Improving Ground Combat

<Shameless Plug>http://www.spaceempires5.com/en-US/node/4342</Shameless Plug>

Groundcombat was just a bloody waste of development time,it is terrible.I hope he forgets about it for SEVI.

I think ground combat could be made better, just not sure what to do...

The thing about spacecombat is the checks and balances. Some weapons are very powerful, but can't fire on fighters (that sort of thing). maybe this could be added to ground combat.

how about causing damage variably depending upon what's being hit. for instance, a tank should have a harder time killing infantry, but infantry should be able to kill infantry easily.

SEV, more than a feeling.

I don't think ground combat should be scrapped at all. It needs to be fixed, yes. but definitely not scrapped.
I think bigger area to fight in would help alot.

How do you figure that? Combat has and will always be dependent on tactics and technology both driving each other in an evolutionary method.

When tanks first came out (actual field worthy ones mind you) they were absolutely feared by infantry BECAUSE the tank could engage the infantry with out danger. Infantry and technology evolved to counter the tank with AT weapons and associated tactics, but it didn't negate the tank in its ability to kill infantry. If anything the tank didn't loose any of its killing power against infantry just the time to execute its targeting and firing sequence

Actually, he is saying that tanks are not as useful at killing infantry as other infantry is. That is a correct statement. Infantry's speed and agility in the real world makes tanks very ineffecient at killing it. However, infantry have difficulty killing tanks due to their armor. In the real world, tanks without infantry support are very vulnerable, just as infantry without tank support is vulnerable. That is the balance the game's ground combat needs.

ya tanks are pretty deadly against infantry. between the heavy machine guns and the cannon they can shred a unit pretty fast. not to mention the fear they instill. breaking men and having them flee is almost as good (if not better - human rights?) as slaying them all.
if you look at the evolution of weaponry... tanks came out. infantry developed anti tank weapons (rpgs, mines, grenade down the hatch....) so tanks become faster, with electronic countermeasures and the ability to fire while moving. i think infantry would be obsolete if tanks could enter/capture holes in the ground and buildings.

Modern tanks were made to fight other tanks,not infantry.

True. but if a tank came rolling up on you... are you gonna stick around? not likely. even if you have anti-tank weapons you still have to sneak up on the bastard.

ok so how do we make ground combat better in SEV....

Largest trouble with ground combat is that it's a very simple 'game-in-a-game' and the AI only knows to charge in one direction. Certainly we shouldn't hope to try and buff it up to be like a real RTS game but with resources removed.

Having said that, there's still room to make it interesting. There are 3 unit types that can participate in ground combat by default: fighters[1], troops and weapon platforms. More unit types can also be introduced as variants - e.g. fighters that cannot launch to space, (expensive) 'troops' with much less movement and using ship-class weapons, etc.

[1]Is it true you can ram them from space combat to put them into ground combat?

One other thought: right now it's far too easy for me to look at a planet's cargo and think "hmm... too many defending troops. I'll just bombard everything until there's much less then send my troops in".

Consider making troops very resilient to space-combat weapons (assume they're hiding in shelters before ground combat begins) by some means (e.g. very high troop damage and armour). Also consider introducing anti-weapon platform components - this will encourage more troop drops which would then have to fight a healthy garrison that can't be orbitally bombed away.

Ok fine, this 2nd half of the post isn't about how to make it better by introducing more variation. It's about making ground combat better by having more of it in the first place.

Change troop effects on happiness in accordance with how many troops you expect there to be. Too many uselessly weak troops just drains CPU resources for not that great fun.

---Sig---
Playing Touhou games (Go here if interested . No, nobody else is that good/insane as that replay). No rush for SE V bug fixing.

Actually, not sure what real world your referring to, but the tanks I know and saw in combat deal with infantry (or the watered down variant called gorillas) quiet effectively and efficiently, even with all the AT weapons available to the infantry, so no, its not correct statement. It all depends on the tactics employed and the resources available.

The game needs a variant of vehicle/unit types to allow for the tactical and technological evolution process to work. This is a two parter: mod the AI to deal with the units and components that technology provides to implement evolved tactics, and two: set up units, components, to follow an evolutionary tree.

Oh, and a much bigger more varied battle field would help immensely. Planet invasion shouldn't just happen in one turn, its a major undertaking on a planetary scale. Technically, if your building a Space Empire, it starts with planet conquering, not planet glassing. So a much more robust ground combat sequence should be fleshed out.

As I understand it, infantry is more effective in a closed combat environment, like Urban, or a very rough environment, like Mountains, than tanks are.

However...

We should keep in mind that these are MODERN world examples. SE5 starts at least 400 years in our future, with vehicles that use Ion engines for ground levitation (making something akin to a flying tank).

Try not to think of infantry vs tanks. Try to think of infantry and tanks becoming the same thing...like the Tripods from War of the Worlds. Each one had one individual controling it, making it effectivly a really big and really powerful form of combat armor.

All of that aside, I agree that the ground combats in this game are lacking. Given that we have ground combats at all (previous SE games had none) I'm glad we have any at all. However, I think anyone who is making a large mod should seriously consider working over ground combat in it. I know its on my list of to-do...after my AI stops being a push-over.

"Only by being constantly at war with evil in all things, including yourself, can you truely know peace."
Download my mod here: GidMod
or there:

My main point I was trying to convey was that technology and tactics drive the unit type and the effectiveness of that unit. So you said the same thing as I did.

I do like the idea of the tripod walker tank

As for any unit types: its all about combined arms combat!

As for infantry being more effective in an urban environment it really depends on the rules of engagement, which SEV really doesn't have any form of that either. If you wanted to forgo the civilities and level buildings to get infantry, a tank would be very effective so would bombs in that manner.

Mountain terrain for a tank will only be accessible if technology improves to the point they can hover a 74 ton vehicle.

Here is a thought, how come SEV doesn't have space support, as in pin point strike capability to support troops on the ground. This way if you equipped a component (call it fire support component) you could have the option to call in a space strike to get rid of a pesky forticifation or get troops out of trouble.

There are lots of ideas coming out here.
From what i see, the only way to get ground combat where we want it is to create a RTS engine say, in the style of Command and Conquer?? it could take into account ships in orbit, and you could call down bombardments on specific targets (eg ION Cannon) Maybe a campaign map for each planet... you have to take all the 'capture' points on a planet for it to be considered conquered. this would make invasions more dynamic.
Now i don't see this really feasible in SEV but maybe in SEVI?

The argument over Infantry vs Tanks is rather irrellevent to SEV. Just look at the 'troop' unit as a tank accompanied by some infantry. or the troop as Combat Armour... either way it doesn't matter they both end up doing the same thing.
Maybe Infantry could be added in?? We're looking to make Ground Combat more interesting. add more variety to Troops by making 'SOLDIERS' and 'VEHICLES' seperate.

One very simple answer. Make Troops larger. Currently it's such a pain to micromanage 100 units per planet to have a ground defence that I just ignore it and fight in space. Make those ground platforms real sizes, like, half the size of a matching size weapons platform, but without the ability to engage space targets.

I believe it's possible to change the damage ratio's to planets in the Damage Types or Settings file also, which would then let you make planets which unless you use orbital bombs (make a new damage type for them perhaps even?) your not going to kill anything but weapon platforms on a planet, or maybe even not kill weapon platforms (though the AI would struggle then)

Most of the work has already been done. See the link in my post above.

All this is very interesting and most of it went through my head when I was creating the Ground Combat mod. Rather than everybody trying to reinvent the wheel, how about you check it out and tell me what you think needs to be changed (and why). I don't consider this "my" mod as such - it's an open work and I don't pretend to be an expert on warfare so I'm willing to listen to suggestions.

http://www.hotkey.net.au/~bjhann/Ground_Combat.zip

You do have a very good ground combat mod.

However, the mod I'm playing (mine) is a bit extensive, and it would take a while for me to modify my mod to include stuff from another mod. Not to mention the sticky points of releasing a new version of my mod, with someone else's work in it. That is a bad thing, in my book, unless they give you permission first.

Anyways, I like the challenge of doing my own work.

"Only by being constantly at war with evil in all things, including yourself, can you truely know peace."
Download my mod here: GidMod
or there:

Mmm, it's the thing about SE V mods - very hard to inter-combine different mods.

As for Troop size thing - I'm viewing these units as around half the size of a mountain. Anyway yes, we ought to take a look at what has already been done, then evaluate what's good and what isn't so that future mods can also incorporate the good ideas.

---Sig---
Playing Touhou games (Go here if interested . No, nobody else is that good/insane as that replay). No rush for SE V bug fixing.

Well, as the old saying goes...

Steal from one, its plagiarism.
Steal from many, its research.

"Only by being constantly at war with evil in all things, including yourself, can you truely know peace."
Download my mod here: GidMod
or there:

In the Capship Mod (which is currently on hold due to my not knowing how to get capships do do what I want them to) I have troops set at 100kT, and they're also quite expensive. My thinking is that capturing a planet shouldn't be a fight between hundreds of little tanks - it should be an epic operational-level battle between massive armies, and so now each troop unit represents an entire army. To that effect I removed the troop weapons entirely and replaced them with divisions of various types of troops:

* Infantry - slow speed, armed with laser rifles
* Tanks - fast speed, armed with explosive shell cannons
* Artillery, moderate speed, armed with rockets
* Neotanks (think battle-mechs) - moderately fast speed, armed with plasma torches

Using bonus speed abilities (the same used by stock CT and more advanced engines), I made it so the entire army moves at the speed of its *slowest* still-functional division.

In addition, I added "commanders" replacing the troop cockpit component. There are currently two types of commander, Aggressive and Defensive, each with his own special abilities. (I could add more such as Field Medic and Special Ops, but I started with just two.)

* Aggressive commanders have an offense bonus, a defense penalty, and can attack on their own in addition to the troops under their command. They are placed in outer-hull slots since they are so gung-ho.
* Defensive commanders have an offense penalty, a defense bonus, and can move very quickly ("flee in terror!") once all troops under their command are destroyed. They are placed in inner-hull slots since they are so cautious.

Admittedly, troop design in Capship Mod is much simpler than in stock or Balance Mod, seeing as there are fewer components to choose from, but more specialized divisions and commanders can be invented...

~~~
The power of the ancients is now yours to command. You are truly the Master... of the obvious

What do you want capships to do? Maybe we can help.

"Only by being constantly at war with evil in all things, including yourself, can you truely know peace."
Download my mod here: GidMod
or there:

Permission is hereby granted to anyone and everyone to incorporate whatever bits of the Ground Combat mod they like into their own mod.

Capships? Well, what I would like ideally is something along the following lines:

* Capships should be able to fire their main guns at other capships, but not at patrol (light) ships, since the patrol ships are too small to hit with such large guns.
* Patrol ships should be able to fire their main guns at other patrol ships, but not at capships, since the weapons would have no effect against the capships' heavy armor.
* Capships should have "weapons banks" which are basically large, rapid-fire versions of patrol-ship weapons. They bear the same relationship to capships and patrol ships that point defense weapons bear between regular ships in stock and fighters.
* Both capships and patrol ships should be able to move.

I can get MOST of those done, but not all of them - if I make all capships "bases" as I initially did, I find that capships cannot move, and just spin in place because that's what bases do. If I make all of them ships and just give the heavy weapons an accuracy penalty or the light ones a bonus, though (and I haven't actually tried this yet), then capships will be able to waste ammo firing at patrol ships they have only a 1% chance of hitting, and patrol ships will be able to waste ammo firing at capships they can't scratch.

Fyron suggested on IRC that I use ship strategies to prevent ships from wasting ammo (at least most of the time) by creating "anti-capship" and "anti-patrolship" versions of all the strategies, where the anti-capship strategies have "largest enemy" as their first priority and the anti-patrolship strategies have "smallest enemy" as their first priority. That would work, except for a few little things:

* Ships would be limited to one role - ships with a mix of light and heavy weaponry would be most effective at one role only, and waste some of their ammo firing light weapons at heavy ships or vice versa.
* The anti-patrolship strategies would actually target fighters and such first, unless they are set not to target fighters at all.

Suicide Junkie suggested using special damage types and making capship components (or at least their armors) immune to light weaapons and light ship components immune to heavy weapons, but I don't think that would prevent the ships from actually firing at each other, and not only would they waste ammo, a massive death beam hitting a patrol ship with no effect just looks weird

SJ also suggested trying the weapon delivery types, setting them to either "light" or "heavy" and giving the hulls immunity like crystalline hulls reduce damage from beams, but I tested that and even when the ships are immune, the other ships still shoot at them

I guess my best bet is Fyron's strategy idea, unless anyone has anything better?

~~~
The power of the ancients is now yours to command. You are truly the Master... of the obvious

Then why can't you use the "Weapon Target Type List" field in Components.txt to split normal weapons in two kinds, in the same way it already works with point-defense (can't fire on ships) and missiles (can't fire on units)?

Looks like you can't add a new "ship" (ship or base) type, but you might be able to add a new unit type!

Didn't Ekolis say in his 'Capship' mod thread that having them as units wouldn't work because then they could be transported as cargo, maybe I read that somewhere else, I don't know, so much is going on here I can't keep track of things.

I'm sorry that I can't be of any help. From what I've read you can't add a new ship type as BlueTemplar said, so maybe you are stuck with Fyron's strategies idea, but that still leads to wasted ammo and not quite the effect you're looking for.

I don't suppose there's a way to add targeting conditions to weapons other than 'type of target'? Could you limit a weapon bank to target only ships of greater than 500kT? I'm going to have to start getting into modding so I can actually offer some input. I don't suppose my idea would work, but it's all I could come up with.

Good luck Ekolis, I hope you find a way so we can all enjoy your mod.

_______________________________________________________

SEV Wiki - it's there to help (or be helped).

That's right, I didn't want patrol ships to be carried in cargo.

Though I think in VehicleUnitTypes.txt there are settings for "can be carried in ship cargo" and "can be carried in planet cargo"... I wonder what happens if I turn those both OFF? What happens to newly constructed units then??? Are they launched into space in groups (tolerable), launched into space individually (perfect!), or do they disappear (no good at all)?

~~~
The power of the ancients is now yours to command. You are truly the Master... of the obvious

Hmm, I was mistaken about those 2 settings - neither of them exists

However, I found a few interesting ones which might be fun if they're actually implemented...

Has Spaceyard Capability - Does this mean you could make unit groups which construct? That would be really nifty... think "self-replicating mines" or "construction drones" which build faster and faster the more units are there! And if you place them in ship or planet cargo, do they add to the build rate of the parent???

Can Fire Into Space From Ship Cargo - Not sure what this one would be used for, but it sounds neat

Can Be Boarded And Captured - Ooh, imagine this - fighters that actually carry crew and can be "boarded" by other fighters or "robotic assimilation drones" or even by boarding pods launched by ships... or what if you assigned this to a ground unit (is there a board command in ground combat?) so troops could storm a weapons platform and capture it for their own use???

Abilities Added To Parent When In Cargo - This is actually used by stock Weapon Platforms and it's what gives a planet shields from weapons platform shield generators (which I think is kind of silly so maybe it should be removed, but whatever ) In any event, you could use this to create "admiral", "general", or "governor" units which you could place on ships or planets, sort of like the "heroes" in MOO2 or the (nonfunctional) "avatars" in SE4 PBC games - an "admiral" unit could give a ship some combat bonuses, a "general" could give troops on a planet some combat bonuses, and a "governor" could give infrastructure such as mineral miners and spaceyards some bonuses.

Actually, that "general" idea might be useful for a ground-combat mod, bringing us back to the original topic... Combine it with the "commanders" I mentioned earlier from Capship Mod and you'd really have an interesting system!

~~~
The power of the ancients is now yours to command. You are truly the Master... of the obvious

While it's your mod and ultimately such decisions are based on the feel you want for the setting, you might want to reconsider that.

In our world, a ~60 ton PT boat or a ~9 ton airplane can individually do noticeable damage to the heaviest-armored ~58,000 ton battleship. With lucky shots or a small group operating in concert, they can kill. Both can be carried as inert cargo by freighters, or carried and launched in combat by specialty ships.

If in your setting the patrol ships are so much smaller than even a light capital ship that they can't even scratch them, you're probably looking at significantly more than the factor of 1,000 size difference above, quite possibly up toward a factor of 10,000 size difference. Given that, it would be quite odd if a patrol ship couldn't be carried in cargo; at that point they're closer in scale comparison to a ~1 ton battleship *shell*, and might be in something closer to a rotary magazine than a flight deck

It's all a matter of relative scale. Remember that the planetoid class ships (such as Dahak) of Weber's Empire from the Ashes setting carry a *battleship squadron* in cargo for light screening and utility work, amongst their ~200 lesser craft.

Hmm... well, patrol ships range from 50kT to 300kT, and capital ships range from 500kT to 3000kT, so it's only a factor of 10 size difference... I guess I wanted to make the capital ships *feel* bigger, even if they're not all that much bigger... besides, in stock, the largest ship is only about 10 times the size of the smallest, not 60 times as in Capship Mod!

I guess what I could do is actually make the capital ships 2000 times larger, and measure all ships in tons rather than kilotons (so patrol ships and fighters can actually have multiple components! ) Then, I'd have maybe fighters at 5 to 30 tons, patrol ships at 10 to 60 kilotons, and capital ships at 15,000 to 90,000 kilotons (15 to 90 megatons - I don't think SE5 lets you have a second measurement override!)

Of course, then I'd run into the issue of some ship components being 1000 times larger than others, so a capship could easily install patrol ship components like stealth armor... I guess I could put an AI Tag 01 on the patrol ship hulls and capship components, and an AI Tag 02 on the capship hulls and patrol ship components, and require that no ship have both abilities...

Another thing is, though, that I want both capships and patrol ships to be able to carry fighters, so I don't want to make capships TOO big or there would be no reason other than the game engine that capships couldn't carry patrol ships in cargo!

Now, if there were just a way to force specific unit types to NOT launch in groups but launch individually... then I could have "tugships" which could tug "system ships" which are really units about between systems... of course there would be no icon for "system ships in cargo" unless I removed one of the other unit types...

~~~
The power of the ancients is now yours to command. You are truly the Master... of the obvious

Planetary ground combat has been a ignored dimension in all space 4X games genre i have played. There has been some innovative ways, like in Imperium Galactica 2 and SEV(very similar) but no game in this genre has done a good job at making the planetary combat really fun.

As for inspiration i can think of the Robotech series, and the movie Starship Troopers.

Making a truly global strategy game that involves larger units, like divisions and corps, and on a planetary scale, with the option to use of WMD(with political and environmental issues), and not only fighting around a city would be the next great step in the series.

Hmm. Here's a totally offbeat, random suggestion for ground combat: What if you changed troops to be substantially larger, and used ship-size components, in a similar manner to weapons platforms and satellites, rather than fighter craft? They're hovering vehicles, so it'd be closer to 'flying land-battleship' than 'tank', but then you'd actually care about the vehicles you dumped to the ground, and there'd be few enough of them to make tactics count for a little more. (Notice how having an entire swarm of tanks just makes the game 'select everybody, rush the bastards'?) I dunno. It would certainly make them stand up to fighters a lot better than stock.

Or maybe just the thought of being able to feild bolos amuses me...

Provided the various balance parameters, the tech tree and the AI are adjusted suitably, I'm all for "bigger Troops with ship-class weapons".

---Sig---
Playing Touhou games (Go here if interested . No, nobody else is that good/insane as that replay). No rush for SE V bug fixing.

Really, what ground combat currently lacks is weapon platforms able to defend themselves (To form fixed defenses), 'artillery' weapons to make range and distance meaningful, and for actual objectives worthy of defense to be present. As it stands, the 'need to wipe everyone else out' thing makes buildings pure scenery, and the lack of range differences or fixed defenses makes vehicle speed irrelevant - pretty much the only thing ever needed to do is simply stroll forward to gun range and outgun the other fella.

That you end up with hundreds of the little buggers against each other just makes the overall micromanagement (if it was really needed to start with...) impractical, and thus further encourages the whole thing to end up a bit of a Ctrl-A, Click-other-side-of-map, fastforward-to-see-what-happens affair.

Change the Maximum Model Size field in vehiclesizes.txt.

Whoops, yes, I think you're right.

You guys will probably hate me for saying this, but I always thought that MOO3 actually got ground combat about right - basically a glorified rock, paper, scissors where you pick your strategy and push the button for the dice to roll, with your progress being shown on the map. Also liked the fact that the basic unit sizes were battlion, division, and army.

I think that taking over planets and their facilities rather than just glassing them and starting again should be an important strategic aspect of the game. But it doesn't need the real-time micro management of the current implementation.

That being said, it's not as bad as GalCiv2. I always hated the fact that it was the entire population of the planet that turned into a miltary force and got shipped around the galaxy.

Okay I hate to say this but the ground combat of moo3 was not something I would want to imitate... Other aspects of the game yes ground combat no...

Groovy Baby Yeah!

Battillion-level combat would be very nearly ideal - it gives the proper sense of scale, and would let you drop a dozen troop units, instead of four hundred vehicles whose pathfinding then slows a machine down to a crawl. Hmmm. I wonder how you'd represent that on a unit level?

How to represent giant armies in terms of unit design, or in terms of unit models? For a unit-design example, scroll back to the post I made about Capship Mod's troop model As for unit models, you could always make an xfile which contains a bunch of little teeny tiny troops in it!

~~~
The power of the ancients is now yours to command. You are truly the Master... of the obvious

The .X format actually has a specification for animation. Whether SE5 abides by that is anyone's guess...

~~~
The power of the ancients is now yours to command. You are truly the Master... of the obvious

Animation....hhhmm, I haven't tried it yet but my model program has all kinds of options for it. I don't think SEV's engine has animation control for x files, but I haven't tried it yet. I will have to verify this unless someone already knows?!?!

My main issue with the Ground Combat approach is that I get the feeling that you'd be sacrificing the whole sheilds/armor/weapon/sensor/etc technology levels in order to use it - effectively, if one uses individual components to represent a combat force, is it possible to still represent advances in various technologies (Even if not all of them)? I'm also a little cautious as to how it would interact with aircraft. Or weapons platforms. >.>

Now, if one could specify troop statistics using more variables than simply %level%, this would be... most Excelent(tm).

Maybe you can come at it sideways? I know you CAN make component statistics be based on more than just [%level%].

"Only by being constantly at war with evil in all things, including yourself, can you truely know peace."
Download my mod here: GidMod

Yes, you will rarely attack with less than 10 troops anyway, so make then 5-10 times stronger, bigger in kT, and more expensive! Also, you don't have to remove, militia, just make it 5-10 times more rare as well!

The only problem I can see is pop happiness (police). Can you make it grow by increments of 1-2 instead of 10 like it is actually?

What would be far more fun is if troops improved happiness dependant on the planetary population - so a bigger planet requires more troops to police.

That would make sense.

Aye; pity I can't see a way to do it.

On the other hand, fiddling with the 'larger troops' idea continues apace - the results so far are intruging. While balance is a bit of a pain (Hell, when is it not? ), it otherwise seems to be a much more viable system. I'm still tweaking out a few bugs, and writing up the values properly, but we'll see how things go.

(My intention is that this is one part of a larger mod, but once I have a rough beta of the minimod, I'll be releasing it for playtesting, etc. I expect there'll be a series of 'MiniMods' like this, with BalanceMod as the base and the new playstyle changes incorporated, unless people object to the idea?)

Not sure if my "custom unit types" idea has taken root in this topic so re-stating it here: what if troops, weapon platforms, satellites and fighters were all combined into a single unit type, arguably even replacing all those 4 unit types?

Call it the "Mobile Suit" say. A large unit, using ship-class weapons, that can be launched/recovered into space (fighters/satellites), can fight on the surface (troops), can shoot space targets from the surface (weapon platforms) and have limited space travel (fighters).

It would simplify the data files (fewer components/research areas to worry about), might be beneficial for the AI (fewer units to make decisions with) and cuts down on the micromanagement of ground combat (fewer, bigger units - we're already talking about this).

It's nice that SE V gives us lots of unit types but there's no reason we must stick with them - VehicleUnitTypes.txt is there so we can make up entirely new units.

---Sig---
Playing Touhou games (Go to this Wiki if interested. No, nobody else is that good/insane as that replay). No rush for SE

You could do that, certainly. Although one suspects such an item would cost a lot.

Also, fighters can already engage in ground combat, and be launched into space for self-defense, so other than ship class weapons (AKA drone scale), fighters do much of the task already...

...Also, while a one-unit-fits-all sounds simple, it's not always ideal - game balance wise, what makes this less preferable over, say, a frigate?

'course, if you wanted to do a Mecha Mod, feel free.

Thing about fighters is... I don't think they can capture a planet by themselves. I might have been hit by a 'last enemy unit is off-screen and thus unkillable' error, but I could not capture a planet using nothing but fighters. Thus I think the fighters' "uses sky plane when in ground combat" disables them from being able to capture.

Besides, fighters can't shoot at space targets while still on Surface. "Mobile Suits" will have the option of sitting on the safety of the planet and shooting (immunity to point defence weapons), or deploying and flying out to kill ships which are bombarding the surface from beyond their max range (immunity to seeker weapons). But if you do launch units into space, that means they can't defend in the ground combat of that turn (or maybe they immediately drop back down, but they have a chance of being shot while up there, depleting your garrison).

Game balance is merely down to adjusting the variables appropriately. Frigates would of course be vastly preferable just because they can move in space much faster and can go through warp points. These "Mobile Suits" would e.g. have only 20% the space movement (though faster in-combat movement due to special after-burners). I've also had in mind re-defining how Supplies work such that ships would also have inherent advantages over "Mobile Suits".

Still... in reverse, if you had a lot of resources then carriers filled with these expensive units would be very powerful.

---Sig---
Playing Touhou games (Go to this Wiki if interested. No, nobody else is that good/insane as that replay). No rush for SE

I think, that something NOT capable do most of its functions should be MUCH more efective in its only one function. Thus logicaly there should be Imobile unlaunchable suites, imobile launchable working only in space, mobile unlaunchable, mobile launchable. So we have Sats, platforms, fighters and troops back. So imo merging them is bad idea. Maybe make something like corvete that can land and fight in planetary combat, can shoot from ground into space ... and is much worse in everything than specialist.

Seconded.

Oh aye, something that can do everything should be worse than specialists in each field. That's not an issue if all the specialists are removed. Now, it's "logical" to have all these specialists because that's more realistic and adds a lot of thought on how exactly you'll split your build time/resources and how you'll deploy them.

However, it's also "logical" to remove all these specialists from a game/mod design point of view - keep things simple for the AI and for general mod maintenance. You are still left with complexity (player designs the units -> specialisation of certain designs, player must decide whether to keep units on surface or launch them, etc) and being freed of constraints can put you into harder decisions.

---Sig---
Playing Touhou games (Go to this Wiki if interested. No, nobody else is that good/insane as that replay). No rush for SE

Thirded

Groovy Baby Yeah!

Sounds like Psieye just recruited themselves to making a mechamod.

But to allow specialization, you need to make special "ground-ground", "ground-spcace", "space-space" weapons (if possible via mounts). Without that Only choice would be wwhether to make them mobile (place or not place engines) and wwhether launch them (satelite) or not (WP combined with troop).

This means you do have specialisation thoughts - pretty standard that some weapons are 'ground only' or 'space only'. However you'd also have the "Energy/Matter" weapon types, as I intend to have a combat system where certain armour/shields are highly effective at only one of those weapon types.

I'm going to have to tidy up my Mod thoughts and post them all on the Wiki or something, aren't I?

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Playing Touhou games (Go to this Wiki if interested. No, nobody else is that good/insane as that replay). No rush for SE

I Agree. Ground Combat COULD be better. Why could'nt they make the ground Combat 1st person, and then do the same thing with Space Combat?
They should also change the top-down shipbuilding System to a 3D shipbuilding system

1st person like in TA:Spring would be nifty (even if ugly-looking and practically useless).

3D ship design would only make ship creation cumbersome, maybe in SE6 if we have 3D-like space combat?

Eh. You already have three layers of 'height'. Really, it's a pain in the butt enough as it is, though.

And making a MechaMod, at least a simple version, would not be hard at all - You simply have to copy+paste the closest equivalent from UnitTypes, change the values in it to what you require, do much the same for VehicleUnitSizes, and add the new 'Mecha' type to suitable targeting and components. Which is mostly going through hitting 'paste' onto the appropriate lines in Components.txt.

The game is wonderfully modifiable, like that.

Um, just to be certain... what are we seconding/thirding/fourthing? My posts or Reivers'?

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Playing Touhou games (Go to this Wiki if interested. No, nobody else is that good/insane as that replay). No rush for SE

Alpedar's.

I second BlueTemplar's post, the Alpedar's. This is the fifth post for the forthing of the third post

I hearby certify that the blue templars comment was technically accurate

Groovy Baby Yeah!

I agree with less but bigger units. HOI 2 and Operation Art of War concept should be used. We definitely don’t want something as complex as those two games, but use the Army/Division/Brigade units into SEV land game.

The armies sizes would depend on the technology level you’ve reached. Those armies would have infantries/tanks/artillery/AA/etc. as components. Each of those components would add to the army defensive, offensive, range and movement abilities.

Land components choices should be in line with weapon technologies used for current units. Ex: Infantries means DUC with a bonus in defence, tank would mean DUC with a bonus in offence, artillery means missiles, AA PD, etc… Several components can be added to the army to make it more efficient, like: better sensors, transport, medical brigade, engineers, etc.

A fighter unit should be translated in a jet fighter or bomber division once it lands on the planet. They will then follow the rules of engagement of the land campaigns. Those should have the best movement rates and should be targeted only by AA weapons and other fighters divisions.

Movement per months should be limited in such a way that several months are required to complete a land campaign. For bigger well defended planets, which should have a bigger land area, it could even take a few years. That needs to be carefully balanced.

Thank you,
Frank

To split the fighter, you could remove the 'takes place in ground combat' ability and make a specific ground attack fighter (squadron, wing and such) that only takes place during ground combat (give it the 'uses sky plane' ability).

Hmm. "Atmospheric fighters", anyone?

Not to sound like a broken record or anything, but... Already done in the Ground Combat mod.

In a sense, certainly - however, the Ground Combat mod still focuses on individual forces - soldiers, tanks, aircraft - while the current sugesstion is to be deploying craft at a squadron level, along with entire batillions of ground troops.

Further, the Ground Combat Mod uses contemporary weapons, or at least flavor, and while highly admirable in its own right, I've found it somewhat difficult to scale to the more 'traditional' SEV techs - meson rifles vs anti proton rifles, if you get my meaning. From what I recall (And I admit I may be wrong but I remember something about the way tech trees were done), it also alters a number of other aspects about the game, to emphasise the Ground Combat - which while again fine, makes it harder to port directly into another mod.

I'm currently working on a battillion-level mod, which is functionally working other than a bug report I need to file to MM about directional damage, and getting balance on the forces right, such that the new troop combat model involves entire battillion/regiments/whatever-you-want-to-call-'ems in action, while being as integratable as possible into Balancemod, and even stock if someone felt like fiddling the balance on the weapons to suit.

While I don't intend offense or anything, while Ground Combat Mod does what it does well, what we're talking about here is an entirely different approach to the troop combat in the game.

I like the concept, since there is a fundamental difference between the two types, ask any aerospace engineer and you'll get an ear full

Also gives a more specialized and varied approach: make the atmospheric fighters less expensive and carry a lighter payload (say just small and medium hull sizes about half that of space fighters).

Too bad you can't give environmental penalties/advantages to unit types based on presets. Would also give a better reason to think through how you would attack/defend during combat..