STGOD 2k8 Planning thread

[Academia Nut]

Could you expand upon your idea for how this would work? Because O and D have to have some sort of effect in general battle or it would be absolutely pointless to buy either.

This is also why I suggested having to declare where your point defence is being allocated at the start of the turn, so that the attacker can choose what to hit. So instead of dividing the attacks up amongst twenty targets, more fire can be directed at fewer targets to punch through their defence. So in the instance of 50 1+1D ships vs a 50 point dreadnought, if the dread tries to target all of them simultaneously, its going to die without having done anything. If however it focuses on 25 ships, it will swat those 25 out of the sky, but do nothing to the others for that turn, letting them get in an extra turn of combat. Admittedly, in this scenario you would have been better off to bring 50 2 point ships, but things tend to break down in such lopsided engagements anyway. I suppose figuring out how many ships you can target per turn would be useful. No idea how to do that, but giving bonuses to the numbers you can target through improved sensors and/or improved offences would be a decent point of discussion.

And yes, the troops thing is a bit of a pickle. I suppose we could make the other stats better to compensate so that we don't get into a big pissing match, because super soldiers are cool and unless you have something more tempting, then a lot of people will be wanting them.

Let's see if we can make something good enough that people will want to buy it as a start:

Improved Logistics: For every 1 point you invest in this attribute, you get a +1% bonus to the speed at which you can repair your ships, and field repairs are more effective. For every 50 points you invest, you can repair one grade further in the field than normal (so with 50 points you can reapir a Damaged ship without needing to return to port, and for 100 points you can repair a Severelly Damaged ship without needing to return to port or drydock [I can't remember what the damage levels are like, but you get the idea]). This aspect can represent a robust supply system or mobile, miniaturized fabrication systems, or other such ways of ensuring that ships have what they need.

A rough draft, but it gets the idea across. We just need to tempt people with things better than ground combat to prevent everyone from dumping everything into whatever cap we set, just to keep even with everyone else because everything else is a waste of points.

[Dark Hellion]

I think the troops thing is coming along because everyone has realized that holding ground will be important this time around, as opposed to last time, where naval power was the be all end all. Really, I have super infantry, but a very normal army otherwise. I am tying it to my fluff, and to some imperial fluff. And really, the Empire is so big that multi-system wars could be fought within its boarders and the reports never have to go above sector command level. We are talking about a truly massive organization that could literally lose planets for black budget if necessary. So, I don't think we should penalize players for buying improved ground forces, but really trade is going to be huge for the long game, as is imperial tech, and diplomacy related skills. Power blocs are going to be hard to form with barbarians roaming around, the Enclave existing to break the backs of anything that tries to reignite the Empire, and every sneaky faction trying to come out o top.

As for the O vs. D. Rp value will be huge. Most of the time, a fleet engagement isn't going to end with a fleet destroyed, but limping away damaged. However, improved O will mean you kill ships, kill trained crew (important) and damage hard to replace components. Improved D means you don't take damage period, as opposed to simply taking superficial damage. Which saves repair points, and keeps the fleet in better operation, as well as freeing up logistics for real things, like feeding your fleet while its a hundred light years from home.

Oh, and will we please try to RP morale this time. I mean, last game I had a half dozen biological factions trying to claim that they would walk through my fallout infested, nuclear mine ridden, asteroid encircled, planets filled with suicide troops without suffering from major combat fatigue. This was bullshit then, and it still is now. Your troops aren't going to be happy about fighting some dumbasses half way across the galaxy because they spell colour with a U. Just admit it, have your troops bitch, spend the points to buy combat strippers and make em happy.

[Covenant]

Could you expand upon your idea for how this would work? Because O and D have to have some sort of effect in general battle or it would be absolutely pointless to buy either.

Sure. I generally agree with your points--I was just poisting these ideas as general ideas, I'm not trying to invent anything new, just clarify what we already like. I'm trying not to invent things out of thin air, so excuse of the mechanics are a bit muddled--I'm only interperting what I thought we decided on, not what I'm actually proposing. I was hoping someone would be able to present me with the actual ruleset, not that we'd be making it up right now!

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Anyway... cliff's note version of my interpertation:

• Damage calcs reduce actual damage to only a percentage of the ship's actual 'weight' as we discussed early on, making a 50 point ship theoretically do only 30 points of damage a turn.
  +O damage is 'bonus damage' that is added later in the calculation, making it a better cost-to-benefit than normal 'weight' in terms of damage dealing capacity.
  +D reduces +O damage directly, but not normal damage. This makes it useful for keeping big ships from being gutted by bonus damage, but does not overpower the stat.

Longer Version:

Put simply though, +O damage is computed seperately from normal damage, and more generously--so that while a 15 point ship might end up doing only 3 damage a turn (due to our damage calcs we thought up early on) a 5+10 ship might do more like 7--making it way better at dealing damage but becoming a glass cannon. To a 40 point vessel though, the +10 is sensible and simulates the 'Heavy Guns' and such that a big ship would have. A 40+10 is a Yamato dreadnaught, whereas a 50 pointer is an Iowa-Class Battleship with a fuckton of AA but not as heavy a main shipkiller armament.

And important to this is the idea that +D does not lower the attack value of normal ships. In other terms, that a 40+10D vessel is simply a 40 pointer versus normal ships, because Active Defenses only slow down Improves Offensives. That may seem bizzare, but these are primarily ECM, anti-fighter and anti-missile systems and not extra armor and shielding. It doesn't really make your ship tougher all-around, it just makes it able to stop specialized systems like fighters and torpedoes. Active Defenses should not 'add hitpoints' to a ship, since that's the job of actual hitpoints.

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That said...

I'm definately for the idea of declaring where the PD's go too. I think that's the cleanest way of deciding how to handle 'fleet screening' in a sensible way.

Another take on Improved Offensives could be that they are 'called' damage. If we do go with your great idea of having people assign their 'Active Defenses' to certain ships, squads, etc, then we make it much better balanced. It could even act as the 'damage soak' that Adrian mentioned without becoming overpowered, since you'd be given the option of aiming at someone else besides the screened vessels, and doing full damage--or if too many ships are shielded too thinly, we'd do what we discussed and just fire at FEWER of them, penetrate the defenses, and score kills.

Now for the called damage--Improved Offenses could be said to shoot THROUGH those defenses. They'd still do damage as normal, but would be unblockable. That's a total reversal of before, but I like it. We'd make 'Active Defenses' great at screening your ships against anything--and the only way to penetrate them and hit those ships you REALLY wanted to hit would be to fire Improved Offensives through them. But their damage would otherwise be exactly the same, so they're only useful for attacking ships that are heavily shielded/screened/ECM protected.

Whatcha' think?

It's a bit confusing, but it needs to do something, and both offenses and defenses need to do something 'above and beyond' their normal cost. But if Improved Offenses hit extra hard (and are able to be specially targetted) then both of them become reasonable purchases without throwing the entire mix out of whack.

We want these systems to be balanced--so essentially someone SHOULD be able to ignore them and just make bricks of 20 points, no specials, and just send swarms of those at you and do fairly well. The bonus damage and offense things should add color and tactics to the mix, but only add another 10-15 minutes or so of thinking to a combat round.

I do like the idea of 'calling' where the Point Defenses go though, and I think that operates very well.

And yes, the troops thing is a bit of a pickle. I suppose we could make the other stats better to compensate so that we don't get into a big pissing match, because super soldiers are cool and unless you have something more tempting, then a lot of people will be wanting them.

That's mostly it, yeah. Unless other stuff is good, everyone wants that. And why not? Not only is ground combat DIRELY important to winning a large planetary battle (definately the BIGGEST reward you could imagine) but it's also a big part of the ego factor. Ship dominance is somewhat faceless, and besides, we've long-since banned bonuses that apply to ships. The only other place that gives people as large a hardon is ground combat, as they can describe their glorious shitkicking infantrymen punching holes in tanks, flipping jeeps, and laughing off artillery fire if they put way more points into it.

And why not? But unless we have something as useful to balance it (and I quake in fear at balancing something that's as good as a +500% ground combat modifier) everyone will take it.

I think the most obvious solution is either to reduce the value to 100, so that putting ALL your points in translates only to a +100 bonus (way more fair) and then just lowering the costs of other things to match. Or, what I think is a lot more reasonable overall, is making the Bonus Ground Forces thing apply ONLY to DEFENSIVE FORCES on your homeworlds. This makes it useful to have, but prevents you from assraping a planet with only a handful of troops. Huge defensive bonuses merely slow down an opponent, and don't throw off the balance. Hell, they add to the game for everyone, since now there's more chances for rescue and reinforcements to arrive. But offensive ground troop bonuses should be paid for via the "I am buying more Manz" command.

However, we could make a lot more sense of this if we had a bigger list of possible aptitudes. If we say that each point counts as 1 percent, then all the other aptitudes (repair speed, captured planetary conversion rate, hypercomm speed, faction defensive information networks) all work on the same scale nicely. 100 into repair speed doubles it. 100 into planetary conversion halves how long it takes to make them willing to do my bidding. 200 points into info-nets triples my early warning network's radius (or area, which when computed on a 3d sphere may not be all that big) and 500 into hypercomms could approach but not quite reach realtime communication speed (with default speed six times as slow).

I think that'd work well. It'd encourage people to spend points elsewhere, since all the things operate on percentage bonuses. While ground combat bonues (especially if they are merely planetary defense bonuses) will make your worlds concievably six or seven times as difficult to defend (RP'd any way you please) it wouldn't be utterly more useful than nearly realtime communication speed or nearly realtime repair speed. 500% bonus to repairs? Yes please.

[Dark Hellion]

How about making infantry upgrades either offensive infantry or defensive infantry. Being good at taking over a planet doesn't mean you are good at holding it against an invasion. All those APCs and IFVs that are awesome at blitzing cities suck ass when you are getting sieged. Big slow arty that can counter-battery fire is really good though.

And really, if people RP well, huge infantry bonuses aren't going to matter, because no matter how hard your infantry, you either have to make the opposing populace submit, or you are going to be rooting out guerillas and trying to be building infrastructure long after the game has ended.

Just punish people for doing dumb things, and enforce fair play from populaces, so we don't have people claiming unbreakable populaces (and unbreakable populaces are probably frothing fanatics that no one cares if you nuke to shit).

[Covenant]

I say we have population breakability as it's own aptitude (for those who absolutely need it) and otherwise just give a reasonable amount of time it takes to break a world, and have your take-over speed as a seperate aptitude. Making it RP'd is re-taw-ded. You can continue to RP a 'La Resistance' group blowing up a Venusian Starbucks or something, it just won't effect control of the world. A few minor saboteur cells are really a lot less dangerous to infrastructure than organized crime and corruption are.

As for offensive army bonuses, we HAVE those--it's called 'bring more army men.' Just spend some of your monthly income buying AT-AT's and such. I bet that 100 points of spaceship funding directed into Tank production buys a fuckton of tanks. That's all the bonus you need.

[Darkevilme]

Covenant your method works fine if that was all that we're representing with the bonus. But in the case of the Konige its not production, its not tanks or walking death cathedral warbots. Its literally pure inherent awesomeness. And with the Chamaran's its physical capability, forcefields and psycher elites.

Though the idea of spending production to build walking death cathedral warbots is a good one to have as well.

Also i imagine that fighting someone with 600% repair speed would be rather freaky.

Commodore after damaging enemy fleet and forcing it into retreat bombs world it was defending and then decides to pull back, enemy fleet by this time of course is back operational and pursues the Commodore home to return the favour.

[Academia Nut]

Yeah, dumping all 500 points into Improved Logistics the way it is written means that if you don't destroy a ship outright, it is going to be coming back at you within a couple of days at most. Justifying why you have such mind boggling repair rates is probably reserved for AI civs with insane nanotech. That or you have enough spare parts and crews laying around that you could build entire ships. It might be a bit overpowering, but honestly, if you want to dump 500 points into one area you should kick ass with it, and you're going to weak or average everywhere else.

Okay, I think we're getting closer to how O and D should work. I'm actually kind of liking O as improved targetting. How's about this for how a combat turn would work:

1) Each side declares how much damage they do in a round (using whatever formula we come up with) and how they have arranged their active defences for that turn.
2) Knowing how much active defence each ship has, each side declares where they are going to target their fire. So if you have say 40 points of damage to deal in a round, you can target one 40 point target or 40 1 point targets (unless we decide on a max number of targets per round rule). Declare which points are from O.
3) Each side can agree or disagree to the chosen target. If they disagree, they may select the targets, but in doing so they take extra damage that turn. Not sure exactly how much, but enough to make this not worth it unless you are defending a strategically important target (like a superweapon, a troop ship, etc). So say maybe take double damage to disagree with a target. So if say you want your corvettes to sacrifice themselves for your dreadnought, you could take the 40 points of damage done that turn and apply it to 80 points of other targets. If you do not care about other targets, then that damage is not doubled, so if you also had 20 points of damage hitting one of your cruisers and you accept that, you do not double that as well. That said, any points of damage from O cannot be contested.
4) Figure out damage, subtracting D from any dealt. Damage from O slices right through D.

All this together shouldn't take more than 15 minutes to do, and makes both O and D useful in all situations. O might be a bit underpowered now, so maybe we could bump it up, but it seems to be fluff wise that a lot of O is simply having better targetting capacities.

[Covenant]

A lot of O could also be armor-percing rounds that blast through shields, or high-power beams that lance right through enemy screening vessels, and so on. You can make it a lot more exciting than better fire control if you want, you can think of it as bombs so mighty that not even the Universe's best defenses can shield you from their blast, and so forth.

If they do slightly better damage than normal (like I suggested they might) then they're still a useful thing, without being uber. I certainly like the idea, and I'm glad you thought of that good way of handling D that made it possible.

I'm not sure about the contesting mechanic, but the rest is pretty good, as it allows us to keep the simple mechanic of allowing the defender to choose what he loses, but also giving an attacker an in-game upgrade option to allow him to target specific things. It makes sense for a big superbeam ship, for example, to be a 10+10 artillery platform and fire big nasty beams down into the enemy from long range that can't be blocked to help gank enemy sueprweapons.

Covenant your method works fine if that was all that we're representing with the bonus. But in the case of the Konige its not production, its not tanks or walking death cathedral warbots. Its literally pure inherent awesomeness. And with the Chamaran's its physical capability, forcefields and psycher elites.

It doesn't matter how you desc or RP them. Regardless, we price things equally to their value. If you field fucking action-figure sized warbots and use cybernetically enhanced GI-Joe figures as your infantry--and RP that each of them is capable of ripping a wookie in half with mind bullets, the sad fact is it is still only as powerful as it's cost, essentially.

We shouldn't have an entirely different sliding scale that dictates army and infantry stuff, allowing one side to have inherent superiority in all things to someone else. Afterall, this doesn't just apply to infantry--it appleis to their tanks, planes and automobiles as well. They'd all be 6x as strong per cost, which is just goddamn ridiculous.

Honestly, if you want a Chamaran Samurai to be able to split a planet, that's cool, he's still going to cost 100 points or so. And if we want Ruckers to be able to throw up the horns and stomp the shit out of a Bolo tank, that's totally fine, but they'll cost 100 points too.

So all I'm saying is that you can RP anything you want, but that we should use money to add 'bonus power' to our infantry attacks. It's not fair that one side can make a one-time payment now and be completely and utterly unbeatable in a ground combat unless they're outnumbered ten to one, especially when your units cost the same amount.

Think about that. For me to beat you, I'd need to spend an additional five times as much as you on troops, just to be equal. If you buy no troops at all, I have to buy five battalions extra jus to invade a world, to suppliment the 'automatically available' ground forces of a fleet. And if you DO buy even a piddling number, say 3x a default force, that brings you to 4x as strong as before, which forces me to buy perhaps as many as 25 times as many troops as normal just to take the world from you.

That's way out of line. And on defense it works just as badly, as I'd need around 10 to 1 odds just to stand against the hypothetical 500 point retard nation, if not greater numbers than that.

So really, RP it anyway you please. You can have your Samurai be your biggest, baddest units if you want (within the rules of course, they need quantifiably blockable quantek like psi-amps) but don't completely throw the balance out the window by making this into a racial wankfest. If you do, you know someone's gonna put 400 points into ground forces and make your Samurai look like redshirts.

I'm singling Ground Forces out at the moment because there's no other bonus (yet) that ties into a direct combat modifier at a universal level. That's pretty massive, really. It's the real gamewinner buy right there, as it's cheap upfront and only gets better and better as time goes on and more combat hits dirtside. Now, if we have OTHER things that are just as good then it won't be out of balance, but that's just what I was bringing up. Right now, throwing 500 points into groundforces is a no-brainer really, as it has a tangible benefit whereas most others don't. Adding a few better aptitudes, like logistics/repeair whatnot, would go a long way towards making some of us consider something else besides wanking our heroic soldiers.

BTW, I'm pretty much settled on a non-Imperial faction now. Did we ever decide what the 'barbarian' bonus/penalty is?

[Darkevilme]

Okay that all makes sense. now then, with the obvious option of spending racial points to have your soldiers piss pure badassery and rip a tank in half with their steely gaze gone we need a good list of other stuff to spend racial points on. There's improved FTL coms, improved logistics(the repair kind not the no upkeep kind), imperial tech(those sensor factories and other things that allow you to exceed certain shipbuilding limits), imperial shipyards of expensiveness... and loads of others i'm sure people can think of.

I personally think that earlywarning networks are distinctly production not racial and could even be classed as system defences seen as system defences at the moment exist to buy time for reinforcements to arrive and early warning networks essentially do the same by starting the reinforcements timer earlier on. So early warning networks, planetary shields, system wide interdictors are all defences really and should probably be bought as such.

As for the Chamaran's, i'll just change my assumptions to be that while they are awesome the entire species did fit on the fleet so they really cant field epic ten billion kitty armies without risking extinction. The 'we're all that's left' was my reasoning for base line infantry having forcefields.

*goes to decide how many points should be taken from ships to fielding Onnai battalions*

[Covenant]

Your baseline infantry can have forcefields, but in game terms they'd be the same 'cost' or 'weight' as a heavy tank, even if they are just catgirls with shields in all the RP. So while someone will send 100 infantry and 20 tanks at you, the Chamarans might counter it with 30 line infantry. Thing is, both forces would be the same cost, so it's totally fair. Unlike ships we don't really have enforced rankings for ground battles, so it's mostly a matter of who anted up higher for a longer time.

See what I mean?

Basically, in game terms, ground forces are merely numbers and not actual units. A 1000 point ground force can be made of AT-AT's, or infantry, or rabbits, or Chamaran Samurai and it's still just a 1000 point unit. The reason that the 'Ground Force' multiplier gets crazy is that while everyone may be 'assumed' to have a free 1000 point military in a given conflict unless they bring extra, you'd be assumed to have a 6000 point one.

You can RP your infantry as being the match for one million humans with rifles, if you deem it necessary, since it's just RP. All I'm saying is that in pure GAME terms, the modifier is out-of-whack since it distorts the balance to a degree that I have to pay more than you for the same effect, which would be akin to me getting twice as many spaceships for my dollar--which is unfair. If I wanted to say my spaceships were ten times as strong as you, that's okay--my 100 point ship would be the size of a corvette, but it'd still cost 100 points.

That's what I'm sayin'. Not trying to ruin your theme in the slightest. Just saying that the combat numbers need more attention paid to them than that. I don't care if your infantry are the biggest badasses in the Universe, so long as 10 points of them are a match for 10 points of mine (even if 10 points of mine mean one million infantry).

[Darkevilme]

I understand, makes sense.

So how many battalions does a given world have by default to defend itself? in production equivalent points i mean. Cause i have to funnel points from ships in order to get enough groundside warriors to fight and conquer and i need to know what a good baseline is for the various types of colony i'll be messing with.

[Hotfoot]

I didn't want ground forces to pull from the same point pool as fleets for numerous reasons.

A: It creates the sad situation of some poor schmuck who wastes all or most of his points on ground forces and then gets assassinated when someone who was sensible comes around with spaceships.

B: It's dead easy to make and supply a force of insurgents that can put up token resistances to proper military units. The cost in doing so is so negligible you can't quantify it in the units we use to build even the smallest ship.

C: So long as a nation has population, it should have viable ground forces. So long as a nation has the infrastructure that allow for a spacefaring (or even modern) civilization, they will have makeshift weapons. Moreover, the general sort of nation involved will create a general mindset in the population towards or against military service and training. This is why ground forces was to be a global bonus, to represent the amount of time, effort, and general industry the nation has put towards the ground military. In a particularly militant society, where every child trains from the time they can hold a gun, even the general militia could be better than the regular military of a nation who thinks that violence is abhorrent, etc. and so forth.

D: There is never, EVER a huge focus on ground combat in the STGODs. Once a planet has been taken over, that's pretty much it, the only remaining factor is time. In other words, "how long does it take to break the back of the resistance?". There is no reason at all we need as detailed a system for ground forces as we do for fleets. Seriously guys, it sounds keen, but in practice, it just bogs things down and makes everything harder.

E: If you're going to build ground combat with the same points as starships, then we need to impose the same limitations. It's stupid as hell when someone spends 1,000 points on a single starship, why should it be any different when someone does the same for ground forces? Again, we get back into the whole character debate, and again this comes back to unneeded complexity.

Gentlemen, there is a reason I moved to separate ship points from everything else, and we're seeing it right now. Just about the only thing I could reasonably support being paid for with ship points are system defenses and early warning networks, because those directly interact with ships. Everything else has no real point of contact, other than being able to be destroyed by ships in orbit (and let's do be honest, infantry that can engage starships is just silly).


As for the rest of the combat discussion, I'm sifting my way through it as I have time.

[Covenant]

Well, how will someone defend their worlds from someone with a huge racial total in ground forces? How will you invade such worlds? Do we build special 'troop transport' vessels or something?

I'm not being snarky, I'm just not sure how we'll handle ground forces in any rational way besides paying for them somehow. If we give people a way to get a racial advantage to it, but no way for someone to brute-force overcome that advantage... isn't that a pretty simple equation?

As for ground forces, I always considered them a heap of 1 point units, no matter what size you RP them as. Reducing a 3000 dollar heap of ground units into a 1238 point heap does not allow you to repair any of the ground units. The idea is that you're landing millions of troopers every time you attack a planet, so we're talking about a single 1-point purchase being equal to one thousand trained fighting men and mechanized transport. A 10 point 'tank' would be equal to a Bolo. It also keeps them in line with the firepower of starships we're talking about, since a 50 point starship would be the most massively huge thing you could imagine if it were on the surface of a planet.

Buying 'extra' troopers (we should assume a 'normal' invasion force of some level is always present) would also provide a means of taxing an enemy's forces, so he can't afford to just sweep in and grab all ur d00dz in one month after a loss. If we do away with buying extra troopers then, really, bonus to ground combat becomes pointless. If there's no numbers being tallied then there's no way that 'more' or 'better' troops really translate into 'a little bit more time before you lose' and you'd be better off calling it a "Duck and Cover" aptitude.

[Academia Nut]

Well, I think the problem with ground combat right now is that we really haven't actually quantified how it is supposed to work. Plus I was going to RP my 200% ground combat as partly Rucker supersoldiers, and partly because the Konige take enormous numbers of troops with them. But that brings up the issue of how much do ground units cost anyway? What about troop transports? Are they free unless you buy upgrades for them?

I propose the following system for working with troops:

1) Ground combat units have no attack value against ships, but 1/10th their value for the purposes of defence. This essentially allows us to know how tough it will be to bombard them. Will probably have to figure out a collateral damage rule so that people actually have to land troops and dig the bastards out instead of sitting back and shooting them.
2) Max unit size is 10 points. Improved ground combat increases this cap. Units may be broken up and combined at will, but may not go over the limit.
3) Unarmed transports are free and carry 1 unit each, regardless of total cost. They count as having 1 hit point in space combat, but have no offensive capacities. If a transport is destroyed, the unit is lost.
4) Units destroyed in battle are not permanently lost unless they are cut off from resupply (typically being on a planet that is taken by an enemy force). Even if reduced to 0 HP, they still repair, although they need a minimum of 1HP to be used in battle.
5) For the purposes of purchase and maintenance, units cost 1/10th their combat effectiveness.

Proposal: To keep everything level at first, everyone gets a number of points to spend on their ground troops. Further expansion may be made later, drawing from the same industrial production pool as ships.

What do you think of this? It lets us throw around lots of troops and unless we lose control of the planet they are on, they will eventually recover. It also makes improved logistics important for ground combat nations as it allows them to get a lot more use out of their big, expensive units. In space, having fewer units makes your losses harder because they are more concentrated, but then again you also have a hell of lot easier of a time defending your transports.

Thoughts on this?

[Covenant]

I think that any orbital bombardment is really going to decimate an army in a matter of minutes anyawy, so it's hardly worth giving them a 'value'. There's also no reason to give them a 'size' unless they can be repaired, which I don't think is necessary. Characters can be RP'd as doing the majority of the damage if you will, but the actual combat should be a simple numerical comparison. I don't think there's much value to making actual land units of any sort.

[Hotfoot]

Well, how will someone defend their worlds from someone with a huge racial total in ground forces? How will you invade such worlds? Do we build special 'troop transport' vessels or something?

I'm not being snarky, I'm just not sure how we'll handle ground forces in any rational way besides paying for them somehow. If we give people a way to get a racial advantage to it, but no way for someone to brute-force overcome that advantage... isn't that a pretty simple equation?

Racials, like most bonuses, don't create impossible odds. A group with a -50% can still conquer a planet with +200%, it just takes more time, and the +200% can more easily break off the shackles once orbital superiority is regained. Ground combat all comes down to orbital superiority and being able to keep supply lines open anyway.

As for ground forces, I always considered them a heap of 1 point units, no matter what size you RP them as.

Yes, but your perception and the perceptions of others are not always eye to eye in a general sense, and when someone comes in with a 1000 point Bolo, well, you get the idea of what they'll argue for. More to the point, a single point of starship points means a lot of assumed things that really aren't necessary on the ground level.

If we do away with buying extra troopers then, really, bonus to ground combat becomes pointless. If there's no numbers being tallied then there's no way that 'more' or 'better' troops really translate into 'a little bit more time before you lose' and you'd be better off calling it a "Duck and Cover" aptitude.

Ground combat is simplified compared to space combat anyway, largely because it becomes trivial when someone chooses to glass a planet instead of invading. The more complex and difficult you make the capture option, the less likely anyone is to use it. The fact that it takes a considerable amount of time is downside enough, because it means having to dedicate forces to protect the investment that cannot be used elsewhere. Throw in the concept that you need to gimp your fleet in the process, plus pay upkeep, plus all this other stuff, well, you get the idea.

[Beowulf]

http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic. ... 72#2622072

"Whoever controls space generally controls the surface."

Ground forces generally don't matter. If you don't control space, you're going to lose the planet, unless you can relieve them pretty fast. If it's too much of a pain to conquer the planet, the attacker will just bombard them until they give up.

Ground combat it already pointless. Any that takes place is merely for flavor. You can't take over a place without boots on the ground, but boots can be destroyed from space.

[Adrian Laguna]

Ground combat is simply a delaying tactic that only works if the enemy wants the planet intact, or mostly intact. You put your armies on top of everything the enemy will consider valuable, so that it takes time for said enemy to clear them out the hard way. In said time, hopefully a friendly fleet will arrive and regain space superiority. If the enemy doesn't consider any part of the planet valuable, the ground pounders are royally fucked.

A viable way to force more ground combat is to use theatre shields. However, that only works when the enemy considers the massive collateral damage inherent in battering them aside to be unacceptable. On the other hand, you can actually get field battles if under a theatre shield in something the enemy doesn't want destroyed. Like a major production centre. The enemy will have to land outside it, and march toward it to capture it. This could also work with an invading army whose supporting fleet is destroyed or forced to retreat. They are safe from ortillery so long as the owners of the planet don't want to put a huge crater into it.

[Dark Hellion]

Ground combat will be important in this STGOD though, for reasons that have been laid out in the Background Thread before. Simply put, none of the factions can afford not to conquer territory if they can help it. Without the overarching protection of the Empire, most factions are woefully underprepared to try to interact at the galactic stage, and simply need to expand so they can deal with overpopulation, logistical problems etc. because they do not have the infrastructure that the Empire once provided to simply add some hivespires if you need more room, or ship some transistors half way across the galaxy to power your space radios.

That being said, there is still no reason to add much more complex rules, because the space battle really is going to determine weather your troops are a massive invasion force or are going to be forced into insurgency and slowly pounded into obscurity. As long as players RP their populaces resistance correctly, and don't automatically assume that everyone is a fanatical die hard, things should work fine.

And seriously guys, there are hundreds of Imperial remnant factions and barbarians to choose from. If your first choice loses, just make another. We seem to have a real tight group here, so lets play for fun, because the winner isn't getting any prizes.

[Academia Nut]

Okay, let's give this thread a boot to the ass again.

How would you all like to do ground combat? Do we want to have it be "go down and root out the enemy, victory is already assured now that we control the high ground" or "even with control of space, we still need boots on the ground and taking out the regulars is going to be a pain in the ass". If we can agree to that then we can agree to how we want to run ground combat, in which case having something like Improved Ground Combat will either just affect how quickly you can take a world and how long you can hold out, or we will need a more complex mechanic to prevent people from getting "free" soldiers later on because their guys are so much more effective.

[Darkevilme]

Personally i think having ground combat be a factor could be interesting. It fluffwise amounts to adding sufficient theater shielding to planetary targets to nerf or make imprecise orbital bombardment as Adrian mentioned.

Though i suspect others just want to be able to sit up in space and say 'oh look we blew up another residential district, do you want to surrender yet? we can keep this up all day you know'

[Tanasinn]

It makes sense that orbital control means assured victory...eventually. As has been said, most nations want and need these planets intact. Sure, you could pulverize cities with fusion weapons until the enemy surrendered, but that's going to act as a wonderful propaganda tool against you diplomatically, is going to fuel insurgencies even when the proper defense force is annihilated, and is going to cut down on production.

Nations that have a penchant for bombarding planets into radioactive glass are probably going to have serious public relations costs and difficulty competing against nation-states with hospitable worlds full of now-compliant people. Citizens of other worlds would probably be made more compliant to their new lords when they heard what happened to Planet X after the Evil Empire showed up; they'd rather accept a tolerable conqueror than help a rabid destroyer by resisting occupation.

[Dark Hellion]

And trade embargoes, blockades, etc. mean your civ is fucked if they can be enforced. So really, you have to be confident that you can both beat who you are attacking, and fend off any outsider interference before you commence primary ignition. Because once you pull the gloves off against someone else, everyone else is going to against you.

[brianeyci]

I hesitate to say anything, because I will probably be a minor player and not around a lot. I talked a lot and was a presumptuous ass in the last one, and ended up not posting in RP at all.

But my suggestion is for ground combat: if it happens, it should happen over ten or more posts. It should be a long affair, just because most people will want to avoid civilian casualties and rooting out the insurgents and military from the civilians is serious business unless you're into demolishing everything. And even then soldiers can fight in the rubble.

Force ground combat to be at least ten substantative posts, and it will be clear who is the winner just by the quality of writing. This can be done in combination with points, but if someone is writing really great stuff, maybe mods can reward a bonus.

So it could happen like this:

• Invader contacts defender through pms and sees if they can reach an agreement on who will win and why (if they both agree, no reason to involve anything at all and they can write the scenes collaboratively.)
• If not then it is an "aggressive" attack which will have to involve a mod. Invader makes several posts of landing forces, preparation, skirmishing with inferior border units of the defender and crushing them. Defender makes many posts about preparing defenses, fortifications, evacuating civilians or sheltering them, arming the population, defensive plans, etc.
• After ten posts by both sides, a moderator gives a bonus based on good writing to both sides. For example if someone is really great he could get +20% or if someone is awful he could get -50% especially if all he says is "I have more points who cares about this I can write one liners." Then the points, with bonuses added up, are calculated and the loser and winner are informed. The final post, who wins and who loses, is written by collaboration between the victor and loser.

There is obviously a degree of subjectivity in what is "good" writing and what is "bad" writing. By forcing it to go ten posts or more, a drawn out affair, it is easier to tell who is shit and not doing the work writing, and who is putting actual effort into plausible, interesting conflict.

Of course the Invader could short circuit this process and on turn one resort to indiscriminate orbital bombardment with no care for civilian casualties. This would take one post instead of ten, then the invader empire would face the consequences in future dealings with other empires.

This would also allow the mods to punish those players who consistently RP their ground forces as unbeatable, crushing all before them, suffering 0 casualties, using impossible tactics and strategy, with Mary Sue characters and cardboard cutouts... etc. It can also punish people with bad grammar, spelling, poor sentence structure, etc. .

[Spyder]

And trade embargoes, blockades, etc. mean your civ is fucked if they can be enforced. So really, you have to be confident that you can both beat who you are attacking, and fend off any outsider interference before you commence primary ignition. Because once you pull the gloves off against someone else, everyone else is going to against you.

If current powers aren't trading with each other right now, how will enacting a trade embargo mean "your civ is fucked"?