Taking enemy homeworlds way too easy?

[Setekh]

Basically like weapons mounts in SEV

[Shark7]

ORIGINAL: Setekh

Basically like weapons mounts in SEV

I wouldn't know, never played SEV.

[Sark]

ORIGINAL: Shark7

Here is a solution I suggest:

For stations and bases, we could allow for the doubling of certain stats such as weapon range and damage, and for defensive stuff, double armor value for armor and double shield value for shields.

...

Essentially, it would amount to doubling the defense and power of the bases over the ships...and since bases are stationary and structurally larger, this makes sense (to me at least) in that bases don't have to devote space or power to main engines (only station holding thrusters) allowing for larger weapons and heavier armor/shields.

This would be a great improvement and go a long way toward giving the homeworlds/developed worlds some staying power.

This would be a great Tech to add - Starbase weapon mounts/clusters etc. Possibly have weapons start out at 1.5 times or double the power for bases and be able to increase them to 3 or even 4 times as powerful.

Heck if you just moved the default distance that defense bases are from the planet and each other so that they had overlapping fields of fire and could support each other it would help.

While we are wishing... I would also like to see a planetary based warp inducement facility that covers the whole solar system and only affected enemy ships. Make it where fleets have to come in on normal engines from the edge of the system basically giving the defender some time to rally their ships.

[jalapen0]

Let's keep the modern day comparisons to a minimum. In my opinion, there really is no comparison. These are aliens with alien histories and alien morals. A hive does not care about the individual, only the hive. They should not care if civilians get thrown to the meatgrinder, as long as it advances the hive's goals. Therefore, no "human shields" I think for a sci-fi game like this, you have to think outside the box. Most likely, if an alien empire is out to destroy another empire, they aren't going to fight for the cities, farms, resources, etc. They are going to glass the planet, kill every organism that could cause them harm, and repopulate. If they don't, they still aren't going to care about infrastructure. They'll blow it to hell and enslave the leftover population. They don't care if it's on cnn the next day or not.

For these reasons, I think any invasion should cause significant civilian casualties and infrastructure damage. Civilians will also fight and die to protect the planet along with troops. Pick whatever game mechanic to represent this, but it should be done....along with taking a significant amount of time to take over a planet...possibly 10x as much or more. Right now, it seems the troops fight one battle, the attacker puts it's flag in the ground, and it's theirs. It just seems kinda rediculous. Without a large technological advantage, it should take months or maybe years to take a planet. It'll also be a meatgrinder, needing to constantly send in new troops to reinforce troops on the ground. Meanwhile, the planet is getting blackend, possibly some permanent damage will result and will reduce planet and resource quality.

[gmot]

That's a valid point about aliens behaving completely differently with different morals on an invasion but it could equally go the other way. Perhaps the green ladies (forget their name) would be especially scrupulous on an invasion to avoid any civilian casulaties at all.

But I think we're all in agreement here that the invasion logic/AI could really use some beefing up and there's been some great suggestions in this thread. Hopefully the devs will take a look and incorporate something in a later patch/expansion.

[Kayoz]

ORIGINAL: jalapen0

Let's keep the modern day comparisons to a minimum. In my opinion, there really is no comparison. These are aliens with alien histories and alien morals. A hive does not care about the individual, only the hive. They should not care if civilians get thrown to the meatgrinder, as long as it advances the hive's goals. Therefore, no "human shields" I think for a sci-fi game like this, you have to think outside the box. Most likely, if an alien empire is out to destroy another empire, they aren't going to fight for the cities, farms, resources, etc. They are going to glass the planet, kill every organism that could cause them harm, and repopulate. If they don't, they still aren't going to care about infrastructure. They'll blow it to hell and enslave the leftover population. They don't care if it's on cnn the next day or not.

What you're describing is interesting, but requires a complete overhaul of the diplomatic workings. Each race responds to different events in different ways. Boskara, for example, wouldn't give a toss what anyone else thinks of them, nor would they suffer or benefit from happiness levels. This makes a horrendously complex balance and testing matrix for the CodeForce QA members.

Given the current diplomatic method, I don't see an alternative to measuring all races by the same moral standard. Yes, it's imperfect, but look at sci-fi - any race is nothing more than an existing Earth creature morphed into a sentient shape. Talking dogs, thinking termites, sentient frogs. It's quite unique if a race in any sci-fi literature is so different as not to resemble anything in existence on Earth. But given a completely different evolution environment, how could they be anything BUT completely different?

Look at human history - our attitudes have changed dramatically over the last few hundred years alone. Not too long ago, the organized genocide of the North American Indians was greeted with public joy. Sacking cities and enslaving the entire populace was once considered the norm. During the crusades, King Richard executed 2000 prisoners of war, and he was considered a hero in his time. Morality is a funny thing that changes from decade to decade, from society to society. It would take a great deal of innovation on the part of a game development company, to be able to reflect this in a game - and so far, I haven't seen it done.

ORIGINAL: jalapen0

For these reasons, I think any invasion should cause significant civilian casualties and infrastructure damage. Civilians will also fight and die to protect the planet along with troops. Pick whatever game mechanic to represent this, but it should be done....along with taking a significant amount of time to take over a planet...possibly 10x as much or more. Right now, it seems the troops fight one battle, the attacker puts it's flag in the ground, and it's theirs. It just seems kinda rediculous. Without a large technological advantage, it should take months or maybe years to take a planet. It'll also be a meatgrinder, needing to constantly send in new troops to reinforce troops on the ground. Meanwhile, the planet is getting blackend, possibly some permanent damage will result and will reduce planet and resource quality.

I agree with you on the point of the flag-in-the-ground. Iraq was taken over in short order, but the insurrection following the "mission accomplished" pronouncement has tied up tens of thousands of troops for years. And that's only a culturally different group invading. How might people react to aliens, whose behaviour and thought processes are completely incomprehensible?

But it's unavoidable. How else can we model civilian reaction to being invaded. Are you suggesting that each race react in a different way to different races? Humans fighting to the death versus Boskara, but content to accept the new governorship of Securans? Can Dayhut be absorbed into the hive mind of the Gizureans, or is the operation of their hive minds so radically different, that genocide is the only option? Think of the matrix and its complexity - how do you balance it all? And more importantly, is it worth it in terms of resulting enjoyment for the players for the development and testing time involved?

[jalapen0]

Really when it boils down to it, all I was asking for was for it to take a long time to capture a planet. It should also cause alot of casualties and infrastructure damage.

[Tree Dog]

ORIGINAL: Kayoz

But it's unavoidable. How else can we model civilian reaction to being invaded. Are you suggesting that each race react in a different way to different races? Humans fighting to the death versus Boskara, but content to accept the new governorship of Securans? Can Dayhut be absorbed into the hive mind of the Gizureans, or is the operation of their hive minds so radically different, that genocide is the only option? Think of the matrix and its complexity - how do you balance it all? And more importantly, is it worth it in terms of resulting enjoyment for the players for the development and testing time involved?

I think it'll be even harder, considering there are often different civilisations of the same race. I mean, there's no reason all Boskaran hives would want to completely enslave any planet they'd conquer (especially if, as I get it from the Human description, races tend to forget/lose their history and develop differently in different places). Why would Humans fight to death Boskara providing food, medicine and autonomy, but be fine with dictatorial Securan slavers ?

Also, yes, I think it'd totally be worth it.
Currently, all you have to do is to drop the tax rate to 0, wait for the war to end, and then, tax back with no problems...

It would be better if we had to cope with that kind of problems. A system similar to HoI3 would be good in that regard, in that game, in the land you occupy (I think a per-planet basis here would be better, instead of per-country), you can choose how repressive your government is with occupied territories, the more you are, the more resources and industrial capacity you get, but the more they're likely to rebel and the less you get manpower, and probably some other things I forget. In time, the planets conquered should get in line with others and progressively adapt to a certain point, though.

[Data]

It would be better if we had to cope with that kind of problems. A system similar to HoI3 would be good in that regard, in that game, in the land you occupy (I think a per-planet basis here would be better, instead of per-country), you can choose how repressive your government is with occupied territories, the more you are, the more resources and industrial capacity you get, but the more they're likely to rebel and the less you get manpower, and probably some other things I forget. In time, the planets conquered should get in line with others and progressively adapt to a certain point, though.

don't know for what HoI3 stands for (and I'm to lazy at this hour to google it) but I like this idea, brings more options and diversity to the table

[Sabin Stargem]

Hearts of Iron 3, an World War II simulation game.

[Kayoz]

ORIGINAL: jalapen0

Really when it boils down to it, all I was asking for was for it to take a long time to capture a planet. It should also cause alot of casualties and infrastructure damage.

I believe that taking a planet is a relatively easy task in comparison to keeping it. You should have to keep garrison troops on a planet, for a while, to keep control of it. As it stands, you invade a planet, immediately pick up your troops and head off to the next one - effectively steam-rolling the AI.

Time to capture too quick? I'm not sure about that. Slowing down planetary combat doesn't strike me as necessarily resulting in an improvement to things. The situation remains the same - drop troops and bugger off. You get the planet and all the orbital defences to boot. Making this happen more slowly gives the AI a chance to react - but I'm not sure the AI -CAN- react, given what I've seen of its behaviour. AI needs some serious attention.

[caerr]

How about instead of taking ownership of the enemy capital, you would gain a sort of vassalage of it. The planet would remain in the hands of the enemy empire, but you would gain a small income/research bonus from it. There should also be a chance that the planet would try to break free if they notice you're weak enough/involved in too many wars.

This would fix the issue that capturing a homeworld just gives too big of an income boost and makes the rest of the game too easy.

[Data]

+1

[Erik Rutins]

Have you tried the new beta update which made includes to homeworld defense?

[Shark7]

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

Have you tried the new beta update which made includes to homeworld defense?

I'm playing the beta now Erik, the biggest problem is that I can build transports that give me 60+ troops with a fleet of 12 transport...far more than enough to overcome the the defensive bonuses...

I also started a suggestion thread with some points that might help, or might not. tm.asp?m=2697367

If anything, I think increasing the size of the troop transport modules from the current size 8 to size 50 would go a long way to solving the problem.

[J HG T]

I agree with Shark here. If you deconstruct the problem you'll probably understand that ability to transport ridiculous amounts of troopers so easily and early in the game is the biggest part of the whole issue. Fixing the size of troop modules would do miracles.

[caerr]

Invasion difficulty is one thing, but should the player really be able to own enemy capitals? They just give so much income boost that any kind of balancing effort on behalf of invasion difficulty goes out of the window once you manage to capture your first homeworld.

[ggf31416]

It it was real life once you have total space supremacy around the planet the enemy would be pretty much doomed. The enemy ground forces outside targets valuable to your empire would be destroyed from the space and the ones inside would be forced to fight on your own terms, that is you could attack each target defended by 1000 enemy troops with 100000 of yours.

In the real life the coalitions forces managed to take control of Iraq in a few weeks despite being outnumbered by the Iraq Army and outnumbered over 1:100 by the population. Obviously in real life numeric superiority it's not required anymore to take a large country and a planet shouldn't be too different.

The problem is not that enemy homeworlds are too easy to take, the problem is that they are to easy to keep and they provide benefits inmediately.
Conquered planets should provide their benefits gradually, for example when the planet is conquered none of the population pay taxes and the tax paying population increases by 25M each day the planet it's controlled (2 years for a 18000M planet). Also large planets should attempt to revolt and if their original owner sends troops to regain the planet they should support these troops.

The AI also should attempt to regain space superiority and land troops on their own planet when it's being invaded by the enemy.

[Shark7]

ORIGINAL: ggf31416

It it was real life once you have total space supremacy around the planet the enemy would be pretty much doomed. The enemy ground forces outside targets valuable to your empire would be destroyed from the space and the ones inside would be forced to fight on your own terms, that is you could attack each target defended by 1000 enemy troops with 100000 of yours.

In the real life the coalitions forces managed to take control of Iraq in a few weeks despite being outnumbered by the Iraq Army and outnumbered over 1:100 by the population. Obviously in real life numeric superiority it's not required anymore to take a large country and a planet shouldn't be too different.

The problem is not that enemy homeworlds are too easy to take, the problem is that they are to easy to keep and they provide benefits inmediately.
Conquered planets should provide their benefits gradually, for example when the planet is conquered none of the population pay taxes and the tax paying population increases by 25M each day the planet it's controlled (2 years for a 18000M planet). Also large planets should attempt to revolt and if their original owner sends troops to regain the planet they should support these troops.

The AI also should attempt to regain space superiority and land troops on their own planet when it's being invaded by the enemy.

It all comes down to the enemies willingness to fight for their home.

For a better example do a search on 'Operation Downfall' and see what would was projected to happen during an Allied invasion of the Japanese home islands where the troops and populace were both well trained and highly motivated.

Conquering a homeworld should be very difficult, IMO.

[adecoy95]

ORIGINAL: diablo1

So the ai sucks more or less? Well you won't find that in X3 Universe as the Xenon come at you with destroyers very early in the game. I've lost everything in systems bordering them. I'm glad some of you are honest and really tell what this game is like. I was fixing to buy it but I think I shall wait much longer now until they create a challenging ai like X3:Terran universe. [:)]

you think x3:terran conflict is challenging? i have killed battleships with a full fleet escort in a medium fighter.

about the topic at hand. i think that the whole homeworld situation is a symptom of another, bigger issue.

homeworlds are far too valuable in late game. worlds grow so slowly, you can push to the end of the tech trees in several places while your worlds are only pushing 0-2k income from taxes. you can somewhat reduce this by manually controlling the taxes, but the ai cant really do this.

it only gets worse when you start grabbing independents, the ai wont grab them as fast if you really try to get them.

but the worst culprit by far are the lost colony's, oh lawdy... if you grab one of these you have a second max population world! and thats crazy!

if in most of my games now i try to limit independents, to give the ai a little bit more of a breather, but i cant disable lost colonies.