Ground Combat

[Tampa_Gamer]

Seawolf - are you permitted to expand on that?

[Mark Pavlou]

I wholeheartedly agree with Tampa_Gamers suggestions. I would also like to add the following ideas/expansions:

Ground combat to be held after all space combats have been completed.

OPTION: Allow attacker to use orbital fire from ships over planet to reduce defender numbers.

Defender should set up unit positions first (home ground advantage) - attacker should select "drop points" (perhaps one for each troop ship) around which his/her units would be randomly distributed (simulating the confusion and disruption of an atmospheric landing - this could be alleviated with appropriate tech).

OPTION: When generating terrain, vary this according to planetary conditions. Add appropriate bonuses to combat (eg. mountains could give bonuses to hit, forests bonuses to defense).

OPTION: When generating terrain, include squares to represent all planetary factilities which could then be targeted by ground units. This would allow an attacker to try destroying key buildings (if hopelessly outnumbered by defending militia for instance) or the defender to implement a scorched earth policy (Bah! So what if I lose the planet! You're *not* getting all my nice Shrines!)

In a previous discussion on this, someone did suggest having a tie-in with WDK 2K - using this to run Ground Combats. I would like to see such a tie-in but, given the work needed, would prefer to see in-house stuff done first.

[Seawolf]

Whoa Mark!


You are creating another totally seperate game there! Whay tou are proposing is a little beyond the scope of the game currently.

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Seawolf on the prowl

[Comar]

It would be fun, but is hard ( if not impossible ) to do in a simultaneous game. It can be done in a PBEM, but can also bog down the turns. For single play, it should be possible, but would take a lot of recoding and that would delay publishing the game. Maybe they will look at it for future patches or Versions.

[Tampa_Gamer]

People - the issue is not to debate how hard x, y or z would be to code (thats for Aaron and the design team to decide) - the issue is Do people want it? As I posted below the response from Aaron on this idea was:

"An excellent idea. If there is enough interest, we'd definitely add a
tactical ground combat option in.

Aaron"

It seems so far on this board and few others that everyone is interested in having the tactical option but people are concerned about the programming difficulty.

My 2 Cents - Thanks

[Jeb]

I have a question about the ground combat engine that's currently in the game. Are ground cannons the only weapons useable by ground troops, or can they use any small weapon? I haven't gotten far enough in my game yet to test this out myself.

[Master Belisarius]

You can use any small weapon.

[Elmo]

Tactical ground combat would be nice. However I'd rather see an improvement to Strategic combat first. Improve the eye candy for strategic combat. Seeing a bunch of colored pixels flashing around on the screen for a couple of seconds is very disappointing considering all the work that went into building ships and getting them to the battle. The enjoyment of PBEM play would be greatly enhanced by more detail during strategic combat resolution.

Elmo

[This message has been edited by Elmo (edited 26 October 2000).]

[Marco]

I strongly welcome a more detailed ground combat system, even a simple reply of space ship combat with the only change of the units involved.
Howewer I would be much more iterested in a system that would add more tactical and strategic options.I agree with all the suggestions from Tampa-gamer, I only suggest the following changes:
-allow fighters to directly join ground combat.
-treat support from space ships like "off-board artillery".This fire would eventually strike squares on tactical ground map, not individual enemy units, and I would introduce even a drifting possibility to simulate targetting difficulty on planet surface.
There is some minor drawback in this system:
1) In a ground combat may be involved hundreds of units.
2) What happen if after a complete 30 turns combat neither side have completely annihilated the other ?
Concerning the options suggested by Mark Pavlou I agree that ground combat have to be held after space combat and with the suggested placements of units.
I think that generating terrain with bonuses will add too much complexity and I prefer the simpler solution of Tampa-gamer.
The idea of planetary facilities involved in ground combat is very interesting but in the case of huge planet you simply can't place 25 facilities on the ground map.
If we want to allow this option I would suggest to divide the planetary surface in "key areas" (continents?), let say 8 for huge planet and only 1 for tiny planets, and allow to place a maximum of 3 or 4 facilities in each areas.After ground combat the original owner of the planet will only have the benefits of all undestroyed facilities in uncontested key areas.
In this manner we could even allow grounds combats Lasts for more than a space turn, with units of both sides on the same planet at the end of the ground combat step. The big drawback is that every planetary attack would be eventually divided in 1-8 separated grounds combats every turn.

[Danny]

I think it would be nice, but there are other things more pressing. Plus I rarely use troops.

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I AM Canadian.