Suggestion: The Addition of 'Air Forces'
Something very similar has been proposed in several forms in this very thread...
rummages around...
starting from this comment.I link this as the discussion went for several pages and was heated at times, so hopefully we can avoid talking in circles by repeating it and in the process keep blood pressures low for the holiday season.
A couple ground forces related suggestions that have been on my mind:Ground Force Admin Commands - just like we have now for Naval Admin Commands, will give things to do for higher level ranks and also allow flexible organizing of units into larger groups(like Armies or Corps) for RP and tracking purposes, without having to build incredibly costly and enormous HQs.
I'd honestly prefer this to the current system. Once you get to the highest HQ hierarchy levels the leadership should really be administrative, not based on field formations. I tend to feel like I build a 2-4 layer formation hierarchy, depending on tech level and doctrine, and then have to build repeated formations of the HQabignumbermillion + 15,285 LVH-LOG for every higher level to give my high-ranking generals a job. The current system also sucks because HQ cost scales infinitely so you have to spend several tank divisions' worth of BP for a high-level HQ to say nothing of the research costs especially for conventional/low-tech games.
Named GF Construction Factories - just like we have now for shipyards, primarily for RP purposes.
As far as the GFCFs go, I'd rather have them reworked to function like every other planetary factory in the game, i.e., building ground units with a percentage of capacity rather than one formation per facility.
Back to everyone's favorite punching bag... ground combat.
I thought perhaps Heavy Bombard units could ignore (or partly ignore) fortification, with the intent that it would make them particularly useful when assaulting homeworlds which tend to be fully fortified. The game rationale is now you have a reason to bring Heavy Bombard units, the "real-life" rationale is that heavy artillery is one of the main ways you deal with enemy's fortifications.
A few issues with this: first, it would require adding an exception to the ground combat rules, and Steve has generally trended towards eliminating exceptions to the rules in the VB6 --> C# transition; second, this assumes a specific RP for the HB component which is not necessarily reflective of how all players use it (in a WH40K setting for example, siege mortars are actually relatively short-ranged compared to field artillery - not realistic, but there you go for a popular example); third, it doesn't solve the main reason players avoid using HB which is the massive collateral damage that results compared to using lighter artillery (indeed, for some players even MB/MBL is too damaging), and v2.0 purports to solve this with an 80% reduction of collateral damage so we will have to see if that works well enough.
Also, IMO HB works fine mechanically, the main problem is that it is overkill against NPRs which use very limited ground forces templates. In a multiple-player-race setting where the player races actually use HVH and heavier classes the 6 base damage of HB (and, in v2.0 the 9 base damage of SHB) become useful against armor-heavy forces and thus is (are) a good defensive option at the very least.
As a corollary, we could then have fighters ignore (or partly ignore) evasion, making them more effective against vehicles on the attack. This would give defenders some buff to counteract the benefit to attackers of artillery, and again provide a reason to bring them to a fight, and would DEFINITELY jive with real life. Doesn't matter much how fast a ground unit is going, because relative to an aircraft with missiles (or even guns), you're still pretty dang slow.
This is sensible but would have very little impact. Usually evasion is only relevant for attacking formations and usually it is the attacker in a planetary battle who has fighter support, if anyone. Although if we took the above suggestion for make GSFs a ground unit class then defending forces would actually be able to use (aero) fighters practically - another argument in favor which I don't think came up in the last discussion (@Steve plz!).