Developed planets with large populations should not flip in a single turn. Let ground wars play out like ground wars.
Invasion and conquer should be a gradual process. You bring your space marines (or whatever) to the planet and they invade. Depending on the size of the population and the number of troops present, a state of war might last for a few turns or dozens. Or it might stalemate altogether, with neither side able to gain advantage. You need to get more troops to tip the odds. While the war wages on, the planet is out of commission.
And, if you are able to invade with the element of surprise, your enemy would be able to send ships to reinforce the defenders or drive off the attackers. Or research new technologies to make its fighters stronger and win the battle that way. Or appeal to the UP to stop the war. Or any number of other alternative strategies.
Think of a scenario where you've just landed marines to take a crucial planet deep in your enemy's territory, only to have the enemy destroy your fleet on the next turn. Now your invading marines are stranded, surrounded by the enemy, fighting a war of attrition in the hopes that you might be able to reinforce them.
I like this idea. It would certainly add a dimension to the tactical play as you would have to gain "space supremacy" around a system to conduct an effective campaign. Civilization and Horizon have such a mechanic through city health and planet health, respectively, that have to be reduced before a city/world can be taken.
This was the battle of Guadalcanal in World War II.
Invasions are definitely one of the weakest mechanics as is. These suggestions are good.
The current planet invasion mechanic is simply a place holder. GC2 was much more robust. The post for the tentative schedule shows combat as coming in Beta 3, tentatively slatted to be shipped sometime in December
"December 2014: Beta 3 - Combat! Yor Singularity!This is the big combat update. Ground invasions, our new take on fleet combat, and the sinister mechanical Yor join the beta before the end of the year."
No, its all to complicated.
I like the idea including the possibility of joint ownership and stalemates, but I wouldn't wait more than 5 turns to conquer a planet. The devs have been mostly quite about PI rules so maybe this is already in there master plan?
If you have fought through the defending fleet and now have supremacy of the skies, the defenders could not last overly long. You have at the minimum 2.5 billion soldiers (in gc2 I often used 10 or more transports full of troops, the troops not killed moved on to the next planet) attacking planets with the usual avg of 15 billion inhabitants. In GC3 I have 3 sizes of transport 5, 10 and 20. I move in with fleets using what I need to overwhelm each planet. I also have battlefleets running interference and all my transports are armed.
Edladner: If you have fought through the defending fleet and now have supremacy of the skies, the defenders could not last overly long.
Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, etc. show that superior force of arms and tactical position is inadequate to predict the length or success of a military mission. Regardless, it's a game with aliens about space warfare. What makes sense is kinda secondary. I'm thinking about what makes for interesting strategic and tactical gameplay.
You have at the minimum 2.5 billion soldiers (in gc2 I often used 10 or more transports full of troops, the troops not killed moved on to the next planet) attacking planets with the usual avg of 15 billion inhabitants. In GC3 I have 3 sizes of transport 5, 10 and 20. I move in with fleets using what I need to overwhelm each planet. I also have battlefleets running interference and all my transports are armed.
It sounds as though you've already won the game at that point. I don't see this mechanic having any noticeable effect on this strategy. Your masses of troops would quickly overwhelm the planet's resistance rendering any rescue or reinforcement operation moot. Not that they could do anything since your fleets would destroy them before they could approach the planet.
This is more about a situation where you are roughly at parity with your opponent. (Or the silly problem of planet sniping, where you send in a really fast transports to an undefended colony and take it all in one turn.)
DARCA: No, its all to complicated.
I don't think it's much more complicated than the current system. You drop your troops in, they do their thing. You don't want to wait so long? Send more troops! If the battle's not going your way, pull your remaining troops out and redeploy them somewhere else.
Lucky Jack: The current planet invasion mechanic is simply a place holder. GC2 was much more robust.
I don't know about "robust" but there was at least some kind of mechanic. I'm as interested in seeing what they have planned for planetary invasion as anyone, which is why I'm throwing my two cents up on the board here (instead of jealously hoarding them -- my precious! )
I like the OP's idea. I'm curious to see what SD has done with invasions.
While I sympathize with the OP, each turn is a year. A lot happens in a year.
The comments regarding most of the conflicts you mention is each city is kind of like a planet in Gal Civ. So to win the war, you have to take several, if not all the cities (planets).
I do like the idea of resistance, but in Gal Civ it is a straight up population vs population. You wipe out the planet's population and replace it with your own. I am not saying I like that system. I feel planets should have troops and population. Once you wipe out the troops, you still have to deal with the population.
my 2 cents, which balanced against inflation for when "my 2 cents" was "coined" is worth about .000000001 cent now.
Full agree with the OP in fact I suggested this a few months back during a discussion of planatery invasion. I really think it would be more fun and more realistic to have ongoing battles for control of a planet, more fun and more realistic.
@blaze of glory. A turn is a week.
And i believe there are 54 weeks in the game year
some up resolution said it would stay in effect for 1 year (54 turns)
Darca
Oops, must have been thinking of another game. Ok, then stages! It shouldn't be just planetary invasion, it should be all battles!
<counting down at work until the weekend....>
You could also have it that you need to have a certain part of your planet's population used for defense instead of the whole population. Your defenders are taken out of your economy etc. Maybe just a slider, maybe a building(s) to have better troops. So your strategy has to weigh more defense verses lost production, research and money.
That is kind of where I was going in my post above. It seems like it violates the lore of the game. After all, if you wipe out the existing population and replace it with yours, where are the Drengin slaves?
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