Troops - Page 2

Baron Munchausen · #11 December 29th, 2001, 01:39 AM

Actually, Geo, I forgot to mention the other unrealistic effect of the current system. Planetary weapons can grind defenses (WPs) to dust with their incredibly high damage Ratings. I don't think that's realistic. Population and industrial facilities are spread out all over the surface. A 'planetary' weapon is supposed to be a wide-area weapon specially designed to destroy this sort of target. So they would be much less effective against hardened targets than the intense ship-to-ship combat type weapons. MM has followed the usual 'marketting-style' of game design in naming the planetary weapons in ways that make them sound right -- like 'Planetary Napalm' -- but not really making them do what they are supposed to.

Would napalm be a weapon you would use against a bunker? It would just sit on the outside & burn. Well, anti-population weapons ought to be the same. They ought to affect only non-hardened targets. So, I guess my first proposal would have to be amended a bit. Planetary weapons should not affect WPs at all, or at least should have a 'damage ratio' like normal weapons have against population. I guess the special power should swap the damage effects between population/facilties and cargo? Something like that.

[ 29 December 2001: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]

Suicide Junkie · #12 December 29th, 2001, 03:12 AM

How about this:
- Change all of the "normal" damage-type planetary weapons into "population only"
- Boost up the damage of the current "pop only" weapon (neutron bombs?), if required.
Thus, platforms & troops are protected.

geoschmo · #13 December 29th, 2001, 05:13 AM

Well personally I don't think it's unrealistic at all that weapon platforms are easy to knock out compared to facilities and population. Compare it to modern warfare. A HARM missle with a six inch warhead can knock out a SAM site, but it would take tons of conventional bombs to destroy a factory, or to kill millions of people.

Sure, we can assume weapons platforms would be hardened, but hardening doesn't really protect you from accurate hits, just close misses.

It's not totally realistic that all the cargo gets destroyed before any population or facilities get damaged, but it's not that bad a system. You would expect the attackers to target the weapons first.

If your goal is to make glassing a planet more difficult and this make landing troops a more accepted option, making it harder to knock out the weapons platforms is a bad idea. You will end up with what I thought you were originally saying and have a planet that was an impenetrable fortress. Once a colony was established you would have now way of dislodging the enemy cause your troop transports would be toasted before they could get within range to drop troops.

Maybe that is more realistic, battles usually go to the defender, but it would affect game play IMHO. Games would stagnate. You would almost have to use Argh's "Blow up the sun" strategy to make any headway.

Geoschmo

Will · #14 December 29th, 2001, 09:16 AM

My $0.02...

Population damage should ideally be a inverse-type function (for those who know what an inverse graph looks like, with x >= 0 ). At the start of bombardment, most people should be in a few areas. As bombardment commences, and the population centers are anhiallated, the firepower needed to kill more people should go up. An acceptable mod would just be to increase the damage needed to kill one million citizens.

Militia strength in vanilla SEIV isn't really strong enough. I play with Strength set at 50% (thus, -50% to ground combat), and yet I still use the strategy of capturing enemy planets. The only difference is that I lose a few more troops in the process, but the captured planet can usually replace those troops in a few turns (troop design is Small Troop, 1xCockpit, 3xGroundCannon/ElectricDischarge, depending if I have organic), and it is easy enough to have a few planets devoted entirely to building troops to replace those lost in invasions on the front lines. A Medium Transport full of troops (375) can take out the militia of a Large undomed planet, even with pitiful strength.

Summary: just jack up the damage/population and militia strength. A lot.

Baron Munchausen · #15 December 29th, 2001, 05:34 PM

Geo, I want it to be harder to knock out the WPs with PLANETARY WEAPONS just like I want it to be harder to kill population with STANDARD weapons. Specialization, see? The current system is not sophisticated enough to allow both. It's one or the other.

With these suggested changes you would need a coordinated strategy to completely destroy a planet. If planetary weapons were then made large and expensive the incentive to use troops would increase. The typical 'raid' by a normally armed ship could then knock out units in planetary cargo and kill some pop but probably not wipe out an entire colony unless it was a new one.

Argh · #16 December 29th, 2001, 06:23 PM

Personally, I'd aim for a scenario where standard weapons would be close to useless for killing pop, myself. Most of the standard weapons are beams and such- not the things you'd use to kill people with- and I think that we have to assume that, in the far-flung future of SE:IV that they arrived at some good method of preventing folks from just dropping a lot of nuclear bombs all over the planet. . . maybe the solution isn't to prevent easy glassing with Planetary weapons, but to make the cost so horrendous in terms of damage to the planet that it's just not worth it when you do the math. Plus, I'd make Planetary arms pretty darn expensive.

Suicide Junkie · #17 December 29th, 2001, 07:52 PM

To help with the "want to have more troop-troop battles", try Phased planetary shields.
Troops land despite shields, and can then fight against the as-yet-unnapalmed defending troops.

geoschmo · #18 December 29th, 2001, 10:07 PM

quote:
Originally posted by Baron Munchausen:
Geo, I want it to be harder to knock out the WPs with PLANETARY WEAPONS just like I want it to be harder to kill population with STANDARD weapons. Specialization, see? The current system is not sophisticated enough to allow both. It's one or the other.

Actually I think it is doable with the current system. We could make the planetary weapons "population only" as SJ suggested, but raise their damage way up. Then raise the "damage to kill population" and your standard weapos won't be able to do much to population, unlees you have a lot of them. And they would wipe out the cargo first anyway, which is the intention. Increase the cost of the planetary weapons to discourage their use, and you have a planet that requires a comined arms fleet to take it. Standard weapons to take out the defenses, and troops to conquer the population.

Raise the number of militia and their effectiveness so you need more troops to conquer a planet, especially a homeworld.

We could also come up with a slew of platform only weapons that have longer range and more structure tonnage to make them a little tougher to knock out.

And as Argh suggested make the cost for glassing a planet intolerable. Change the "Planet Value Percent Loss After Owner Death" to a high number. It's only 10 percent now. Make it 75 or even higher. So if you decide to glass the planet (or accidentally glass a small one

) it will be useless for any kind of resource production. We could even make all the planetary wepons decrese planetry conditions as well.

These changes might encourage the use of smart bombs too. Does anyone use them now? This will make it very hard to knock out facilities without them.

I like all these ideas. I might put this together in a mod. Anybody have a suggestion for a name?

Geoschmo

geoschmo · #19 December 29th, 2001, 10:13 PM

quote:
Originally posted by suicide_junkie:
To help with the "want to have more troop-troop battles", try Phased planetary shields.
Troops land despite shields, and can then fight against the as-yet-unnapalmed defending troops.

This would be cool for tactical combat, but combined with the other changes it would make conquering a planet in strategic combat almost impossible, since the troop ship won't approachuntil the weapons are gone. Unless the shilds aren't that strong I guess.

IMHO rasing the effectiveness of the militia would work fine. We don't really need actuall unit-unit battles do we?

Geoschmo

Q · #20 December 30th, 2001, 09:13 AM

quote:
Originally posted by suicide_junkie:
To help with the "want to have more troop-troop battles", try Phased planetary shields.
Troops land despite shields, and can then fight against the as-yet-unnapalmed defending troops.

I was not aware that there are Phased planetary shields, because if IIRC the planetary shield ability is only normal shields. Or do you mean weapon platforms with phased shields only?