STGOD 2k8 Planning thread

[Academia Nut]

Okay, how's about this? Planetary static defences are capable of repelling ship firepower equal to their value indefinitely, but cannot cause damage to ships. Once that value is exceeded, shit starts blowing up. If people want to take a world without glassing it, they have to land troops. If you have enough ships in orbit to match, say, half the planetary defences, then you can start landing troops beyond the theatre shields and ground combat can begin. Let's say that every colony gets a number of units equal to its base purchase cost (10 units for a Class 1, 5 for a Class 2, etc.) for free, so that an attacker has to bring 10 units to have a chance at taking a Class 1. How does something like that sound to everyone? If we agree to something like this, then we can work out what exactly a "unit" is and how much it costs. If we don't agree, then it's back to the drawing board for me, but at least we'll have agreed that this suggestion was a bad idea.

[Covenant]

Err... 10? That's fantastically low. Though I guess it depends how expensive 'transports' are. Are they like 50 points or something? Otherwise, a handful of 10-point landing craft are going to be a joke.

[brianeyci]

I will say this: if you making taking over planets impossible by defender's fiat like Rogue 9's take over a planet and can't use it the whole game in some one a millenia ago, I don't see much point in attempting to take shit, unless the bonsues afforded are insane.

I will just park warshps in orbit and class, or one warship which is enough for orbital superiority, or satellites, or build a space station there. If I really want it, if I am playing the right guys, I will glass since that seems to be the only way to force the hand. I read Sun Tzu, I know that getting yourself stuck in seiges is the worst, so I'll obviously avoid it because like you said people play to win so if the mechanics support piss poor invasion, better not to do it.

In short I will not use ground invasion if like Hotfoot says it takes too much away from my fleet or too much time.

[Darkevilme]

Ten units. which probably means more than ten points worth of defenders. If its ten points for one unit or battalion then that's a hundred points of troops you need to sink into the battle just to be equal with the defenders, ideally you should of course be putting in four hundred points.. though the problem is that if ground forces cost that much to be viable then no one will bother buying them or conquering worlds and we go back to brianeyci's 'glass everything' mode as the preffered way of doing business. So viable ground divisions to perform planetary conquest should at most take up a fifth of the starting budget.

[Rogue 9]

I will say this: if you making taking over planets impossible by defender's fiat like Rogue 9's take over a planet and can't use it the whole game in some one a millenia ago, I don't see much point in attempting to take shit, unless the bonsues afforded are insane.

If I had to suffer through it then so will you, you whippersnapper!

[Academia Nut]

Ten free units on a Class 1 world, so that would be like showing up and just having to fight the National Guard. And I did say that if you have to have enough ships to tie up at least half the planet's defences in order to land ships, so if you have a fully defended Class 1 world with 100 points sunk into its defences, then an enemy fleet must be of at least 500 points in order to start landing troops, a third of a nation's starting fleet (probably more after subtractions for non-shippy things). A world that heavily defended is probably the home world, so that 500+ point fleet will have had to have fought through a massive battle just to get to orbit. With the way we've written Improved Offences, the troop transports are absolute sitting ducks, so they will probably have to be left behind for the fight. But, if they're left behind, what if the enemy stumbles upon them? Do you leave them some protection, splitting your offensive capacity, or just hope no one spots them and decides to take them out in the hopes that you'll not be dicks and glass the world if you win the space battle?

And yeah, generally if you're attacking, then you will need 4:1 odds in order to have a better than even chance of winning the battle, so you will have to have 40 units to beat a Class 1 world's national guard, which is 40 unarmed transports sitting around with "Shoot me!" signs on them.

Does that help explain why things are more balanced than I initially presented, or do you still think its a bad idea?

[Darkevilme]

I think unless those 40 transports are dirt cheap no one will buy them when they can sink the points into, as Brianeyci will do, building a full fleet and being able to glass worlds and have a better chance of actually getting to the point of being able to land troops or glass worlds.

From an expense and hassle viewpoint conquering worlds should not be such an undertaking that Brianeyci can claim legitimately that we're insane for even contemplating it.

[Academia Nut]

I was figuring that basic, unarmed transports would be free or included in the cost of buying a new ground unit. The only reason to cry about a lost transport is if it was full at the time it blew. If you want armed transports that aren't so vulnerable, I figured the easiest way to do that would be to make it a new specialization like Improved Defences or Improved Hyperdrive.

[Darkevilme]

Yes but you're still buying ground units which takes budget from other things, if it takes more than a tenth or fifth of the budget to create a viable ground army then no one is going to buy one and everyone will join Brianeyci merrily glassing worlds.

[Academia Nut]

I was also thinking of making ground troops cheap as well, say 1 or 2 points for a unit, so that they're cheap enough to not distract from ship building, but so that they have an actual cost. So to extend my example from above, the 40 points of ground troops needed to capture a Class 1 world with just its national guard could be used to buy a battleship instead, but that battleship probably won't have the additional firepower to crack through the 1000 points of shields around the planet to glass it. This way, it makes it a hell of a lot easier to start landing troops to try and take out a world than trying to bring enough fleet assets to crack its defences from orbit and glass the planet.

[Darkevilme]

wait, planetary defences are THAT good? i thought we were going for a game that encouraged offence and not turtling.

If its a world with no fleet protecting it and brianeyci has a modest fleet (200 points maybe) then he should be able to start glassing it just as others should be able to land troops, remember that capturing industry intact is its own reward.

I'll clarify that both tactics (bombardment and invasion) should be undertakeable at the same threshold of fleet power and defences should if they're able to defend indefinitely only be able to hold against a smaller multiplier of their value than you propose.

[Academia Nut]

Well, that's part of the problem. We pretty much know what we're doing when it comes to ships vs. ships, but we have yet to figure out how the fuck we're going to deal with planets. A Class 1 world with 100 points in defence is a huge fortress that will laugh long and hard at a 200 point fleet trying to crack them, seeing as we have a 1-10 effectiveness for ground defences right now. Hell, if we allow planetary defences to hit back, then the 200 point fleet is going up in a puff of vapour. Which is probably why we won't be allowing them to hit back like that, although that will require figuring out how military satellites work. Of course, a 200 point fleet would be more than enough to blockade that world, but its doing dick all to the inhabitants on the surface.

Anyway, the way things are set up right now, theoretically one could take 6 Class 1 worlds and max out their defences to get 6 fortress worlds, but that would cost 600/1500 points, so you're very probably going to start losing fleet engagements, at which point your foes will start concentrating on individual worlds and cracking them open.

Allowing troops to start landing at half a planet's defensive value would actually discourage turtling around planets as your enemies can attack a planet with fewer resources, so winning the engagement in the sky is the important part.

And glassing a world should be harder, but faster. I figure we can just run ground engagements like space ones, but each turn takes days or weeks rather than an hour. If you have enough ships to completely overwhelm a planet's defences and don't want to take it, it should take a day or so to completely wreck the world, but you need overwhelming firepower to do it. A fight between ground troops should take at least a few weeks, presuming you have overwhelming superiority on the ground, which gives time for reinforcements to arrive and drive the invaders out of orbit.

[Beowulf]

The generally accepted rule of thumb is 3:1 for attacking with troops of a relatively similar level of strength. Since we've abstracted it, it'd be 3:1 advantage in cost. Unfortunately, the attacker has space superiority, and therefore the ability to locally mass forces, and thereby achieve that level locally, while not actually having that level of troops globally. The defender can't do the same, because then they're in the countryside, and can get ortillery on them easily.

Static defense should really only be good enough to stall an offensive long enough for a counter-attack, they shouldn't be able to stop a fleet from glassing a world if they really wanted. Really, what kind of nutcase sticks a 1000 pts into shielding? And really, you don't have to glass the entire world, just enough cities until someone shouts surrender.

Maybe have planetary defense points have double effectiveness (thereby making there actually be a point to them). You have to have a fleet equal in size to the defense to be able to land troops. Alternatively, you can start glassing the planet.

A better way to handle troops might be to have the speed in which you can takeover a world proportional to the ratio of forces. Say if you have parity, it takes 10 turns to take over the world. If you have 2:1 advantage, it's 5 turns. 10:1, you take it over in a turn. 1:2, it's going to take forever, in game terms.

It won't take the entire game to take over a world, but rather it can be easy, if you take the initiative to do so.

It had been my understanding that ground troops are part of a different initial pool than ships. It's same pool as global upgrades and planetary defenses.

[Darkevilme]

Well planetary defences are bought from the ship production pool. Global upgrades are indeed a seperate pool.

And Academia, the protection of a nations worlds should not be massive shields of teh uber but that thing they have called their fleet. Hence planetary defences should be enough to discourage light raiding but anything more requires, yes, the fleet. It should not be super hard to deal with a planet after dealing with said fleet, that punishes offensive play which is what we want.

Also lets remember, glassing a world is less rewarding than capturing it. Effectively this balances out with the fact that to conquer a world you need troops, if you dont have troops you can glass and i think the decision should be made at the same point.

Planetary defences should be able to protect against x2 or x3 there value, if there's more ship point tonnage up there than that then the invader can land troops or obliterate cities.

[Academia Nut]

We never actually decided if ground forces would be drawn from a different pool than ships, or even if planetary defences were drawn from a different pool. Hotfoot was the one a while back who said that static defences should be 10:1 for their cost, and it has kind of been run with like that for a while as no one really opposed it that much, despite the fact that static defences were 2:1 in the last STGOD. To a certain degree having static defences be stronger will help avoid turtling, as it means you don't have to hold back your ships as much because there is less risk of some nut case attacking while your fleet is off conquering and glassing your worlds. We want to reward aggressiveness and boldness this game, not encourage people to gank the first guy to attack because it will be easy to destroy his infrastructure before he can respond properly.

[brianeyci]

And really, you don't have to glass the entire world, just enough cities until someone shouts surrender.

Then I propose there be serious consequences and damage to industrial output for orbital bombardment. Perhaps permanent consequences to point output, to the point that a person could consider surrendering to fight another day far more productive than fighting to the death. This is how I imagine it going (like Rogue 9's example made me think): invader glasses one city an hour, demands surrender. Defender says to himself, because there are no consequences to resisting, I hate this fucker, I'm just going to say no until the end of time.

Then when on the ground, which takes forever because the guy is using every little excuse not to budge, invader executes 100 civilians an hour, until the organized resistance ceases. Defender is incensed at such an action, and decides that somehow, partisan resistance can be as effective as an organized military which is obligated to surrender to protect its citizens, just because he doesn't like the idea of being beaten as a player.

Suicide bombers really only work because there's an underlying motivation: Islam. I doubt everybody who wants to be evil will have religious fanaticism. Otherwise people have an instinct for self preservation. Most countries with a god complex would be crushed under the collective heel of occupation forces: like the Japanese, the Germans.

It could be something pretty simple like ten turns to get an occupied planet up and running, regardless of occupation tactics. But in my opinion it should be spelled out so dicks don't be creative and think they can make a country full of Klingons without any backstory at all.

We want to reward aggressiveness and boldness this game, not encourage people to gank the first guy to attack because it will be easy to destroy his infrastructure before he can respond properly.

Then make it easy to destroy point production. One cruiser is orbit can annihilate many cities, permanently destroying points. This doesn't encourage turtling at all... it encourages first strikes. Adding a 3 to 1 or 10 to 1 is pretty silly. Adding static defenses to AVOID turtling seems to be about the most backwards logic there is. If there are good rules in place, a small flotilla of ships could conceivably kamakazie themselves through and fire off a few nukes permanently crippling infrastructure. If the rules are bad, and it's just 1000 points > 100 points with no "leaky" aspect to defense but just point comparison, that's when turtling happens.

[Academia Nut]

No, people will turtle because then the most effective defence is to keep all your ships at home and never move anywhere because if a cruiser can cause permanent damage then the risk is too high to do anything else. Aggressive players will run right into a wall because anyone nutty enough to start kamikaze glassing planets will immediately be ganked by everyone else who prefer infrastructure, theirs or their future conquests, intact. Glassing a world should be hard, if expedient when you have enough ships. If the system is set up to encourage ground engagements that take weeks instead of orbital bombardments that take hours, then people will be willing to play more fast and loose with their fleets because they know that they can get back to their core worlds from a campaign fast enough to try and reclaim their worlds, rather than finding nothing but smoking craters because they decided to take 2/3 of their fleets and go conquer some worlds.

[Covenant]

Difficult to penetrate defenses don't make the game turtley because you can't pull your forces BEHIND them. These aren't Total Annihilation style turrets. Someone can't just hole up permanently because they'll lose planets and then the time when they're finally forced to fight a space battle they'll be outnumbered four to one and die horribly.

Making ground combat take a while like A.N. proposes helps reduce the 'steamroller building speed' effect, but in no way encourages turtling.

[brianeyci]

If I can send one cruiser to annihilate a planet through some fluke, and if the rules permit this to happen despite 1000 points worth of defense fleet, then first strikes will happen. Gang up? Since when, first strikers will be rewarded by hitting and destroying a chunk of shit. If I can send one cruiser to each of my opponents and deal 5 points worth of production out of 50, then the aggressor is supremely rewarded. He can attack many opponents at once and cause crushing damage, scatter his fleet to the winds and split up for ultimate mobility.

Obviously that is a little too extreme, but if infrastructure is easily destroyed, and orbital defense leaky, it becomes easy to send a relatively small fleet, destroy infrastructure, and withdraw, especially if the ships themselves are incredibly tough.

If there's 50 points generated per "turn" a simple rule could be, one run could destroy 1 point per every 100 points committed to attack. Then small fleets could come in, attack, do 1 - 3 points of damage, and withdraw. They will get chased and slowly depleted, but the aggressor is rewarded. If there is not enough to encourage aggression, midway through the game the mod could adjust it so it's 2 or 3 per 100 points of ships in orbit, or 3 or 4 and very very quickly people will be splitting up their fleets to their many enemies to deal with production and ruin it.

In order for this to work though, production has to play a pivotal role in the game... maybe a lot more than just 50 points a turn, it could be several hundred, to quickly replace fleet losses. That is a far better mechanism than 10 to 1 static defenses. The United States production in merchant marine was crucial, so same thing has to happen here... there has to be giant "sleeper" industries or people will play turtle with their fleets.

[brianeyci]

Difficult to penetrate defenses don't make the game turtley because you can't pull your forces BEHIND them. These aren't Total Annihilation style turrets. Someone can't just hole up permanently because they'll lose planets and then the time when they're finally forced to fight a space battle they'll be outnumbered four to one and die horribly.

Making ground combat take a while like A.N. proposes helps reduce the 'steamroller building speed' effect, but in no way encourages turtling.

To reduce steamroller, can make it difficult to capture planets. But if production is easy to destroy, it will encourage aggression. Make production easy to repair, and it's even better with a dynamic game.

It doesn't matter if you can't pull back behind the turrets: fleet goes elsewhere, and another fleet comes to attack your planet. Meanwhile, your planet forces the attacking fleet to take a long time, and your own fleet is taking a long time itself. It results in an ultimate slowdown of the game, and I don't see how you can't conclude that. You sure can pull back behind the turrets... keep your fleet elsewhere, and have your planet stave off attacks. Let me put it another way, it's slower than if people can split up into ten smaller fleets and attack ten worlds and destroy real infrastructure.

If an aggressor can handle multiple empires at once... and attack two or three empires with real consequences... then it becomes a real brutal war, with everybody splitting up their fleets ten times over to hit production, or concentrating everything for one decisive run but being unable to flexibly intercept the guys who are splitting everything up.

[Rogue 9]

If I can send one cruiser to annihilate a planet through some fluke, and if the rules permit this to happen despite 1000 points worth of defense fleet, then first strikes will happen. Gang up? Since when, first strikers will be rewarded by hitting and destroying a chunk of shit.

Since, I don't know, every STGOD ever played? Look, people tend to attack the opening aggressors in these games because they don't want to be next and in the meantime the aggressor's fleet is off attacking someone, and is consequently not there to stop attackers. And if you send a cruiser to annihilate a planet with a proper defense fleet, that cruiser will die.

[Academia Nut]

We've already decided on production. You start with gaining 600 points a turn, split up amongst various sized worlds, but you have to pay 20% to maintenance of your military assets, so when we start with 1500 points for the military that means that you only get 300 points towards new production each turn, with diminishing returns as more and more of your industry is tied up in maintaining the fleet.

And you're not getting it brian. If we let leak through such that small task forces can cause major damage to industry, then everyone with a fucking brain is going to keep their ships at home to prevent first strike kamikaze douche bags from nipping away at their industry. End result: everyone turtles until the first strikers are identified, at which point they get stomped on for being dicks who randomly bomb shit.

The point of making planets better defended is so that you can attack knowing that even if someone decides to strike at you, you will be better able to take the hit. We want the game to be an exciting brawl where strategy and roleplaying are rewarded and aggression is useful, not a fight between a bunch of pillboxes.

Let's put it this way. Let's say there are two groups, Nation A and Nation B. Nation A, being an aggressive fuck, decides to send 2/3 of his fleet to attack Nation B, and through clever manipulation of the scenario, manages to destroy half of the enemy force with minimal damage (unrealistic, but I want the numbers round for easy of the example). Now Nation B is in a bad situation, with not enough ships to effectively drive out the invaders who are landing troops with the intent of conquest. They have only a few options:

1) Hope to pull an equally brilliant move with their forces. Probably suicidal at this point.
2) Send their remaining forces at the Nation A, knowing they can still overwhelm the forces there. This is space and everyone has FTL, there is no way of keeping them from getting there.

Now, Nation B is on a time limit here. If they get caught by the now returning forces, they're fucked. The more damage they can do, the better. If even a cruiser can damage infrastructure, then their best bet is to immediately hit the biggest industrial centres right away. The easier it is to glass worlds, then the more it will be used in this situation. If you do it enough, you can even start cutting into the maintenance budget, at which point Nation A is so fucked it isn't even funny.

So if damage to industry is easy, what has Nation A just gained by being the aggressor? Nothing! Worse than nothing, it has just lost out big time!

If on the other hand glassing is hard, then Nation B is better off hitting easy targets and hoping that they can sue for peace before the rape fleet descends on them. The damage is nowhere near as bad for either party. Nation A might be able to force reparations since it is still in the stronger position, maybe even keep some of the smaller colonies it conquered, Nation B has lost some ships and maybe some minor colonies, but is still capable of bouncing back and lick its wounds for a while.

Only consequences is interested in a suicidal, omnicidal blaze of destruction, the rest of us have other plans.

[Covenant]

Glassing a world should not be easy. That's just dumb. That favors a moronic little strike too much, and assumes that production is incredibly easy to take out. If you want to take out someone's production capability, show up with a large enough force when there's nobody home. End of story. Aren't we still allowing the 100 point one-shot planetbusters? That's the role of such weapons. You want to sneak-kill a planet without giving them the chance to fight you for it? Bring the proper hardware. A few railguns and lasers from a Destroyer is not 'the proper hardware'.

[brianeyci]

And if you send a cruiser to annihilate a planet with a proper defense fleet, that cruiser will die.

Why does it have to be that way?

I'm challenging the status quo I know, but when was the last awesome STGOD? I heard STGOD4, and how long ago was that?

Ultimately it is up to the majority of the players: but the game can be played like this.

• Small fleet of x ships flies into orbit of planet, destroying y points worth of production, then retreats. This happens with one post.
• Defensive fleet is unable to stop this, and chases after small fleet. Ships are extremely durable, difficult to destroy. Defensive fleet "attrits" points out of the smaller fleet over time. Depending on another variable z, how many turns it takes to return, defender can kill a lot or a little of the attacker's forces.

As long as repair of points is slow, and point production is important, this way can work. All would happen is an attacker would declare his intent to attack in a post and come into orbit. The defender instantly loses some assets. The attacker can stay and fight and die, or retreat. If he retreats it can be a running fight all the way back to the home docks, with losses depending on how largely the defender outnumbers the attacker and how many ships he appoints to give chase.

I am new at this STGOD shit, but it seems obvious to me certain things have been done a certain way for a long time and maybe it's time to shake things up.

The key to encouraging attack is logically... tougher ships. NOT tougher planets. Very very tough ships, weak planets.

Glassing a world should not be easy.

Doesn't have to be glassing. Point production destruction, glassing cities. Real consequences for real actions, for a real attack. Showing up only when nobody's home... well then, I'll just keep all my ships home all the time, what then? Well do backroom deals and find an ally to attack so it's 2 to 1? That kind of method obviously encourages turtling and metagaming.

You start with gaining 600 points a turn, split up amongst various sized worlds, but you have to pay 20% to maintenance of your military assets, so when we start with 1500 points for the military that means that you only get 300 points towards new production each turn, with diminishing returns as more and more of your industry is tied up in maintaining the fleet.

Good enough. Now make those points easy to destroy, and a little bit of a regeneration if they're damaged, and win.

[Academia Nut]

With a drydock, ships can be repaired from "nearly destroyed" at the start of a turn to full functionality by the end of the turn, the cost of repairs being part of the maintenance fees. Destroyed industrial capacity can be repaired with point expenditures back up to the planet's maximum size.

Also, you broke the first rule of STGODs right there: you're not allowed to call your shots. The sequence would go like this:

*Small enemy fleet shows up if the intent of taking a pot shot
*Defending fleet assrapes them because they are way too small
*Defender laughs at attacker for being a douche bag who is trying to glass worlds like that

The only way you can damage a world is if no one is home. If worlds are easy targets, then guess what? Everyone will be at home and that's just a lame way to spend a Friday night.

You're the one going about this all wrong. Worlds are the prize here, not ships. Ships are expendable, they are easily replaced, worlds are not. If we make worlds tougher, than people will be more willing to risk them. If we make them weaker then the easiest way to defeat someone is to avoid their fleets and bomb the fuck out of their planets until they can no longer pay upkeep on their ships. It took five fucking years of strategic bombing for Germany to succumb to this sort of strategy. When your worlds have effective theatre shields and anti-missile systems, even taking pot shots with nukes isn't going to do shit.