Suggest - Features and Improvements

[Arioch]

Also already mentioned before but really suggest ignoring ground troops during raid - it leads to awkward situations where two tanks and Assault Marine cannot caputre a single slave for 2 turns even though they have a 85% chance of conquering the planet itself.

Why raid a colony if you have enough troops to conquer it and take everyone as slaves?

If you have the ability to drop your troops anywhere on the world, presumably the defending troops have the same capability; they have vehicles and transportation infrastructure too, and it's not as if they can't see you coming. Being able to grab slaves from a well-defended world without the defenders having anything to say about it seems just silly. That might be fun to do to the AI, but I don't think it would be very fun if the AI could do that to you.

[zolobolo]

Also already mentioned before but really suggest ignoring ground troops during raid - it leads to awkward situations where two tanks and Assault Marine cannot caputre a single slave for 2 turns even though they have a 85% chance of conquering the planet itself.

Why raid a colony if you have enough troops to conquer it and take everyone as slaves?

If you have the ability to drop your troops anywhere on the world, presumably the defending troops have the same capability; they have vehicles and transportation infrastructure too, and it's not as if they can't see you coming. Being able to grab slaves from a well-defended world without the defenders having anything to say about it seems just silly. That might be fun to do to the AI, but I don't think it would be very fun if the AI could do that to you.

I absolutely agree: why raid a colony if we have enought troops to conquer it?
Since the defending forces take their toll on the raiders, the raider force needs to be stronger then the defenders to not get wiped out=can conquer the planet

Sometimes the odds for capturing slaves seem to be even worse then capturing hte planet In the above example I even raided an undefended planet of two pops and no milita tech with 2 tanks and 1 radier unit and got out with 0 slaves in two attacks: invading the planet had 85% chance for a succesfull conquest.

Hence my question if we could see the probability of capturing slaves: that may clear up the odds

But generally raiding is not a viable tactic as it needs the same amount of preparation as invasion, has the same probability of casualties but apperantly lower chance for success. If the costs are the same as invasion but the potential benefits are less in which situation is it a viable option?

The only situation I can imagine is when the planet cannot be held and a superior enemy force is already inbound: in this case it is still a better idea to invade, take the salves and demolish the buildings

If the chance for unit loss would be lower then for invasion and the chance of capturing slaves higher then that of invasion, it would make sense but we would need to see the numbes and the differences to determine that - so far in my experience the odds are worse

Hence my other suggestion: if the two actions are clearly segregated, the mechanic is also clear as well as the pros and cons.

[Dragar]

Arioch, when do you envision us (as players!) raiding worlds for slaves, rather than taking the planet?

[Arioch]

Arioch, when do you envision us (as players!) raiding worlds for slaves, rather than taking the planet?

Frontier colonies with small populations and lacking defensive infrastructure are practical targets for slaver raids (and this is usually the situation in which you find such slave raiders in science fiction literature). You'll get small numbers of slaves, but with minimal effort and can it be done early in the game before you have large fleets. This was designed as something for the NPC Marauder faction to do, but I thought it might be fun to let the Gremak player do it as well. It's not meant to be a game-changing tactic, or even the most efficient way to capture slaves. If raiders' use is limited, I'm perfectly okay with that. (They're also essentially the only purchased/manufactured militia in the game, which is not nothing when you need to maintain a certain military ratio on slave planets.)

[AMX]

FWIW, the idea that raiders might land in a remote part of the planet, grab what/who they can, and then run like hell before the garrison can bring the hammer down on them seems perfectly logical to me.

[zolobolo]

I see the idea and it works pretty well for Marauders.

For the player the mechanic is only utilizable via Gremak or Humans

For Humans the problem is clear I think: as mentioned before they have a very slow start and cannot effectively produce Assault MArines with transports for raiding within the first 100 turns (also has way to heavy research requirement for that). I guess in case of Humans the idea for Assault Marines was to use them for boarding action and raiding has been added in afterwards to them when they turned out to be classified as milita as well

In case of Gremak it is more tricky as they already start with the Marauder Raiders "tech" available to them + their starting homeworld and slaves allow for the rollout of a raiding unit with 4 turns compared to 6 turns for a tank + 4 Turns for transport. It seems like a viable option for them from early game on and they could save 50% metal and roughly 50% produciton cost on tank unit compared to invasion. The question again is what are the odds? If they are perfectly identical or better then that of invasion, then it is viable for Gremak, but if the success rate is lower, the small saving on 2 Turns per unit is not worth it as raiding actions need to be swift unlike invasions else might as well invade and then pull out

But considering the basic idea the mechnic is not meant to function beyond early game which I find to be a shame as it has a lot of potential

Withouth touching on the base idea then: how abouth giving Human faction the tech necessary to build Assault Marines right off the bat and/or better yet: a couple of Assault Marine units to start with. This way they can have some fun decision in early game as well and partake in the raiding mechanic before it is outdated. It would also fit their nomad pirate nature to start with some "raiding" as well as boarding units - I have also suggested once to outright replace the tank units with Marines for Humans and make them 2X as strong to make the faction even more unique and auto-apply the correct unit for boarding ships instead of tanks which do not add that much manpower. This mid-to late game weakining of their invasion forces could even serve to balanced out the advantage they are given in the start

[Dragar]

Arioch, when do you envision us (as players!) raiding worlds for slaves, rather than taking the planet?

Frontier colonies with small populations and lacking defensive infrastructure are practical targets for slaver raids (and this is usually the situation in which you find such slave raiders in science fiction literature). You'll get small numbers of slaves, but with minimal effort and can it be done early in the game before you have large fleets. This was designed as something for the NPC Marauder faction to do, but I thought it might be fun to let the Gremak player do it as well. It's not meant to be a game-changing tactic, or even the most efficient way to capture slaves. If raiders' use is limited, I'm perfectly okay with that. (They're also essentially the only purchased/manufactured militia in the game, which is not nothing when you need to maintain a certain military ratio on slave planets.)

Thanks; that makes sense. I think the real dilemma here is for the designer to effectively communicate all that in game. I'm fine with it not being a core feature (if it were, it wouldn't make much sense economically, really.)

(I also appreciate the militia behaviour; moreso than their raiding ability!)

[zolobolo]

Now that AI empires can offer merger to the player it would be very helpful to have templates for manual refitting commands besides the existing templates of siege, escort and balanced as there are a lot of ships that need refitting and each needs to be configured manually

Admittedly, it would be problematic to allow for designs of other non-faction specific layouts due to the various ships layouts that might be used: the player could have any one of the possible designs which would need to be filtered according to which hull types are currently available for the player (what should happen if all units are lost for that design?)

Previously we only needed to refit other designs when these were captured which weren't that many of course but if an empire merges with the player and and it had 12 Heavy Cruisers, these cruisers then need to be upgraded one-by-one and then upgraded again when new technology is available.

At least I found that I can never use the basic template for this which might be the solution here: improved templates and no new designs

e.g.: I have found that heavy weapons work better for siege role then missiles/torps expect for Tinkers
Balanced desing also seems ot avoid utilization of Heavy Weapons

[zolobolo]

There are 3 tiers of defensive buildings an the second one seems to be on par with the third and thus being pushed into the late game where there is rarely any action:
1: 480
2. 5000 (+1'000%)
3. 7000 (+71%)

Propose to reduce the research cost of the second tier defensive tech (Defense Network) to 2000 so that it is researched sooner by the AI and player and makes an appearance in mid-game

[zolobolo]

A new defensive starbase type: "Planetary Defense Plattform"

It could be tier I defensive starbase followed up by the current starbase and fortress as tier II and II consequently
It could be cheaper then starbase, but only have heavy mounts + 1-2 PD mount and maybe a single squadron mount capacity

By making it primarily a heavy weapons platform it could fulfill the role missing from current defensive bases and fill the gap in their functionailty offering some protection agains heavy weapons "sieging" (and hopefulyl looking cool doing it )

It would not break balance as it would still take up an orbital slot but would introduce effective defense in early-game and would support the defense fleet (contrary to planetary defense building) thus mending some of the AIs shortcommigs as well

As far as desing goes, it could have a smaller footrprint (25-50% of starbase) and the heavy guns mounted on it could have their own art - though the existing should also do the drick quite well

[zolobolo]

Have the types of ships and their numbes listed next to each uther on the fleets tab instead of the count of all ships and displaying the most powerfull one

This would help identifying fleets capable of planetary invasions, siege or fending off various compositions of enemy fleets

The issue her could be if there are a large number if different types of ships - in this case the menu would take up a large space
One way of handling this might be to create two rows with half-sized models if the list reaches the edge of the menu and have the menu only take up as much space which is required for displaying 3-5 models (as 99% of fleets will not have more types in them)

Displaying the number of the type of ship on the bottom left or right of the model would also save a lot of space: the current menu coud easilyl host 2-3 models as is this way

Grouping ship hulls of the same type togethe (instead of displaying each specific design with individual setup separately) would also greatly decrease the list and would enable a realistic calculation of max models per fleet. Per default, this would the the amount of ship hull types a faction has + vairable of captured ship hulls + merc ship hull types

[CapnDarwin]

With the latest update, it is noted that factions may request players (maybe other AIs) to stay out of owned systems. Is the reverse true? Will AIs stay out of my claimed systems unless there is some form of agreement? One of the biggest issues I have with the game is AIs spamming colonies or outposts into a system I have claimed first without any type of agreement or provision in place leading to me having to counter-spam outposts or blowing up AI ships trying to grab worlds in my space.

Keep up the great work! Really enjoying the added challenges and improved AI mechanics.

[Arioch]

Have the types of ships and their numbes listed next to each uther on the fleets tab instead of the count of all ships and displaying the most powerfull one

This would help identifying fleets capable of planetary invasions, siege or fending off various compositions of enemy fleets

The Fleet Report is just intended to be a list of fleets. If you click on an item in the list, it will display the fleet in the bottom pane, and you can see everything about it.

You can have fleet with a hundred ships in it, and every one could be a unique design. I don't think it's practical to try to display all that information in a simple list.

[zolobolo]

I unerstand that I was looking at it just form my side: I was not yet interested in a list of my fleets but I would have been interesting in finding all the fleets that contain specific type of ships (mostly troop transports, Outpost and colony ships). It would effectively transform the view to a full-scale fleet composition list while still retaining a level of aggregation where sensable

The problem with too many models is clear hence my suggestion to only display the hull type
All of the above cases + capital ships types would be clearly visible and would cut down the amount of models to display vastly: if a ship has several variants, it would be a single icon with the number below it counting all variants of that hull

Still as I said: mercs and captured hulls migth still blow up the frame. Solution: ...

If anyone is curious I can splice together a mockup frame to show what I mean

[zolobolo]

Option to select research tree or list as default (I am mostly using the list and tree is the default since last update)

Generally I find myself researching hover tank tech till Turn 100 and Battlemechs by 200
This seems just right at first as my games usually go somewhere around 300-400 turns - but the longer turn times (micro and more things to do) in the late game make it feel as if I always have battlemechs (more things happen on late-game turns and they seem longer).

This is emphasized by the fact that the first 100 turns where normal tanks would be used does not usually see any combat yet

So maybe increase tech vost of tanks and Battlemechs or have a 4th tier?