As a little feedback, I've been exploring Gremak strategies lately. Slavery seems difficult to use without upsetting many non-Gremak populations in your empire, but I think I just need to be more aggressive about making Mauraders to keep the peace, and 'using up' slaves when I have too many.

Horrific acts aside, back to boarding - Gremak seem extremely well suited to boarding, especially in the early game.

Their ships have Distortion Fields, allowing them to close to boarding distances without suffering too much damage. They struggle with early research, meaning captured pirate or enemy vessels usually provide huge boosts to scientific progress - and using boarding pods over a medium weapon is hardly a great loss when you don't have many good weapons available to put in there. And their Command Cruisers and Battlecruisers have Assault Shuttles, allowing you to continue the process.

Also, there are various documentation issues I'm not clear on - Assault Shuttles indicate there's a penalty for landing ground troops that they remove, but I'm not clear where this penalty is (or if it exists at all).

Dragar wrote: Also, there are various documentation issues I'm not clear on - Assault Shuttles indicate there's a penalty for landing ground troops that they remove, but I'm not clear where this penalty is (or if it exists at all).

I was confused by this as well. According to the feedback so far, it has been planned that landing troops get a penalty without Assault Shuttles but was never implemented even though the text alludes to it

Personally I think the concept would be great, but the penalty would need some clear indication in the ground invasion screen

Yeah Gremak are great at boarding and also have the sweetest designs in my opinion
Tend to loot their ships when not playing Gremak to get the Field Generator and smack it on Military Transports

zolobolo wrote: Personally I think the concept would be great, but the penalty would need some clear indication in the ground invasion screen

It could be a nice perk, but maybe the most important thing is clarity. Right now it's confusing.

If you think abouth it, that is why Military Transports exist as they do in the game in the first place

Combat-wise there is no real reason why the transport would need to be armored: they are transports
Their added value is rectified by the indication that they are a more "secure" way of transprting troop to the field

Granted, they serve a usefull purpose as Boarding shuttles but then their nname just doesn't match their function

zolobolo wrote:If you think abouth it, that is why Military Transports exist as they do in the game in the first place

Ah, true. I guess it might be easier to make the design consistent by actually adding the ground-invasion functionality, then!

Dropping invading troops from a cargo hold instead of assault shuttles is supposed to incur a combat penalty, but this was never implemented.

I had an idea. What if delivering troops from a cargo hold incurred some chance of the transport itself being destroyed, when participating in a ground invasion?

harpy eagle wrote:I had an idea. What if delivering troops from a cargo hold incurred some chance of the transport itself being destroyed, when participating in a ground invasion?

I'd prefer to implement the originally intended behavior (which will require some UI changes), but it's not a really high priority at the moment.

I also think we need to eventually implement some kind of ground unit reinforcement/pool mechanism, so there's more work on this mechanism somewhere down the road.

Arioch wrote:

harpy eagle wrote:I had an idea. What if delivering troops from a cargo hold incurred some chance of the transport itself being destroyed, when participating in a ground invasion?

I'd prefer to implement the originally intended behavior (which will require some UI changes), but it's not a really high priority at the moment.

I also think we need to eventually implement some kind of ground unit reinforcement/pool mechanism, so there's more work on this mechanism somewhere down the road.

Loosing transports would be a logical outcome and would not require UI changes - only to display the lost transports in the battle report screen in the end

But if you would like to go with the original concept, maybe the Assault shuttle image itself could be used to display the "bonus?
Question is how you would display the debuff though

Another problem is proportional effect:
What if 3 ground troops have Assault Shuttles but 3 are brought down by transports?
The problematic can be circumvented via the transport loss idea by displaying all transports as well as Assault shuttles as invading troops and the probability of them being lost just like for any other ground unit (Assault Shuttles would simply be way tougher then transports and thus the loss of them very rare or 0%)

Do you feel that a reinforcement pool mechanic is needed? MY invasions usually end after 1-2 turn of invasion but of course this is with bombarding
If you are planning to implement some serious penalties for bombing (like the environmental damage already mentioned) then it would surely be useful as invasions could be drawn out well beyond 3 turns

zolobolo wrote: Loosing transports would be a logical outcome and would not require UI changes - only to display the lost transports in the battle report screen in the end

I don't feel it is a logical outcome. In order to invade, you have to first destroy all defensive systems that could reasonably attack ships in orbit. Tanks and militia shouldn't be able to shoot down transports. The transports don't land; they ferry troops to the surface in non-military shuttles. The idea is that troops landing this way are less effective than those landing in proper military assault shuttles, hence the invasion combat penalty.

zolobolo wrote: Do you feel that a reinforcement pool mechanic is needed?

The current issue with our ground combat system is that it requires a certain degree of micromanagement to build replacement tanks and move them to the front, so what most people do is send empty transports to the trade pool and build new troop transports with tanks preloaded. This sort of works gameplay wise, but it doesn't make a lot of sense logically, and it doesn't work with more expensive military transports.

That sounds reasonable.

Military transports also fill a space combat niche since they are pretty effective at boarding. Do you intend for them to keep that role once they become necessary for non-penalized planetary invasion?

Arioch wrote: The current issue with our ground combat system is that it requires a certain degree of micromanagement to build replacement tanks and move them to the front, so what most people do is send empty transports to the trade pool and build new troop transports with tanks preloaded

This is so true

So are you thinking on expanding the functionality of the trade pool to invasions?
This way transports would be first reserved for food, then for ongoing invasions and will finally serve as trade ships if the first two requirement is met...

This would be great as it would give even more function to the pool (and using existing mechanics is always good) but raises the question of where and how the tanks come into play... Like having a pool for tanks as well?

Or, to avoid another pool, "invasion" could be initiate automatically when there are no defenses and depending on the available trade capacity slowly wear down the defenders without the need to produce tanks - though this concept would be hands free it is slow an not fun as the player does not have direct control over it

harpy eagle wrote:Military transports also fill a space combat niche since they are pretty effective at boarding. Do you intend for them to keep that role once they become necessary for non-penalized planetary invasion?

Boarding capabilities shouldn't be affected.

zolobolo wrote:So are you thinking on expanding the functionality of the trade pool to invasions?
This way transports would be first reserved for food, then for ongoing invasions and will finally serve as trade ships if the first two requirement is met...

This would be great as it would give even more function to the pool (and using existing mechanics is always good) but raises the question of where and how the tanks come into play... Like having a pool for tanks as well?

Something like that. You would assign ground units to a reinforcement pool, and they would board available transports from the trade pool, and then you could call for them from the troop transports at the front, and they would be delivered automatically.

That actually sounds splendid.