Matrix Games Forums

ORIGINAL: Pocus

One important factor to consider usually (in many games) are the penalties or destructions incurred by the target upon capture. If losing then retaking a planet means it gets severe penalties to production for a decent time, then you'll want to defend it even if it costs a lot. That's sure on the contrary that if there is no penalty, then you are better defend nothing and retake with a mobile force. I hope the game is set right on this aspect.

Edit & PS: Any land combat should inflict collateral damages to the population

In the real world there usually are some considerable political and cultural implication for loosing territory, even if you can later on retake it. Those things usually don't exist in games or are so small that you can usually just ignore them.

I would be just fine if there were some severe penalties to loosing stuff other than loosing it. I think that is usually things that games don't implement enough of that force the player to role play such issues rather than game them.

I might sound like a min/max player but I actually role play quite heavily when I play and put allot of restrictions on my behaviour to make it more fun. But should I have to do that, shouldn't the game mechanic support logical behaviour such as defending your worlds rather than wait for the attacker to land and then I attack them instead since my units are super good at attacking but awful at defending. I rather have my troops in space waiting for the enemy to land their occupation force, that is an odd behaviour in my opinion. But when you have units that are good at attacking and awful at defending you will get that behaviour. It also make no sense that a unit is worse at defending than attacking, I don't even think it is physically possible.

I can move my attack force around at my pleasure, defences have to sit at every planet so will be very expensive. If I instead invest those resources in more ships instead I can probably keep the invasion from happen in the first place. And if it does I have my own invasion force to simply remove them from the planet.

In the real world there usually are some considerable political and cultural implication for loosing territory, even if you can later on retake it. Those things usually don't exist in games or are so small that you can usually just ignore them.

I would be just fine if there were some severe penalties to loosing stuff other than loosing it. I think that is usually things that games don't implement enough of that force the player to role play such issues rather than game them.

There is now a warescore indicator. It has never been of much focus on Stream, but I guess it plays into how Warweary your Population is?

ORIGINAL: zgrssd

In the real world there usually are some considerable political and cultural implication for loosing territory, even if you can later on retake it. Those things usually don't exist in games or are so small that you can usually just ignore them.

I would be just fine if there were some severe penalties to loosing stuff other than loosing it. I think that is usually things that games don't implement enough of that force the player to role play such issues rather than game them.

There is now a warescore indicator. It has never been of much focus on Stream, but I guess it plays into how Warweary your Population is?

Yes... I think that could be used to reflect issues with not defending your property enough. So if you loose a colony (or mining stations) and then retake it you will never recover even close to what you lost. You probably also should loose points if your former colonies are occupied and you don't even attempt at reclaiming them until there is a peace signed.

This could mean that both sides can receive huge war weariness penalties if they both fail to defend their territories and just attacks.

In general I think that someone that declare war should generally be more susceptible to losses on their own territory than someone who are declared war on. A defender in a war will usually be psychologically more inclined to accept temporary losses then someone that attack, especially in the home territory.

Incurring WW if you lose a world (even if you retake it, i.e. not a zero sum game) is a good point ...

Currently AFAIK for War Weariness the game goes by value lost.
So a small colony will have a different impact then your Capitol world.

However I could not get any actuall values from the Streams, so no idea if that might already be penalized.

I think this is hard to get from the streams, I agree.

So long as you keep getting War Weariness for not being able to defend stuff that you either capture or recapture.

If a world bounce between two empires many times then both sides should gain allot of War Weariness... that is the sort of attrition that will put allot of political pressure on an empire.

Obviously the importance and size of a colony counts... but it should not be on a linear scale... let's say you loose 10 points for a world with 100 million you should not loose 100 points for a world with a billion people. The small world should have a bigger impact than the larger one per population count.

Well, the Necromancers took Helion Prime in one day. [:D]

Yeah, I would expect long, hard fought battles on large population worlds, unless they are pacifist weaklings.

ORIGINAL: U235

Well, the Necromancers took Helion Prime in one day. [:D]

Yeah, I would expect long, hard fought battles on large population worlds, unless they are pacifist weaklings.

It is probably possible to mod into the game with changing attack/defence values and the number of HP that units have. I will certainly make some effort doing some investigation into this after the games release.

A thing to consider is that space supremacy would be extremely telling on any ground force fighting against it. Massing troops would be difficult without it being visible from above in one way or another, and ships that can target other ships moving at space travel speeds can probably also target effectively stationary targets on a planet. Fighting against that would be like trying to have an infantry fight in Red Alert, except one side has tesla coil coverage and one side don't. Zap. Zap. Zaaap.

It would not really be a stand up fight. But without that space supremacy, the attackers would have a hard time. It isn't easy digging out every last entrenched defender. There's the question of using civilians as hostages for good behavior but that one is culturally sensitive. Will the attacker be willing to do such a thing? Will the defender care? And of course this doesn't work if the attackers are famously inhospitable owners, meaning all who surrender are going to become food. Or get sent to the LeQuint Dickey Mining Company.

ORIGINAL: Spidey

A thing to consider is that space supremacy would be extremely telling on any ground force fighting against it. Massing troops would be difficult without it being visible from above in one way or another, and ships that can target other ships moving at space travel speeds can probably also target effectively stationary targets on a planet. Fighting against that would be like trying to have an infantry fight in Red Alert, except one side has tesla coil coverage and one side don't. Zap. Zap. Zaaap.

It would not really be a stand up fight. But without that space supremacy, the attackers would have a hard time. It isn't easy digging out every last entrenched defender. There's the question of using civilians as hostages for good behavior but that one is culturally sensitive. Will the attacker be willing to do such a thing? Will the defender care? And of course this doesn't work if the attackers are famously inhospitable owners, meaning all who surrender are going to become food. Or get sent to the LeQuint Dickey Mining Company.

I think it is impossible to tell how difficult it would be... anything on the ground possibly also could shoot at anything in space and have access to more energy and thus very tough shields and weapons etc... so it all comes down to whatever technobabble side of the coin you want to have the advantage.

It would not be terribly difficult to make up any story reason for why invasion would be very hard or vice versa.

In general I'm more interested of the in game mechanics and making troops matter for defending a planet, but then again I can be completely wrong.

From my point of view I rather build ships to defend my planets than troops and only build troops for offensive actions, more or less, at least things seem that to me from what I have seen.

ORIGINAL: Jorgen_CAB

ORIGINAL: Spidey

A thing to consider is that space supremacy would be extremely telling on any ground force fighting against it. Massing troops would be difficult without it being visible from above in one way or another, and ships that can target other ships moving at space travel speeds can probably also target effectively stationary targets on a planet. Fighting against that would be like trying to have an infantry fight in Red Alert, except one side has tesla coil coverage and one side don't. Zap. Zap. Zaaap.

It would not really be a stand up fight. But without that space supremacy, the attackers would have a hard time. It isn't easy digging out every last entrenched defender. There's the question of using civilians as hostages for good behavior but that one is culturally sensitive. Will the attacker be willing to do such a thing? Will the defender care? And of course this doesn't work if the attackers are famously inhospitable owners, meaning all who surrender are going to become food. Or get sent to the LeQuint Dickey Mining Company.

I think it is impossible to tell how difficult it would be... anything on the ground possibly also could shoot at anything in space and have access to more energy and thus very tough shields and weapons etc... so it all comes down to whatever technobabble side of the coin you want to have the advantage.

It would not be terribly difficult to make up any story reason for why invasion would be very hard or vice versa.

Anything in space can move. Anything on the ground with access to a lot of power would have to be static. Since we know that DW sensors can detect if enemy derelicts are powering up, it seems plausible enough that they might also notice enormous power fluctuations on a planet, meaning such weapons might even be visible from space before they start shooting.

It's a bit like modern day fixed positions versus stealth bombers, cruise missiles, and mobile artillery. The fixed position, once discovered, is at a massive disadvantage. This disadvantage would be significantly bigger if the fixed position is at the bottom of a gravity well and the mobile attacker is up on top. Just drop rocks all day from way outside the range of anything on the ground. It's not like the planet or the fixed installation can dodge.

So I don't think it's really fair to reduce the space supremacy advantage to just being a matter of technobabble. I don't think anyone could possibly come up with remotely reasonable technobabble that actually works this out to be a defender's advantage when the attacker has space supremacy. Constructing single scenarios would of course be possible. Plenty of ways to do that too. But in the general case, the ground force that has space fleet support will have a massive advantage over one that doesn't, even if the one without has the home field advantage.

I think the bigger problem lies in actually holding the planet without mass extermination and planet-wide devastation. It would take decades of work to overcome the negative bias towards invaders. I imagines that the natives of remotely aggressive species would indeed go native again the moment the occupation forces ship out. Can those occupation forces even hold without the support of space forces?

And that pushes the problem towards also being affected by cultural factors. How is the attacker's faction perceived? What are the defenders like? If the Liir or the Phidi were to drop out of warp tomorrow and insist on living in our plastic-filled oceans then I'm not sure it would take that much for me to welcome our new dolphin or sea horse overlords. But the Boskarans? Who would surrender to them and actually stay surrendered?

ORIGINAL: Jorgen_CAB

In general I'm more interested of the in game mechanics and making troops matter for defending a planet, but then again I can be completely wrong.

From my point of view I rather build ships to defend my planets than troops and only build troops for offensive actions, more or less, at least things seem that to me from what I have seen.

I mostly did the same in DWU. Having a bunch of troops just sitting there to defend a planet never really appealed to me. But it might have been different if I was having issues keeping enemy troop ships from landing troops in the first place. That was usually not the case.

But again, the idea of letting an enemy fleet have access to my planet with my people on it and just holding it on the ground regardless of what they're sending my way strikes me as so alien. I have vague recollections of doing it a few times, but just having troopers sit around was just never a good investment. The same thing applies to ships, really. No point to having big garrison fleets that defend against non-existent threats.

Garrisons generated from population are probably part of the answer to your question. The game now provides free troops defending each planet. I don't see them as useless civilians taking up (useless) light weaponry against professional soldiers invading, but more like local 2nd line troops. They are now free. You, the player, only pay and play reaction forces that can intervene to strengthen the defense (if you manage to pass the blockade?) or counter-invade if the planet falls.

That the enemy could hit you is irrelevant if the enemy does not hit you, for fear of colatteral damage.
I think bombadment hurts the enemy more then the ally. But using Bombardment lowers your reputatio - unless used on a low reputation enemy.
And you get a colatteral damage free +25% just for having space superiority.

Always ask yourself how far up the Escalation ladder you are willing to rise:
https://youtu.be/XgN5yq362_s

As the video points out, people have been espousing that infantry warfare and naval invasions would be "a thing of the past" for:
- cannons
- tanks
- airforces
- the atom bomb
And they have been wrong 100% of the time. Planetary Invasions will not be a exception.

ORIGINAL: Spidey
Anything in space can move. Anything on the ground with access to a lot of power would have to be static. Since we know that DW sensors can detect if enemy derelicts are powering up, it seems plausible enough that they might also notice enormous power fluctuations on a planet, meaning such weapons might even be visible from space before they start shooting.

It's a bit like modern day fixed positions versus stealth bombers, cruise missiles, and mobile artillery. The fixed position, once discovered, is at a massive disadvantage. This disadvantage would be significantly bigger if the fixed position is at the bottom of a gravity well and the mobile attacker is up on top. Just drop rocks all day from way outside the range of anything on the ground. It's not like the planet or the fixed installation can dodge.

So I don't think it's really fair to reduce the space supremacy advantage to just being a matter of technobabble. I don't think anyone could possibly come up with remotely reasonable technobabble that actually works this out to be a defender's advantage when the attacker has space supremacy. Constructing single scenarios would of course be possible. Plenty of ways to do that too. But in the general case, the ground force that has space fleet support will have a massive advantage over one that doesn't, even if the one without has the home field advantage.

I think the bigger problem lies in actually holding the planet without mass extermination and planet-wide devastation. It would take decades of work to overcome the negative bias towards invaders. I imagines that the natives of remotely aggressive species would indeed go native again the moment the occupation forces ship out. Can those occupation forces even hold without the support of space forces?

And that pushes the problem towards also being affected by cultural factors. How is the attacker's faction perceived? What are the defenders like? If the Liir or the Phidi were to drop out of warp tomorrow and insist on living in our plastic-filled oceans then I'm not sure it would take that much for me to welcome our new dolphin or sea horse overlords. But the Boskarans? Who would surrender to them and actually stay surrendered?

In general I agree with you, you would have to stop the opponent in space with really tough ground to space weapons and satellites in space so they can't even get close to the planet. A planet probably would have thousand if not million times more energy available for shields and weapons if they so choose you use them.. And as I said... you can technobabble any solution to any problem.

But as I said generally I agree with you...

The thing that I don't like with how the units are balanced is that you have some units that are way more powerful when they attack and very weak when they defend.

First of that is impossible... there is no way a unit can ever be better when attack than defending.... they can very well attack as part of their defence, as any good defender would do. It really does not work like this in real life as the game present defence/attack strength. There will always be a benefit to the defending side no matter what forces you select to use. Some forces will naturally be better at attacking, but that is very different.

Any way... the current unit balance means you want your armoured and special forces units floating around in space. Wait for the opponent to land on the planets with their armoured forces and take out your militia.... then you land your forces and take them out having all the advantages.

You avoid the planet being bombarded, you attack their units when they are the weakest and you are the strongest, they don't get benefit of militia helping them, you might even get help from the locals.

I'm mostly concerned about AI being held back from building heaps of ground units for no good reasons given that ground units seem perfectly worthless to use rather than having your armoured units in space ready to simply counter strike, or just more space ships to stop them drooping the troops in the first place.

If you invade an opponent I get that you need some form of occupation force, that is different. You need troops there to stop the planet from rebelling. Then there is a valid reason to build troops to defend the planet. But once the population is assimilated you don't need those troops there anymore.

One single infantry unit is roughly the cost of half up to one frigate in terms of maintenance. Who in their right mind would use a static infantry unit that can do pretty much nothing versus something as versatile as a frigate. Unless you need troops on the ground to suppress the population then ground troops are pretty useless unless you want to invade someone. Thus the only really good troops are those with a good attack value, defence values are almost meaningless.

I will probably try this as soon as I get my hands on the game and if this is true I will come back an complain a bit more about it if true... [;)]

As I said before... for there being any reason to defend anything the cost in resources doing so must be at least six time of not more efficient than attacking, otherwise there is no real point defending anything on the ground in the first place at all. It also have to be way cheaper than moving spaceship around in space.

I think that a game like Aurora 4X have a really good balance here as invading a world is a huge undertaking in resources versus the resources you need to defend them, both with ground troops and space to orbit weapons. Attacking a fully fortified world in that game is almost impossible (if you are close to equal in economic strength), you would have to blockade it for decades first so their units become out of date and they lack the resources to upgrade or something. Another thing, there also is the type of resources used, ground forces in general (in Aurora 4x) don't use the same basic resources as what you need to build your space fleets, so you can afford to build both. As long as you have the wealth to support it, ground troops are usually not that expensive in wealth cost in that game either.

The thing that I don't like with how the units are balanced is that you have some units that are way more powerful when they attack and very weak when they defend.

First of that is impossible... there is no way a unit can ever be better when attack than defending.... they can very well attack as part of their defence, as any good defender would do. It really does not work like this in real life as the game present defence/attack strength. There will always be a benefit to the defending side no matter what forces you select to use. Some forces will naturally be better at attacking, but that is very different.

WW1 would be to differ. WW2 also has something to say about that.

Quite regularly the British Mark1-5 had massive success on the attack. But once the counterattack hit, they were deathtraps. They were quickly abandoned. And in fact so many were captured, that all demand for reverse engineering was met and the germans started fielding units of captured biritish tanks.

The best way to defend with a Tank in WW2 was to dig in. Quite literally dig in at Kurks.
If you wanted those kinds of weapons in a defensive role, you just got the gun on a carrier rather then mounting it on a harder to hide, easier to hit, pointlessly mobile platofrm.

ORIGINAL: zgrssd

The thing that I don't like with how the units are balanced is that you have some units that are way more powerful when they attack and very weak when they defend.

First of that is impossible... there is no way a unit can ever be better when attack than defending.... they can very well attack as part of their defence, as any good defender would do. It really does not work like this in real life as the game present defence/attack strength. There will always be a benefit to the defending side no matter what forces you select to use. Some forces will naturally be better at attacking, but that is very different.

WW1 would be to differ. WW2 also has something to say about that.

Quite regularly the British Mark1-5 had massive success on the attack. But once the counterattack hit, they were deathtraps. They were quickly abandoned. And in fact so many were captured, that all demand for reverse engineering was met and the germans started fielding units of captured biritish tanks.

The best way to defend with a Tank in WW2 was to dig in. Quite literally dig in at Kurks.
If you wanted those kinds of weapons in a defensive role, you just got the gun on a carrier rather then mounting it on a harder to hide, easier to hit, pointlessly mobile platofrm.

Misuse of a specific equipment in a specific scenario is not really much proof of that to be honest. I'm talking about strategic use of forces, not tactical applications of them.

Misuse of a specific equipment in a specific scenario is not really much proof of that to be honest.

How do you "missuse" a tank?
How does that constitute missuse of a tank?
Those old tanks did walking speed - on good ground. Of which there was none in the reality of warfare.
When infantry attacks from any direction without a convenient sightport and machinegun, it was a actuall metal coffin.
A immobile tank is a speedbump for infantry and other tanks.

If I want to defend, I could get 1 Tiger II tank for 321,500 Reichsmark or 10 (ten!) 8.8 cm Pak 43 for 260,000 RM.
In case you wonder, that is the same gun.

Tanks do not defend. They are wasted on it. They propably just tell the enemy where your ambush is.
Whatever room there is to counterattack during planetary defense is covered by the +25% "Armored Defense" bonus you got for having a Tank in DW1. I would asume it exists in DW2 as well.