I like the fact that it takes a lot of investment in troop transports to conquer high population planets.Too many games allow for 2-3 troop transports to conquer a planet of billions of people when I believe a full planetary invasion and occupation should be a monumental undertaking. That being said, in SiS once I’ve build a group of 5+ troop transports, I’m free to conquer as I please without needing any downtime between invasions, assuming I win the space combat of course. I’m thinking there should be some mechanic to slow down invasion tempo.
Maybe troop transports are built with a loaded regiment of troops ready to go, but once they invade they need to return to a friendly colony to reload for another invasion? This could, or could not, involve taking a unit of civilian population to create a military regiment. I've heard pro and con arguments on using civilian population to create military units in other games so I think that is a topic open for debate if planetary invasions were to progress down this line of reasoning.
Another idea involves maybe using a troop transport to invade a planet “uses up” that transport, forcing the player to build more to invade a different colony. This second option is more straight forward than the first reloading troops idea, but less appealing to me because I never understood why other games make troop transports disappear post-invasion when those vessels should still be available to be reloaded and used again after conducting a planetary assault. Still, it would probably be easier to implement so I'll put it out there.
So what are the devs and other testers thoughts on this area of the game? My apologies if there are already plans in place to change the way planetary invasions are handled. I've been away from the game for a while due to computer issues so if I've missed something I do apologize.