Bockaded Systems

For what's not in 'Top Priority Game Design'. Post your ideas, visions, suggestions for the game, rules, modifications, etc.

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Kharagh
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Bockaded Systems

#1 Post by Kharagh »

Hi All,

while browsing through the forums I asked myself if blockaded systems are totally blockaded or is there a chance to break through? Has this topic ever been discussed? I didn't find anything about it.

My idea would be to that you would need a certain number of ships (depending on planet size/or system size) to block a planet/or system completely.
If you have less than this amout of ships, the planet will only be blocked to a certain extent. Enemy ships will have a x%-chance to break through your blockade, thus delivering needed goods/troops, etc to the planet.

The enemy could then decide if the chance to get trough is good enough to risk loosing his ships.
If the ship gets cought, it will be engeged by a calculated random amount of your ships. The enemy now can either try to fight (if he has combat ships with him) or try to flee from combat.

We could add a patrol setting for ships over a hostile planet, which will greatly increase the chance of blocking off the planet completetly, but will disperse the fleet and so make it more vulnerable to massiv attacks.

This way blockaded planets/systems will have higher chance of either holding out longer or being freed by a massiv attack, if the blockading party makes the wrong decision.

I hope all this hasn't already been discussed in another thread.

Please tell me your thoughts about it.

Greets,

Kharagh

noelte
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#2 Post by noelte »

As i remember it wasn't already discussed. I can understand how you feel about blockaded systems, but to me there shouldn't be any break throughs. This way you would be forced to react quickly and it would also be an result of your previews strategic misplanings.
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Kharagh
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#3 Post by Kharagh »

The player would have to react quickly in any case. Even if he sent loads of freighters this would have no big impact on the siege of the system. It would merely enable him to keep his population from starving during that time.

Most planets won't be sieged anyway as the attackers will either just bomb the planet to dust or mount a ground attack.

It just adds one more stategic choice, if the attacking player wants to prepare to beat off a full scale rescue attack for the whole planet or if he wants to disperse his troops to be able to stop incoming freighters better and thus starve out the population.

guiguibaah
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blockaded systems

#4 Post by guiguibaah »

What would be interesting is if the planet that is blockaded (or the system) could still have a ground war going on within in. You run into enemy territory with 30 troop ships aka Starship troopers. They rush to the planet - on route you lose 10 to planetary defences. They drop their assault pods and retreat, loosing another 4 to planetary defences.

Of the assault pods (5 per troopship) that were launched (200) 50 are destroyed by planetary defences, leaving 150 pods of troops to land upon the surface.

Then the enemy comes in and blockades the system. But he has no ground troops to send to aid the battle on the planet's surface. 2 turns later WOOPS your ground troops have succesfully taken over the planet, including the defences, and now they bring them to bear on the blockade fleet.


* * *


Or, perhaps an anti-blockade weapon. A special ship or device that can be fired a few systems away and does lots of damage to massed fleets. A bit like mine fields in Moo2, but launchable to other systems.
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Daveybaby
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#5 Post by Daveybaby »

And of course that system would also work for an attacker landing troops on a system with space based defences still in place. Which is a good thing.

Moo1 did something like this - the percentage of ships that get through to land troops on a planet is directly proportional to the size (and combat effectiveness) of the fleet defending/blockading the system. Moo1 only had one planet per system, but it shouldnt be difficult to factor in multiple planets - i.e. it would naturally be easier to defend/blockade a system with one (populated) planet than one with many, because you can concentrate your ships in one place.
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Kharagh
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#6 Post by Kharagh »

In a multiplanet system you could still choose if you wanted to defend all planets or only some of them. Of course the bigger the fleet the bigger the chance of blocking all incoming ships would be.

I again would like to advocate my giving ships in hostile space a patrol option, which would increase the chance of blocking incoming enemy ships, at the cost of dispersing your ships around the system/planet and thus making them more vulnerable for large scale attacks.

Patrolling ships could also have a small chance (depending on sensor equipment) of detecting incoming ships early and giving the defending fleet a small advantage in battle, perhaps enabling it to mount an ambush.

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