Planetary bombardment(genocide)

[Jubala]

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.

[Seawolf]

Kev,

Why is this a flaw?

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Seawolf on the prowl

[General Hawkwing]

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) and clear a few of the people if need to make troop take over more likely.

[rdouglass]

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????

[LintMan]

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.

[Commander G]

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.

[Invader]

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!)

[rkurschner]

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.

[Shadow99]

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).]

[James Sterrett]

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.