Detailed Strategic Ground Combat

[dogscoff]

It has often been discussed, and it would be really cool, but I think it would make the whole game ridiculously complicated. MIcromanagement hell. I suppose if you had a decent AI minister to take over for you if you didn't want to handle it yourself...

The other factor is the storage space. Savegames and maps would take up huge amounts of disk space and take forever to download.

I would like to see a few more variables thrown into ground combat though. I'd like rock planet races to fight at a disadvantage on gas planets, for example. Native breathers should get a combat bonus too, and various other changes that have been discussed, especially concerning orbital bombarment.

Now for SEV.... Imagine this:

How about if SEV was designed as a hugely huge massively-multiplayer Online universe, constantly operating in accelerated realtime whether you're Online or not (ie a fleet might take a real-life week to get from A to B) with campaigns that go on for (RL) years. The game universe would be insanely vast, and empires would eventually become too huge and complex for a player to operate on their own. You'd have "teams" playing each empire, and one team member could dedicate their time to ground combat on a huge, planetary sub game like the one you describe. Maybe even one general per planet, if it were complex enough.

Man, just imagine... that would be sooooo cool.

Of course, we'd all be single inside of a month...

[Gil Hamilton]

The game MANKIND was/is? "Massively Multiplayer Online"-- Four thumbs down!

[Baron Munchausen]

SE is a space game. Adding ground combat in that much detail would be a nightmare to program, and then a micromanagement nightmare to play as already noted. If you want to play a combined space/ground campaign, try Emperor of the Fading Suns. It runs in the DOS box of Win95/98 but it's a fairly advanced game. Last update was 1999, I think? You can get it for free at Home of the Underdogs: www.the-underdogs.org

Warning! You'll learn what micromanagement means with this game! It might be the only game out there which exceeds SE IV for micromanagement.

In SE IV, I think all we need is a few more options like the ability to choose a strategy that our troops use in combat. The effect of planetary bombardment on troops needs to be reduced, too. If troops were protected by the same damage ratio that protects population you'd really have combat for planets because troops would survive to fight the invading troops.

[ June 14, 2002, 15:43: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]

[Shadowstar]

Well of course it would be a nightmare if the game continues to be as micromanaged as it is. Remember, I come from the Stars! community, where you can automate just about everything. You can even have your ships automatically move toward and attack any enemy ships that come within a certain range.

I'm assuming that at some point, hopefully SE5, the game will be much easier to automate so there won't be so much micromanagement. That way, you could have stuff like this with little problem.

Also, universes and saved games wouldn't need to take up that much more space. You could just use a fractal system to generate the planets' surfaces and store facility locations and troop positions each with two extra variables to determine X,Y location on the planet. Then, all you'd be storing in saved games and universe files would be a single planetary seed and, for saved games, locations for all the facilities and deployed troops. Possibly in a huge, overcrowded universe the file might get rather large, but even then, probably not by much.

[Gryphin]

I would love to see Ground Combat reduced to something like the Intel system.
Each planet would spend points to defend it.
The Attacker would build up and spend points to invade
The results would be abstracted.
You could still glass a planet if you wanted to.
If I want tactical combat, I’ll play with micro armor (1/285 lead/pewter) miniatures.