Rebalance Fortification - Add some sort of counter to it.

[Droll]

I don't think there's a modifier for no atmosphere.

There is - its called the extreme pressure or lack thereof.

[Ektor (OP)]

As far as I know, extreme pressure only works for planets with pressure above racial maximum.

[Jorgen_CAB]

not to mention you are also using garrison troops that are especially trained to fight in the terrain... this will increase the value of those troop quite allot too. 

I'm... not?

Did I say that you did in the first place... I was not responding to your post...

I have done some tests in the game and they seem to conclude roughly what the math say... if there are no specific other factors then 3:1 is a roughly even fight with a slight advantage to the attacker because of the evasion chance of the attackers. The math are pretty accurate and the results that I have seen confirms it pretty well...

I have moved on to more interesting ground combat tests.

[Droll]

I honestly think that fortification reduction due to combat should be a thing as was already mentioned. The combat engineers that was suggested could also be used as reverse construction vehicles - not directly attacking enemies but "deconstructing" their forts, or maybe just reducing their fortification bonus according to some engineer to enemy CON vehicle ratio.

It also prevents the attacker from just landing with shedloads of con vehicles and rapid fortifying their own army while incentivising the defenders to try and pressure the attackers so they do not have time to establish a fortified beachhead themselves.

[Jorgen_CAB]

I honestly think that fortification reduction due to combat should be a thing as was already mentioned. The combat engineers that was suggested could also be used as reverse construction vehicles - not directly attacking enemies but "deconstructing" their forts, or maybe just reducing their fortification bonus according to some engineer to enemy CON vehicle ratio.

It also prevents the attacker from just landing with shedloads of con vehicles and rapid fortifying their own army while incentivising the defenders to try and pressure the attackers so they do not have time to establish a fortified beachhead themselves.

I would not be against any such mechanics as long as the defensive nature of the game remain relatively strong. If it is too easy to break and invade enemy fortified positions then it will not make any sense to defend anything to begin with and using resources on defences become pretty meaningless.

It also should be possible for a defensive army to maintain and repair fortification if enough effort is put into it.

Fortification in the game is an abstraction for ANY kind of defence and does not have to be just passive defences in the form of bunkers and minefields.

In general I think that it is a bigger problem that all troops gets to fight so effectively all the time. The larger the armies that fight on a planet the more time battles should play out... allot more than it does now. The current mechanic will almost never turn a battle into a natural stalemate... that is because there is no natural attack or defender currently in the game.

In VB6 you could reach more natural stalemate during invasions.

[Droll]

It also should be possible for a defensive army to maintain and repair fortification if enough effort is put into it.

I think you could easily make it so that CON vehicles in addition to fortifying soldiers also counteract hostile engineers or something like that.

[Droll]

The side that doesn't have fortification tends to be the side with orbital support and fighters.  The whole mechanic is designed to favor defenders for cost, because otherwise it is supremely easy to assault a world by concentrating forces.   A civilian garrison of infantry can easily have a heavy armor division dropped on its head, with orbital bombardment support to boot.

CSAP spam working well doesnt indicate its good against fortification so much as it might indicate they are too good for cost/tonnage.   Or maybe WAI from being good against infantry, I suppose.

Pretty much.

If you can carry out planetary invasion it also means you got orbital superiority, therefore you can rain hell on down below for as long as you want. Sprinkle some nuclear warheads if you're feeling particularly spiteful.

So I completely disagree with Ektor on the subject of fortification and defense performance. However I agree on the supply, construction and support behavior. The fact that battalion-, regimental-, and divisional-level supply or artillery support doesn't work really gets my gears grinding.

All forms of orbital bombardment kick up dust and in the case of missiles radiation as well. If defensive fortification is too powerful than the idea of planetary conquest becomes a pipe dream as the only cost-effective way to get rid of hostile planets is to render them inhospitable. On the flip side I agree - nerf forts too much and now its just not worth building defence on planets, at least on the ground.

[Garfunkel]

I'm sorry guys but I don't see the problem here. Ektor's test is very useful confirmation of what was assumed before - but its hindrance is the same that plagued the earlier theorycrafting: it's assuming equal tech and equal build points. Fortification being very strong when tech levels are equal and BP is equal is not an issue IMHO at all - that's exactly how it should be. Aurora is not a game to be balanced on the knife's edge.

And remember, lack of FFD makes both air support and orbital support almost pointless as they get massive to-hit maluses. Always include the proper amount of FFD.

[Bremen]

I'm sorry guys but I don't see the problem here. Ektor's test is very useful confirmation of what was assumed before - but its hindrance is the same that plagued the earlier theorycrafting: it's assuming equal tech and equal build points. Fortification being very strong when tech levels are equal and BP is equal is not an issue IMHO at all - that's exactly how it should be. Aurora is not a game to be balanced on the knife's edge.

And remember, lack of FFD makes both air support and orbital support almost pointless as they get massive to-hit maluses. Always include the proper amount of FFD.

I mean, I don't even think it's particularly strong in ideal circumstances. 3:1 odds sounds powerful, but it overlooks a lot of aspects of being on the defensive that don't show up well in playtests.

Orbital bombardment is an obvious one that will almost always favor the attackers, but there's also the simple fact that if you have 3 or more colonies, your garrisons are split up into smaller chunks while the attacker can bring his entire assault force against your colonies one at a time. And of course there's the fact that if your colony is too tough a nut to crack they can just nuke it from orbit, in which case you're down the colony *and* the extensive ground forces you spent time and materials on.

3:1 in favor of the defender is really what I'd call the absolute minimum to make it worth garrisoning colonies at all.

[Ektor (OP)]

I honestly think that fortification reduction due to combat should be a thing as was already mentioned. The combat engineers that was suggested could also be used as reverse construction vehicles - not directly attacking enemies but "deconstructing" their forts, or maybe just reducing their fortification bonus according to some engineer to enemy CON vehicle ratio.

I think this would be a pretty good solution.

And remember, lack of FFD makes both air support and orbital support almost pointless as they get massive to-hit maluses. Always include the proper amount of FFD.

I tested with proper amounts of FFD. Bombardment and Fighters aren't very useful because their volume of fire is simply too low. The chance of missing is very high, as shown in previous experiments, troops have a ~5% (I said 0.5% before, but it was a miscalculation) chance to hit in good terrain conditions.

I mean, I don't even think it's particularly strong in ideal circumstances. 3:1 odds sounds powerful, but it overlooks a lot of aspects of being on the defensive that don't show up well in playtests.

Orbital bombardment is an obvious one that will almost always favor the attackers, but there's also the simple fact that if you have 3 or more colonies, your garrisons are split up into smaller chunks while the attacker can bring his entire assault force against your colonies one at a time. And of course there's the fact that if your colony is too tough a nut to crack they can just nuke it from orbit, in which case you're down the colony *and* the extensive ground forces you spent time and materials on.

3:1 in favor of the defender is really what I'd call the absolute minimum to make it worth garrisoning colonies at all.

That's the thing, though, you'd have to bring massive amounts of ships - hundreds of them, if you wanted bombardment to be effective.

but its hindrance is the same that plagued the earlier theorycrafting: it's assuming equal tech and equal build points

How else to conduct tests, then? This ensures a purely mathematical advantage to be shown. If you attack with ten times the bp, for example, probably most of what you do will work due to sheet volume.

[Jorgen_CAB]

I'm sorry guys but I don't see the problem here. Ektor's test is very useful confirmation of what was assumed before - but its hindrance is the same that plagued the earlier theorycrafting: it's assuming equal tech and equal build points. Fortification being very strong when tech levels are equal and BP is equal is not an issue IMHO at all - that's exactly how it should be. Aurora is not a game to be balanced on the knife's edge.

And remember, lack of FFD makes both air support and orbital support almost pointless as they get massive to-hit maluses. Always include the proper amount of FFD.

I mean, I don't even think it's particularly strong in ideal circumstances. 3:1 odds sounds powerful, but it overlooks a lot of aspects of being on the defensive that don't show up well in playtests.

Orbital bombardment is an obvious one that will almost always favor the attackers, but there's also the simple fact that if you have 3 or more colonies, your garrisons are split up into smaller chunks while the attacker can bring his entire assault force against your colonies one at a time. And of course there's the fact that if your colony is too tough a nut to crack they can just nuke it from orbit, in which case you're down the colony *and* the extensive ground forces you spent time and materials on.

3:1 in favor of the defender is really what I'd call the absolute minimum to make it worth garrisoning colonies at all.

Well... we can't forget all the other resources that goes into getting the troops in place on the planet that also have to be included in any offensive war. The logistics surrounding invasions... everything from beating the space forces, suppressing and destroying any STO and then the ships, supplies, fuel and all that other stuff to actually get the offensive troops on the ground will count.

You then have the thing about never really knowing how strong an opponent Garrison really is as there are many factors that will have an impact on them.

If we could know exactly how much force is necessary to win with minimal loss then I do think the current system would be too weak, but we never really know until the day we try the invasions. And in most cases we will probably try to bring allot more than a 3:1 advantage to be absolutely sure to win.

We then don't know if an enemy will be able to respond to any aggression and how that response will look like, in a real scenario there should be allot of unknown factors that make the decision making allot harder.

[Ektor (OP)]

I really think there should be some sort of intelligence mechanic, though, a way to find out how many of what the enemy has before comitting to a full invasion. IDK if ELINT does that.

[Jorgen_CAB]

That's the thing, though, you'd have to bring massive amounts of ships - hundreds of them, if you wanted bombardment to be effective.

You can build specialised bombardment ships with Miniaturised weapons... they will be allot cheaper to fire and you can bring much larger volumes of them for the same ship tonnage.

[Jorgen_CAB]

I really think there should be some sort of intelligence mechanic, though, a way to find out how many of what the enemy has before comitting to a full invasion. IDK if ELINT does that.

There is... you can get a rough estimation for what the enemy strength is before invading... but you will not know for sure how strong they are or what type of troops they have. But you will be able to see roughly how many troops there is.

[Ektor (OP)]

Oh, fine then.

Right now I'm trying bombardment, I started with carronades because they deal the most raw damage, I put 90HS of carronades into a design and then spawned it. It had the same rough 10% hit chance, killing about 0-1 units per round. Then I changed this to 30x4 Railguns, this worked very well, and that single ship could now reliably kill around 8 units every round. Still not a lot, though. I'll try even smaller weapons.