Planetary bombardment(genocide)
 

I been playing the game a couple a days now and i think its a great game but i dont like the way the a.i during war just wipes out your planets with ships ive not had troops invade me once yet,i think planetary bombardment should be changed in a patch so you can only destroy facilities from space and you can only get the planet with ground forces anyone agree.

Re: Planetary bombardment(genocide)
 

I dunno, I kinda like the idea of destroying a few million people http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif

Now one thing that'd be nice to see is that if a player/AI does bombard a lot, the other AI in the game should get ticked off and attack that player/AI.

Re: Planetary bombardment(genocide)
 

NO that a rotten idea. In a game where we can terraform planets it makes no sense to need ground troops to take a planet over. Besides what if a oxygen breather takes over a methane planet? IMHO

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Seawolf on the prowl

Re: Planetary bombardment(genocide)
 

One thing I've been thinking is that it's just too easy to obliterate a planet from space with normal weapons I've had a single fairly low-tech AI ship come up to a defenseless colony of mine and destroy it in about 3-4 tactical combat turns using nothing but low-end beam weapons. I've done the same to enemy colonies similarly.

Currently, there's really no reason to ever use the planet bombs (unless you're using one of the specialty ones like a plague bomb). Standard ship weapons do a fine job against planets, so why invest time/space in planet-only weapons?

I think it should be possible to kill off an entire planet population from space, but I think it's just too easy right now, where you can do it with a few standard combat ships, compared to how hard it is to capture a planet with troops (which takes some expensive research, requires you to build troopships and lots and lots of troops, and since ground combat is only 10 turns, it can carry over for several game turns to capture an enemy homeworld).

Genocide is far too easy right now, compared to conquering with troops, and there seems to be no real repercussions from it.

What I'd like to see is the normal ship weapons (direct fire and seekers) do substantially reduced damage to populations (but maybe not so reduced for planetary facilities and platforms), so that it would effectively require more specialized weapons/ships to actually eliminate the population.

That would at least make it more difficult for a raiding frigate to destroy undefended colony worlds. Unless the frigate was loaded with planet bombs... but then it would have less room for ship to ship defenses/weapons.

Perhaps if troop tech (and troops themselves!) were cheaper, that would balance things a bit more also.

Re: Planetary bombardment(genocide)
 

Terraforming a planet's atmospehere costs much more money and time than colonizing with another race. Plus it takes less technology.

Re: Planetary bombardment(genocide)
 

Lintman hit the nail on the head you can destroy a planet population far to easy why even bother making ground troops when you can destroy a empire with a frigate.

Re: Planetary bombardment(genocide)
 

I almost never bomb enemy planets. They are too useful as slaves to my empire http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/ima...ons/icon12.gif. Especially ones that breathe a different atmosphere than I do.

Re: Planetary bombardment(genocide)
 

Well, it is fairly easily to purge a planet as long as it isnt shielded. I kind of like the effect that MOO2 had with the reduction of most weapon's power when targeting a planet.

However, I believe it is a fairly simple tweak to make. In the 'Setting.txt' file I think there is a 'Damage to kill 1 Pop' or somesuch. I think it is set to 10. Maybe try setting a bit higher...20? 30? 50? I think that might make planets far more resiliant to standard weapons.

Talenn

Re: Planetary bombardment(genocide)
 

Changing that stat would make it harder to kill pop with both standard and specialized wheapons. You'd have to up damage done by the planet-only wheapons as well to compansate.

So. Damage to kill 1 pop = 500 Damage done by Planetary Naplam I = 10000. That would keep the ratio of specialized wheapons the same (1 bomb kills 20 pop), while making normal wheapons quite useless. Then, you have to convince the AI, somehow, not to keep sending normally-armed ships against your planets....

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KMJ

Re: Planetary bombardment(genocide)
 

Yes you can increase a population's resilience to weapons, but one only wonders if the AI can alter its strategy and tactics to accommodate this - it might continue to stupidly bomb planets to almost no effect, which is the result I've gotten after trying it.

This is a major flaw in the game. You can invade AI colonies but they must take the slower route of bLast\colonize. It's not much fun to play like this, either.

It was the same in SE3. I had been hoping this gameply issue had been fixed in SE4. Aaron, if you're reading this, can you plan and implement some ways to address this weakness?

Re: Planetary bombardment(genocide)
 

Killermanjaro,

If you tweak it like that taking out weapon platforms will suddenly become a walk in the park. A few of those overpowered planetary napalm bombers and weapon platforms are just a memory.

Re: Planetary bombardment(genocide)
 

Kev,

Why is this a flaw?

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Seawolf on the prowl

Re: Planetary bombardment(genocide)
 

I agree that a population should be harder to destroy from space with beams/direct fire weapons. One can wipe out a 1000 mil planet with platforms with 3-4 LC's (armed w beams)in one combat. Maybe the game could be set to wipe out all but the Last 1 million pop with beams, bombs or tropps would be needed to defeat the Last scattering of people. I'm not sure how hard that would be to program though.
I also agree that it is a waste to clear a planet with pop that breathes another atmosphere. What should be used is weapons to destroy facilities only (selectively would be best) http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/ima...ons/icon12.gif and clear a few of the people if need to make troop take over more likely.

Re: Planetary bombardment(genocide)
 

I've found that if you try to kill off all pop on a full planet, you severely reduce it's conditions. I guess if you want to colonize a planet with deadly conditions (after you kill off 4 Billion people) you're welcome to it.

I remember SE3 being very easy to just wipe out the pop with no repercusions. It is a LOT harder IMO to 'purge' a pop. To begin with, you need a LOT more firepower - A LOT MORE. Those of you who have SE3, load it and compare - you'll see what I mean.

All that said, I do agree that the whole issue still need "tweaking". If any of you play SMAC, maybe it should be treated like a "Planet Buster". In SMAC (Sid Meiers Alpha Centauri), if you use a 'planet buster' missle, all the other players almost immediately declare war on you (in SMAC its called vendetta). Maybe that might work and may be a relatively simple (programming wise) solution.

Thoughts????

Re: Planetary bombardment(genocide)
 

I also prefer to capture an enemy world rather than destroy it. But the AI doesn't...

Has anyone ever been invaded with troops by the AI?

I had thought it would be a fairly simple code change to adjust some weapons to do less damage to population, but I guess that if it was made harder to destroy a planet with direct fire weapons, the AI would have to be tweaked to know that and use alternate methods.

Re: Planetary bombardment(genocide)
 

I agree with the those that have suggested that space weapons have greatly reduced effectiveness against planets, exception would be seekers which release their energy at impact. Likewise, weapon platforms using non seekers should have reduced firepower shooting out. Consider the atmospheric effect the cause. There should also be modifers based on planet type. Gas Giants should absorb more energy in the atmosphere than Rock. Ice planets could have the least effect, but that would make Ice planets even more pathetic to choose. No atmostphere planets would not have this effect.

Re: Planetary bombardment(genocide)
 

Change your computer player design creation files at Space Empires IV\Pictures\Races\<Computer player's race>\<Computer player's race>_AI_DesignCreation.txt and make the standard Attack Ship more like the troop transport and see what happens! (Must be the 1st ship in the list!)

Re: Planetary bombardment(genocide)
 

I was invaded by troops occasionally in SEIII. That's how discovered how nice they were! Haven't played SEIV enough yet to know if that is still an option.

Re: Planetary bombardment(genocide)
 

While I do agree that normal beam weapons (anit-proton beams, meson bLasters, & polarean beams) should do less damage to planets other direct fire weapons should not receive that kind of penalty. If we wanted to be realistic (like Commander G is implying) then other direct fire weapons (all high energy beams, graviton weapons, etc) would still inflict normal damage (after all they are weapons designed to do enough damage to effect palnets (& in the case of Quantum or Anti-Matter torpedo's would inflict more damage against planets).

I disagree about weapons platforms (& to a lesser degree satellites) & how they should be treated. For Weapon Platforms these things should require mega sized weapons (they do need to get into orbit after all) & they should (somewhat) have their power reduced, but Gas giants are inhabited near the edges of atmosphere & so aren't any worse than rock planets (to be honest all constructs on a Gas giant should be near space or float within the upper outer most atmosphere). As for Satellites they should also require larger sized weapons... After all who in there bloody right mind places itty bitty guns on satellites to defend their planets? (take a look at Bab5 to see who the satellite guns were near or greater in power than ship based systems, with only planet based guns being better.)

I'd suggest adding code so that planets are considered to have the type of armor plating that stops damage below a certain point & then set that point at ~50, 75, or 100 (based on planet size, larger planets being effected less).

[This message has been edited by Shadow99 (edited 17 November 2000).]

Re: Planetary bombardment(genocide)
 

The argument in favor of diplomatic penalties for the destruction of planets is that it makes the player's decisions in the game more complex. Do you take the easy, fast route, vaporizing the population, but annoying all the other empires? Or do you put in the work to make a planetary assault, deal with the unhappy population, and keep your diplomatic standing intact?

I don't know the details of how the system works in SEIV. In MoOII, the system essentially assigned you a permanent penalty to diplomacy every time you did something naughty. A similar system would probably work well for SEIV. Given the number of planets, it might even work best if you could eventually work off an early penalty?

Such a system doesn't preclude players from simply blowing away all in their path - but they need to orient their empire design on warfare to survive the diplomatic fallout (or, I suppose, be very good at diplomacy in order to counter the fallout). Either way, the decision-making becomes richer.

The downside is that it means more programming for Malfador, especially regarding the enemy empire AI.

Re: Planetary bombardment(genocide)
 

Those of you that want to know if the computer will use troops to invade you I at least know that they do load troops into transports. I captured an enemy troop transport in one game using the intelligence operation. It only had 6 troops on it but I then used it to capture two of the enemy planets and gave myself a nice foothold in the system http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif.
I haven't seen the AI actually using the troop transports but that is probably because I usually take the fight to their systems so they don't get much ofa chance to fight in my teritory. My guess is that if I just waited and didn't attack them first maybe made treaties with all of them till they turned on me that could happen.

Re: Planetary bombardment(genocide)
 

I still havent been invaded with ai troops,i dont think the a.i build them enough if ever.I wiped out most of an empire with a 1 troop ship,it was quite funny aswell because i invaded a a.i planet then left and invaded another and of course the a.i would wipe out the planet of there own people i did this to 10 planets in there own territory,so they ended up destroying there own empire when then only needed to invade.I think this bombardment problem needs sorting out with a patch so the a.i doesnt rely on just mass genocide.And like james said there should be diplomatic Penalties for destroying a planet population.

Re: Planetary bombardment(genocide)
 

Take a look at the Default_AI_Construction_Vehicles.txt file.

Of the 6 or so entries, only 2 of them even have transports listed (infrastructure and defense). For infrastructure, it is set to 1 transport per 10 planets and 1 troop per planet. Minimum requirements are 1 transport and 0 troops. For defense, it requires at least 1 transport no matter what, and 1 troop per planet with a minimum of 2 troops.

First , that's nowhere near enough troops to accomplish anything, and probably not enough transports either (not for the AI anyway, a human could probably do ok). Second, these things are so far down the construction queue the computer probably doesn't get to them anyway. Third, neither of the attack AI states has troops or transports listed. THAT's why they just come in and glass our planets. What's the good news? Each and every one of us can play around with this file and report his or her findings (HINT HINT).