How to Defend Against Planetary Invasions

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null
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How to Defend Against Planetary Invasions

Post by null »

Let's talk about planetary invasions. Here's how it works now:
A planet is considered defended if it has any one of the following:

- Starbase
- Missile defense
- Beam defense
- 3 small sized ships or more
- 1 small, 1 medium ships or more
- 1 large ship or more
http://forum.l3o.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1301

This means that a single small ship isn't capable of protecting a colony without ground defenses from invasion. Since I think this is an interesting game mechanic I thought I'd start a discussion about it. Here are some ideas for different ways to handle it. I've tried to quantify both how they may impact gameplay (crunch) and why they seem like an "intuitive" way to model invasions (fluff). I'd love to hear other people's ideas and opinions.

(Note that I've focused on the use of ships to defend since the high cost and long build times of static defenses means that new colonies will need fleet defenses for quite a while.)

1. Keep it as is:
+ Permits the rather novel tactic of "raiding". Lightly defended worlds can be taken by lighting strikes from armies alone. Maybe you lured their main battle fleet away with a clever feint. Maybe the enemy fleet is just weak. Either way the Imperial Guard will have its day!
+ Makes sense because planets are HUGE. How can one wimpy little ship deny ALL enemy landings?
- 3 R.P.s worth of ships is a ton of resources to devote to defending a brand new colony. If you enemies are really close at the beginning you could be devoting 50% of your R.P. allotment just to protecting Mars and Pluto (for example).
- Seems a bit counter-intuitive to me. Why 3 R.P.? Why not 4? Or some number based on tech levels?
? Forces players to expand much more cautiously.

2. Change it so you only need a single requisition point worth of ships to defend:
+ Has the benefit of being pretty familiar since this is how most games handle it.
+ IMHO it's easier to think about (ANY defenders is enough)
+ Makes sense because presumably even a single ship in orbit can RUIN a ground army's day.
- Obviates the aforementioned raider strategy.
? Makes explosive expansion strategies safer.

3. As #1 but incorporate the ships into the invasion math. This would mean that up to 2 R.P.s of ships could assist the defenders against the landers the fleet couldn't prevent from disgorging troops. There could be some kind of bonus added to the defenders' skill or maybe the ships could periodically kill some fixed number of invaders (based on weapons # & tech) as ground commanders call in orbital strikes at key moments.
+/- Same as #1 but a little easier for players to expand/defend colonies
+ Would really breathe life into modelling "the contested border world".
- Awfully complex for something that doesn't happen very often.

4. Open it up. Let any world be invaded. Say you make landing troops on a planet more like boarding ships. Once the transports get into range they can dump some number of troops on the planet each tactical turn. Base tech might take all 20 tactical turns to do it while tech like transporters could speed it up. After the space combat phase ends the entirety of both surviving fleets help with the ground war (as in #3).
+ Permits lots of new strategies. Even token defenders could deny a portion of an invasion force while powerful fleets could help steamroll low tech empires with lousy fleets but lots of soldiers. Hit and run raids would become even more viable.
+ Ground combat tends to be a pro forma affair in 4X games. You just load a big pile of dudes into transports and barf them onto planets after the REAL battle in space is done. This change would make defending and conquering more dynamic than that.
- Pretty crazy. Would change the game ALOT and have far reaching implications as ground combat became much more important.

So what say you guys?

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True_poser
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Re: How to Defend Against Planetary Invasions

Post by True_poser »

I defend against invasions in a simple, practical and totally cheating way.

I build a fleet of troop transports (you can build them as much as you want, no weapons - no command points used).
They are built with troops inside, so I just unload all troops onto my colony.

Here's the fun part - troops are replenished each turn if your transports orbit a planet with barracks without any impact on the colony garrison.
So with a 5 strong fleet you get 150k troops generated each turn.

Rinse, repeat.


Personally, I believe that the whole invasion mechanics should be changed, as it:
1) is simply defender_strength*defender_numbers - attacker_strength*attacker_numbers
2) hugely favors the number of invasion techs known...
3) ...but disfavors developing them further
4) doesn't account for local circumstances (total population, population morale, planet type, outnumbering, space control, etc) which essentially should've made each invasion unique

With proper invasion mechanics addressing issues above current invasion triggers would be ok, I believe.

I believe I have quite neat mechanics in a spreadsheet, however they're utterly unmoddable, so there's no way to try them in-game.
Still, if you're interested, I can try to get it out in some google docs to play various scenarios.

null
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Re: How to Defend Against Planetary Invasions

Post by null »

Heh. I used that transport trick once. Raises a question though: what prevents you from just spamming it to give every planet a huge garrison? I experimented with a small transport group and got a colony up above 1 million troops before I got bored. Given that a full fleet of pure transports should only have 350k troops available (10 ships / fleet * 7 pods / ship * 5k troops / pod = 350k troops / fleet) it seems potentially unbalancing.
2) hugely favors the number of invasion techs known...
3) ...but disfavors developing them further
This is a really good point. After a full ten levels of research you haven't even improved your combat bonus by as much as you did when you made the first breakthrough. Maybe shift it so the bonuses aren't quite so front loaded? It could even be used to give some character to the different paths. For example:

Tank +50, +100, +125, +150, +165, +175, +185, +195, +200, +205
Mech +25, +50, +75, +100, +125, +150, +175, +200, +250, +300

To me this progression gives the techs a bit of flavor. Mechs lag tanks for most of their development but eventually become much better suggesting that they benefit more from fancy tech (going from clunky power loaders to elegant frames that move like dancers, say) while after a certain point you start getting diminishing returns from tank refinements (how much armor can we add boss?).
4) doesn't account for local circumstances (total population, population morale, planet type, outnumbering, space control, etc) which essentially should've made each invasion unique
...
I believe I have quite neat mechanics in a spreadsheet
Heck man, post it. (I'd just just copy and paste it here, unless it's huge) Worst case scenario is that the devs ignore it :).

astral
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Re: How to Defend Against Planetary Invasions

Post by astral »

lol beam defense.. i didnt see beam defense in my game play so far...

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Re: How to Defend Against Planetary Invasions

Post by Wenla »

astral wrote:lol beam defense.. i didnt see beam defense in my game play so far...
I have played tens and tens games and got beam defense only in one game...
You have to have a vision before you can define your strategy

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Re: How to Defend Against Planetary Invasions

Post by True_poser »

null wrote:Heck man, post it. (I'd just just copy and paste it here, unless it's huge) Worst case scenario is that the devs ignore it :).
Sure.
Here it is -
Made in excel 2010, haven't tested it in gnumeric or calc.

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Zaimat
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Re: How to Defend Against Planetary Invasions

Post by Zaimat »

RE: OP topic. Thanks for breaking down to the different scenarios and feedback. Not planning any immediate changes to the sytem but will consider them for any future updates.
astral wrote:lol beam defense.. i didnt see beam defense in my game play so far...
It should be a little easier now if you see a race has the technology you can try to learn by invading one of their colonies. (The chance is very high if they have a beam defense built on the invaded planet itself).

True_poser that'a really neat spreadsheet. You've outdone yourself!
Horizon - Lead Designer | a.k.a. Raf

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True_poser
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Re: How to Defend Against Planetary Invasions

Post by True_poser »

Zaimat wrote:True_poser that'a really neat spreadsheet. You've outdone yourself!
Thank you.
Comes with the profession, I think.

On an unrelated note, in that model I make up non-linear tech bonuses, however, from tech_stats.xml I got the feel that all tech bonuses are hardcoded to increase linearly.
This creates a problem with many redundant techs, as without additional bonuses it's clear, what tech is better (aging reversal and nano-bodies as the most clear example).
Having them leaping on certain levels (stages of the game, essentially) will create much more different research strategies.