let planets be on 'Aggressive' stance

[Dilvish]

Currently, planets are all effectively permanently on 'Passive stance. I know it bothers me and the AIs that to ensure a planet defends against non-aggressive intruders you have to put some kind of aggressive ship of your own in-system, and by now I've read multiple times about it bothering other folks too. It seems to me that we should just add a passive/aggressive setting for planets like we have for ships. The only argument I recall against it was something about systems being big and planets small, but now that is seeming like an invalid 'realism' argument to me.

[MatGB]

Yes please.

But...

While I'd love for my planetary defences to engage everything that turns up, I also quite like sending scouts through enemy territory. Meh, that's why we have stealth parts, OK, niggling objectiong resolved mid sentence.

[Geoff the Medio]

...something about systems being big and planets small, but now that is seeming like an invalid 'realism' argument to me.

The argument was that planets are more-or-less fixed in place, and ships that want to be passive can stay out of their range in-system, whereas other ships could move to intercept.

I'd rather not have an extra per-planet UI setting... but perhaps a toggle at the top of the sidepanel for the system, whenever there is an outpost or planet owned by the player's empire?

[Dilvish]

I'd rather not have an extra per-planet UI setting... but perhaps a toggle at the top of the sidepanel for the system, whenever there is an outpost or planet owned by the player's empire?

Seems like a reasonable enough idea, though the tooltip instruction might be a bit awkward (either a bit wordy to explicitly account for the possibility of other empires owning planets in-system that the setting does apply to, or trim but with that important aspect being only implicit). I would probably start off with trim and implicit.

[em3]

Or maybe setting focus to "Defence" would make the planet... offensive? I mean, the planet would use it resources to hunt down and engage any enemy ships in the system.

[Dilvish]

Or maybe setting focus to "Defence" would make the planet... offensive? I mean, the planet would use it resources to hunt down and engage any enemy ships in the system.

I don't think a planet should have to be devoted to defense focus to be aggressive. Have that be some sort of either-or check in addition to the system setting might be reasonable to consider, but seems like a complication without enough benefit to me.

[biza]

hi, maybe it should be made via diplomatic options per "enemy" not per planet?

1. Make planets always to fight peaceful ships except when new option eg."propose intelligence agreement" is selected

or 2. Leave as it is with new option eg. "total war" or "always engage"

That way MatGB can send scouts through enemy territory, and I can destroy their scouts

Cheers!

[MatGB]

Or maybe setting focus to "Defence" would make the planet... offensive? I mean, the planet would use it resources to hunt down and engage any enemy ships in the system.

I don't think a planet should have to be devoted to defense focus to be aggressive. Have that be some sort of either-or check in addition to the system setting might be reasonable to consider, but seems like a complication without enough benefit to me.

I concur, but I do think a planet on defence focus should be aggressive, regardless of other changes.

[Dilvish]

I concur, but I do think a planet on defence focus should be aggressive, regardless of other changes.

That would be a reasonable choice, sure, but it also seems reasonable to me to let planets go on defense/protection focus without necessarily making them aggressive. A key situation would be a stealthed planet-- it seems reasonable that the player could want it to stay passive/stealthed but still be on Protection focus.

It also raises a number of questions about handling -- would it toggle the entire system to aggressive, or just that planet? When the planet drops defensive mode, would that do anything to the system setting? If the two are not tied together, then you have situations where the system setting says one thing but the planet setting forces another, which could be a bit confusing (could be reasonable, but still potentially confusing).

Altogether, it just seems that if we are going to have a system aggression setting then it is a bit better to simply rely on that system setting rather than having this other parallel/redundant/possible-conflicting setting also. Having an extra setting like that also seems it would potentially add a fair bit to the coding nuisance.

[Morlic]

I think a system setting makes much more sense. It is my understanding that if I choose one fleet to be aggressive, the other fleets in the systems still would be in combat even if set on passive. The same should hold for planets, I suppose? Then choosing individual planet settings would not make much sense to me.

A possible approach towards the Defense focus is that as soon as you select the Defense focus, your system setting is also set to aggressive. However, this is only for convenience reasons and may be manually overriden simply by changing the system aggression setting again which would ultimately be the only setting to matter.