Taking enemy homeworlds way too easy?

[ASHBERY76]

You might relocate Moscow but you cannot relocate the massive population which is what kills the A.I. [:)]

[BigWolfChris]

Perhaps immigration should occur faster to offset a lose of the capital?

Most planets will remain with small populations throughout the entire game
So from a gameplay perspective, have people move around faster maybe?
Might not be realistic, but then very few players will play long enough games to have a realistic population increase
For starters the tech tree is far too small for such a long length game

[ASHBERY76]

ORIGINAL: BigWolf

Perhaps immigration should occur faster to offset a lose of the capital?

Most planets will remain with small populations throughout the entire game
So from a gameplay perspective, have people move around faster maybe?
Might not be realistic, but then very few players will play long enough games to have a realistic population increase
For starters the tech tree is far too small for such a long length game

I agree high population planets like your capital should include a massive push factor for emigration.It would solve the issue of losing homeworld being such a blow to your entire game.

[forsaken1111]

Yeah I would like to see migration pushed much more, especially to colony worlds that are your race's native type.

[gargoil]

ORIGINAL: ASHBERY76

ORIGINAL: BigWolf

Perhaps immigration should occur faster to offset a lose of the capital?

Most planets will remain with small populations throughout the entire game
So from a gameplay perspective, have people move around faster maybe?
Might not be realistic, but then very few players will play long enough games to have a realistic population increase
For starters the tech tree is far too small for such a long length game

I agree high population planets like your capital should include a massive push factor for emigration.It would solve the issue of losing homeworld being such a blow to your entire game.

I must also agree. It is one thing that growth is slow. But all colonies that start from scratch never amount to anything really, even late in the game.

[frugaldude]

Maybe the solution is a change in the universe generation.  

Capitol planet populations begin significantly larger than their colony planets.  No matter what slider variations are used the end result is effectively the same.  This is creating an environment of concentrated wealth which is easily exploitable.

An initial distribution of wealth might be desirable.  Each empire could be generated , depending upon its age, with one or more of their initial colonies having nearly equal population and tech development as the capitol planet.  

Losing a capitol wouldn't be as critical.  Smaller colonies would have more sources of colonists.  Game mechanics would not have to be changed.

This could be randomized to create a more varied universe.  Young empires could have 0 to 1 equivalent colonies.  Expanding could have 0 to 2.  Mature could have 0 to 3.  And old empires could have 0 to 5.

[Sithuk]

Frugal: Agree. Good ideas on making colonies becoming more important and the HW less so as time progresses. I think play is far too skewed towards the homeworlds for the majority of a game timeframe. Other planets rarely grow their population to be as large. Colony significance remains relatively minor. Independent colonies which start with higher pop are slightly more relevant.

I like the idea of enhancing private emmigration, driven by the private passenger ships. I like this a lot. Perhaps put in a slider to stop immigration to a planet at a certain pop? Prioritise immigration by planet quality / proximity?

I still would like to see the no invasions until space defences are removed to stop the heavily shielded troop transport tactic. It makes grabbing planets too easy. Including grabbing the all important homeworlds of neighbouring empires at the start of the game.

[Litjan]

ORIGINAL: fierceking

Why not just keep it simple.

How about make the AI fleet focus fire on transports and have it so that the transport loses troops as it takes damage.

So if the transport takes 50% damage before it lands its troops then only 50% of the troops gets to land. Since when taking damage usually you get casualties.

I absolutely agree. Most of the other solutions seem a bit artificial. This is the most realistic option, in my opinion. And any decent starport can easily demolish most troops transports within seconds, if they concentrate their fire.

Jan

[Litjan]

ORIGINAL: Sithuk

I like the idea of enhancing private emmigration, driven by the private passenger ships. I like this a lot. Perhaps put in a slider to stop immigration to a planet at a certain pop? Prioritise immigration by planet quality / proximity?

Yes, I think immigration/population growth for new colonies could use another boost. It has been improved somewhat in the expansion, now I actually get some tax from new colonies (in longer games), something wich basically never happened in the original. But I would be all for another lift in migration.

[hewwo]

ORIGINAL: Litjan

ORIGINAL: Sithuk

I like the idea of enhancing private emmigration, driven by the private passenger ships. I like this a lot. Perhaps put in a slider to stop immigration to a planet at a certain pop? Prioritise immigration by planet quality / proximity?

Yes, I think immigration/population growth for new colonies could use another boost. It has been improved somewhat in the expansion, now I actually get some tax from new colonies (in longer games), something wich basically never happened in the original. But I would be all for another lift in migration.

+1

[Shark7]

Something else that could be tried to encourage migration to a certain planet would be to have a toggle policy that would 'Entice' people to migrate to a planet at a cost of Imperial funds. Like a tax credit to buy a house (in a current world example).

Basically it would work like this:

You go to the planet in question, click on a button to 'Enact Migration Incentives". Once enacted, the planet will experience 3-4 times normal migration from larger planets. The downside is that it costs you money each month (example 5k/month).

If you were to see an advertisement for the program it might read:

'Come to exotic Outworld, be a pioneer! Guaranteed jobs for all immigrants. Government sponsored program guarantees 1 acre of land and a house at no cost to you!'

Then when they get there they find out they'll be working 16 hours a day in a salt mine...

[ASHBERY76]

ORIGINAL: Litjan
I absolutely agree. Most of the other solutions seem a bit artificial. This is the most realistic option, in my opinion. And any decent starport can easily demolish most troops transports within seconds, if they concentrate their fire.

Jan

Any decent human player will just wait until the bases are destroyed first and then invade with troopships so this solves nothing.Human players can plan you know. [:)]

The only solution is massive emigration increase to make homeworlds less important.

[Sithuk]

Ash: Enhanced emmigration solves the unbalanced importance of HWs throughout the entire game.

Stopping troop transports from invading until space defences are destroyed solves the early game HW rush.

[Dannyboy99]

Now that DW has fighters and such could troop ships not require dropships? So a single dropship carries 1 troop then returns to the ship to pick up more. These dropships will be vulnerable to enemy fighters and point defence. This would allow a number of different troopship strategies: Carrier ships with bombers and fighters escorting troops, heavily armed and armoured ships standing off and landing armies 1 troop at a time, etc

[fierceking]

ORIGINAL: pipewrench

ORIGINAL: fierceking

Why not just keep it simple.

How about make the AI fleet focus fire on transports and have it so that the transport loses troops as it takes damage.

So if the transport takes 50% damage before it lands its troops then only 50% of the troops gets to land. Since when taking damage usually you get casualties.



then we would just build many transports to make all things equal. I agree with your ideas but then I would just send in empty transports first to focus the fire.

Every tactic has a counter.

YOu can have the AI scan transports and if its empty ->> ignore focus on the one with the most troops.

[fierceking]

ORIGINAL: ASHBERY76

ORIGINAL: Litjan
I absolutely agree. Most of the other solutions seem a bit artificial. This is the most realistic option, in my opinion. And any decent starport can easily demolish most troops transports within seconds, if they concentrate their fire.

Jan

Any decent human player will just wait until the bases are destroyed first and then invade with troopships so this solves nothing.Human players can plan you know. [:)]

The only solution is massive emigration increase to make homeworlds less important.

You're missing the point. Thats what your suppose to do. You are suppose to take out the defenses first before you do an invasion to minimize troop losses.


Right now you dont. You can just send your transports to take over a homeworld w/o taking out the defenses. You can take over a homeworld with the enemy defenses intact. Which is dumb.

So no kidding your suppose to take out the defenses first. That's the point of this thread.

[forsaken1111]

By using the 'fighters' system could we make troops land on small lander craft which could be shot down by point defense systems?

[BigWolfChris]

ORIGINAL: fierceking

You're missing the point. Thats what your suppose to do. You are suppose to take out the defenses first before you do an invasion to minimize troop losses.


Right now you dont. You can just send your transports to take over a homeworld w/o taking out the defenses. You can take over a homeworld with the enemy defenses intact. Which is dumb.

So no kidding your suppose to take out the defenses first. That's the point of this thread.

However, regardless of space defences, you don't need many troops to take the homeworld over, because it is poorly defended on the ground as well

[kenata]

As I read through this thread, it occurs to me that maybe I am not attacking enemy home worlds correctly. In all the games I have played, the enemy usually has around 8-20 troops stationed at their home world and I need to bring about 16-20 to effectively take the world. That is, if they have not built a fortified bunker, which makes it take about 25 troops to take the world. Some people here have talked about sneak invading a home world, but I think I have never been lucky enough to find one which has just loaded up its own transports so its stockpile is low.

That said, I can believe that some people have played enough to come across this situation. However, most of the solutions here seem to be far too top down, that is, they deal with the approach before the invasion. My thoughts are kind of like this.

1) Planets of a certain size should never simply roll over on an invading force. Ultimately, 16 units of troops should not really be able to hold 16k pop planet. I think that planets should have a huge penalty similar to civ where the people themselves are trying to rejoin their own empire for a time. Maybe something like a year per 1k people of happiness penalty.

2) Planets should never give up the fight because all their defenders are gone. In fact, I think that per 1k pop, a 1/2 strength unit is added to the defending units. This way, a 16k planet have all its defenders gone, but the planet will still defend against invaders. These units also won't count towards loadable troops.

3) Transports too close to a planet are immediately considered a foe by all ships in an empire, war or no war. This way you can't just slip a transport real close to a planet then sneak invade.

4) Transports should have to send drop pods to a planet to invade. This was a really good idea from above to make it so that you can't just slip a transport in real close and invade. Additionally, this will allow for things like planetary flak or point defense to take out the drop pods.

5) Ion weapons should affect the troop pods of a ship. This is a bit of a weird one, but it would have drastic effects on the ease a fleet of capital ships with troop pods can drop their troops.

[Sabin Stargem]

In MOO2, one of the nifty things about planet defense is that your planets automatically populate themselves with defensive units once the infrastructure is in place. This feels alot like how Distant Worlds should be, in that you issue an one-shot order to improve defenses at a planet ("build ion cannon"), then the game takes care of the rest according to the planet's population, racial stats, technology, ect. Unfortunately, Distant Worlds is currently fairly limited in terms of defending planets, and the overall process of how that would work out. Things like the time and personnel required for an invasion is too small. Furthermore, it seems that having soldiers on a planet doesn't improve morale, which is odd since an military presence should lend itself to creating order on an planet, be it comforting or disquieting. It would be nice if we had a war planner, and one of the screens in it was about how the takeover of an planet should be conducted, recommending how many troops are needed, how long, and how much control they are projected to exert upon the planet's population, and carries out the intention once the orders are given.