The Unconquerable Planet & Other Problems With Ground Co

[Father Tim (OP)]

As I spread my benevolence and enlightened rule to neighbouring planets, my Legions of Doom (tm)  have encountered several unexpected difficulties:

I.  There & Back Again, A Hobbit Legion's Tale

Building troop transports is simple enough, but there doesn't seem to be any sort of assault shuttle, dropship, transporter, or capsule system to get them from the starship to the planet.  Either the darn things actually land on the planet, or Sufficiently Advanced Technology is in use.


II.  War is Heck

Ground combat causes Collateral Damage to planetary installations (fair enough, I suppose) that appears to be based on the combined attack strength of all sides.  Unfortunately, it also causes Radiation levels and Planetary Dust to soar.  Why, oh why, did I arm my Legions of Friendly Persuasion (tm) with dirty bombs and hand-held nukes?  I must have been mad.

Alas, for the inhabitants of a poor (ie low industry) planet called Dirt, the combination of Collateral Damage, Radiation, & Dust resulting from a visit by my Legions Pour Encourager les Autres (tm) wiped out planetary industry and rendered the place nigh-uninhabitable.  "If only they'd nuked us from orbit," the Dirtlings cry, "we'd still have places to work and air we could breathe."  Tragically, I chose the 'humane' option of planetary invasion.


III.  War is a Continuation of Diplomacy by Other Means

Foolish me, I 'forgot' to issue a declaration of war before my Legions of (Gunboat) Diplomacy (tm) opened fire.  It's fine though, the people of Dirt declined to declare war while being shot at.  Once I did declare war, the people of Dirt were happy to return to Peaceful Relations, no questions asked.  What they wouldn't do is surrender, even with no armed vessels & no ground troops left.

My Legions of Conquering (tm) were actually unable to conquer the defenceless planet of Dirt, due to a peculiar Dirtling construct:  the Woden Base.

Code: [Select]

Woden class Base    14800 tons     250 Crew     593.5 BP      TCS 296  TH 0  EM 0
Armour 13-53     Sensors 1/0     Damage Control Rating 0     PPV 0
Troop Capacity 6 Divisions    

This design is classed as a non-combatant for maintenance purposes

This design is classed as a Planetary Defence Centre and can be pre-fabricated in 30 sections


Cleverly, the Dirtlings have constructed a PDC that is undetectable by Thermal or EM sensors, for some reason refuses to show up on active Grav sensors, and can't be shot at.  My Legions of Incompetence refuse to conquer the planet due to the presence of this unarmed building.


IV.  To the Victor Go the Spoils

The presence of this unarmed pile of rocks gives the Dirtlings great hope; occupying their defenseless planet with twenty divisions of battle-hardened troops and stationing a half-dozen battleships overhead to threaten orbital bombardment failed to influence their diplomatic outlook one iota.

[Father Tim (OP)]

Ground combat causes Radiation and Dust levels to increase.  If the combat is large enough (in my case 36 divisions vs 25) it causes more damage than simply bombarding the planet into submission.  Can I please equip my divisions with environmentally friendly weapons?

When planetary combat causes damage to large buildings (naval academy, GFTF, CFF) they immediately cease to function.  In the case of a GFTF, any unit it was training goes POOF! into the ether.  Each point of collateral damage destroys 1/30th of a Commerical Freight Facility or Tracking Station, and the repeating decimal throws an error 3265.

Destroyed ground units cause "Error 30001 was generated by MSFlexGrid.  Invalid Row Value."  Officers commanding ground units destroyed in combat have zero chance of death, and retain their assignments to now-destroyed units.

Ground units' readiness values don't change - ever.  I can't recall what was supposed to effect unit readiness scores, but two years of continuous combat had no effect, neither did 22 years deployed in the field or training in a PDC.

Ground units can't conquer a planet that has an intact PDC, even if that PDC has no weapons.  There's no way for ground units to 'storm' a PDC as happened at the climax of the Theban war.

The Diplomacy screen didn't react to the presence of my battle squadron in orbit.  As I recall, simply having a warship in orbit is enough to imply orbital bombardment without having to explicitly threaten it, but it would be nice if the Diplomacy screen made some mention of it.

An option to reduce collateral damage to planetary installations would be nice.  Maybe have the attacker incur some sort of penalty to combat values to represent the efffort taken to avoid destroying industry.


I would like to propose a new model for ground combat.  Rather than the current all-or-nothing approach of a chance for each division to be destroyed, how about each round of combat applying a varying amount of 'damage' in the form of a reduction of the division's Readiness rating.  When a division's readiness rating is reduced to 0 or less that division is destroyed.

[waresky]

AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Am an older of Italian Curious Army (TM?) and ive laugh up to 5mins from ur news into distant,no ,sorry,FAr FAR FAR Galaxy:))))

Ive exactly 23 Armored Transport Troop (6DVS each) in route to conquer an "ur-Quan Master" slavish planet to become free..so,ur news reach my transports captains..and fear spread in whole Holy Freedom Fleets (tm enough?)...

Ive plead my Great Admiral to AVOID,ABSOLUTELY AVOID,the Nuke's use for "convince" and "capitolate" the our "nice" neighboor...

..stay tuned.

[Steve Walmsley]

As I spread my benevolence and enlightened rule to neighbouring planets, my Legions of Doom (tm)  have encountered several unexpected difficulties:

I.  There & Back Again, A Hobbit Legion's Tale

Building troop transports is simple enough, but there doesn't seem to be any sort of assault shuttle, dropship, transporter, or capsule system to get them from the starship to the planet.  Either the darn things actually land on the planet, or Sufficiently Advanced Technology is in use.

The game assumes that troop transport bays include suitable drop ships to get troops to and from planets. Adding some actual drop ships, perhaps built along the lines of fighters, might be a good idea, but at the moment there are no orbit to surface units in Aurora. Its assumed that cargo shuttles, personnel shuttles, etc are outside the scope of the game because they add complexity without any improvement in gameplay. Some form of drop ship might be a possibility though as that would add a lot to assaulting a planet, especially if they could be launched from some distance away.

II.  War is Heck

Ground combat causes Collateral Damage to planetary installations (fair enough, I suppose) that appears to be based on the combined attack strength of all sides.  Unfortunately, it also causes Radiation levels and Planetary Dust to soar.  Why, oh why, did I arm my Legions of Friendly Persuasion (tm) with dirty bombs and hand-held nukes?  I must have been mad.

Alas, for the inhabitants of a poor (ie low industry) planet called Dirt, the combination of Collateral Damage, Radiation, & Dust resulting from a visit by my Legions Pour Encourager les Autres (tm) wiped out planetary industry and rendered the place nigh-uninhabitable.  "If only they'd nuked us from orbit," the Dirtlings cry, "we'd still have places to work and air we could breathe."  Tragically, I chose the 'humane' option of planetary invasion.

LOL. The radiation and dust effects of collateral damage have been removed and the population casualties have been reduced by 75% (because its easier to flee a battle than a thermo-nuclear bomb). I have left the physical damage as it is.

III.  War is a Continuation of Diplomacy by Other Means

Foolish me, I 'forgot' to issue a declaration of war before my Legions of (Gunboat) Diplomacy (tm) opened fire.  It's fine though, the people of Dirt declined to declare war while being shot at.  Once I did declare war, the people of Dirt were happy to return to Peaceful Relations, no questions asked.  What they wouldn't do is surrender, even with no armed vessels & no ground troops left.

Diplomacy has been ignored for several versions. I need to do a full revision.

My Legions of Conquering (tm) were actually unable to conquer the defenceless planet of Dirt, due to a peculiar Dirtling construct:  the Woden Base.

Code: [Select]

Woden class Base    14800 tons     250 Crew     593.5 BP      TCS 296  TH 0  EM 0
Armour 13-53     Sensors 1/0     Damage Control Rating 0     PPV 0
Troop Capacity 6 Divisions    

This design is classed as a non-combatant for maintenance purposes

This design is classed as a Planetary Defence Centre and can be pre-fabricated in 30 sections

Cleverly, the Dirtlings have constructed a PDC that is undetectable by Thermal or EM sensors, for some reason refuses to show up on active Grav sensors, and can't be shot at.  My Legions of Incompetence refuse to conquer the planet due to the presence of this unarmed building.

IV.  To the Victor Go the Spoils

The presence of this unarmed pile of rocks gives the Dirtlings great hope; occupying their defenseless planet with twenty divisions of battle-hardened troops and stationing a half-dozen battleships overhead to threaten orbital bombardment failed to influence their diplomatic outlook one iota.

Yes, the hidden PDC rules do have a couple of small holes

Steve

[Steve Walmsley]

When planetary combat causes damage to large buildings (naval academy, GFTF, CFF) they immediately cease to function.  In the case of a GFTF, any unit it was training goes POOF! into the ether.  

Both of those are intentional. You can build a small portion of a building to repair it. For example, if 10% of a research facility is lost, you can build 0.1 research facilities to fix it. I have considered changing this though so you either lose the whole building or none at all.

Each point of collateral damage destroys 1/30th of a Commerical Freight Facility or Tracking Station, and the repeating decimal throws an error 3265.

I have changed the target sizes so everything is divided by numbers that do not require rounding.

Destroyed ground units cause "Error 30001 was generated by MSFlexGrid.  Invalid Row Value."  

I can't recreate this one. On which window was the error?

Steve

[Steve Walmsley]

Officers commanding ground units destroyed in combat have zero chance of death, and retain their assignments to now-destroyed units.

Officer death can happen and officers of dead units are re-assigned but for some reason only for officers commanding HQ units. I have extended this to all ground units.

Ground units can't conquer a planet that has an intact PDC, even if that PDC has no weapons.  There's no way for ground units to 'storm' a PDC as happened at the climax of the Theban war.

You can already storm a PC by selecting it as the target of your ground attack. This is obviously a problem if the PDC is hidden

Steve

[Steve Walmsley]

Ground units' readiness values don't change - ever.  I can't recall what was supposed to effect unit readiness scores, but two years of continuous combat had no effect, neither did 22 years deployed in the field or training in a PDC.

I would like to propose a new model for ground combat.  Rather than the current all-or-nothing approach of a chance for each division to be destroyed, how about each round of combat applying a varying amount of 'damage' in the form of a reduction of the division's Readiness rating.  When a division's readiness rating is reduced to 0 or less that division is destroyed.

The readiness factor exists because I was planning something along those lines and never got around to it. There are a few factors that concern me though. Firstly is that players will likely want some way to protect their low readiness units by witholding them from combat in attack or protecting them in defence and that adds complexity to ground combat. One simple solution is that low readiness units (below 50%?) will refuse to attack and defending units don't get a choice. Secondly, low readiness units probably should have some chance to surrender rather than fighting to the last man, which again is more complexity, particularly if POWs are involved. Morale represents units quality so that too should probably be affected by readiness losses, perhaps once replacements arrive. Which brings up the question of whether they should be such as thing as replacements (and associated costs - perhaps in the form of building Replacement Units) or whether readiness should return for free over time. Ground combat will also last a lot longer, which perhaps is not a bad thing, with associated greater collateral damage. Although I guess I could mitigate the collateral damage by making it equal to the readiness loss rather than the damage caused.

The alternative is simply to remove readiness. I am open to opinions in this area. Is ground combat fine as it is or would using readiness enhance it?

Steve

[Steve Walmsley]

When planetary combat causes damage to large buildings (naval academy, GFTF, CFF) they immediately cease to function.  In the case of a GFTF, any unit it was training goes POOF! into the ether.  

Both of those are intentional. You can build a small portion of a building to repair it. For example, if 10% of a research facility is lost, you can build 0.1 research facilities to fix it. I have considered changing this though so you either lose the whole building or none at all.

I decided to go ahead and make this change. Now you either lose a facility or you don't; there are no more fractional losses. The chance of a facility being lost to a hit is dependent on the target size. For example, research labs are treated as being 20x larger than factories so in the past a hit on a research lab destroyed 0.05 research labs. Now there is a 5% chance the lab will be destroyed and a 95% chance it will remain completely intact.

Steve

[Father Tim (OP)]

Destroyed ground units cause "Error 30001 was generated by MSFlexGrid.  Invalid Row Value."  

I can't recreate this one. On which window was the error?

Steve

Umm . . . F2 Population & Production I guess, or maybe Ctrl-F3 Events.  The error messages popped up when I advanced a time increment that included ground combat, and a number of them appeared exactly equal to the number of ground units destroyed that increment.

[ShadoCat]

For v3.2, I have simplified them considerably. All PDCs start out hidden and cannot be detected. Once they fire or use active sensors, they lose their hidden status and can be detected normally. This is over-simplified because it means races that didn't see them fire can now detect them but it makes life much easier. Also, only PDCs that contain ground forces can prevent a surrender. An attacking ground force now has a chance to detect hidden PDCs equal to its attack strength, with a maximum of 50%. This is checked every 5 days, after ground combat.
Steve

How about the ability to rehide PDCs?  This also fails the giggle factor in some ways but it prevents other races from seeing what they couldn't see.  In rehiding a PDC, maybe have a build task to do it or just have a time limit (1 day for active sensors, 20 days for fired weapons), after which it is hidden again.  

Or, have a cargo ship pick it up and redeposit it in a different location.  The code is there already since you added transportation of of PDCs.  Just flip the bit back to hidden whenever a PDC is unloaded.

Any other option would involve the creation of a table just to keep track of who knows about which PDC.  Yuck.

Hmmm.... there might be another alternative.  Treat PDC location the same as system survey results.  Thus, only the people who have found it will know that it's there.