Troops are useless
 

It came up in a recent game of mine. SEV v1.33 w/ BM 1.03a

Basicly it was discoverd that if you load fighters into a cargo bay you can drop them off on a planet like troops and you can capture the planet.

I had weapons platforms, but they appearred to do nothing, which I assume is a seperate bug.

The question is this: Why if fighters can do space AND ground combat would you EVER build troops?

Re: Troops are useless
 

Because if no one has balanced them yet http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/rolleyes.gif , someone should give troop components some advantages over fighter components. Like, fighters probably should require some propulsion which would make them much faster than troops, but more expensive, and troops should probably be able to more economically mount more equipment, since they can use the ground to hold them up... etc.

Re: Troops are useless
 

And a decent ground only weapon for weapon platforms would be nice. Something that would make you want to give up tonnage that could be firing into space instead. Sort of a mixed bag of troops, fighters, weapon platforms, militia all mixing it up on ground combat.

Re: Troops are useless
 

I don't think fighters give happiness.

Re: Troops are useless
 

Why not make troops able to pile on heavy armor, while fighters can't afford the weight.

Re: Troops are useless
 

Or make fighter weapons unable to target troops.

Re: Troops are useless
 

That would push the advantage to far in the other direction, especially since the AI tends to keep a number of fighters in cargo, which are then used in ground combat.

Someone might try creating an AntiAircraft weapon, ie: only targets fighters, with higher damage.

I don't know if it will work though, because I think in ground combat the targeting is a little off. Weaponplatforms will often have DUCs or Laser weapons that should target fighters, but only their point defense weapons fire during ground combat.

Re: Troops are useless
 

That's because ground combat gets a separate damage line, and space-based DUCs can't fire during ground combat.

Re: Troops are useless
 

I see, so a AA type weapon for troops should work.

Re: Troops are useless
 

A point worth noting is that the Weapon's Platforms listed above were equipped with 2x Point Defense Cannons Lvl 4 and 2x Anti-Proton Beams lvl 2.

I think it should be changed such that fighters are only good for space combat or at least are incapable of planet capture without troops.

Re: Troops are useless
 

You can make such a change in your local copy (preferably in a mod folder, such as copying the file into the "GameTypes\Standard SE5" folder), by editing VehicleUnitTypes.txt.

Re: Troops are useless
 

Alas it happened on a PBW game with some friends.

Re: Troops are useless
 

It seems that the "best" answer would lie with Aaron here...

Ground troops should be a requirement to conquer a planet - a fighter-only force should be restricted to inflicting casualties and/or destroying facilities.

It would also be nice to have the option of using a fleet's main arnament in an orbital fire support role - increasing attacker firepower at the cost of greater planetary destruction (happiness, facilities, etc) and blue-on-blue casualties (which could be reduced with Advanced Military Science research).

Re: Troops are useless
 

First shouldn't be to hard.

Second would require whole new code sections.

Third option (blue-on-blue casualties) may or may not require new code sections. Shouldn't be too hard with proper programming in place (Just modify the bombardment code (The new code sections) so it occasionally picks a friendly).

Two is the sticking point.

Re: Troops are useless
 

Yeah, but how many troops would you require? Is a contingent of 1 sufficient?

Re: Troops are useless
 

it would be modable. also the partucular "unit" required to capture a planet would be modable too. (I hope)

at the moment though, giving troops a 'seeker' which can only target fighters would do the trick - also give more things from the troop weapons tech branch.


I'd make it big enough so that you can't easly fit any other weapons on small troops too, that should help with balancing troops vs fighters.

Re: Troops are useless
 

The problem is, any amount higher than 1 is completely arbitrary and will lead to stupid mechanics. Say you set it to 50 troops. What if my invasion force is reduced to 49? Even though I've slaughtered all enemy units and militia, I suddenly can't conquer the planet, for lack of 1 troop... makes no sense. If you set it to 1, then its completely meaningless. Just put one heavily armored, unarmed troop unit with your fighter invasion force and you haven't really solved any problem. Any other low number has the same effect.

Re: Troops are useless
 

That sounds like we need a hard-coded setting complementary to the "Ground Combat Militia Troop Population Amount" settings. This would be the Troop Occupation Level -- the number of troops necessary to control a population. It's a perfectly realistic idea, as anyone paying attention to the Iraq war would already know. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif If you don't have enough troops to keep up a sufficient presence, the occupied population will revolt. Maybe the original empire doesn't control the planet anymore, but neither do you.

Alternatively, MM could just use the militia setting as the occupation level. Which also makes some sense.

Re: Troops are useless
 

Alternatively, MM could also making the militia setting amounts actually work as well. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

But I like the idea. The amount of troops required could also decrease as the enemy population is assimilated - making more use of that aspect of the game.

Re: Troops are useless
 

Randomly triggering revolts with some generated militia units on an occupied planet is fine; making it impossible to conquer the planet after all defending troops are defeated, just because you have 1 less troop than some arbitrary threshold, is bad game design IMO. Remember, gameplay trumps realism.

Re: Troops are useless
 

I was hoping that the buildings would be more spread out or grouped into smaller "cities". That way there could be a longer campaign to take over the planet (more strategic) instead of a mad rush from both sides to destroy the other and take over the colony.

Re: Troops are useless
 

Given that troops reduce unhappiness and unhappiness governs revolt chances, I'd think this is already covered.