Author Topic: Cold War Comments Thread  (Read 71917 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Offline Shinanygnz

  • Lieutenant
  • *******
  • S
  • Posts: 194
  • Thanked: 6 times
Re: Cold War Comments Thread
« Reply #330 on: February 11, 2021, 11:26:43 AM »
Can fighters be sent through jump points unaccompanied or do they need to be launched from their carriers after transit?
Also does the limit on jump point transits apply in both directions?
I'm thinking in context of a jump point assault.

Fighters have to be carried through a JP on a carrier, and can't launch on the turn of transit.  Gunboats (which arrive later) can self-transit, as can larger small craft like pinnaces.
In Alkelda Dawn, jump carrier racks were introduced which allow ships to carry other ships through.  Again, no launching on turn of transit.
 
The following users thanked this post: Migi

Offline Hawkeye

  • Silver Supporter
  • Vice Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 1059
  • Thanked: 5 times
  • Silver Supporter Silver Supporter : Support the forums with a Silver subscription
    2021 Supporter 2021 Supporter : Donate for 2021
    2022 Supporter 2022 Supporter : Donate for 2022
    2023 Supporter 2023 Supporter : Donate for 2023
Re: Cold War Comments Thread
« Reply #331 on: February 11, 2021, 12:50:46 PM »
Maybe I can clarify those two contradicting replies :)

In Aurora, fighters are just small ships and can, in fact, jump through a warp-point
In Starfire, however, fighters _can't_ transit through a warp-point.

Hope that helps.
Ralph Hoenig, Germany
 
The following users thanked this post: Migi

Offline Andrew

  • Registered
  • Commodore
  • **********
  • Posts: 666
  • Thanked: 111 times
Re: Cold War Comments Thread
« Reply #332 on: February 11, 2021, 01:01:03 PM »
No Fighter are completely unnable to transit a WP and a Carrier cannot launch on the turn of Transit. WP assault is a weakness of carrier fleets, even worse if they want anti-matter weapons on the fighters if they do then the carrier dies as soon as a hanger bay is damaged.
Pinnaces a larger small craft can transit , and later they can be armed, even later Gunboats carried on external ship racks can transit wp. Other than that it is ships and later missile pods for WP assaults.
Ships can transit in both directions with no effect but a counter assault is usually suicide as the rest of the attacking fleet is formed up onthe WP and all of them are active so they shoot the counter attackers to pieces it is almost always better to keep your activated ships on the defensive side where they can shoot up confused attackers.

This is of course Starfire and Aurore is completely different
 

Online Jorgen_CAB

  • Admiral of the Fleet
  • ***********
  • J
  • Posts: 2822
  • Thanked: 673 times
Re: Cold War Comments Thread
« Reply #333 on: February 11, 2021, 02:08:41 PM »
Maybe I can clarify those two contradicting replies :)

In Aurora, fighters are just small ships and can, in fact, jump through a warp-point
In Starfire, however, fighters _can't_ transit through a warp-point.

Hope that helps.

Yes... sorry... missed that it was in for a Starfire thread... my bad...   ;)
 

Offline StarshipCactus

  • Lt. Commander
  • ********
  • S
  • Posts: 261
  • Thanked: 85 times
Re: Cold War Comments Thread
« Reply #334 on: February 13, 2021, 05:44:41 PM »
The last thing humanity needs is a swift end to the Mintek. They are the only thing keeping the D'Bringi from steamrolling the Colonial Union. Hopefully the Mintek have rebuilt their mobile fleet and researched carriers.
 

Offline Migi

  • Captain
  • **********
  • Posts: 465
  • Thanked: 172 times
Re: Cold War Comments Thread
« Reply #335 on: February 14, 2021, 04:47:08 PM »
From previous comments I gathered that fighters are good in Starfire because they can strike from out of range of other weapons (much like in WW2 you can destroy the enemy without risking damage to your own fleet).
Does that mean that fighters move in strategic movement, or do they only move in tactical movement?

Do fighters have a fixed armament, and can they carry missiles?
How fast are fighters relative to corvettes?

My understanding (from the starfire demo PDF I found) is that larger ships use a lower % of their total mass for engines, does that mean that corvettes as carriers are inefficient?
 

Offline Andrew

  • Registered
  • Commodore
  • **********
  • Posts: 666
  • Thanked: 111 times
Re: Cold War Comments Thread
« Reply #336 on: February 14, 2021, 06:38:22 PM »
Exactly what weapons fighters carry depends on tech level.
Inititally they carry rockets which are short range but do a fair amount of damage to a ship, firing them often means being shot at by a ships point defense, but if you can arrange to have ships firing missiles at the same time then the ship has a choice defend against missiles or shoot at fighters. Fighter Rockets cannot be intercepted. Fighters can also carry guns which are useless against ships but deadly to other small craft, this makes them the best defense against fighters.
Later fighters get missiles which do less damage but can fire from a range which makes it hard to shoot at the fighter but the small salvo size means that most ships can shoot down the missiles and take little damage , and laser packs which can effectivly shoot at ships repeatedly.

They really cannot move on a strategic scale as their life support is good for hours however they can launch from far beyond shipboard weapon range. They also can't see very far so they until figher sensor packs are develeped need a ship with long range sensors to guide them in.
Corvette carriers are not particularly effective carriers typically 6 fighters on a 16 hs hull while a 30hs CVE carries 12-18. But the CT(V) is faster than any other carrier and so can move in launch its fighters and guarantee not to get caught by enemy ships in an open space battle, they are also strategically fast, But if someone manages to attack them they are defenseless and die, this usually involves an ambush at a WP or high tech fast fighters. Kurts Pheonix campaign featured them being uses very effectively by one race until the opposition came up with counters
 
The following users thanked this post: Black, Migi

Offline Kurt (OP)

  • Moderator
  • Vice Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 1765
  • Thanked: 3389 times
  • 2021 Supporter 2021 Supporter : Donate for 2021
    Gold Supporter Gold Supporter : Support the forums with a Gold subscription
    2022 Supporter 2022 Supporter : Donate for 2022
    2023 Supporter 2023 Supporter : Donate for 2023
Re: Cold War Comments Thread
« Reply #337 on: February 15, 2021, 08:36:03 AM »
Exactly what weapons fighters carry depends on tech level.
Inititally they carry rockets which are short range but do a fair amount of damage to a ship, firing them often means being shot at by a ships point defense, but if you can arrange to have ships firing missiles at the same time then the ship has a choice defend against missiles or shoot at fighters. Fighter Rockets cannot be intercepted. Fighters can also carry guns which are useless against ships but deadly to other small craft, this makes them the best defense against fighters.
Later fighters get missiles which do less damage but can fire from a range which makes it hard to shoot at the fighter but the small salvo size means that most ships can shoot down the missiles and take little damage , and laser packs which can effectivly shoot at ships repeatedly.

They really cannot move on a strategic scale as their life support is good for hours however they can launch from far beyond shipboard weapon range. They also can't see very far so they until figher sensor packs are develeped need a ship with long range sensors to guide them in.
Corvette carriers are not particularly effective carriers typically 6 fighters on a 16 hs hull while a 30hs CVE carries 12-18. But the CT(V) is faster than any other carrier and so can move in launch its fighters and guarantee not to get caught by enemy ships in an open space battle, they are also strategically fast, But if someone manages to attack them they are defenseless and die, this usually involves an ambush at a WP or high tech fast fighters. Kurts Pheonix campaign featured them being uses very effectively by one race until the opposition came up with counters

That's a pretty good summary of the situation.  For those that don't know, I'll give a little bit more basic info:

Starfire has dedicated carrier hulls that are more expensive to build than comparable warship hulls, but, fighter bays mounted on non-carrier hulls cost three times as much to build and maintain.  As the smallest carrier hull is a CVE, which is destroyer sized, this means that while CT(V)'s are possible, and they have advantages, they are relatively costly to build on a per-fighter-carried basis. 

As you note, one of my aggressor races in the Phoenix Campaign used CT(V)'s exclusively, with a fair amount of success.  The Axons were a race that preferred swarm fleets prior to the introduction of fighters, and they just converted their corvettes to corvette-carriers when fighter tech became available.  Their corvette-carrier fleets were very effective for a time, but they suffered from the same problems that most swarm fleets have - a marked inability to effectively attack defended warp points and the tendency to go up in flames if they meet a superior force, with little to show for their sacrifice.  To balance that they were fast, and anyone could construct large amounts of corvettes fairly easily, so losses could be replaced. 

The 1st gen fighter, the F0, is only slightly faster than a corvette unloaded, and has the same speed as a corvette when fully loaded.  The F0 has a round trip range of 120 light seconds.  By way of comparison, the longest ranged ship-borne weapon at that tech level is the capital missile with a 7.5 light second range.  The rockets the fighters are equipped with can hit their targets out to 2 hexes (.5 light seconds), but are most effective at point blank range.  As you note, the most effective defense against fighters is other fighters.  A ship's best defense against fighters at HT-8 or lower is point defense, and lots of it.  Unfortunately, most fleets will have actually reduced the amount of point defense mounted on their ships once they reach HT-7 because of the introduction of datalinked point defense.  Datalinked point defense allows all of the ships within a datagroup to join their point defense together to defend against incoming missile salvoes.  This tends to result in the reduction in the overall amount of point defense per ship, because of the effective increase in point defense available to the datagroup. 

The F0 is not an overwhelming tech development in an of itself.  It does give its user a large advantage, in that it can strike from beyond the range at which the enemy can respond, if they don't also have fighters.  They can be effective, particularly against unprepared enemies who will tend to misidentify them as small craft carrying suicide nuclear charges, if they've never encountered fighters before.  They are an attrition weapon, in that the user can afford to lose large numbers of them while eliminating enemy ships, as they are relatively cheap and quick to build, making them easy to replace. 

Kurt
 
The following users thanked this post: Black, Migi

Offline Kurt (OP)

  • Moderator
  • Vice Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 1765
  • Thanked: 3389 times
  • 2021 Supporter 2021 Supporter : Donate for 2021
    Gold Supporter Gold Supporter : Support the forums with a Gold subscription
    2022 Supporter 2022 Supporter : Donate for 2022
    2023 Supporter 2023 Supporter : Donate for 2023
Cold War: A Question
« Reply #338 on: February 21, 2021, 11:15:18 AM »
I am very dissatisfied with the ground combat system I’ve been using for the Cold War campaign.  I’ve been using the planetary conquest and control rules from Galactic Starfire because I like those more than the rules from 3rdR, but they have some big gaps that I find annoying.  The system from Galactic Starfire is very generic and general, which I understand given the focus is on space combat, but it is unsatisfying for several reasons:

1.   The Galactic Starfire rules allow invasion forces to be easily raised and disbanded, meaning that very little planning in their use is needed.  The only limitation on raising the ground forces is the size of the population the force is being built at, and because there is no drawback to spreading the raising of the force across many populations there is essentially no limitation.  You can literally go from having no standing army to having an immense invasion force overnight, and that’s just not realistic. 
2.   The ground forces used are very generic, denoted by “Qv” and “H”, to indicate personnel and equipment.  As I said above, I get this, as Starfire is a space combat game, and time put into the ground combat component would detract from that.  Still, I find this uninteresting and uninspiring. 
3.   Combat strength only takes into account the relative tech levels of those involved, as well as some strategic factors, like racial stats and racial crew grades.  But because the invasion forces themselves use the racial crew grade, not their own crew grade, there is no incentive in keeping them around once they’ve served their purpose.  They become liabilities once they’ve completed their immediate mission, as they don’t earn experience and continue to consume resources.  This encourages the player to disband invasion forces once they’ve completed their mission, as there is no upside to keeping them around.  This eases record-keeping, which was likely the reason for this, but is very unrealistic. 

The above reasons make the ground combat system I’m using very numerically deterministic.  The invader merely has to make a basic calculation of the Qv/H needed, then ship them to where they are required.  No other planning is required, and literally no invasion preparation time is need, aside from the time it takes to ship the invasion forces to where they are needed. 

Therefore, I am working on something different.  Several wars are kicking off in the Cold War universe, and I’d kind of like to try something different.  I’m not sure what I’m going to do, though.  I’ve thought about using rules for other games, but finding something that simulates the correct scale is difficult.  After all, we are talking about planetary conquest.  I’ve played around with using the ground combat rules from GDW’s Fifth Frontier Wars, as they are the correct scale, and are abstract enough to use in a reasonable amount of time, but I’m not sure they’ve got the flavor I want.   

In any case, if anyone has any thoughts or suggestions, I’m interested in hearing them.  I’ve considered this question before, and ultimately just decided to stick with the Galactic Starfire system just because its easiest. 
 
The following users thanked this post: StarshipCactus

Offline misanthropope

  • Lt. Commander
  • ********
  • m
  • Posts: 273
  • Thanked: 73 times
Re: Cold War Comments Thread
« Reply #339 on: February 21, 2021, 04:04:21 PM »
uh, there was no question in there :)

it wouldn't be hard to just reduce the quantity of Qv that could be raised, especially on medium bodies. also,  one of the weird things about gsf ground combat is that your primary cost is shipping.  if you quadrupled the cost of Qv while doubling their strength, you would for starters reduce the burden of feeding an army in peacetime, and also your surviving troops would represent a potential asset insofar as reuse/recycle becomes a lot less expensive than building one from scratch.

i assert that you wouldn't generally keep a large fleet deployed just to build up their grade- i mean if you didn't have an important security role for them at the time.  army is a lot less vital to avoiding Sudden Death Surprise than navy, so honestly just-in-time army construction is always going to be pursued as far as possible by any rational player, unless you are make troop grade way more important, idk, a factor of 1.5 or 2 for each grade level?  that scale of effect would be enough to make me explore whether it makes sense to build and maintain a large peacetime ground force- i'm kind of tight with my money but also extremely conquest oriented.

given that the whole galaxy is grinding along without any happy little wars because everybody feels too poor, i think you want to be careful not to escalate the costs of ground action very much.
 

Offline Kurt (OP)

  • Moderator
  • Vice Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 1765
  • Thanked: 3389 times
  • 2021 Supporter 2021 Supporter : Donate for 2021
    Gold Supporter Gold Supporter : Support the forums with a Gold subscription
    2022 Supporter 2022 Supporter : Donate for 2022
    2023 Supporter 2023 Supporter : Donate for 2023
Re: Cold War Comments Thread
« Reply #340 on: February 21, 2021, 05:25:45 PM »
uh, there was no question in there :)

it wouldn't be hard to just reduce the quantity of Qv that could be raised, especially on medium bodies. also,  one of the weird things about gsf ground combat is that your primary cost is shipping.  if you quadrupled the cost of Qv while doubling their strength, you would for starters reduce the burden of feeding an army in peacetime, and also your surviving troops would represent a potential asset insofar as reuse/recycle becomes a lot less expensive than building one from scratch.

i assert that you wouldn't generally keep a large fleet deployed just to build up their grade- i mean if you didn't have an important security role for them at the time.  army is a lot less vital to avoiding Sudden Death Surprise than navy, so honestly just-in-time army construction is always going to be pursued as far as possible by any rational player, unless you are make troop grade way more important, idk, a factor of 1.5 or 2 for each grade level?  that scale of effect would be enough to make me explore whether it makes sense to build and maintain a large peacetime ground force- i'm kind of tight with my money but also extremely conquest oriented.

given that the whole galaxy is grinding along without any happy little wars because everybody feels too poor, i think you want to be careful not to escalate the costs of ground action very much.

I guess I was asking more for thoughts on possible ground combat systems other people have used.  I thought about just changing the time required to raise ground troops to six months, and to give them crew grades similar to ships.  This would require foresight and planning if you want to go conquering, but you wouldn't need to raise troops to defend, unless you wanted to.  So in peace time you could get away with a small army that were your best troops, and then when war threatened you could build up your armies.  That would be the easiest route, as it would retain the current system.  I've experimented over the years with various things, but none caught my fancy. 

Having said all of that, money is very tight in the Cold War universe.  I've gone past Turn 150 and none of the races in the game have come close to achieving 50,000 MCr's per month in income, although the D'Bringi Alliance's total income comfortably exceeds that.  In the Phoenix Campaign, a race with 50,000 income wouldn't have registered as a player on the galactic scene.  The largest alliance in the game, the ASR, at turn 145 had an income of 1.2 million MCr's.  The 2nd Empire of Man had an income of just over a million.  Even the Rogen alliance, which was a small group of races that had banded together to fight the bugs, had an income of 219,000 MCr's! 

I do like how, even with the major races in the Cold War universe, I've been forced to make real decisions by the scarcity of money.  None of my races have been able to thoughtlessly develop every tech system at every tech level.  Some of the smaller races have had to make painful decisions about what tech to develop, because of their limited funds.  I like that, it forces meaningful choices on the various races, and will, over time, emphasize tech differences.  For example, several races have forgone the development of capital force beams, because they invested in HET lasers at a previous tech level, and refitted their ships to use those weapons.  The races are finding it difficult to justify constant refitting of their ships, every time a new tech comes along. 

All of this gives the game a different feel.  And, the Cold War Campaign has progressed past the point at which the Phoenix Campaign became unplayable.  While it is taking more time to complete each turn than it did in the past, it hasn't come close to being unplayable.  I take that as a good sign. 

Kurt
 

Offline Migi

  • Captain
  • **********
  • Posts: 465
  • Thanked: 172 times
Re: Cold War Comments Thread
« Reply #341 on: February 22, 2021, 12:15:52 PM »
I started writing a lengthy explanation of how armies work in Stellaris (at least as far as I remember and on the last iteration I played) because it actually has some of the same issues, fleet engagements are key and ground wars are kind of unglamorous but necessary.
However that turned out to be very long and I suspect it has far too many mechanics to fit into Starfire, unless you're expecting to write a whole game engine to handle it. I seem to have written plenty without including it. :P

Noting in advance that I don't know the rules for Starfire or your ability to implement big changes my proposals:
1) Raising large armies inherently takes a long time, and an army which is attempting to assault a planet needs to be large. You need drill sergeants to get recruits through basic training, you need uniforms for the recruits, you need equipment for the recruits to train with and you need equipment for each finished unit. (Side note I skimmed this article about the US mobilization in WW1 which states "the materiel side of mobilization was the most costly, complex, and time consuming." https://history.army.mil/documents/mobpam.htm)
From your post I gather that Starfire only has 1 size of army unit, and it is only used for assault. On this basis there should be limited ability to train armies which can invade other planets.
Aurora has Ground Force Training Facilities which represents the training and equipment production facilities needed to train armies. They are big, expensive and take a lot of population (the same as a research facility). They can only build 1 army at a time so they also limit the rate at which you can build up your forces.
I don't know what your options are for adding new structures to Starfire or RPing the cost of building and maintaining them.

1a) Planets should need a specific building in order to train assault armies.
1b) That building should be relatively expensive and have an upkeep.
1c) The number of simultaneous armies trained should be limited by the number of buildings (without knowing how many armies are in a typical Starfire invasion this might be 1:1 or 10:1)
1d) (optional) Training additional armies over the normal training capacity should cost exponentially more, eg 2x cost for 1 more than capacity, 4x cost for the 2nd etc. This reflects the cost of overworking the facilities but still provides flexibility in emergencies.

2) What ability do you have to add extra unit types to Starfire?

3) Training takes time and a quickly trained army will be much less effective than an army with lots of training. An army can be deployed early with less training than desired but this impairs its ability to perform. Additionally training in 'the real world' outside of boot camp is probably more valuable than the ability to run faster through an obstacle course.
Racial stats should represent the maximum performance for an army (it sounds like special forces are too small to be represented, they would be the logical exception to a limit).

3a) The training level of the army should be reflected in the time it takes to raise the army. An army should have 1 grade per month (or other sensible timeline) it spends being raised, up to the maximum of the racial crew grade. This allows armies to be raised quickly but makes them much less effective than armies raised in advance.
3b) It may be better to have non linear returns on investment depending on how large scale of possible grades are and how much benefit you gain from each grade. For example maybe the first grade should take 2 months of training and every grade after should take 3 months.
3c) Alternative: Armies are deployed as soon as they have 1 grade. Once deployed they gain extra grades up to the racial crew grade maximum by conducting field exercises. This should takes a certain amount of time per grade and cost money to perform.


3d) Regarding your point about disbanding armies once they've conquered the target.
Once you have possession of the target planet you need some way of keeping it under control, which is presumably provided by the conquering armies initially and then they get swapped for lower quality garrison troops.
Could you make assault armies explicitly single use and have them priced on that basis?
Any assault army which is expended in this way can generate something like an Aurora Cadre and give a discount or bonus when training another army, either taking less time to train or gaining grades faster during training.
On the other hand maybe taking some or all of these steps will make the armies sufficiently valuable that they will be worth keeping.
 

Offline Kurt (OP)

  • Moderator
  • Vice Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 1765
  • Thanked: 3389 times
  • 2021 Supporter 2021 Supporter : Donate for 2021
    Gold Supporter Gold Supporter : Support the forums with a Gold subscription
    2022 Supporter 2022 Supporter : Donate for 2022
    2023 Supporter 2023 Supporter : Donate for 2023
Re: Cold War Comments Thread
« Reply #342 on: March 03, 2021, 09:54:54 AM »
Sorry about this, Migi, I missed your post somehow. 

I started writing a lengthy explanation of how armies work in Stellaris (at least as far as I remember and on the last iteration I played) because it actually has some of the same issues, fleet engagements are key and ground wars are kind of unglamorous but necessary.
However that turned out to be very long and I suspect it has far too many mechanics to fit into Starfire, unless you're expecting to write a whole game engine to handle it. I seem to have written plenty without including it. :P

Noting in advance that I don't know the rules for Starfire or your ability to implement big changes my proposals:
1) Raising large armies inherently takes a long time, and an army which is attempting to assault a planet needs to be large. You need drill sergeants to get recruits through basic training, you need uniforms for the recruits, you need equipment for the recruits to train with and you need equipment for each finished unit. (Side note I skimmed this article about the US mobilization in WW1 which states "the materiel side of mobilization was the most costly, complex, and time consuming." https://history.army.mil/documents/mobpam.htm)
From your post I gather that Starfire only has 1 size of army unit, and it is only used for assault. On this basis there should be limited ability to train armies which can invade other planets.
Aurora has Ground Force Training Facilities which represents the training and equipment production facilities needed to train armies. They are big, expensive and take a lot of population (the same as a research facility). They can only build 1 army at a time so they also limit the rate at which you can build up your forces.
I don't know what your options are for adding new structures to Starfire or RPing the cost of building and maintaining them.

1a) Planets should need a specific building in order to train assault armies.
1b) That building should be relatively expensive and have an upkeep.
1c) The number of simultaneous armies trained should be limited by the number of buildings (without knowing how many armies are in a typical Starfire invasion this might be 1:1 or 10:1)
1d) (optional) Training additional armies over the normal training capacity should cost exponentially more, eg 2x cost for 1 more than capacity, 4x cost for the 2nd etc. This reflects the cost of overworking the facilities but still provides flexibility in emergencies.

2) What ability do you have to add extra unit types to Starfire?

Starfire has covered ground combat only in a placeholder sort of way, in my opinion.  Therefore, anything I add will fit in, however, anything I add will have to be done outside of Starfire Assistant.  I already handle ground combat and occupation with spreadsheets, so that isn't a big deal. 

Quote
3) Training takes time and a quickly trained army will be much less effective than an army with lots of training. An army can be deployed early with less training than desired but this impairs its ability to perform. Additionally training in 'the real world' outside of boot camp is probably more valuable than the ability to run faster through an obstacle course.
Racial stats should represent the maximum performance for an army (it sounds like special forces are too small to be represented, they would be the logical exception to a limit).

3a) The training level of the army should be reflected in the time it takes to raise the army. An army should have 1 grade per month (or other sensible timeline) it spends being raised, up to the maximum of the racial crew grade. This allows armies to be raised quickly but makes them much less effective than armies raised in advance.
3b) It may be better to have non linear returns on investment depending on how large scale of possible grades are and how much benefit you gain from each grade. For example maybe the first grade should take 2 months of training and every grade after should take 3 months.
3c) Alternative: Armies are deployed as soon as they have 1 grade. Once deployed they gain extra grades up to the racial crew grade maximum by conducting field exercises. This should takes a certain amount of time per grade and cost money to perform.


3d) Regarding your point about disbanding armies once they've conquered the target.
Once you have possession of the target planet you need some way of keeping it under control, which is presumably provided by the conquering armies initially and then they get swapped for lower quality garrison troops.
Could you make assault armies explicitly single use and have them priced on that basis?
Any assault army which is expended in this way can generate something like an Aurora Cadre and give a discount or bonus when training another army, either taking less time to train or gaining grades faster during training.
On the other hand maybe taking some or all of these steps will make the armies sufficiently valuable that they will be worth keeping.

You make some good points.  One of the issues with ground warfare in Starfire is trying to come up with the concept of what ground warfare in such an environment would be.  After all, nearly every race in the game fields ships that can depopulate worlds, even heavily populated worlds, with the weaponry they commonly carry - i.e., missiles.  And in the game, there is no penalty for nuking a population, except diplomatic.  Once a population has been eliminated, the conquering race can send in its own populations as there is no environmental damage in the game. 

In this environment, with planetary bombardment having little to no consequences, most planetary populations would surrender once an enemy fleet reaches orbit, unless the inhabiting race is inherently unreasonable, or they knew the invading race won't bombard populations.  That might be realistic, after all, once a conqueror controls the orbitals, they can drop stuff on the planet until it surrenders, and population centers and critical infrastructure, at least, will be hideously vulnerable, even if military assets aren't.  In this environment, a ground military would only be necessary to control planets that have surrendered, and would likely consist mostly of military police, with small, heavily armed reaction forces to deal with any armed uprisings or insurgents.

From the other side, if I was going to design a military force to defend a world, what would be reasonable?  The only ground weapons that could reach into orbit and engage enemy starships are PDC's, and PDC's are easily detectable by ships with long-range scanners.  Most of the races in my game have avoided using PDC's, because they literally invite a conqueror to bombard their planets, as that is the only way they can be dealt with.  I believe it was this thinking that led to ground forces being considered a footnote in the regular game.  Well, that and the fact that the people involved in creating Starfire wanted a ship-to-ship combat game, and believed that a ground warfare component would merely detract from that. 

I have played around with the idea of changing the rules so that drive fields no longer work in the combination of gravity/atmosphere.  This wouldn't change most of the game, but would remove PDC's and planetary bombardment.  With the threat of planetary bombardment removed, a planet could thumb its nose at an invading fleet, unless it had weapons that could engage ground targets, and ground troops.  This would require invaders to include a ground bombardment component to their fleets, as well as a ground invasion capability.  I get excited thinking about incorporating various different ground warfare rule systems, until I remember that we are talking about a planet-wide invasion.  Very large scale, very strategic. 

Kurt
 
The following users thanked this post: Migi

Offline Gyrfalcon

  • Bug Moderators
  • Commander
  • ***
  • G
  • Posts: 331
  • Thanked: 199 times
Re: Cold War Comments Thread
« Reply #343 on: March 03, 2021, 01:19:44 PM »
A question: what about using Aurora to simulate the ground combat? Design some base ground units, with their weapon and armor levels based on the tech level so a 10cm laser is HT-1, 12 is HT-2 and so on.

You could use the build times from Aurora to see how long would be needed to build the units, though you’dneed to decide on the cost to megacredits and backfill creation to the start of the game.
 

Offline Kurt (OP)

  • Moderator
  • Vice Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 1765
  • Thanked: 3389 times
  • 2021 Supporter 2021 Supporter : Donate for 2021
    Gold Supporter Gold Supporter : Support the forums with a Gold subscription
    2022 Supporter 2022 Supporter : Donate for 2022
    2023 Supporter 2023 Supporter : Donate for 2023
Re: Cold War Comments Thread
« Reply #344 on: March 03, 2021, 07:06:15 PM »
A question: what about using Aurora to simulate the ground combat? Design some base ground units, with their weapon and armor levels based on the tech level so a 10cm laser is HT-1, 12 is HT-2 and so on.

You could use the build times from Aurora to see how long would be needed to build the units, though you’dneed to decide on the cost to megacredits and backfill creation to the start of the game.

I don't have much experience yet with Aurora's ground combat module.  I've tried to play around with it a couple of times, but the learning curve is steep and I don't have enough time right now to immerse myself in it to really learn it.  I'm looking forward to using it the next time I start an Aurora campaign, though.