depth but I am not really convinced by the suggestions made in this thread. It goes into the direction of HoI4s system, which I personally dont like very much and feel like it shouldn't be a part of stellaris.

 

[prismaticmarcus]

While I like the idea of improving ground combat this sounds like it would result in exactly the amount of unnecessary micromanaging that you fear.

It will also just lead to more army spam since I don't see why more armies wouldn't solve the problem of resistance.

If you combine it with an army creation rework sure it increases the depth but I am not really convinced by the suggestions made in this thread. It goes into the direction of HoI4s system, which I personally dont like very much and feel like it shouldn't be a part of stellaris.

i don't really care, but i'm just thinking of what would be a minimalist tweak to make ground combat/planets a bit more interesting.

i don't see 'having to build more armies' as 'unnecessary micromanagement', cos it's about thinking ahead and having the resources, which sounds like strategy to me.

 

[Millbot]

I just don't see much gained in visualizes at all. Thing is combat in stellaris is pretty hands of be it planet invasion or fleet battles. Don't believe me, get a fleet in combat and tell me what else you can do other than maybe making the fleet disengage? Once you're fleet is in combat, you don't get to tell it how to do things. Now go play any RTS like command & conquer or starcraft or all the other ones I'm not listing and not how much control you have over units during combat. Stellaris is designed this way intentionally because you have tons of systems you have to manage in real time, which means even a tiny galaxy is still a very huge map in comparison to any RTS map and it's multiple maps. In depth army management would just add even more individual maps you have to open and each map is going to make it harder to keep up with everything that is going on. Only thing that could in theory manage this would be the AI and I'm pretty sure this is the indirect buff that no one wants to give the AI. The AI wins because you bog down managing combat in the Grocery system and Potato Prime was the first of 19 worlds that you needed conquer, while battles are waging in 4-5 other systems.

In fact, the way armies work, it's essentially, a map that most players never tab into. So any visual fireworks spent on it isn't going to be a good investment. That resources that could be going into stuff that most of the playerbase will spend far more time seeing.

Like the only change I'd be on board for with armies, would be making them ship components. One it makes sense, if your fleet wins and controls the space in a system, you're able to land armies and this pretty much means your armies need naval escorts. It would also make combat a bit more interesting because right now, it's move fleets in sweep system and then just saturate the worlds with armies. Only two things you concern yourself with as a player is how dead armies and failed ground assaults impact exhaustion, and then creative use of assault ships as sacrifices to either bait fleets into engaging starbases before sicking your fleet on them or as a means to stall a fleet from doing things. If the army is attached to the fleet that actually impact how the player chooses to invade things and makes what we do control over combat more interesting. Do you forgo invading armies and just rely on your fleets bombarding planets and destroying fleets? Do you invest in some armies and have a dedicated fleet or two to take soft target worlds? Do you seriously invest in some fleets built for planet invasion, so that they can do the job really well against any world you want to invade? Mind you, your combat is still most deciding what systems you fleet runs into, what techs those ships have, fleet size & composition and whether you manually snake it through a system.

If people want involved. Well if it's a space combat game with fleet battles, you'd want those fleet battles being more controllable first. You'd also probably not want the system to be real time in the way that stellaris is, while you have to juggle multiple maps with battles on them. Sure the battles should be real time, but you'd probably want it so that only one battle at a time is going before the game cycles to the next. So turn based with real time battles. Of course, if you have that, then yes it should look good visually.

I guess this a long way to say, that maybe some of you all should be asking paradox to make a new game that can give you what you want, rather than try to ham-fistedly mold Stellaris into something that it was never built to be. Ground combat is designed to not just be fire and forget, but something that you pretty much ignore outside of seeing how much army strength you need, moving those armies to systems and landing them (like I feel the game steers you pretty hard away from doing much with the planetary invasion tab and to be fair, you have plenty of other things to do anyways).

 

[Lykus Cerebros]

i don't really care, but i'm just thinking of what would be a minimalist tweak to make ground combat/planets a bit more interesting.

i don't see 'having to build more armies' as 'unnecessary micromanagement', cos it's about thinking ahead and having the resources, which sounds like strategy to me.

Well how the system works currently is at the start (2200-2230) you build as few armies as possible to save resources but it quickly just becomes click on all planets and queue up half a dozen armies. Then merge them all and have them follow your fleet in aggressive.

That system while it works is boring and besides some edge cases there is no difference in army types or species forming them.

Now throw in internal unrest caused by bombardments or population preference. What does really change then? You just spam more armies as a defender to keep the planet under control or more as attacker to conquer / reconquer it. The core stays the same boring numbers game other than that you have to remember if you conquered those pops from your current war enemy at some point.

 

[Ferrus Animus]

The current army system is basically functional and requires little attention or effort devoted to it. The place it has is to add an extra step to planetary conquest, that requires a little more work from the attacker.

There's a lot that could be dopne with ground combat to replicate the myriad fo sci-fi stories that feature it, but all that would require a massive systema over haul, a lot of attention devoted to it in dev resources and player attention and would need to have effect on everything from economic systems to planetary buildings etc...

It is a lot of work with an uncertain payoff, and the current system works well enough

 

[nestorius]

not much point really with regard to combat armies atm just slow down the inevitable.

 

[prismaticmarcus]

The current army system is basically functional and requires little attention or effort devoted to it. The place it has is to add an extra step to planetary conquest, that requires a little more work from the attacker.

There's a lot that could be dopne with ground combat to replicate the myriad fo sci-fi stories that feature it, but all that would require a massive systema over haul, a lot of attention devoted to it in dev resources and player attention and would need to have effect on everything from economic systems to planetary buildings etc...

It is a lot of work with an uncertain payoff, and the current system works well enough

maybe for Stellaris 2. which is a loooooong way away...