Bombardment Design

[Geoff the Medio]

When captured, we now reset the supply meter to zero and it has to regrow, same applies to defences and infrastructure. Why not production and research output?

That's easily doable. I'd like some Dilvish feedback for AI considerations, though...

[Dilvish]

From a player perspective I tend to think I would prefer that PP and RP just drop to some fractional value (a half, third, or fourth) rather than all the way to zero, but not having tried it yet I don't have a strong opinion. Something along these lines does seem like it would help slow down blitzkrieg, so I am in favor of experimenting with it.

That's easily doable. I'd like some Dilvish feedback for AI considerations, though...

I don't think that would be a significant problem.

The predicted future PP/RP stream the AI calculates as part of assessing invasions would be off until I get around to adjusting it. It will leave the AI somewhat overvaluing invasion opportunities relative to now, but perhaps that would be an improvement.

Such a change should also put an even greater premium on defending one's colonies & I'll try to get around to some AI adjustments on that front soon-ish, but I don't know how noticeable the difference will be.

[MatGB]

What about natives? I tend to view natives as 'joining' the empire instead of being conquered, and they get the advantages, etc. I know that's my personal head canon and not strictly what happens but should natives be set to zero as well as conquered enemy worlds?

But yeah, play around with things, if it's that simple a change then putting it back'd be a simple thing if it's horrible.

[Geoff the Medio]

Such a change should also put an even greater premium on defending one's colonies & I'll try to get around to some AI adjustments on that front soon-ish, but I don't know how noticeable the difference will be.

Do you want to commit the c++ changes at the same time, or should those go in now?

What about natives? I tend to view natives as 'joining' the empire instead of being conquered, and they get the advantages, etc. I know that's my personal head canon and not strictly what happens but should natives be set to zero as well as conquered enemy worlds?

I'm assuming that distinctions between voluntary joining vs. forced conquering of native planets will get some substance when happiness and species-empire opinions are functional.

[Dilvish]

Do you want to commit the c++ changes at the same time, or should those go in now?

I think it should be ok for the c++ changes to go in now.

[Geoff the Medio]

Done.

[Vezzra]

...planetary shields / troops interaction mechanic...

IMO too complicated. I'd keep shields and troops as two distinct, independent mechanics. If I understand correctly, the objective is to make invasions harder/more time consuming in order to counter the blitzkrieg effect. I think a reasonably easy way to achieve that would be to make it sufficiently harder to bring down planetary shields. The old 0.4 design pad contains some interesting, simple ideas in that regard. I quote the section dealing with planetary shields:

Planetary shields are extremely strong defensive weapons that can protect a planet for several game turns, and render it nearly invulnerable to damage during a space battle.

Shields are tracked with a planet shield meter. The current shield meter indicates the "power" or "health" of the planet's shields, and the max meter value indicates the max shield strength the planet can maintain. Shields regenerate over time, like other meters.

While a shield is in place, a planet's surface is protected from orbital bombardment by fleets of enemy ships. The planet's building and meter levels are unaffected by enemy fleets in a system while the planet's shield is functioning. However, non-fleet warfare, such as dropping ground troops or using biological or psychological/sociological attacks can penetrate a shield. These attacks can destroy a planet's defense or infrastructure even if the shield is up, necessitating having protection against them even if a planet is shielded.

Shields can be damaged by enemy fleets in their system, however a relatively large and powerful fleet is required to do this. Fleets have a shield damage rating, which is the amount of damage they do to each enemy planetary shield in their system each turn. If this rating is higher than a given shield's regeneration rate, the shield is depleted each turn, until it is disabled. If the fleet's shield damage rating is less than a shield's regeneration rate, the fleet cannot damage or full prevent regeneration of the shield.

Some ship parts or weapons may be specially designed to weaken enemy planetary shields more effectively than other weapons.

Exactly what determines a fleet's or ship's planetary shield damage rating is not yet determined. Likely it will depend primarily on the strengths of weapons on the ships. Certain weapon types (LR, SR, bombers) may be more important for shield-damaging than others (PD, interceptors). There may also be special ship parts that don't act as standard weapons during battles, but which give ships a powerful anti-shield effect.

Of course several of the concepts described here have been made obsolete by later design desicions (although I think this original design as a whole has been well thought out!), there are still quite some ideas in there we should consider keeping.

The ideas important for our discussion at hand are:

1.) Shields are sufficiently strong to withstand even a quite powerful attack fleet for several turns. A few even moderatly powerful ships shouldn't be able to knock down a planets shield in just one or two turns. To knock out a planetary shield quickly should require e really, really big and powerful fleet.

2.) Shields have a certain regeneration rate (well, that's actually already the case), and regenerate even when still in combat/under siege (not sure if that's the case currently). This regeneration rate should be high enough to require at least a moderatly strong fleet to overcome it at all. A few measly frigates shouldn't be able to even make a dent into the shield of a well developed colony on a large world. So, the bigger/better developed a colony is, and the more advanced shield techs the owning empire has, the stronger an attacking fleet needs to be to be able to overcome the shields regeneration and thus reduce the shield meter at all.

The values for total shield strength and shield regeneration need to be chosen well so that planetary shields don't get too overpowered. But they should be high enough that an attacker needs reasonably strong fleets to be able to pose any threat to a (of course sufficiently developed) colony at all, and that it takes him some time to knock out the shields and be able to drop his invasion troops.

If planetary shields are affected by standard ship weaponry or require ships with specialized bombardment parts is another, different discussion.

[Vezzra]

When captured, we now reset the supply meter to zero and it has to regrow, same applies to defences and infrastructure. Why not production and research output?

Well, I'm a bit late with my contributions to this idea (the respective changes have already been committed), but here are my two cents anyway: I'm a bit worried that this might render invading a planet too unattrative for an attacker once depopulating a planet by bombardement and recolonizing it becomes a viable alternative (which we are currently working on and will soon be done I think).

I mean, what's the point of invasion (in terms of game mechanics, not ethics of course)? Isn't it that I get posession of an enemy colony with it's assets maybe not perfectly, but at least partially intact so I don't have to build up everything from scratch? Opposed to bombardement, which destroys everything. The point of having different alternatives for taking over a enemy planet is that there are (preferrably very distinct) advantages and disadvantages connected with the different alternatives.

Bombardement: advantage: quick, cheap (less/no resources required); disadvantage: everything destroyed, colony needs to be build up from scratch.

Invasion: advantage: you get a already developed colony that at worst only needs partial rebuilding; disadvantage: takes more time, expensive (more resources required, currently in the form of troop ships that get consumed in the process).

With this change the advantage of an invasion is maybe not completely nullified, but not very far from that. If almost everything needs to be rebuild anyway, why bother with the hassles that come with an invasion, and instead just glass the planet? The only viable reason left why one would opt for invasion would be to aquire a race you don't have in your empire yet.

Well, it's already in, so let's see how it turns out.

[Geoff the Medio]

If almost everything needs to be rebuild anyway, why bother with the hassles that come with an invasion, and instead just glass the planet?

Capturing with troops has the advantage that the population remains intact, which presumably will substantially speed up the process of making a planet productive.

"glassing" is probably not the best term to use, as it suggests an extreme form of bombardment that renders a planet uninhabitable. Bombardment would just eliminate existing infrastructure and population, but the planet would remain recolonizable.

I've recently considered adding a "pollution" or "environmental damage" type meter to planets, which could be increased by bombardment in order to represent the extreme of doing so, to the point of glassing. It could also be increased by some types of resource output, and is certainly precedented by mechanics in various MOO games. I'm not sure how fun or interesting dealing with pollution is, though it could make for interesting situations where aggressive exploitation of one's own planets leads to them becoming useless, just as if they'd been bombarded by an enemy.

[MatGB]

It's a good point, but ATM you get all buildings and, crucially, all population, which means if you've got force/energy structures the planet will get back to at least a moderate output level faster than a brand new colony, which lest we forget costs a fortune, especially in the mid to late game with the current upkeep modifier.

I was quite surprised tho to see it simply implemented with almost no dissent, I'm not 100% sure it's a good idea either, it was meant as a suggestion, but it is worth trying to see if it tones down the speed of development and straightforward trashing of places.

I'm mulling over writing a strategy guide aimed mostly at new players, it would currently say something like "don't build that many colony ships, they're expensive, let the AI do that and capture them, you only need to colonise strategic locations or resources past the early game", and that's currently my main approach, when I try something else I get slowed down, the explore/expand phase is over very quickly once you know what you're doing, making colonisation more viable as a mid to late game strategy when it's currently a waste compared to troop ships sounds like a good thing to me.

re shields, the current implementation is close to spot on the design document for th emost part, the only thing stopping it really is the infrastructure penalty for shipyards and drydocks (do we still need that cost BTW? I'm all for using infrastructure for stuff but really dislike the 15 point penalty for a drydock given we've taken out one of the bonus techs). My current game is, for a change, on High planets as I haven't done that for ages, and I'd forgotten how lethal it is to picket fleets on taken but not yet captured systems while the troop ships come up, even completely trashed systems can damage small picket fleets, and I've lost at least two fleets this game on attacks to systems that had more planets than I'm used to. The planet setting really does make a difference to tactics as well as strategy, which is nice.

[Vezzra]

Capturing with troops has the advantage that the population remains intact, which presumably will substantially speed up the process of making a planet productive.

I'm not so sure about the "substantially" part. Of course it's better than having to build up population too, but if that's enough of a difference to make invasion worthwhile is the question. Well, we'll see.

"glassing" is probably not the best term to use, as it suggests an extreme form of bombardment that renders a planet uninhabitable.

Ok, not the best choice of words. What I meant was simply depopulation by bombardement.

[Vezzra]

It's a good point, but ATM you get all buildings and, crucially, all population, which means if you've got force/energy structures the planet will get back to at least a moderate output level faster than a brand new colony, which lest we forget costs a fortune, especially in the mid to late game with the current upkeep modifier.

Does the Force Energy Structures tech really work like its description implies? I've been under the impression that this is actually a broken/not working as intended feature.

...the explore/expand phase is over very quickly once you know what you're doing, making colonisation more viable as a mid to late game strategy when it's currently a waste compared to troop ships sounds like a good thing to me.

Well, a simple solution for that would be (as has been already suggested) to make troop ships substantially more expensive.

re shields, the current implementation is close to spot on the design document for th emost part,

Is it? I'd say the basic mechanics are there (although I'm not sure if shields really do regenerate during combat), but the numbers IMO aren't. You can knock down planetary shields far too quickly and easily (otherwise we wouldn't be discussing the blitzkrieg issue).

[MatGB]

I don't know for certain force energy works exacly as intended, but it definitely works—indeed one of the recent test releases had one of Cami's patches applying the boost/malus twice, and i've checked the numbers over time. One thing current and noticeable is that displayed production doesn't always match up to what it should be each turn, especially noticeable with a Megalith, on the turn it's built it applies fine, but if you change focus the old values stay a turn, if you change back the next turn they'll still be on the old setting (I try to avoid building that thing on stargate planets but sometimes have no choice).

The problem with boosting shields massively more is planetary defences can be lethal to a fleet action, it can take turns to knock down shields if you've a tough enough fleet but don't send in overwhelming odds, the unshielded AI asteroid hulls do this sometimes. But if there's an enemy fleet around a well defended system and you're attacking you need a massive assault fleet and the planetary defences get hit a lot in that as well.

OTOH, I've happily had defences hold off experimentor black kraken and similar for several turns, if the attack fleet is tough but not overwhelming they do work as intended from my observations.

Re troop pod costs, no oar in that fight, I don't care but it would change the way you calculate costs &c. I do think that the current fleet upkeep modifier for colony pods (*6) is high, especially true for outposts which become almost pointless in the mid to late game. It's not something I push for, I do soemtimes change it when I want to force myself to not just zerg rush and build up instead, but it works as intended. It's just that blitzkrieging is so effective as a tactic that colonies become a waste of points once you've got the tech to build decent warships. Which is before turn 50 normally.

ETA: a thought, troop pods subject to the colony upkeep modifier not the ship upkeep modifier?

[Dilvish]

why bother with the hassles that come with an invasion, and instead just glass the planet?

Vezzra's bloodthirsty side shows itself once again.

[Vezzra]

ETA: a thought, troop pods subject to the colony upkeep modifier not the ship upkeep modifier?

I'd rather remove the colony upkeep modifier from the colony/outpost module parts.