Ground Combat

[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.