Hello all, hope you had healthy and happy holidays. Moo2 abstracted ground combat and while it was simplistic it was effective. That doesn't mean however that there was not room for improvement. For example, when being invaded, I would often notice that my enemies fielded 9 transport invasion fleets that would allow them to take my planets intact. I on the other hand was always loath to spend that many command points on transports and rarely fielded more than two at any given time. This inevitably caused situations where prior to my own invasion I would bomb the planet in question in order to soften it up. The drawback here was that I killed a lot of the population on said planet and destroyed a considerable number of buildings. This usually meant that while I was able to take the planet it was seldom "intact" As I pondered this it occurred to me that IG2 actually paid as much attention to ground combat as it did space combat, for me this was a huge plus. With this in mind, I spent some time thinking about how this feature could be introduced in a TBS game such as this while remaining fun, simple and most important, quick. I understand this feature, if implemented, would be a prime candidate for DLC rather than the base game and I'm cool with that, however... Maybe it's a bad idea. So before actually presenting what would basically be an entire design for a mini game and doing the work that would be involved, I would like to know how you all feel about it.
I think it might be worthwile to have more detailed ground combat. In particular, it always striked me as a bit unlikely that ground combat is decided in a single turn - think WW2, in which only a small area compared to the entire planet was actually fought over and which still lasted almost 6 years. A multi-turn struggle over important planets (during which, I guess, all production on the planet would stop) would also allow you to bring in re-inforcements, or intercept your enemy's re-inforcements in space, etc., overall adding more strategic depth to the war. That doesn't mean that every ground combat would last many rounds, this would only happen in cases where the military might of the invading force is roughly comparable to the one of the defending force. A full-fledged ground combat model (with different types of units at different technology levels fighting over different types of terrain tiles, population centers, and buildings, involving orbital bombardment and drop-ins of additional troops etc.) might indeed be interesting for an expansion pack.
It's difficult to have an opinion on ground combat because it is always overlooked in 4x games. It would certainly be interesting to see an attempt at making it something other than an afterthought. One potential problem is that, if it cannot be resolved in a single turn, planetary battlefields will become a "map within a map" that you have to keep checking on, which kind of goes against the MOO2 design philosophy of being clear and accessible. There's the other obvious consideration that if the game allows heavy orbital bombardment - why even bother with the management headache when you can just swiftly destroy the enemy from the air? I'm not rejecting the idea of good ground combat, I'm just saying it has to be tied into the other gameplay mechanisms in order to work properly. If done well, it could actually be an important mechanic in stopping snowballing and late-game boredom. If you have to pour resources into ground combat (rather than just glassing planets from orbit) and each occupied world becomes an ongoing drain on your army, then painting the map becomes a lot harder, and big empires run a massive risk if they overextend themselves and get hit by insurgents on the ground.
TL;DR: No. My first association for tactical ground combat is Heroes of Might and Magic scene but with only one unit type. I saw that screenshot in one 4X in development, can't remember which one but I wouldn't be happy watching that scene every time I'd like to conquer the planet. Ideally I wouldn't want to juggle maps within a map but I'm open to surprises, if map is small enough and there aren't too many unit types it could be interesting. Anyone played UniWar (iOS/Android free game)? Speaking of unit types MoO 2 missed opportunity of using armor/battleoids in offense. If transporters became automatically loaded with them (1 tank + 2 marines instead of 4 marines) then there would be an incentive to research them. I'm for multi turn invasions. It could work in both tactical as well as in roll based system. Instead of rolling dice all the way until one side dies, limit amount of rolls per turn. If it is draw attackers go back to transporters. Personally I'd just spice up MoO 2 ground combat with selecting invasion strategy kind of like in Galactic Civilization but not with all their baggage). Some strategies may employ bombardment rolls from ships in orbit (BTW bio weapons killed both population and troops), riskier strategies provide combat bonus but may cause collateral damage (destroyed building, killed population, maybe even friendly fire), safer ones would be free of collateral damage.
Well, map-in-a-map, you get that in MoO2 too: each star system is a map in a map, even the tactical space battles are a map in a map. The way I could imagine a relatively simple, multi-turn ground battle system: you have a progress bar (underneath the planet?) which is slowly filled (turn by turn) from two sides: attackers and defenders (in their respective empire colors). The length of the progress bar is determined by the planet/population size, the number of attackers/defenders and their technological capability decides how fast the progress is. Once the two bars of attackers/defenders meet somewhere in the middle of the progress bar, the battle is instantly decided by a dice roll weighted according to the length of the two bars at that time. This would make it possible to send in re-inforcements if you see that you are about to lose the battle - or retreat your troops before its too late. You could even have allies helping you with the attack/defense. Here's a turn by turn example how that could work: Turn 1: attack of a planet with 10 population => Bar length = 100. (the exact numbers don't matter, just as an example). The attacker has 5 troops which have strength 2 each. The defender has 3 troops which have strength 4 each. Turn 2: Attacker arrives at a length of 10, the middle 68 unit lengths are still empty, the last 12 are covered by the defenders. The attacker realizes that the defenders will have a slight upper hand. Reinforcements of 5 additional troops (strength 2 each) are launched from a near-by system, will take 2 turns to arrive. Turn 3: Attacker at length 20, the middle 46 unit lengths are empty, the last 24 covered by the defenders. The defenders develop a new technology, which pushes the strength of defense to 5 each. Turn 4: Attacker at length 30. Reinforcements arrive and are landed (will affect next round only). Defender now gained 15 more unit lengths compared to before, arrives at 24+15=39 from end. Therefore, middle 31 unit length still empty. Turn 5: Attacker would reach length in this turn 50. Defender would be at 39+15 = 55 from end. Since that is more than the length of the bar, the battle is resolved, and the attacker has a chance of 50/(50+55)=47.6% to gain the upper hand.
Greetings gents, First, let me extend my thanks to anyone that has taken the time to vote or leave a comment on this it is appreciated. My opening post was more about the concept than anything specific but I do have a well thought out idea behind this which is motivated and influenced by six different games I have played over the years, one of those being Moo2. Today, I will leave a general outline for your consideration and hopefully we can have some fun with it, if nothing else it should be a fascinating exchange of ideas and I always welcome that. Let’s start at the strategic level, or rather what stays the same. Here I envision hardly any changes from Moo2. The player would still have a variety of buildings to choose from such as marine barracks and armor with one or two additional new buildings (eg. Special forces, Mercenary) Transports would also be built in the same manner as Moo2 so up until this point there is nothing new, rather an enhancement of the core game. The changes would all be reflected at the moment that combat is actually about to take place, in this instant I would propose that the player be given the option of auto resolve (same combat as in Moo2) or manual combat. Should manual combat be selected, the player would be presented with a secondary screen depicting the world he/she is fighting over in a simplified form. This would still leave room for terrain to be a factor which would take form in the shape of plains, forests, mountains, hasty fortifications, fixed fortifications, rivers, bridges, etc. (there should be several default maps for each planet type that will be randomly chosen to keep the combat from getting boring) This map, in keeping with Moo2 should be defined by a number of squares and not hexes, the reason will become clearer as you read on, the map should also be somewhat small. The number of units in play would also be quite small. Currently I have two separate ideas on this. One idea is to limit the number of units to six maximum. The units however would vary greatly in how powerful they are. (Think divisions and corps size units where more transports would equal larger units) The other idea is more units but with fixed strength (more transports equal more units) In both cases, unit facing would be a factor meaning you could execute flank attacks etc. and would stay within the flavor of Moo2 (four sides to consider, just like ship combat), winning would be accomplished by either eliminating the opposing units or capturing the opposing command post, losing would be the opposite. The ability to withdraw or surrender should also be present By keeping the map and number of units small I would be looking at accomplishing two goals and they are both critical. A small map with limited numbers of units would become far easier to code and the AI, which would be faced with a very finite number of choices would be very effective. The length of ground combat would also stay reasonable with a fairly large battle taking only about five minutes to resolve. (This would avoid the mechanic becoming tedious) Some unit types would include Infantry (slow movement fair attack and defense, basic unit) Artillery (slow movement, fair attack, poor defense, ranged fire, basic unit) Armor (medium movement good attack and defense, available with armor barracks) Jump troops (medium movement, fair attack and defense, ignores terrain, advanced unit) Hover tanks (medium movement, good attack and defense, ignores terrain, advanced unit) In all cases (except ranged units) units must be adjacent to an enemy in order to initiate combat. Leaders could play a role Cut scenes can be included as I have seen something similar but the option to disable them should be present. Turns in ground combat would be similar to space combat, in other words… A turn is strategic, one turn is a length of time that is not affected by how many turns (tactical) are used in combat. This would not allow for multiyear ground wars but personally I believe it is better for the player to not have unfinished business from turn to turn. For me, a TBS game is similar to a board game and this would keep that feeling. Anyhow, this is just a broad outline but I do have quite a lot of material ready on this, especially the logic behind it. As the poll numbers are really too small for me to gain any insight however, I will put this on the back burner for now but would be willing to continue the discussion as needed or entertain any thoughts or ideas you may have.
I am a big admirer of turn based tactical combat. But in this case... I see the tactical ground combat as a potential cul de sac for any 4x space games. Firstly, oversimplification of this part of the game means inevitable repetitiveness and as a result dead/dull feature. Secondly the ground combat interferes with a natural pace of the game. Every (habitable) planet is an another theatre of war if we take into accunt the scale of ships in comparison to the planet size. I imagine one turn invasion only as a complete demolition/annihilation by bombardment or invading undefended planets. Planets with larger garrisons and fortificatons should be able to defend longer time with serious chances to be supplied or evacuate. It gives some interesting flavours to the strategic layer because you could decide to support your troops as a defender or try to rescue the remnants of your troops/characters. Fine example of this idea was Guadalcanal campaign from WW2. Both sides were trying to supply their forces and in that environment some of the most exciting naval battles occurred. I see ground combat rather as a process with the more or less detailed reports about casualties, morale condition, destroyed or damaged facilities, dead characters, and a ovarall percentage victory indicator. It could be nice being able to defend your colonies by organize supply convoys or conversely fight the enemy who try to supply their troops or retreat with valuable goods.
Some excellent points JG yet incongruent with a game based on Moo2 unless core mechanics are altered. Case in point, Guadalcanal Two powers fighting over a piece of real-estate in the middle of the sea. A game like HOI can replicate this, Moo2 can't, why? The answer is fundamental to the game mechanics. In a battle over a planet there are only two possible outcomes, you either control the planet (even if blockaded) or you do not. This is absolute and is achieved in a single turn thereby negating the possibility of engaging in a Guadalcanal type situation. Can you then have ground combat last several strategic turns where space combat does not and remain plausible? It can be done easily if one were to abstract a strategic turn as a year and a tactical turn as month. In this case ground combat not resolved in twelve tactical turns would resume at the subsequent strategic turn. Re-enforcements could play a factor, the defender would receive whatever additional forces planetary buildings can generate in a single strategic turn and the attacker whatever additional forces are transported from elsewhere. However, just because it can be done does not mean it should, ground combat should be similar to space combat not for the sake of realism but rather the sake of coherence. But you are correct, in a game with hundreds of systems to fight over this could become a negative which is why I specifically suggest that the combat must be optional and quick. SEV didn't need ground combat, much easier to wipe everyone out and start a fresh colony but in Moo2 there was actual benefit from taking a planet largely intact, that is why I recommend a ground combat "mini" game as a way to flesh out the existing core game, not alter it entirely.
I've always thought ground combat shouldn't be decided in 2 seconds. WW2 took years, the 2nd Gold War conflict hasn't stop since 2001. How can an entire planet, a whole huge massive planet with billions of people, many continents, thousands of a mega cities. A hundred million small factories all of which would be pumping out armament if their planet was invaded. How could that massive scale combat be over in a near instant. If planet Earth were invaded right now by aliens and our armies were defeated by some super weapon, i sure as heck wouldn't go back to work tomorrow like nothing happened. I would be worried as all fudge that they were going to eradicate us, and i wouldn't go down with out a fight. Our planet Earth would probably be engulfed in a total war for all time until every human was wiped out, and that would take an eternity even for an advanced alien race when you consider the absolute massiveness of the size of Earth. So, I would like to see ground combat invasions take many years, and allow for reinforcements from both sides. Thus controlling the space above the planet becomes more important to allow for you to send down reinforcements like the Guadalcanal campaign from WW2 that was mentioned already. Basically if I want to play Moo2, I already own it and I can just go play it. I want the next Moo to kick this shit up a notch. Give me cool and awesome new things to do and see. Add some more realism where we can and give me some new strategies and strategic options. Dont just make another stupid Moo2 clone.
Every 4x game is a matter of tradeoff between realism and playability. Say, I hate that oversimplification and 1 unit per hex mehanism in the latest installments of Civilization franchise. On the other hand I do not have any problems with a wisely designed tactical ground combat but such layer should be an integral part of the game flow. If you propose autoresolve as an option, it means that there is probably something shallow/repetitive/bland. There should be a real incentive to play it manually. I think of one factor which is usually neglected in nearly every space 4x game - scarcity. By scarcity in this case I mean planets with rare/unique strategic resource or important strategic position on the map (eg. planet which controls warmhole entry). As I said most of 4x games are about vastness and this is partly a reason of the midgame crisis syndrome when you always have access to many similar sources of minerals etc. So, IMO scarcity and uniqueness should be taken into account during designing of this game.
JG, I completely agree with you with one minor qualification. The auto-resolve can still be handy in a situation where the outcome is already certain so I feel it has it's uses. IG2 had no auto-resolve and was perhaps the only exception to the rule. Coincidentally, that game mirrored the approach you described is some ways. A dozen colonies made you a major power there, every rock you found was important because there were so few of them, they were indeed scarce.
Good point about autoresolving as a facilitator when the outcome of battle is obvious. I've never played IG2, so I cannot refer to this game. Anyway, it is good to see such substantive thoughts like yours ChrisKonstantine.
Thank you for the kind words JG. I will incorporate another variant into this then reflecting "multi year" ground combat and remember to retain the flavor and continuity with Moo2. As for scarcity in general, the idea would also benefit the Devs. It would make it far easier for them to dictate the pace and remain plausible.
Thinking back, in MoO 2 conquering planet actually took more than one turn (unless attacker was telepathic). First you had to break main army and then you had to constantly keep rebels under control until whole population got converted. Rebellions were mostly hidden behind the curtain but if you didn't prepare for it, freshly occupied planed would flip back and undo all your previous conquest efforts. Simply adding some fanfare to rebellion events would make ground combat more involved. Adding more to rebellions would help too like chance to kill occupation troops or revert portion of assimilated population.
I generally don't want to see tactical, turn-based combat in my space 4x games. Takes away too much from other game play I would rather focus on. I definitely believe ground combat should take more than a single turn to resolve, with each side getting chances to reinforce their armies if they can win control of the orbit over a colony, but I don't see a need for direct control of the ground battle itself. I would prefer to influence ground combat indirectly in several ways. Having some rock-paper-scissors ground combat unit types to build would be nice. I could spy on enemies to see what kind of units they favor and design armies to counter them. Specific technologies to boost each of those types would be a nice touch as well. Besides army composition, I'd like to issue broad directives and then let my generals figure things out. Stuff like "conserve troops" for slower but less costly tactics for when I know I'll need those troops later, or "fight to the death" if I need to capture a colony ASAP for some reason and I don't care about taking more casualties.
IMHO, I don't see tactical turn based ground combat fitting in with 4X games. I personally find ground combat generally takes away from fleet combat (a more fun activity) and can get clunky when it spans over several turns. I think something that resolves itself quickly or some elegant way that spans multiple turns with high usability is good.
I used to think I wanted turn-based tactical combat in a space 4X game... and then I played StarDrive and StarDrive 2. Both made attempts at turn-based ground combat, and both were generally seen as lackluster. StarDrive 2's system in particular was far too time consuming and repetitive. Even the developer agreed and changed it to a much simpler MoO style system with the DLC. More recently, I played Polaris Sector which didn't add a true tactical system but did add some complexity on the strategic side. They introduced a rock, paper, scissor system with fighters, jets, ships, tanks, marines, etc. that added a new wrinkle but for me fell flat. It was too much work for too little return. Automation was available, but the AI couldn't handle the system and continuously pumped out huge numbers of weak units with no regard for counters or diversity. I think trying to tack on such a system in a game like this is just too difficult and more importantly time consuming to do correctly. This is not to say I'm opposed to adding some features that spice up ground combat. I think technologies and leaders that offer special abilities or bonuses specific to ground combat would be a nice addition. I'd like it if players could focus on a strong ground invasion game if they wanted to. Whether that include mechanized infantry, exosuits, or the invention of plasma rifles and armor made out of alien skin, it doesn't matter to me as long as it offers the player some clear choices to focus in that area. Attack and defense values, perhaps combined with a per unit HP value, would likely offer enough to allow for some juicy bonuses. One aspect of Polaris Sector that I did like was that invasions took a long time and allowed for reinforcements to be brought in. The way the meter showed who was going to win the ground combat if nothing changes, and how long it would likely take, was very nice.
Yeah, Polaris Sector had one of the best systems for contesting planets I've seen in a space 4x game. The time and effort it took to conquer a planet made it truly feel like you were engaged in long struggles where either side could change the balance of power by getting reinforcements into play. The military game play in general in Polaris Sector was its strong suit and I hope SpaceSector takes a few queues from that game when it comes to ground combat.
Nice to see the exchange of ideas and opinions here, I live for this kind of stuff. Just a quick recap of some essentials in case I was not clear enough. (a problem inherent in these type of conversations) The changes would all be reflected at the moment that combat is actually about to take place, in this instant I would propose that the player be given the option of auto resolve (same combat as in Moo2) or manual combat. (In other words strictly optional) The reasoning, to allow a player to take a planet more intact and with fewer loses if so desired some relevant info A small ground map with limited numbers of units, terrain would play a factor The length of ground combat would also stay reasonable with a fairly large battle taking only about five minutes to resolve. (This would avoid the mechanic becoming tedious) Basically the feel of the ground combat would be similar to space combat in Moo2 just quicker, as the number of units would be capped, however, those units would vary in strength proportionate to the effort extended in building them up. The idea centers around the ground combat being complimentary to the core game in feel, done right, it would not detract from the experience of the game. The key, in my opinion, is not to slap on an entire second game to the existing but rather to enhance a small aspect of it. Looking at the poll so far, the numbers are still too small for me to draw any conclusion but the opinions expressed so far are quite valuable in and of themselves.
For me the most important part - the reason why I play 4x games - is decision making. The game should force me as the player to make decisions. Ground combat is no exeption to this. Unfortunately there are only a few 4x games that have ground combat implemented in such a satisfying way. One of them that comes in my mind is Emperor of the Fading Suns. The rest like Stars in Shadow, Stellaris, Galciv or MOO are ok and they work somehow, but in reality they are quite uninteresting and their potential to force the player to make important decisions are limited. In a potential conflict with aliens, the main combat arena would be surely the ground and not space. Also nearly every important scifi franchise has its focus on ground combat (star wars, starship troopers, wh40k etc.) So should we have a tactical arena for planetary combat? Yes, if the devs have a good idea how to make it fun, full of decision making by the players and short. OTOH I am against it, if it is badly and amateurish implemented as in Stardrive. For example in MOO2 you have different troop types, but did anyone really use mechs for anything? When these came into play the game was usually already in the end phase and they had not much impact. Additionally you could not even transport them. So while its nice to have different troops types, the implementation of mechs in MOO2 was bad. The devs for this game should avoid such traps.
