Gaming the system: Shouldn't you have to have Space Superiority to invade a Planet and take it all?

[Hikikomori]

My personal rule at the moment is that i do not invade if there are stations in orbit.
Not because it seems unrealistic to take a planet while they are there (actually, having to kill everything in orbit doesn't feel right either) or because the losses in troops would be too great, or any other lore/tactical consideration.


I feel it would be much cheaper and effective to build less armed vessels, just enough for an elastic defence, and send a few more and tougher troopships and troops. Even if they get annihilated, they would do much more harm for less cost. Therefore my fleet i brought with to mop up any defenders and the fixed defences feels irrelevant, almost useless.
Bringing them after the troopships and maybe a few cannon fodder ships are done just does not seem "right".

In my last game i had the situation where the home world of the enemy was just a bit too tough, his fleets and fixed defences combined with my underdeveloped repair facilities kept me from being strong enough to take it with losses i felt i could afford, so i retreated and took another colony of his first.
I needed to juggle my fleets, getting much needed repair/reinforce time, while he chunked out fleet after fleet.

Not invading while i could not overpower his defences held the ai in play and a entity worth consideration while planing. It kept the game challenging.

But i knew i could just send my 4 huge troopships and be done with it. With the orbital structures on my side it would be a piece of cake and 80% of his capabilities would vanish with his home world, ending the war for good this time. But if i can't take the system, i shouldn't get it.

If i only get the planet, not the stations with sneaking in a few troopships, i don't get that much for what would be a suicide mission, but i could do it. He would be in an excellent position to conquer it back though.

And i wouldn't feel bad for taking it from the sneaky warmonger [:D]

[Tanaka]

ORIGINAL: Hikikomori

But i knew i could just send my 4 huge troopships and be done with it. With the orbital structures on my side it would be a piece of cake and 80% of his capabilities would vanish with his home world, ending the war for good this time. But if i can't take the system, i shouldn't get it.

Exactly [8|]

Maybe something else that would help is that all bases and ships should have to be taken by assault pods or destroyed. They cannot be transferred over magically! This effectively would turn the defending race into a nomad pirate race which would be pretty cool!

[Hikikomori]

ORIGINAL: Tanaka

ORIGINAL: Hikikomori

But i knew i could just send my 4 huge troopships and be done with it. With the orbital structures on my side it would be a piece of cake and 80% of his capabilities would vanish with his home world, ending the war for good this time. But if i can't take the system, i shouldn't get it.

Exactly [8|]

Maybe something else that would help is that all bases and ships should have to be taken by assault pods or destroyed. They cannot be transferred over magically! This effectively would turn the defending race into a nomad pirate race which would be pretty cool!

My preferred solution would be that stations stay with the original owner, but loose their repair/build capabilities, and maybe their construction progress too. All the workers from the construction slips fled after all. [;)]

It would maybe help with the shared resources between planet and station, the planet keeps everything but can't do anything with it, the station has them still mirrored but has no access. Also docking is impossible.

I suspect one of the problems of implementing something like that might be that the game is not prepared to deal with planet belongs to side A, station to side B situations, at least not the "wrong" way around, with planet changing sides only. It's always either planet and station, with resources shared between them, or only planet(after the station get scraped or destroyed) and no station. Blocking the resources from being used or shiped would "only" call for a deactivation of construction yards and docking bays.


It would make sneak-through attacks still viable, helping with an attack later on. It would also make assault pod attacks to capture a station a thing. (I have to test what happens if i take the station but not the planet, it never seemed like a good idea, but i would like to know what happens with the cargo and ships.)

Hell i would also gladly take a "screw it, self destruct it is" option. That would still be bordering on an exploit, but it would be better than the status quo.

But that may be a pain in the a** to implement, and until then houserules it is.

[Testmann]

If only ISIS would know about this, they'd turn around immediately.

[Hikikomori]

ORIGINAL: Tanaka
I think if you watch Haree's lets play where he invades the Gizurean homeworld and runs his troopships straight through a cloud of defenses and bases and takes everything you might understand my frustration. All ships, bases, planets, empire all become his in one swoop this way. You can't say there was not enough defenses because you can barely even see the planet. [:)]

Check out the 47:00 mark:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4Fw_ru ... 9&index=10

The whole enemy armada flips too, didn't notice before... (damn my skipreading)

Well that is just cheap. [:-]

[Icemania]

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins
I could see increasing the attrition a bit more, but we balanced this pretty well across a variety of cases in Shadows and Universe development. I think a higher modifier for space control could actually make it too powerful and reduce the need for the rest of the elements of a successful invasion or planetary defense. A good player will still find ways to win though and from what I can see, Haree hit that planet with pretty overwhelming force. I don't think that makes the case on its own that adjustment is needed.

We don't need overwhelming space force. Indeed we don't need any space force at all. We need speedy troop transports, coordinated timing, with a minimum 3:1 ratio of ground forces, and every homeworld is yours every time.

Considering roleplaying a defending race where you had a Large Spaceport with Tractor Beams in orbit above your homeworld.

You see a bunch of troop transports getting within range of being able to land troops.

A passive race might try to hold those troop transports at a particular minimum distance with those Tractor Beams and issue a warning.

An aggressive race might declare war, attack the transports as priority targets, and push the troop transports away.

But no race would be stupid enough to just let them land.

[Hikikomori]

Harees fleet was actually rather pitiful, at least in impact. His ground forces where insanely strong. I didn't watch the whole episode, but i thought from what i saw if the ai decided to attack he would be toast.

That would be an easy way to win, just send troop transports to every planet simultaneously, with enough superiority to take them against all the odds. If the ai has not a few heavily loaded transports near, it is done for.

And after you did that, you got yourself a few free fleets to boot.

[Blackstork]

ORIGINAL: Icemania

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins
I could see increasing the attrition a bit more, but we balanced this pretty well across a variety of cases in Shadows and Universe development. I think a higher modifier for space control could actually make it too powerful and reduce the need for the rest of the elements of a successful invasion or planetary defense. A good player will still find ways to win though and from what I can see, Haree hit that planet with pretty overwhelming force. I don't think that makes the case on its own that adjustment is needed.

We don't need overwhelming space force. Indeed we don't need any space force at all. We need speedy troop transports, coordinated timing, with a minimum 3:1 ratio of ground forces, and every homeworld is yours every time.

Considering roleplaying a defending race where you had a Large Spaceport with Tractor Beams in orbit above your homeworld.

You see a bunch of troop transports getting within range of being able to land troops.

A passive race might try to hold those troop transports at a particular minimum distance with those Tractor Beams and issue a warning.

An aggressive race might declare war, attack the transports as priority targets, and push the troop transports away.

But no race would be stupid enough to just let them land.

I will second this. If this is possible to implement then it will be ultimate fix to all problems stated in this thread. There should be another setting related to tractor beams behavior, and may be more one ship class called patrol ship without hyperdrives and with tbs to defend planets.

[Gas Can]

It is hardly challenging to take down a planet only with landing units, just stack shields onto the troop transporter and your good to go.

[ehsumrell1]

Also depends on if either the planet has an Ion Cannon and/or Spaceport/Starbase has Ion
weapons which can disable the Troop Transport's engines and leave them as easy targets
for the other defensive weaponry. As Erik said, some may get through, but they could
also get shredded too.
(Kind of reminds me of the first assault landing sequence from Starship Troopers. Some
pods made it, some didn't)
[:)]

[corwin90]

How many Ion Cannons does the AI typically place on ships and stations defending planets?

[Vardis]

Maybe gravity weapons could do damage to troops. Then they'd be good for temporarily stopping those transports and impacting the ground attack before it lands.

[mensrea]

ORIGINAL: Flinkebeinchen

@mensrea
Just read "The Lost Fleet" from "Jack Campbell" and you get a pretty good idea what ships from space could do.. Amazon link

I don't need to read a fictitious book to understand the dynamics of the situation. I'm aware troops on the ground would be highly susceptible to orbital fire. I'm also aware that they would be hiding in schools and hospitals and deliberately using civilian shields. They would also probably be executing civilians for every soldier zapped from orbit. They would be dressing as civilians and blending in. Its exactly like what Testmann said about ISIS...they have no airforce at all and the US has total air superiority. That wasn't much of a hindrance though, as they moved through Iraq like a swarm.

Airstrikes can only achieve so much unless your willing to kill indiscriminately to achieve your objective. Though I do concede that you could probably eliminate the vast majority of the invaders (up to the point that the remainder would go into hiding or surrender) the toll in civilian life would be extremely high, and perhaps that should be an option, something like selective bombardment. Wipes out troops but with very high collateral damage.

My main concern is orbitals flipping sides immediately. It makes no sense. The orbitals should be regarded as separate entities from the planet that would have to be dealt with separately. Would a dev be able to comment on that aspect and clarify whether it is intentional or just something that can't be changed?

[Hikikomori]

Lore considerations are nice and not unimportant for atmosphere, but in the end it's only gameplay that counts.

While the tractor beam might have fixed the invasions being very easy to pull off, the huge potential gains remain.

Flipping a station and if the last planet the whole enemy fleet are very desirable, from a strategic/tactical standpoint at least.
Depending on how well the AI uses the tractors and how hard it is to break through it might become a non-issue in the majority of gameplay situations.

I did not have time to test it really, so any experience anyone could share would be interesting.
With the improvements in the next version of AI-Mod templates it might be again another story though.

But how hard it now may be, i will never be able to accept a situation where i am handed the planet, the stations and the enemy fleet, no matter how hard the trick was to pull off. It is just cheap and shouldn't even be possible.

And if we are talking lore, i really have a hard time getting my head around an enemy station and huge fleet becoming mine after i just conquered their homeworld. You would think for their very existence they would put up more of a fuzz.
You could explain it with extortion or this or that, but it just does not fly for me lore-wise either.

But it's not the end of the (my) world. [8|]

[Aeson]

Maybe gravity weapons could do damage to troops. Then they'd be good for temporarily stopping those transports and impacting the ground attack before it lands.

I'm under the impression that currently, if a ship carrying troops loses its troop compartment, you lose the troops. I might be mistaken, but if I'm not, then gravity weapons already have a chance of weakening an invasion force.

As far as the subject of this thread goes, it is my opinion that opposed landings where the opposing space defenses have not been neutralized, or which are not heavily outnumbered, should not be removed from the game simply because it's possible to abuse it to ridiculous levels. While I think the successful invasion with four super transports and no real fleet is ridiculous, I don't think it's worth banning everything from that to an invasion which takes place while your fleet is fighting in an attempt to gain space superiority just to fix this perceived flaw. If you don't like abusing the system to that extent, don't do it, or at least don't come to the forums with a suggestion for 'correcting' this flaw by removing any chance whatsoever of pulling anything remotely resembling this off. I shouldn't need space superiority to conduct landing operations, I just need enough of it where I can get boots on the ground, and then I need enough space forces in the area to prevent those who are willing to resort to such tactics from indiscriminately bombarding the planet (since the game doesn't allow for tactical planetary bombardment, only the kill everyone option). An invasion just needs enough fleet power to protect the transports while landing and protect the supply lines enough to keep fighting in order to be successful, it doesn't need virtual control of the surrounding space.

And if we are talking lore, i really have a hard time getting my head around an enemy station and huge fleet becoming mine after i just conquered their homeworld. You would think for their very existence they would put up more of a fuzz.
You could explain it with extortion or this or that, but it just does not fly for me lore-wise either.

It might possibly be a 'starving them out' situation. I have no idea how large the food supplies the stations over planets would carry, but, at least for the spaceport, I doubt it's all that much, as the spaceport has a significant amount of traffic with the planet it orbits due to trade. It's not terribly likely, in my opinion, that they keep particularly large stockpiles of food on hand beyond what they expect to need to distribute to the next set of freighters that come through, and it makes little worthwhile difference to the game if the spaceport surrenders when the planet falls or a week or two later. It's also not terribly unlikely for a fortified position, once cut off from resupply, to surrender even before their supplies run out; we may remember the diehards best, but those who gave up before the sieges really got going are fairly prevalent in human history, too.

I'm also aware that they would be hiding in schools and hospitals and deliberately using civilian shields. They would also probably be executing civilians for every soldier zapped from orbit. They would be dressing as civilians and blending in.

I disagree. ISIS is a special case, in that they are not currently a recognized nation with a reputation to maintain, and they have nothing to lose by violating the accepted laws of war - they're a rebellion, and so they're guilty of treason. Endangering and murdering civilians recklessly to protect their own forces is not likely to produce a significantly worse outcome for them should they lose, as their leadership is mostly bound for prison or the gallows anyways, and the rank and file will generally be allowed to return to whatever they were doing in civilian life anyways, perhaps with some restrictions on their rights or a bit of prison time before being released. The US cannot use its air supremacy to full effect because "civilized" nations simply don't indiscriminately bomb targets where there is a high likelihood of collateral damage, at least not in the post-WWII era, and doing so violates both the accepted rules of war and a number of treaties to which the US is a party. I expect that the future-humans of Distant Worlds have similar ethical issues with endangering civilians through this employment of soldiers and with indiscriminate bombardment of planets, and I suspect that several of the other species, especially those that fall under the "good" alignment, will have similar issues.

Moreover, at least under the current rules of war, it is illegal for soldiers to conceal themselves as civilians during combat. If your soldiers are not recognizably combatants while participating in a military action or preparing for one, then they are not protected under the Geneva Conventions regarding the treatment of prisoners of war. While there is no guarantee that there would be universal adherence to a rule of this kind between the various species and factions which exist in Distant Worlds, I would be rather surprised if at least some of them were not inclined towards this form of rule. Even if it does nothing else, it helps your own forces recognize their own. There's also little reason why, if restrictions of this nature are not adhered to, the defending side would not resort to similar tactics, beyond the pragmatic concern of avoiding friendly fire incidents and the ethical and moral concerns of endangering noncombatants, and the defending side is significantly more likely to be able to benefit from this - it would be incredibly difficult to disguise a human as a civilian giant spider when invading a Dhayut world, but the Dhayut soldiers defending the planet should have no such issues. There are something like 20 species in Distant Worlds. How many of them are morphologically similar enough to humans for it to be practical to disguise an invasion force as a not completely out of place group of civilians? How much effort would that require beyond what would be needed just for an invasion of troops in uniform? Maybe I can look like a Mortalen, but is it really worth giving enough of the invading human army cosmetic surgery or costumes to be able to hide a reasonable fraction of the invading force among the civilian population of the target world? Is it really practical to train enough of the army sufficiently in the local languages and dialects?

[mensrea]

Well, personally speaking, if I know I'm going to die anyway, and there's a chance that the people on the planet will be exterminated or enslaved, or reduced to second-class citizens even, I'm going to drop the orbital on the planet before I give up. I would also expect defense orbitals to be stocked with years worth of supplies, not weeks.

Intra-racial combat will not enjoy the level of honor that interracial combat does, which is even quite a stretch given all the depraved stuff people do to each other, "civilized" or not. And by the way, the US and many "civilized" countries have been bombing the hell out of civilians since WWII. Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Iraq again. They have been using depleted uranium munitions too, which is way worse than just dropping conventional bombs. There are plenty of parts of the Geneva conventions we blatantly disregard and plenty of instances of things being written off as accidents or unintentional. Really I think the whole idea of rules of war is kind of a total joke, especially once you start fighting against actual aliens. The only rule is to win. I'm not going to get into a debate over this though, this isn't the place and I really don't care to do so with someone who actually believes those rules are anything but lines on pieces of paper.

The other points were for example only. Point is, if you want to shoot at soldiers from orbit and they are occupying or moving through cities and towns civilians will be killed, period, its only a question of how many. Unless your willing to do that then having a fleet in orbit will not affect armies on the ground. Players should have the option of taking that route though; it would be the middle ground between standing by and watching or completely annihilating everything on the planet.

[llanite_slith]

Another thought- what if you give point defense from orbital stations and local ships a couple free shots (similar to ground based space defenses)? This might address some of the issue without extensive modification.

[Tophat1815]

ORIGINAL: llanite

Another thought- what if you give point defense from orbital stations and local ships a couple free shots (similar to ground based space defenses)? This might address some of the issue without extensive modification.

I was thinking along similar lines. We already have boarding pods,troop jump pods launched from transports seem a logical extension.

[Hikikomori]

ORIGINAL: Aeson

And if we are talking lore, i really have a hard time getting my head around an enemy station and huge fleet becoming mine after i just conquered their homeworld. You would think for their very existence they would put up more of a fuzz.
You could explain it with extortion or this or that, but it just does not fly for me lore-wise either.

It might possibly be a 'starving them out' situation. I have no idea how large the food supplies the stations over planets would carry, but, at least for the spaceport, I doubt it's all that much, as the spaceport has a significant amount of traffic with the planet it orbits due to trade. It's not terribly likely, in my opinion, that they keep particularly large stockpiles of food on hand beyond what they expect to need to distribute to the next set of freighters that come through, and it makes little worthwhile difference to the game if the spaceport surrenders when the planet falls or a week or two later. It's also not terribly unlikely for a fortified position, once cut off from resupply, to surrender even before their supplies run out; we may remember the diehards best, but those who gave up before the sieges really got going are fairly prevalent in human history, too.

That is not really the situation i am talking about.

You are talking, i believe, about a siege, where the attacker has the planet, but not the station, but has space superiority.

I am talking about situations, as in haree's video(47 minute mark) linked on page 1 where the attacker
gets his fleet slaughtered, but manages to lure away the enemy armada and land his transports.

After haree's battered fleet flees with 20% of its strength left, the planet is conquered, the station flips and the enemy fleet, which just ripped apart the "invasion" fleet and sits with its dozens of ships still above the planet, magically(as its the last planet of the race) becomes entirely his.

A fleet which, as far as i saw, could have wiped him out completely if the AI choose to do so.


You could explain it with the threat of killing their families or such, as the planet is controlled by haree, but even if you can accept that lorewise, i believe its a gameplay design that is just not ideal. To avoid using a more colorful word.

[Aeson]

I am talking about situations, as in haree's video(47 minute mark) linked on page 1 where the attacker
gets his fleet slaughtered, but manages to lure away the enemy armada and land his transports.

From what I can see, the opponent in question had no other worlds, and may not have had any troops in the fleet. Thus, that fleet's options are to surrender to the nation that took the homeworld, go pirate (or, if you'd rather, continue fighting, but now in a manner entirely consistent with the way the game portrays pirates), or defect to someone else. They can scuttle themselves, but most people will not do something which is clearly suicidal, such as scuttling their ships when they lack a nearby friendly (or at least, not hostile) location for the crews to go to after the ships die. As such, in my opinion, under the circumstances shown in that section of the video clip, it is entirely reasonable for the fleet to have surrendered. The surviving elements of the yellow faction appear to lack sufficient ground forces to conquer a decent base for the fleet to operate out of should they wish to continue fighting, they certainly lack the power to retake their homeworld, and they probably lost a significant amount of their leadership, who are either now dead or in the hands of the green faction and issuing orders, at the behest of their captors, for the fleet to surrender.

Moreover, the only way that they can materially impact the situation on the ground on their homeworld is by bombarding it, and to all appearances Distant Worlds lacks any kind of targeted bombardment that makes it less likely for a fleet shelling its own homeworld to be killing the friends and family of the ships' crews. There are certainly examples throughout history of fleets and armies willing to undertake such actions, but there are also plenty of examples of fleets and armies which are not. At the point in time the fleet surrendered, it has few other reasonable alternatives. Piracy is very unlikely to be able to sustain a fleet that size, the surviving members of the fleet may have little good will towards the other nations in the game, which have clearly failed to come to their aid and are distant anyways, and surrendering to green means that the crews of the yellow fleet at least have a shot at being able to return to their homes and their families, rather than defecting to some foreign land and never returning home again.

That fleet may have been able to wipe green off the map, if it chose to do so, but it would not have been able to liberate its homeworld or any other colonies which green had occupied. If it carries on the fight, it's as good as dead, regardless of how much damage it does to green before it finally dies.