Ground combat strange?

[hammer58 (OP)]

First time back playing aurora 4x since major rules changes.

My main issue is ground combat.
I remember ground combat having both sides fire at each other in the report.
Even out classed you still fired and missed.
This time I have troops on a planet getting their butts kicked.
I am losing about 115 troops per combat report.
No return firing is happening.
My men are just getting slaughtered with no return fire.
I do not think this is happening from orbit.
As they only have 1 ship in orbit.
But I have no report of enemy troops on ground just damage reports coming in as the men are dying.
I am not even getting how much damage they are doing.
I get hits taken armor penetrated units lost.
I am getting about 195 hits per combat report.
Too many for a single ship I think.
My troops are set to front line defense.
Backed up by HQ with supply in support with bombardment.
Backed up with regiment HQ in Rear echelon.
None of the support or rear echelon are taking damage yet.

Why are my troops not firing back?

[nuclearslurpee]

Is the NPR marked as a hostile race?

[hammer58 (OP)]

NOPE good catch. But why are they neutral when they are shooting at my troops?

I mean to fire that General, as he just let the troops under his command get slaughtered and told his men hold your fire hold until the last man.

[Garfunkel]

There are situations when you don't want troops to attack even when under attack.

[Steve Walmsley]

NOPE good catch. But why are they neutral when they are shooting at my troops?

I mean to fire that General, as he just let the troops under his command get slaughtered and told his men hold your fire hold until the last man.

You need to set an NPR to hostile manually. There are situations where you might want to accept an NPR attack (ground or space) and not fight back. For example, if you intruded on their space and they fired but you retreat without returning fire, or accept the loss of ground troops, it will be much sooner when their diplomatic view of you returns to neutral. If you fire and cause damage, that will take a LOT longer.

[hammer58 (OP)]

ok got it.

[hammer58 (OP)]

NOPE good catch. But why are they neutral when they are shooting at my troops?

I mean to fire that General, as he just let the troops under his command get slaughtered and told his men hold your fire hold until the last man.

You need to set an NPR to hostile manually. There are situations where you might want to accept an NPR attack (ground or space) and not fight back. For example, if you intruded on their space and they fired but you retreat without returning fire, or accept the loss of ground troops, it will be much sooner when their diplomatic view of you returns to neutral. If you fire and cause damage, that will take a LOT longer.

I have been thinking more about this issue. I think the natural response when fired on is to fire back. That should be the default of the game.
It is what players would expect to happen. Then add a check box to disable the automatic return fire option.
For those rare intentional situations when you do not want to fire back. Then you should have a box to check to make that happen instead of automatic fire when fired upon.

What gave me this insight was the mining tab for a colony. The last column is for reserve settings. Then down on the bottom of the page is spelled out next to a check box how to enable a double click to set reserve levels. So you explain it plain to the player how to do this right there on the bottom of the page.

So why not do the same for ground combat? With a check box. Normal game setting is what a person would expect to happen. When fired on you fire back.
To disable that from happening for the rare times you do not want to fire back check this box. Not sure what page it should be on. But I think it should be set up like that.
Makes more sense than how it works now. I had no idea I had to set a race that was shooting at me to enemy in order to shoot back. 

But I would have an idea to look for a way not to shoot back if I did not want to do so. Why? Because that is not the normal expectation of the game. So then the check box. Check here to remain neutral and not shoot back.

[Droll]

NOPE good catch. But why are they neutral when they are shooting at my troops?

I mean to fire that General, as he just let the troops under his command get slaughtered and told his men hold your fire hold until the last man.

You need to set an NPR to hostile manually. There are situations where you might want to accept an NPR attack (ground or space) and not fight back. For example, if you intruded on their space and they fired but you retreat without returning fire, or accept the loss of ground troops, it will be much sooner when their diplomatic view of you returns to neutral. If you fire and cause damage, that will take a LOT longer.


I have been thinking more about this issue. I think the natural response when fired on is to fire back. That should be the default of the game.
It is what players would expect to happen. Then add a check box to disable the automatic return fire option.
For those rare intentional situations when you do not want to fire back. Then you should have a box to check to make that happen instead of automatic fire when fired upon.

What gave me this insight was the mining tab for a colony. The last column is for reserve settings. Then down on the bottom of the page is spelled out next to a check box how to enable a double click to set reserve levels. So you explain it plain to the player how to do this right there on the bottom of the page.

So why not do the same for ground combat? With a check box. Normal game setting is what a person would expect to happen. When fired on you fire back.
To disable that from happening for the rare times you do not want to fire back check this box. Not sure what page it should be on. But I think it should be set up like that.
Makes more sense than how it works now. I had no idea I had to set a race that was shooting at me to enemy in order to shoot back. 

But I would have an idea to look for a way not to shoot back if I did not want to do so. Why? Because that is not the normal expectation of the game. So then the check box. Check here to remain neutral and not shoot back.

Check your quote tags I think you wrapped your response inside a quote

[ty55101]

What gave me this insight was the mining tab for a colony. The last column is for reserve settings. Then down on the bottom of the page is spelled out next to a check box how to enable a double click to set reserve levels. So you explain it plain to the player how to do this right there on the bottom of the page.

So why not do the same for ground combat? With a check box. Normal game setting is what a person would expect to happen. When fired on you fire back.
To disable that from happening for the rare times you do not want to fire back check this box. Not sure what page it should be on. But I think it should be set up like that.
Makes more sense than how it works now. I had no idea I had to set a race that was shooting at me to enemy in order to shoot back. 

But I would have an idea to look for a way not to shoot back if I did not want to do so. Why? Because that is not the normal expectation of the game. So then the check box. Check here to remain neutral and not shoot back.

I completely agree that ideally this should be more of an automated process. In a published game, I would expect a pop-up or notification to alert me of this with maybe a button to turn on/off return fire.

Now this isn't a published game and as such we (ultimately Steve) considers every change a little more harshly. Both the time to implement a design along with potential effects are considered. For this instance we compare the current two options:

Leave it be:

• No one gets confused by a non apparent update to the game.
• Players retain ability to refrain from responding immediately with return fire to surprise attacks.
• Surprise attacks get a free ground combat round of damage
• Development time is not spent on adding in this feature.
• No potential future bugs resulting from this change.

Take your suggestion:

• Less confused new players regarding ground combat not working
• Your troops don't let themselves just die unless told otherwise

I think a good, easy to implement change would be to have an event pop up when ground forces are attacked by a non-hostile marked enemy that says something like

Code: [Select]

Attack by non-hostile Alien Race ground force
If you wish to attack back, mark Alien Race as hostile in Intelligence window.

[nuclearslurpee]

I think a good, easy to implement change would be to have an event pop up when ground forces are attacked by a non-hostile marked enemy that says something like

Code: [Select]

Attack by non-hostile Alien Race ground force
If you wish to attack back, mark Alien Race as hostile in Intelligence window.

This is the way. Make sure the player is aware of the developing situation and knows their options to address it. I think this fits better in Aurora than trying to tie under-the-hood game mechanics to a checkbox option.

It would also be neat if we could have hostilities on only a single world. I know there's been a few multiple-player-race campaigns where the player has had to mess with stances to avoid having armies on other bodies shoot each other over a localized conflict on some gallicite-rich asteroid.