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DeicidE

Join Date 03/2006

Planetary invasions - reality check

Ramblings of a mad man

To wage war is not a challenge to taken lightly.

Ignoring your opponents alliances, or the killing off of trade routes, or the war tax, where is the impact on your nation. It’s all a bit too easy.

It seems wrong that 2 ships can defeat a planet. Or one if undefended.

How can you transport 1 billion soldiers, tanks, ordinance onto a ship instantaneously, yes you built your ship, hit launch, by a miracle they are just there ready to fly.

Lets face it each man would need 4 cubic meters at least in order to sleep, store weapons, personal items (cos it seems they are going there for the rest of their lives, well maybe not). Therefore 1 billion troops takes up 4 billion cubic meters, or 1 cubic mile, pretty big

(try not to laugh too loud) Now if your flying for 10 weeks you’ll need to phone home every so often, take a shower, eat, keep fit, etc so in reality you are looking at 10 times that.

Put them in cryo-stasis I hear you say, sounds good, but research it, put it on a tech tree somewhere probably towards the end of the tree. But its still 1 mile cubed.

Tanks/planes/missiles/transports probably big beasts so were back to 10 times bigger. So we either have a huge spaceport or space shipyards (or even multiple space shipyards), lets face it even the "death star II" in star wars was only 100miles in diameter, no 10 mile wide/long launch bay there.

I propose new starbase type of "shipyard", for building large/huge/"hugecargo" ships, huge cargo being a new transport type. Although in starwars – attack of the clones at the end you see the clone battleships taking off from the surface I would suggest that is not really feasible for a 300 meter multibillion ton ship to take off, such thing as escape velocity to overcome. Tiny/small/medium ships I can come to terms with, bigger than that needs a space based shipyard… Oh yes!!!

In war the enemy will target your ability to wage war and that is likely to be manufacturing facilities/shipyards first, but since you have to conquer a planet to take out the manufacturing plants having the possibility of taking an expensive shipyard out might add to the game play in a war.

If a nation on earth was to build a nuclear silo out of the blue 1000 miles from your capital city, with a nation you know one day you’ll come to blows with. Would you sit back and say, it’s ok, I don’t think he’ll us it. Would you

a) Build a strike team and take it out?

Build one yourself.
c) Demand they take it apart and submit to inspections, or it’s war soon
d) Bribe them to take it apart and submit to inspections.

Hmm If you can build one yourself then cool, if you can’t then lock and load cos options c and d is not possible, If you already have one then build another or yep you guessed it lock and load.

What do you think will happen when that country is Iran… kind of true to life really.

North Korea might have been bribed to take theirs apart.

Ok, take a break, and continue in 5 mins LOL

One other thing about troops, a population generally consists of a certain composition, the uk for instance http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_Kingdom#Age_structure

Has 66% of population between 15 and 64, its fair to say a man can fight on the battle field to say 45, after that it’s probably a command role of some kind. And lets say 17 is the youngest. Were left with 70% of those and most women will be running the planet, I know I’ve seen starship troopers but at most 10% of women will go to war. So maybe were looking at 25% of the whole population will be eligible to be troops.for a 16 billion planet that’s 4 billion troops, but by the same token it’s also 4 billion troops to defend. I can see the devs will have a nightmare integrating that little gem into the gameplay. So I would suggest that for a 16 billion planet only population over the 8 billion mark are allowed to be soldiers for offensive. (yes 50% but makes the maths easier) and over 6 billion can be defensive troops (66%) – (greater than offensive due to knowledge of land and troops dug in etc)

Seriously if you leave 1 man on a planet should that planet be able to pump out 100 research 50 mp and 100 credits?... answer is obviously no, but it can happen in this game (well ok 10 million might be the lowest in this game)

Also can we not commit genocide too often without being expelled from the UN and massive sanctions imposed? Occupy planets, (those manufacturing plants have ceilings 1 foot too low for your super large race…LOL..how can you use those?) and soldiers add to population, of course people won’t be happy but that also allow the planet to revolt should nearby influence be too low. Maybe declare independence.

Binding treaties

Treaties that can’t be broken,

e.g. we’ll stop the war if you give us 100 credits per week for the next year. if the credit cannot be taken/given then the treaty is cancelled.

Or we’ll give you planets x,y,z and 30 per week if you do not enter our current territory for 60 weeks. The territory is taken from the moment it’s signed, any additional territory gained after that is ignored and can be entered.

Some changes are in order.

1. No more than 10 million troops per ship, or maybe 2 million per module
2. Research levels of cryo storage (5 levels big units to tiny units)
3. New starbase type of shipyard, with all new fancy components to aid in the building of large ships
4. Only troops over 50% population capacity mark can load onto transports.
5. Binding treaties

Advanced changes

1. Option to commit genocide, immediatly expelled from UN with trade cancelled and not possible with all UN nations, unless compensation paid (lot of money)

All of the above might be planned for GC3 if they are tell us so we can start dreaming.

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Too much mundane reality is the enemy of fun. It would be helpful to know what difficulty/map settings your'e playing on. Admittedly, on the easier difficulties youre not too concerned with War, or if everyone on the map declares war on you at once...it's never anything you cant handle. On the more cutthroat difficulties you're much more concerned with the negative diplomatic impact from unprovoked invasion, because getting attacked when youre not ready for it is a much more dangerous proposition.

Beyond that, though. certainly many concepts in the game are streamlined for fun and playability. Military conquest is a staple of 4x gameplay, and you wouldnt want too much mundane reality and logistical details to burden the player so badly they never got to put their war machine into action. It's a game, not a simulation.

Always room for improvement, though.

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They're MINI soldiers.

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Well, face it, but even though you chose your Civilization's alignment to "Good" you are sending 1 billion troopers or more into 1 Transport, you actually think they train them in your planet? No! They take normal people out of the street and put them into the transport for a suicide mission. They slave them, give them bad conditions in the transport. Imagine it like how they used to treat Afro-Americans in that time. Soldiers in this game have no rights, it's pretty clear. But again, what can you expect? It's not like you choose to be that way, sending tons of people in 1 transport, it's just the game, in your side you are perfectly ok.

And another think, think you are in a Huge Galaxy. And you send 1 man in a small scout. He will travel for almost 10 years in this small scout, and if you like Star Wars, think of it as a TIE Fighter's cockpit, this thing is good enough for 1 person and for short trips, nothing big or fancy.

As people said before, this game is not so realistic, and it's good that way. If the Invasion bothers you, so I'd say bah. Because if you want realism, take a look at Sol System. The Sun is in the size of Jupiter and every planet is about 2 squares away from each other. And since we use Hyperdrive and not Star Gates, it's not like you can be teleported from place to place.

Just think of that.

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And you send 1 man in a small scout. He will travel for almost 10 years in this small scout, and if you like Star Wars, think of it as a TIE Fighter's cockpit, this thing is good enough for 1 person and for short trips, nothing big or fancy.

Maybe instead of making life support modules allow you to travel farther, we could do something realistic and make you be able to travel for a longer amount of turns instead. There, you want realism, you got it.

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The game is not even close to being realistic. If you wanted to represent the size of the planets and the distances between them realistically, for example, you would need a high powered electron microscope to play the game.

At any rate, when you build one ship, you got to think of it like it is a fleet of ships. Just like in the civilization games how one sprearman actually represents an army of spearman and not litterlly one sprearman.

Also, keep in mind, how fast the population grows. I mean millions and millions of new people every game turn or every week? Get real!!!

The game was not meant to be realistic at all. Just enjoy it.

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Ahhhh! The realism vs fun controversy.

I just wonder what this game would be like if they had everything on real terms....it wouldn't be that bad I suppose.

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Too much mundane reality is the enemy of fun.

Agreed.

It would be helpful to know what difficulty/map settings your'e playing on. Admittedly, on the easier difficulties youre not too concerned with War, or if everyone on the map declares war on you at once...it's never anything you cant handle. On the more cutthroat difficulties you're much more concerned with the negative diplomatic impact from unprovoked invasion, because getting attacked when youre not ready for it is a much more dangerous proposition.

Painful and above

Beyond that, though. certainly many concepts in the game are streamlined for fun and playability.

Of course it has to be like that, if we had the ability to switch on and off depth and complexity levels, that would appeal to me for the long term.

Military conquest is a staple of 4x gameplay, and you wouldnt want too much mundane reality and logistical details to burden the player so badly they never got to put their war machine into action. It's a game, not a simulation.

Were all out to rule the galaxy, just the balance later in the game is not right, just too easy to build a massive fleet and make lightning strikes.

In DL there was always the rush for planets, if you got enough, you'd won forget war or opinion you'd won, and that was less then half way through the game.

In DA the game flows better, not so clear cut on when you know you're gonna win or KNOW you're gonna win. Once you have enough money rolling in and can churn out the transports/fleets then apart from the the mega events you know you've won, then it becomes mundane to just get to the victory screen. Don't get me wrong fleet battles are awesome. But its pretty academic at that point.

My reasoning is an attempt to slow the end game down or make it more of a challenge to get to that point.

Maybe the solution lies in the AI, I guess if the computer knows what your upto it can prevent it or mitigate it. It just cannot deal with 10 fleets of ships with dozens of billions of troops on course to annexe another system.

Always room for improvement, though.

I'd pay for as many expansion packs as they decide to make. It's the best game out there and has the brightest future.

Roll on TOTA.

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I'm intelligent enough to realise that the stars/planets are a representation only, it makes no different of the distance between them.

The game is based on calculations and formula, I'm just advocating more complex formula and models. None of what I've said will affect game play too much, just slow down the end game. As for the starbase shipyard idea, don't they say variety is the spice of life.

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Lets make each and every planet play like a full blown game of Civilization. To be real, each planet should have a vast array of cities, different cultures and structures.

Maybe each battle could be a full campain of a first person shooter.

This game should be in real time. It should take YEARS to reseach technologies and build structures. weeks? C'mon it takes months just to get plans approved.

Sorry but i just get tired of the "this isnt realistic" argument.

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Can you imagine if a game like this was made? Where you had galciv 2, then civ for each planet, than a first person shooter for each battle?? Holy Cow! World of Warcraft will get a run for its money in being a time sink.

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Someone wrote a parody along those lines years ago, about a World War Two miniatures game played on a man-to-man scale. You had to have railroad train boxcars to lug around the tens of millions of individual minifigs and all the built-to-scale tabletop maps. Just be glad it wasn't a LARP game. heh.

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The game is based on calculations and formula, I'm just advocating more complex formula and models. None of what I've said will affect game play too much, just slow down the end game.

I was sympathetic until this. Like the endgame needs to be any slower. Have you ever played a game on a larger than small map, with a raised planet count? The "endgame" slows to molasses, just from the sheer logistical nightmare of managing worlds and moving population around to manage the massive invasion undertaking.

I hearby assign you to play a large map game with abundant worlds. In a week when you're done, come back and tell us if you still think that portion of the game needs burdened with more details, or "slowed down" any. If you do, I won't agree with you, but I'll respect your opinion.

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Sorry but i just get tired of the "this isnt realistic" argument.

You'd better email the devs and tell them not to bother with TOTA then, cos they ARE trying to make it more realistic. Make a special point to cancel the realistically different tech tree's per race

Everyone is entitled to an opinion, mine is for more realism (Stars! had rubbish graphics and weak AI compared to GC but some of it's models have never been matched in all of the last 10 years).

Like I said above have a switch to turn on realism if you want it.

The dev team have the knack of making complex model work visually well on screen, so I doubt the fun would suffer

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The game is based on calculations and formula, I'm just advocating more complex formula and models. None of what I've said will affect game play too much, just slow down the end game.

I do, on gigantic

, but you know you've won days before you get victory, Don't you? there is a tipping point where you can't lose. the answer?

Govenors might help with the micromanagement hell of end game, and 1.7 does get some way there.

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If this game could simulate reality... you'd get no-where.

you'd never win, plain and simple.

There's just too much political and religious BS that gets in the way.
The closest anyone ever got to ruling the world was Hitler and he's dead.

Real issues for instance would be:

Riots and rebellions on planets you've (sucessfuly) invaded.
you're opinion on issues like gay marriage and stem cells (and people will always disagree with you).
Crime.
Corruption (this includes you).
etc.

simply, there is no ruling the world/galaxy in the real world. So, heck, why not sit down grab a brew and have fun ruling the galaxy in something that is far from reality (just where I want to be).

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The one thing that should be reworked, and I think they were going to rework, is the use of regular population for invasions.

Let's face it, it's just silly that the entire population fights it out, and has anywhere near the capablities of the invasion force. I'd love to see an overhaul where you have garison buildings, that generate soldiers to a certain % of the population.

Opon invasion only the soldiers / militias would fight. Add in some support for mixed populations and things could get really cool. (like you need x% troops there, to contain the natives from revolt, or you could just slaughter them)

Also the transports being used up upon invasion is a bit of a fun killer. It makes the end game very tedious. Just make transports more expensive, and make it cost money to fill them with soldiers.

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I'd buy that in an expansion on it's own

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Alright, just for fun, lets rationalize the setup, IGNORING for the moment that the whole thing is absurdly over abstracted:

1) Cargo ships are pretty big. I don't remember the exact number, but there's room for quite a few bodies if you stack them like firewood. Especially if weapons and equipment are contained with the individual, space isn't as big an issue as you make it out to be. You don't need to be a death star to be carry
2) The entire ship is basically a war-in-a-box. It arrives at a planet and practically disassembles itself to deploy all the dropships, armour squadrons, and aircraft in its arsenal, possibly in several waves as needed. The husk of the ship remains in orbit until the end of the invasion, acting as a command and control center, sattelite intelligence, orbital artillery, and rienforcement hub all in one. Hell, you could probably detach pieces of the hull to use as ammunition for bombardment. A warp drive dropped on you from orbit would make a hell of a bang.

Rationalizing the "civies as soldiers" mechanic is, of course, a doomed prospect to begin with. The closest I can get is that only some of them are soldiers, and the rest are the support staff deployed as they land to establish a foothold. This'd also mean they'd take up much less space, even with their equipment (materials, supposedly, could be gathered on the ground). The attackers would then be relying on not numbers, but the overwhelming strategic advantage of total space superiority. Having an orbital mass driver on the line has to be a pretty sweet deal.

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militias would

Perhaps you could have a tech line where militias could be used. For example: A X% of the population is converted to soldiers upon enemy invasion.

YOu could go down the line to get a higher militia percentage.

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Rationalizing the "civies as soldiers" mechanic is, of course, a doomed prospect to begin with.

Think about it this way, you invade with civilians, but THEY are defending with civilians.

There, I have the solution and I am all knowing, bow down to me!

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It's really just a numbers game with sci-fi symbology attached. The symbology could be applied in any other way and the game would still be the same. I doubt we'll ever see changes for reality's sake and from a marketing perspective, there's no reason to. The game has never claimed to be a simulation of any kind. You can rationalize or criticize, but it is what it is and probably always will be.

I have played simulation games there were very realistic. I've also gotten bored with them pretty quick. I don't think a simulation game with a space theme has ever been done. That might be interesting, but it would probably be a tough sell.

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A warp drive dropped on you from orbit would make a hell of a bang.

I don't have this invasion tactic, is this in the new beta?

* Starbattlecruiser Inimitable approaching geosynchronous orbit above the Fortified Defense Systems Capital.. *

'Sir, our objective is within weapons range'

'Exellent, the destruction of the Capital is at hand, and with that, our victory!'

'Prepare release of the Warp drives!'

'Captain! We have been targeted by the Captital's Ground to Orbit missiles!'
'Fire drives as soon as we have a lock!'
'Drives released Sir!'
'Sir, fifteen Fission Torpedoes are homing in on our trajectory..'
'Emergency maneouvres! Move us out of orbit at once!'
'Sir, sir we can't'
'What??!!'

'We launched all the drives sir..'
...
'All of them?'
'Well, yes sir..'
'Okay, that's it, prepare to evacuate, assemble the crew at the Ejecting Pod deck!'
'Uh, Sir, well..'
'What???!!!'
'We destroyed the enemy Orbital Defense Station with an Ejection Pod Launch'
...
sigh..'All of them?..'
'Yes sir'
...
'Sh*t...'

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hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!

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I would pay good money for an invasion to work like that.

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I would pay good money for an invasion to work like that.

Let's hope Stardock is listening then

....

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