Militia and troops.

[PvK]

It already looks fun to me! And that's good to know about the battlefield size mod option!

I'm sure there's potential there to make it more like an invasion and less like a urban skirmish. Should be nice to see - I'm looking forward to seeing what people do with modding this game.

[Baal]

A good quick solution to troop invasions is make it so that All weapon types can attack troops as well as fighters/ships/etc. Troops only ever appear in ground combat so then the weapons platforms would serve as ground defense as well. Or you could make ground defense specific WPs that only carry anti troop weapons. In any case. It is more realistic to think that an enemy homeworld will have defensive emplacements against invasion.

[Barnacle Bill]

Ragnarok-X said:
Think about it. If earth was invaded by aliens, wouldnt 50 % of the population, excluding chidren and old people help fighting ? I bet so. There is enough weaponry, do doubt about it.

Did the entire population of every country invaded by Germany in WWII turn out in mass to face the German army in open battle with whatever they could scrape up? What's the difference in getting invaded by aliens and getting invaded by Germans. Unless the aliens are bent on extermination rather than conquest, not much. People will do what they did then - whatever the occupation forces tell them, at least as long as the occupation troops are looking. And, no, there won't be enough militarily useful weaponry if there isn't any around - like in just about any European country today. Early in WWII, there was a major program to get American civilians to donate hunting weapons to be shipped to the UK to arm the Home Guard - and if Sea Lion had come out of the blue in 1940 there wouldn't have been time for that.

Q said:
I don't like to talk about realism in a game like SE

"It's just Sci-Fi, it isn't real - anything goes" is what gets us, for example about half the episodes of the original 1970's Battlestar Galactica.

Q said:
(although you could argue about the difficulties the number one military power on earth today has in certain countries against very rudimentery equipped "militias").

There you are talking about insurgents with outside support, in countries where private possession of military small arms is darned near universal - not an ad hoc militia with improvided weapons facing an invading army in open battle. Even then, the kill ratio is something like 10-1 against the "militia" and they don't appear to have any chance of actually militarily driving the occupation force out.

Q said:
I just think that it is not good if you can conquer a homeworld with 20-30 small troops without shields and one louzy depleted uranium cannon.

Depends on what a "small troop" represents. It could be that a small troop is Hammer's Slammers, a medium troop is a regiment of Ogres, and a large troop is a regiment of Bolos. I've certainly never taken them to represent individual vehicles. I mean, it takes up 10 tons of cargo storage - which would hold how many colonists (and colonists have to include all their gear including pre-fab housing)?

Q said:
That makes the first strike option against any encountered empire in the beginning of the game too strong. I like it better if in the early game destroying or conquering a homeworld is almost impossible.

The real problem here is that unless it is the Planet of the Amish there is going to be a defending army of regular troops on the homeworld, so the AI should be programmed to maintain one.

Devnullicus said:

The one that shoots first

Not if the Alien is in Mobile Infantry powered armor a la Starship Troopers (the book, not the movie).

[AAshbery76]

I'm sure if Aliens invaded far less than 25% would fight to the death,and most of the worlds governments would be trying to get a deal pretty fast.Humans are cowards.

[dmm]

AAshbery76 said:
I'm sure if Aliens invaded far less than 25% would fight to the death,and most of the worlds governments would be trying to get a deal pretty fast.Humans are cowards.

This brings up an interesting point. If the aliens were humanoid oxygen breathers with a vast, well-run empire with a similar type of government, and if they had superior tech and good worlds for migration, then they might very well be received with token resistance at worst. Think of examples from human history, like the Persians and Romans and (sad to say) the Nazis. But if all the opposites were true, then resistance might be fanatical, even if pointless -- the invaders might have to wipe out the planet dwellers. There would at least be a scorched Earth policy. That last option is actually available to the human player. He can abandon a planet if he sees that its conquest is inevitable next turn. But really one shouldn't be allowed to do that, willy-nilly, without severe repercussions. Where did those two billion people go; did they all drink Jim Jones Kool-Aid?

Another point is that the type of inhabitants should partially determine their reaction. To use StarTrek examples: Humans might fight a suicidal war to prevent becoming part of a Borg collective, but probably wouldn't in most cases. Klingons would be more likely to fight a hopeless war; Vulcans might accept defeat as logically unavoidable. Ferengi probably wouldn't care at all as long as trade continued. Etc.

Anyway, some awesome possibilities, but what is actually achievable in SEV (without re-coding it)?

[Ragnarok-X]

Barnacle Bill said:
Did the entire population of every country invaded by Germany in WWII turn out in mass to face the German army in open battle with whatever they could scrape up? What's the difference in getting invaded by aliens and getting invaded by Germans. Unless the aliens are bent on extermination rather than conquest, not much. People will do what they did then - whatever the occupation forces tell them, at least as long as the occupation troops are looking. And, no, there won't be enough militarily useful weaponry if there isn't any around - like in just about any European country today. Early in WWII, there was a major program to get American civilians to donate hunting weapons to be shipped to the UK to arm the Home Guard - and if Sea Lion had come out of the blue in 1940 there wouldn't have been time for that.

Uh-oh, you miss something very important here. HUMANDS did fight HUMANS. Because humans have emotions, they believe and know each other.
However, should your country be invaded by giant bugs, or giant lizards, or giant-something with no reference to earth at all, i dont think your 25 % would work quite well.

Heck, even human principles, or ethics like morale, life/death and culture could potentially have a totally different, or no meaning at all to something which is not human. No one will adopt to that.
What about those Xing Hive Insects from SEIV. Do you believe you, or anyone else could adopt to thier lifestyle ?

Unfortunally i cant bring a good example, because their has never been a situation of comparable value in history.

[tmcc]

Ragnarok-X said:

Unfortunally i cant bring a good example, because their has never been a situation of comparable value in history.

Sure you can. What about War of the Worlds, Independence Day, Mars Attacks, and even Terminator. In all cases humans rise to fight and eliminate the alien invaders. Except maybe War of the Worlds were the microbes did it.

Seriously though it brings up an idea. So far we only talk about defense by the dominant intelligent race. Maybe there should be some risk that the invader doesn't get along so well with something living on the planet that they didn't know about ala WotW. Medical technology could reduce this risk.

[Fyron]

If you are going to do that, you also need to add a chance for some pathogen carried by the aliens to mutate and wipe out much of the conquered population, as happened in the new world here on earth.

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

tmcc said:

Sure you can. What about War of the Worlds, Independence Day, Mars Attacks, and even Terminator. In all cases humans rise to fight and eliminate the alien invaders. Except maybe War of the Worlds were the microbes did it.

Ayep, all extremely convincing real-life historical examples.....

[Barnacle Bill]

Strategia_In_Ultima said:

Ayep, all extremely convincing real-life historical examples.....

More to the point, they are examples in which the alien intent is to exterminate the human race, not simply rule them. What is going on in SE is typically conquer & rule - if you want to exterminate you glass the colony from space. I don't believe that humans are going to fight to the death man, woman & child with bare hands if necessary to avoid paying taxes to Lord Amon-Kurath of the Amonkrie instead of General Takei of the Terran Confederation.