I was wondering, if SOASE had Land Based Combat. Like in Star Wars Empire at War or planterary invasion like Galactic Civilizations you can do that. While fighting the enemy in space, you can pause and focus on the land battle or both .So here is what i think.
Colony ships can be upgraded with assault pods to send troops along with colonists to go to the planet. Your Colony Battleships can send vehicles.
Land Based Abilities and Orbital Bombardment. Each side gets new abilities and one unique abilities. Normal abilities are Invasion and Bombardment
TEC
Tractor Beams: Attach these on Krosov(can only tractor 5 asteroids) and Marza(can tractor 15) and bombard with asteroids causing planet damge
Robotic Soldiers: Send Robotic Soldiers along with Human Soldiers to invade.
Advent
Join the Advent
Infiltratos promising them a better life under our rule, unhappy citizens are likely to join our side. Must have allegiance at 50 percent.
Planet Tremor: By scattering gravity-altering satellites into orbit around inhabited planets, we'll be able to cause earthquakes. May reduce life and irreplaceable planet damage.
Vasari
Gas Warfare; Viral Clouds are release on enemies reducing defensive strength but may cause irreversible organic life damage meaning less population less health and maybe even changing the planet.
Massarce: Kill all populace and send broadcast to enemy. May cause rebellions
What do think, should it be RTS style or Turn based
I'd say it depends on if you are wanting to be realistic or not. Landing troops to take over makes more sense than destroying the planet's enviroment from orbit. If you were just destroying worlds that would be different, but since you are taking the planet then a orbital bombardment is not logical. Not when you are talking in what it does to the planets health and population.
I am no advocating for either side though. Merely pointing out if we were being realistic. If you aren't worried about that stuff then orbital bombardment would be faster.
I've thought about land battle in Sins since a little while after I got the game, the idea of space faring races having only on branch in their armed forces seems ludicrous.
I like this idea, the battle could last for a certain amount of time with those variables and landing more men or orbital bombardment pushing the scales in either direction (meaning the planet's current owner can try to tip the balance back toward him by bombarding a contested world, at the expense of the lost HP.)
I think that the infiltrators and enemy culture should cause something like a festering rebellion (Hey! I think I've heard that somewhere before) on planets that they effect and you need to deploy your soldiers to stop the rebels from causing DoT and eventually overthrowing your government and replacing it. However, rather than putting soldiers into siege frigates, I think there should be a dedicated troop transport that is weak and slow and can train soldiers while in orbit around a friendly planet (maybe taking a population point or two for each.) And I think the current planetary shields the TEC has could be given to the other races with the ability you described.
Also, I think planet bombing should be kept, destroying infrastructure in the same way as before. Glassing a planet's surface with bombs multiple times should also eventually cause it to turn into some sort of radioactive or uninhabitable planet for a while (say, when a planet takes a total of 20k of bombing over the entire game, any colony on that planet has the qualities of a dead asteroid or some other penalty for the rest of the game, or some amount of time).
Invasion should also give you all the upgrades the previous owner had while losing some HP in the process.
It just depends... The Advent and the Vasari do it intelligently. They use weapons that allow them to destroy critical points, but not just wipe out all population. Kinetic warheads: power of a nuke, but no fallout. Beams: directional; the opposite of fallout. Nukes with "Heavy Fallout" (in other words, probably Cobalt): nuclear winter.
Bombing should wipe out all infrastructure (because that is what will be hit from orbit), while invasion I still think should lower all upgrades by one level (unless Emergency Facilities was upgraded into a tree, at which point, obviously invasions would affect some completely such as land military power)
However lasers produce heat which could mess with both the impact site, and judging by the size of the beams, over time they could probably mess up the atmosphere causing a warming affect, possibly?
Kinetic weapons... it depends whether it is more cost effective for civilians to rebuild on top of the bomb impacts or in new locations (by the size of the explosions, they should flatten a sizable part of the planet during one detonation) if it makes more sense to build cities in the same location of the recently removed ones then the same places on the surface of the planet will be bombed again and again. If it makes more sense to build in a new location then a new spot will be glassed with every bombardment and uninhabitable zones could spread across the planet in that way.
To sum it up, you could come up with an excuse for this effect if you felt like it and were more eloquent than me.
I also think that the current "Cultural revolutionaries" system where you can't do anything but build a broadcast center could be easily be replaced by something like the land based system I outlined
I dont think we can really say anything about the affect of orbital bombardment on recolonization efforts because theres not enough detail. All that can be said is that if you want to have an easier time recolonizing, you have to be more careful with how and where you bomb and vice-versa. Obviously a successful invasion is going to give you the easiest recolonization efforts. I would say to reflect that you might get a bonus to population growth when you acquire the planet. Upgrades included/time invested would be a matter of balance.
If you're looking for a ship that's weak with little armaments to serve as the troop transport, then I would make it the colony frigate. That makes some sense.
The reason I was suggesting the siege frigate was that I feel that ship isnt used much and would be a primary component of an actual fleet. I would also like to avoid adding a new, underused ship. So, expanding the capabilities of the siege frigate makes sense to me and all 3 races have one. It also makes sense (to me) that it might serve as a troop transport to cover all aspects of sieging in one such specialized ship. That way, the 'siegability' of a fleet is directly proportional to the number of siege ships. It also gives you more tactical options in a fight. You might see more ships coming and decide to switch to razing the planet so that you can cause the most damage to the enemy. On the other hand, maybe you're expecting an epic battle and the opponent runs away. You can then leave your siege ships to take the planet via invasion and get the planet fully populated.
Actually, now that you mentioned culture... the time an invasion takes to take over a planet could be tied to the culture level of the planet. You could invade a planet with strongly hostile culture, but it takes a long time (not drawing parallels! nope!). however, if your culture is strong there, it would be very quick.
I would also change the way the planetary defense upgrade works:
Now, if you had upgrade #3 and I bombed the planet below 4500 hp, you lose upgrade #3 and are now at #2. This would make a fairly realistic siege campaign where you bomb the planet to take out the shields and then invade. If you dont have the resources to beat the garrison, you're force to bomb them all.
This whole system could be implemented without adding new ships or models. just a few icons for some new abilities, some new variables, a new indicator for how many troops are on a planet, and done deal.
If that's the case, I'd say you'd just want to flat out give the planet shields if you upgraded it to the max. So long as the shields were online (say, having an additional 3000 health), the planet can't be invaded, but once they get killed, the siege frigates can either continue to bomb or simply invade.
By default, planet's have no noticeable military power, but after the first upgrade it gains a set number of troops. Siege frigates would have their own reserve of soldiers on board which would slowly regenerate. Obviously, a single siege frigate shouldn't be enough to punch through a fully upgraded Terran planet. Perhaps have the military presence take up a percentage of the planet's income as it's population gets converted to government workers (soldiers). This would also make terran planets more defensible than, say deserts which makes sense. More civilians=more soldiers.
Another way to do it is have planet militaries take up fleet capacity points. Now, you'd have to rename them "Manpower" or something like that, but you get the idea. Those are troops from your main body that you could be using to man ships, but instead you are using them to defend planets. I'm not saying this is the better option, but it's a different take on the idea...
Tying it to fleet points could work, but i think it would be difficult to balance the mechanic against using those fleet points for more ships. If need alot of fleet points to make it work effectively, why bother? on the other hand if it's too low, planets will be filled with troops and you cant invade anyhow.
So here is the core idea:
Secondary mechanics that could enhance the core idea:
Something that just occurred to me: There was discussion about the habitability of the planets after bombing them.... This made me think of the rate of population increase and that is fast. What are they rabbits? On the other hand, the nuclear fall out could be causing that....
Perhaps you could train troops on your planets (using credits and/or the planet's population), then be able to load them onto siege frigates which use them as the invasion force when activating their invasion ability (the frigates having a max capacity of course)
I think max troop count could be based on overall planet pop (ie, you are training soldiers from the normal citizenry and you can only have a certain percent of your pop in arms)
Maybe this could be worked into the TEC insurgency tech? Making the planet neutral, rather than taking it over for another faction. Or the entire concept could be another section of the entrenchment tech screen for each race (increases efficiency or power of your forces, increases the percent of your population you can put into arms, max planet garrison, special bonuses or abilities...etc.)
I could see something like this work if it was kept simple. With no actual battles.
Would like to have a choice in what the planet's role is in my empire. Like a mining planet , improves mining operation effeciency across empire by a percentage, with improved mining yield on the planet. A trade planet , improving income for trading across the empire by a percentage, with improved credit yield. Could be a military planet as well, improve fleet capacity, boosting defensive/offensive values for structures and fleets in the gravity well.
Then tie in with the ability to launch a ground attack to take the planet with minimal infrastructure damage. Or you can bombard the planet, destroy the infrastructure and choose what you want that planet to focus on.
For the troops, to keep it simple, I would suggest making the infrastructure level of the planet, should be upgradeable with above suggestion, cover civilian population values and change the population level to cover troop levels. Add a drop ship to carriers and add a decent cool down for them. Make it so that after they deploy they begin the decent cool down to deploy the next wave. Should be fodder to fighters, flak ships defensive emplacements and somewhat to frigates.
Edit: Also could add ability to incite rebellion on the planets to help weaken the military presence or remove them all together. Would be based on research invested in something like espionage. Maybe requires training in specialized operatives that are highly studied in the day to operation and personnel for each type of planetary operation, several branches.
Always felt the research should have many more levels for each field, not just 2 or 3. Allow more leveling in each area so that you just cant research it all. Just reduce the increase percentages and use diminishing returns a bit so you can't pump up one thing to win, but still have some value for the points invested.
actually, there already is bonuses and such that affect things such as mining or trade. Thing is, no one explores. It should be guaranteed to get something when you explore. And maybe free exploring after awhile. It just doesnt seem worth the time and money right now.
Yeah, the only time I even acknowledge that button's existence is when I have money to burn when I'm about to make the final deathblow against the AI anyways...
lol, i just thought: wouldn't it be cool if you saw the tiny shuttle /w the landing party going down to the planet and get into one of those 'traffic lanes' until it gets to one of the floating cities, at which point you see some tiny explosions?
I noticed the bonuses from the minor artifacts, is I guess what they are.
But to have a planet dedicated to that, providing a substantial boost, could be much more beneficial and meaningful. You get it when you build it not at random.
Imagine a choke point planet being a military planet and getting those bonuses, that would be a tough nut to crack. So do you take the easy way and bomb it into submission or take over the planet with ground assaults. If you bomb it into submission you will have to drop a lot of resources to get it back to where it was.
I still would prefer that the planet upgrades were in more of a tree style. with so many points that you can allocate. Dead asteroids get a few, habitable asteroids get more, and planets get more than that.
while that would be cool, my suggestion is easier for them to implement and easier for the player to adopt. If you have alot of features, a tree makes more sense. If you have a few, rolling it into the existing setup makes the most sense.
If, magically, the devs decided to implement this.... What else would you have? So far, we have troops, planet health, and shields. To protect your planet (I'm sticking with your idea that it be a planetary defense tree), you will need some of each. The smart move is to take some of each. You said something about planetary based weapons, and im okay with that. I just think it could be something that you research and suddenly your max-defense planets all have guns as well.
All in all, if people want Sins to include land based combat, I dont think you can get it with lots of details. It is a space combat game. The best you could get, in my opinion, would be a secondary feature and not fully implemented. By that, I do not mean half-assed. It wouldn't be something that makes you have to re-learn how to play the game, I think.
Holy Lord We are still talking about Land-Based Combat???? This is a space based game. No More, No Less. Neither do we want More or Less. If you want a Land Based game, go play Sup Com 2.
And research to unlock this stuff could be another section of the entrenchment screen
The cool part about sins is theres so much going on at the same time on several different levels. It's natural, especially in RTS games, to want to extend that. Some of the ideas here are not much more than what is already in the game (orbital bombardment, planetary hp, population, etc). I'm pretty sure no one here wants to turn Sins into a land-based game, they just want some land.
Something I've been thinking about for a while now but am just now mentioning... What happens when you halfway bomb a planet and then decide you want to invade or vice versa because the situation changes?
Thus far it just seems that the best I've got means bombing destroys civilian infrastructure over time as it decreases planet health whereas invasion just reduces the troop presence. This way if you decide to do both for whatever reason, you still get the results of both. Now, if you did expand the emergency facilities into an entirely separate build menu in Sins II or whatever, then invasion would probably take down certain things like surface to orbit weapons, troop support infrastructure and the like. Things of that sort.
your right. In SW: Rebellion, the situation was kinda reversed. The primary way to take over a planet was to invade it. I can't remember, but I dont think you could 'bomb it neutral' like Sins. The goal with bombing was to take the level of troops down or bring the shields down so you could invade. But you didn't want to bomb the hell out of it, because the population didnt like being bombed and so your popular support would be pretty bad when you bombed, not to mention that you tend to take out alot of structures you could put to good use when you take it over.
Obviously, lots of things could be implemented that would be awesome. But as I said above, I agree that this is a space-combat game and shouldnt diverge too much from that. I only described the details there to give context. Now, it's too bad Diplomacy didnt add aspects like popular support (Yes, I know there's loyalty. That's not what I mean) among planets, including ones you do not own. There remains the possiblity that could be included in rebellion (since that is a natural consequence of popular support), but I doubt it (would be screwy with culture mechanic and the loyality values).
So, my solution would be to say bombing can remove troops.... after it has removed all the defensive layers and it randomly should destroy some of the structures/upgrades that you would want to preserve.
All in all, this could work. I'm not holding my breath though.
ferry good ideer i like it
I have an idea, divide planets into Health, Fortifications, Soldiers, and Population.
Soldiers and Population are immune to bombardment and invasion as long as Fortifications is not 0, so to capture the planet, one has to bombard Fortifications to 0, then invade or continue to bombard until all Soldiers and Population are dead.Health is the foil to bombardment, if it falls too low, the planet becomes uninhabitable, at least until it rises back over a higher point (for example, at 500 it becomes uninhabitable, and is uncolonizable until it raises to 1000). The Soldiers and Population should all either die when the Health falls below the point, or the former AND when Fortifications reach 0.
So in summary, to capture a planet, one must bombard to destroy Fortifications, then one can choose to invade or bombard to kill Soldiers and Population. But if you bombard too much then you have to wait afterwards to capture the planet.
If we actually could blow up planets or change their type, then I would love your system. Terran planets get 50,000 health or what have you (asteroids get like 10,000). Fortifications get say, 6000. Both numbers slowly regenerate over time, but planet health regenerates MUCH slower. It is literally the health of the planet. Bomb too much on a Terran planet and you get the following progression as the planet's overall quality decreases:
Terran>Desert>Lava>Asteroid>Dead Asteroid>Asteroid Field (aka boom). In this way, hotly contested planets will eventually degrade. The feasibility of a terran decaying into a desert is relatively high. To go from the lava to asteroid on the other hand, you really have to really make the planet go boom and probably the only way to do that is superweapons.
Once you knock a planet down a tier, there is no going back. It permanently gets its maximum population decreased and cannot go back up above the health of that planet type. Fortifications on the other hand can be rebuilt to the aforementioned 6000.
Habitability would be a separate factor. This would be like shield mitigation, simply much slower falling. As you bomb, the habitability of a planet decreases (faster if using TEC and even faster if using High Yield Warheads). You will ultimately bomb a planet to uninhabitability. This factor decreases over time, but after reaching say, 20% (or whatever number and unit system you use) population growth is stunted. After 40%, population begins to drop with an EoT.
Of course, that's all wishful thinking.
You misunderstand me. I mean that you simply can't colonize it while it has an "uninhabitable" passive affect on it, it doesn't change type or anything like that.
Lol, no, I understood fine. I just took your idea and ran with it
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