Suggestions for 5.7 and beyond

[bean (OP)]

For orbital bombardment maybe a better way of doing it is to reflect the lasers in the attack strength of the troops you are using on the ground. This then represents the ability of low orbit ships to support troops with fire missions on identified hostile troops without giving them a mechanic of mass destruction. I also prefer the idea that orbital laser systems are doing precision damage rather than wide spread damage.

As mentioned by another poster before you could also require the use of visible light lasers with a corresponding low range that makes them of limited use in ship to ship combat and gives another design decision.

To me this strikes a good balance between simple world destruction and reflecting the tactical advantage of gaining low orbit superiority with your correctly equipped ships.

To balance this we could always have another unit, say air defence unit, that is able to shoot at ships once they are in low orbit with strength tied to say your laser tech. These would be like PDCs but unlike them you could not target them specifically - representing the ability to disguise them / move them about.

I mentioned something like this at the start of this thread (and obviously think it's a good idea).  However, TheDeadlyShoe might take offense.

And yes, a WWII armored division could beat an infantry battalion by dumping artillery on them.  Maybe.  At some point, artillery really doesn't do much.  If the battalion is well dug-in, they can by and large ride it out.  They would likely have attached artillery of their own.  And modern counterbattery fire is way better then that of WWII.

[TheDeadlyShoe]

 

Passive aggressive sniping rather than a discussion of ideas. Nice.  :p

I like striking starships with ground units; but any implementation of that (or of other ground units) ought to be consistent with existing gameplay. Ideally, it also ought to be elegant without overlapping with existing mechanics and with a minimum of arbitrariness. 

Which is why I used Garrison Bn as my example. Such units would likely be classified as light infantry or motorized infantry if we think of NATO terms and a WW2 era armoured division could defeat it, if with nothing else then through artillery. Whereas a LTA has no chance of beating a GAR in Aurora.

Part of the problem with making such a comparison is that a ww2 division cannot possibly exist in a vacuum; it needs a massive logistics tail and is a relatively clumsy beast.  TN units would likely be far more mobile and nigh-impossible to pin down;  essentially able to strike such a formation at will with massive local superiority. 

[bean (OP)]

Passive aggressive sniping rather than a discussion of ideas. Nice.  :p

I like striking starships with ground units; but any implementation of that (or of other ground units) ought to be consistent with existing gameplay. Ideally, it also ought to be elegant without overlapping with existing mechanics and with a minimum of arbitrariness. 

My apologies, as I think we were miscommunicating.  I was suggesting a means of shooting at starships using ground units, mostly as a counter to allowing orbital beam support.  I'm not sure how you interpreted that.  If that is how you interpreted my intent, and you still find it nonsensical, I'm not sure what to say.

[TheDeadlyShoe]

Well, I apologize for being snippy. This whole thread has been frustrating because my posts keep failing and not recovering, even in chrome. ;_;

I interepreted bombardment immunity as being VS existing bombardment mechanics, ie missiles.  Which just seemed really weird to me.  I still think such a bombardment immunity would be arbitrary, and any beam installation or missile installation would be (given starship/PDC standards) heavy enough to find and destroy.

@Steve - I take you will be revising NPR ship designs accordingly with the new tech - if you take a look at those, could you add more variation in their speed doctrine and armor.  It would be interesting to have heavily armored and slow NPRs, i.e. 20-25% engine space and far more armor layers. Or weapons!

[DatAlien]

Some mechanic that tells you how much characters you can put into a field or how deep can your naval organization be (I spent 1 hour of assigning parasites to branches only to have them cut off when I moved the parent branch one node deeper (and is organization really spelled that way, the z looks strange)) (And now I deleted my carrierfleet instead of removing a branch )

And I would like being able to group all ship classes in squadrons (esp. FACs)

[Zed 6]

(and is organization really spelled that way, the z looks strange)

Oxford spelling (or Oxford English Dictionary spelling) is the spelling used by Oxford University Press. It can be recognized for its use, as in American English, of the suffix -ize instead of -ise. For instance, organization, privatize and recognizable are used instead of organisation, privatise and recognisable. The spelling is favoured on etymological grounds, in that -ize corresponds more closely to the Greek root, -izo, of most -ize verbs.

In the last few decades, the suffix -ise has become the more common spelling in the UK. Many regard -ize as American English, though it has been in use in England since the 16th century.

[blue emu]

Not sure if this has been suggested before...

How about expanding the Tractor Beam techs with some miniaturization?

The first level costs 5,000 RP and gives you your basic, 10 HS Tractor Beam.
The next level costs 10,000 RP and reduces the size by 3 HS, to 7 HS.
The next level costs 20,000 RP and reduces the size by 2 HS, to 5 HS.
The next level costs 40,000 RP and reduces the size by 1 HS, to 4 HS.
The next level costs 80,000 RP and reduces the size by 1 HS, to 3 HS.
The next level costs 160,000 RP and reduces the size by 1 HS, to 2 HS.
The last level costs 320,000 RP and reduces the size by 1 HS, to 1 HS.

[Thiosk]

Not sure if this has been suggested before...

How about expanding the Tractor Beam techs with some miniaturization?

The first level costs 5,000 RP and gives you your basic, 10 HS Tractor Beam.
The next level costs 10,000 RP and reduces the size by 3 HS, to 7 HS.
The next level costs 20,000 RP and reduces the size by 2 HS, to 5 HS.
The next level costs 40,000 RP and reduces the size by 1 HS, to 4 HS.
The next level costs 80,000 RP and reduces the size by 1 HS, to 3 HS.
The next level costs 160,000 RP and reduces the size by 1 HS, to 2 HS.
The last level costs 320,000 RP and reduces the size by 1 HS, to 1 HS.

I'd prefer to see this sort of thing combined with an expansion of the use of tractor tech-- longer range beam weapons that can act to switch off engines.  Deployment of such a weapon could take ships and cut their speed in half-- plenty slow to be closed on and annhilated by short range beam weaponry.

[UnLimiTeD]

Regarding the Orbital bombardment stuff, I made a pretty extensive suggestion about that about two years ago, which was immediately shot down by various forum members for the unfounded fear of advertising GFFP; When i actually just wanted to make things there more interesting.

I suppose I can wait till NA, still, an advancement in that respect would be nice.
I suppose till a ground combat overhaul, it's not going to happen, though...

PS: If anyone were to read that topic, it has some extrmely large letters in there, thanks to a formatting difference from then to today.

[ardem]

Ground combat does need a good overhaul.

I think the first task and easiest would be a supply factor for troops. This means a new design on ships perhaps for the role or using existing supply vessels, since they are going into combat zones.

The second task is to create a bit more variety in the things that can be achieved with troops. A raid on a PDC, defensive operations outside the colony (this might be a less defensive bonus but no damage to the colony), stealth mode on pdc, basicly unseen until it wants to revel itself, great for opening up on oribted vessels that have though its knocked out all planetary defences.

The third task is to add a little more paper rock scissors to the troops, a TAOW game style would be great but impracticable in the time to code, so atleast some minor changes such as mbl infantry has more defence against armour, armour has more ability against assault, assault has more attack against mbl inf. Or what ever you see fit, this might change atleast some loadout changes instead of marines on top of marines.

[Five]

I would like to be able to destroy more then one missle at a time without having to destroy all of the missles in the system....here is the scenario i have run into a few times.

I'm in a system with some baddies that are a higher tech then me. They shoot very fast missles/PT's at me and my missle def responds, shooting its size 1 missles. As they get close some hit and some miss...but others miss and start a stern chase that they can't win as they are slower then the incoming missles/PTs. Now my missle def ships won't fire more missles as they still have missles out, targeted on the incoming, even though they will never catch them. So now i have to go and self-explode all the missles that are in this situation one at a time...and that tends to be alot...and a lot of time needed.

If there was a way to highlight/select more then one at a time it would be very helpful.

-Five

[xeryon]

There is a solution for this:  Design faster missiles. 

I agree, that would be extremely tedious to have to do cleanup rounds like that.  The option to grenade an entire missile salvo should be easy to implement and save a lot of repetitious button mashing.

[backstab]

Ground combat does need a good overhaul.

I think the first task and easiest would be a supply factor for troops. This means a new design on ships perhaps for the role or using existing supply vessels, since they are going into combat zones.

The second task is to create a bit more variety in the things that can be achieved with troops. A raid on a PDC, defensive operations outside the colony (this might be a less defensive bonus but no damage to the colony), stealth mode on pdc, basicly unseen until it wants to revel itself, great for opening up on oribted vessels that have though its knocked out all planetary defences.

Introduction of a Special Forces Battalion would be good.  Enable them to carry out raids to destroy Factories/Mines/infrastructure ect ....  or use them as expensive infantry/marines when you are running low on troops

[ollobrains]

special forces could be a good addition to game to cause damage - suiciding robot combat drones or some such thing

[ardem]

special forces +1

However without a real stealth craft to get them planet side without destruction I doubt it would be possible. Perhaps some AI code around civilian transponders and not destroying them unless an enemy.

If not special forces used in this tactic maybe have insurgency on captured planets for a while which only special forces can take out. Or special forces survive a colony loss and act as insurgents.