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
My word editor uses the standard Turing tech for eliminationof wasted reading time by producing words that are easily scanned over in groupsthatarein uninterrupted strings. This meathod of communicating (excepting misspelling and other human errors) circumvents the need for long thought processes and can greatly reduce the wear on the reader. I find find that it is optimum protocol for these forums.
It is merely the opposite for me. I tend to communicate more like that of a human thanmost of theothersonthis site.
Its precisely statements like this one which actually prove to me that humans aremore cofusedthespecies when it comes to avidly expressing their opinions on the web. Besides that, everyone knows that instant hypervoicemail through neural connections will render computer skills obsolete in 200 years...
P.S. I still believe that "REBELLION" is a win-win for Stardock because they arepioneers in the making of multi-player video games!
With all due respect, I was getting my hopes up that you were gone.
Actually chance is not only a big part of some very successful strategy games, it's also a science in games. Like Poker, gamers who bet on chance in their games make the games so much more interesting.
Lots of gamers would disagree with you on your stance. Especially Warhammer and Civilization gamers.
Though perhaps you were thinking of "cheating" chances such as we saw in GalCiv 2. Those were fun, but I do agree that they could ruin a game with their almost absolute improbability. But that's what you get when you play in space, haha.
@ P4QmA1:
A bit strange then that you seem to be the only one on this forum communicating in this much more effective way, huh?
Though clearly you are a much more intelligent human being compared with us "normal townsfolk" and I suppose I should just kneel down before you and pray all humans will evolve to be as smart as you one day...
But let's all get back to the main subject of this topic, shall we?
Okay, but I think any suggestions about what the devs should put into Rebellion should also be posted in the "Suggestions for Rebellion" topic post.
I think Land-Based Combat would be a great idea, but instead of focusing on the planet and pausing the game otherwise, instead divide the planet into sections and choose to invade/bombard/destroy certain sections of the planet at a time. the on-ground combat and all bombardment would be automated, but it could still show an animation of whats going on down there. but you cant take control of who's down there.
Signed,
Trade Emergency Coalition Advanced Research Facility (TEC-ARF)
LAND BASED COMBAT LIKE GALACTIC CIVILIZATIONS II!!!!
Hmm... good thing I did some thinking on my spare time. I think you guys will like this.
Ground Control (GC): This serves as the buffer between invasion forces, and ultimately determines who wins a land battle. This new ship resource serves to represent a ships capability of fighting invasion forces. GC can repel hostile culture up to twice the regional net of friendly culture against a minimum allegiance.
Planets will still be considerably weakened by enemy culture, but GC makes sure that the planet still retains a minimum allegiance. As previously stated all allegiance below the minimum is up to twice as hard to change as everything above it.
GC is a constant ability that is only in use on the planet whos gravity well the ship in question inhabits.
Every structure in the game has this as well, but only hangars and starbases have a decent amount capable of defending a planet. GC doesnt actually give any benefit to the player using it unless an invasion force is sent down to the planet from the following ship types.
Warship: capital ship that has a large amount of temporary GC points and whos invasion ability allows a large but temporary GC bonus.
War Corvette: lands on the planet to supply a permanent GC bonus up to a maximum of (X). The ability that allows it to do this also is capable of starting an invasion.
Planetary upgrades and research: Planetary upgrades can be researched to give planets a small GC bonus, but any serious defense against GC should be invested in war corvettes and other things. Planetary research can be attained in which ground forces gain an air to space weapon whose power is dependant on the amount of GC.
No matter how immaculate the defenses, a planet always falls to the sheer numbers of fleets. This is no less true with GC points as they apply to fleets. A very large fleet's GC will always be superior to the planets without a friendly fleets help.
Simulated GC animations: A kodiak for example can provide GC realistically because it has a small number of surplus armed personnel onboard, and can also provide planetary laser guided bombardment as air support for friendly forces below where previously its weapons were insufficient without the support of ground forces.
A transporter cruiser also has surplus personnel aboard and can also provide strike craft support. These simulated effects dont infringe the ships dps (damage per second) against enemy fleets at all, but they are simulated for the sake of realism. For example; miniature transporters go to and from the planets from the ships, small vehicles appear on the planets surface, strike craft circle it, and small explosions (smaller than normal planetary bombardment) sometimes appear.
The normal traffic stops due to the planets conflict.
When a planet actually gets invaded, unless there is opposing GC it is instantly subjugated. If there is opposing GC, the allegiance will shift slowly in one direction according to whos GC is greatest. Ten way invasions are possible, as are joint invasions.
The system, while it could do without, would greatly benefit from realtime land battles:
There would be another window which you could expand according to your preference. The window represents a battle on the planets capital.
If computer performance is an issue, land forces could be very simple 3 dimensional polygons made to represent land forces as if you were commanding them through a computer terminal, still maintaining a sense of realism yet alleviating computer performance issues.
According to the amount of GC, certain units could be created similar to ships in which each is useful in their own way.
The battlefield would be decently sized for a 10-20 minute game against the other players ground forces. I can see ten way battles being a problem however... maybe they would still be possible.
Many units are similar to the ones in space. A land equilvalent to a light frigate would be a simple rifleman, a LRM a sniper, a protev a drone that sets up outposts on designated capture points, kodiak a shock trooper in powered armor, capital ship a tank, flak frigate a ATA trooper, a transporter doubling as an APC and drone carrier, and the support cruiser medics and engineers, etc. And no, Im not saying that those units would only be available if you had the corresponding ship type in the gravity well, Im merely making an analogy.
I wouldn't mind taking a slight step in direction of ground combat by having some sort of a troop transport that can assault and disable or take over structures.
easy way would be to mod the game, remove all bombing from siege vessels and capitalships, remove all bomb hardpoints from meshes.
Now, take an ability like Resource Drain and tweak it about for lesser damage and single level, then slap it on a siege frigate. Remove the particle effect and resource earning. Ships launch combat pod at planet and slowly damage to planet HQ is done and some population death. The more siege vessels, the more troopers that get send down so that after 2-3 minutes of this, the planet falls and can be colonized.
No chance... I like Sins the way it is. Space focused. If I want to play a ground focused strategy game of a large scale like this, I will generally play Supreme Commander Forged Alliance. The first Supreme Commander series... Not the second. They seriously screwed up Supreme Commander 2. Dumbed down way too much.
I think the best way for land combat to be implemented would be GalCiv2 style What you guys think?
EDIT: Just realized this wasn't the thread I thought it was.
History tells a different tale...
Nvm.. got confused on what thread I was in...
With the level of technology in Sins, there's really no reason for land based combat.
It would not be that difficult for them to kill everyone on a planet without damaging the infrastructure too much. They can use chemical and biological weapons or neutron bombs. The Vasari can probably make some kind of nanite plague. The Advent can just mind control everyone or give them strokes. Only heavily protected bunkers or military installations need to be destroyed by orbital bombardment. Everything else, roads, bridges, factories, power plants, etc. can be preserved.
I feel like if they made a land based RTS in the sins universe as a seperate game in the future it might be cool, but I think it would pretty much just look a lot like Supreme Commander. Seriously though, has anyone else ever noticed the faction similarities, and game design similarities between sins and Sup Com? Just me? Its probably just me.....
There is an old 4X game called Star Wars Rebellion. It was a turn based game, but I always admired the interactions it used for land vs space.
You have to station landed troop on a planet to garrison it. Those troops keep the local population in check. A population could be for or against your faction, Rebel, or imperial. If their loyalty was with you enough, you would need less or even no garrisons to maintain order and control production at that planet.
There were 2 main ways to take over a planet. After you cleared out the oribiting fleet. You could either bombard the surface or send down troop carriers to fight battles. The battles took place in a auto resolve fashion. There was a RNG to mix things up occasionally, but usually the person with better troops won. You were always likely to lose troops in a land invasion though.
If you want to save your troops. you can have your star destroyers or Tie bombers do orbital bombardment. This would destroy garrisoned troops, production facilities and civilian structures. If you want, you can even glass the planet and destory all life and natural resources. It would be pretty useless then. Later on, you can make a death star and just blow them to smithereens completely.
All of this has consequences, anytime you have civilian casualties, your local loyalty on all planets nearby drops. And in the case of the death star, your loyalty goes up (due to fear) when its around, but actually drops significantly if you use it to destroy a planet.
That means doing land invasions was a better option longterm so you don't wreck your loyaltry and cause a loyalty cascade. If a planet flipped sides due to negative loyaltry, this causes other planet to get negative loyalty too, and if that pushed them over the line and caused them to flip, it caused more planets to flip, and so on. Thats in case you didn't have enough troops to garrison and keep the order.
Sins of a Solar Empire could do more with loyalty, instead of just the broadcast center. I've always wanted to be able to build troops to garrison on low loyalty planets to keep them in my control. If the enemy comes along and destroys those garrisons, either from orbital bombardment or land invasion, it would cause a loyaltry flip, which would hurt loyaltry on all nearby planets.
Yeah, I mentioned Rebellion months ago when this thread was being discussed. I thought that there might be a way to implement troops in Sins, due to the fact that SW:Rebellion pulled it off without having actual in-game units... they were 'cards' in a way, but there was alot of those types of things in that game and there's none in Sins. not to mention that bombing and allegiance would have to be drastically altered if you wanted to make it worth the while...
It could be pulled off, but not without a major redesign. I think me and Volt spit-balled a number of ideas to try to get something in the game along these lines that has minimal changes to the existing mechanics, but they didn't seem worth the effort really...
And by the way, I don't know that you can call SW: Rebellion '4X', as it was real time... In alot of ways, that game was my major attraction to this game.
Seems like it would be real simple to add land combat and make it interesting.
Would only require a few new lines of info to display in the planet view. Showing the current troop garrison and a line that will pop in for enemy troops. That could display the level or strength of the troops as well based off any training, that could be added, or based on the culture influence stronger culture getting a boost.
We already have a new ship that can capture. Add one ship for each race that deploys troops.
Then set up a skill tree for troop training in the military research tab, call it something cool. Then add the ability to train the troops to capture defences, then one for star bases and one for civ structures, with proper research invested. As well as various ability boosting or time boosting abilities.
Interesting part in it would be getting those troops to their targets past the working defences, fighters and bombers, not to mention any fleets in the vicinity. and that is all space baby!
On the defence side you would also have the skills in that tree for countering that you could invest in. Like slowing the advancement or for the different races maybe a boost to planetary defences for a short that could be granted at a certain troop level 50% 25% etc...
Could even require that troops come from planet population and replenishes slowly with planet growth. So troops would be sort of a limited resource...and the info for that is already in place, just adding to it.
As for capturing defences and star bases, you would need to add a tab to the structures much like the planet that shows troop levels. Then you could if you wanted, rather than trying to rush out and capture others, you could turtle in on your structures, mabe get a slight bonus from having troops stationed. But also may loose them to a well planned fleet assault, but that is at least another choice we get to make in game.
So I do feel like it would add a ton to the game, various strategic tactics as well as defensive options. And would be extremely simple to set up in game without a bunch of changes.
This is my opinion for why land-based combat has no place in Sins.
You have ya ground troops, their all ready, waiting, excited even, a force able to kill every last living on a planet in a matter of hours.
I have my fleet, in orbit, above you. I have missles, energy weapons, heavy munitions in general. I blow up your planet, I kill everything on it, including your defense force, with my missles. World scoured clean in a matter of minutes. I move my people in.
Why am I landing? Oh I want to keep the infrastructure intact? No thanks, I'll just build it again. I'm going to get into a slower paced land battle when my ships can just take things out from orbit in a lot less time? I dont think so. Are the AI going to do the same and just nuke me from orbit? I think so.
Ground combat, to me, has no place in Sins when planetary bombardment will do the same thing in less time, since you'd ahve to move in close enough to launch the droptroops, wait for thme to get down, engage the enemy and take over. Whats that? Oh, I can use my ships to deliver support fire to my ground troops? I have capital ships, with very powerful weapons, sitting in orbit, ready to deliver precise fire? Yeah, no.
I can understand why people would like ground combat but really, what place does it have when so much firepower can be levelled at the planet? What are you really getting? The planet upgrades? Thats a little bit of time and money vs the same if not longer time with a possibilty of my troops being slaughtered for whatever reason.The population? Ok, so I'm Vasari, I come along, I take the planet, I now have a planet with an Advent population, what other mechanics is that going to introduce? My population rebels? Less tax from the disgruntled occupants? Are my resource and ship production quotas going to fall? Is any research I do involving that planet going to be hampered by them being a different race?
If we were overtaken by aliens today, they took out every military capability we had right down to militia's and boy scout troops, would we ever accept it? Would we rebel, fight back at every chance, sabotage everything we could lay on our hands on, generally try to make occupation of our problem as big a problem as possible?
Starbases were the last defensive measure, in my opinion, that could be implemented. Adding ground based combat would ruin the game. Give me refund, before you give me ground based combat, is my stance.
If you watch the opening cinematic, you'd know the colony frigates can fly in the atmosphere...
My idea is that you can have an ability that slowly reduces the population an allegiance of a planet for say, 60 seconds? The ability would be something like Shock Troopers, I guess. And enemy factions can counter this by using the same ability on their own planet.
This way "land based combat" is partially implemented in a Sins fashion.
I saw your play style, or what you like to do, there but no good reason not to add drop ships. You prefer to bombard and rebuild from the ground up, and nothing wrong with that I have enjoyed it up to now as well. Why limit your choices though? Especially when it is something that will obviously not affect your game play style but add many options and more fun/replayability for others?
If you read my post on this then you would have seen that it might be a bit more of a challenge for you as well, considering that it could be added where garrisoned troops in star bases or turrets could get a bit of a buff. Nothing overly powerful.
It seems like you are envisioning their being all kind of visual effects with this, showing ships landing on the planet and troops marching around...none of that. Just what I said in my post there nothing more. No need for all the visuals the ships can be a transport only, no need to disappear once troops are dropped the ships would sit in orbit of the planet as a possible target. Most failed attacks would mean the loss of troops, if you lose your ships, because you cannot transport them back.
If you were to choose not to use the troops then you would have a slight advantage there, in that your planets would be making more tax income due to having more population available. More money to build ships and rebuild structure on the planets you bombard, if that is your choice.
Could see this in play with multi player, where a player starts an attack in multiple locations( A and B ) as a diversion and when the defender moves his fleet to intercept the larger fleet( at A ), the attacker jumps in with a small assault fleet from a nebula (near B ) with a few troop transports that take over the planet and defences before the player realizes due to the distraction. Might not notice as a small attack is already underway at the planet.
Once again this might not be for everyone to try to micro manage another aspect of the game but for those that do want to it will provide many more tactical options. And not much of a change for those that don't want to be bothered. But they could at least send some troops to their defenses for the buff easily enough with just one ship.
And as for the population rebelling against the smaller number of troops why risk having your planet destroyed and all life extinguished? The population overall would just want to live in a situation like that where they know the firepower is right there to wipe them out. In the end if the deployment fails bombardment is gonna be the next option.
It could be a different matter altogether though if planets took a much longer time to recover population from bombardment and would also be more realistic. Though you might not like to hear that considering your playstyle preference.
I deally, the broadcast centers should be tied into planet loyalty and troop garrisons. You can counter broadcast turning your population agianst you with military garrisons, you you would need more and more troops to keep order. Ground garrisons should cost credit fee. The more you have, the more you pay. Using garrisons is a quick fix to keep control of a planet that's loyalty is slipping away, but it gets expensive if you don't fix the loyaltry problem.
Planets also would embrace their liberators if they were freeded from an empire who was keeping them subdued with garrisons. It would make using garrisons to keep control risky.
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