Some thoughts on Invasions

[zgrssd]

I have been thinking on again, off again about Invasions and Boarding. And some areas where I think it could use improvement.
Some particular issues are:
- It is too easy to do a "hit and run" invasion. Where you just fire your pods and then run off, doing something else. Like the invasion does not need orbital support
- it can be too easy to defeat-in-detail invasions forces, as the pods trickle in.
- raids are neither fun to execute nor to defend against
- you can use your free raiding forces to damage ground troops, then turn the raid into a proper invasion when damage has been done

So here some ideas to fix that, in no particular order or requirement to combine them.

Unify Infantry stats
There is a lot of difference between each Races infantry stats. I think it should be less. Or possibly there should be no difference.
The issue is that whatever natural abilities a Boskara has over a Teekan, the Teekan will just get more training and gear. And thus be perfectly on par with said Boskara.

There is still some value here - price and speed. It is cheaper and quicker to turn a Boskara into a soldier. So recruiting a local garission from population will be easier. Which also means it will be harder to keep a population in line.

Orbital Spots and Bandwidth
Currently every spot in orbit is equally good for stations and invasion forces alike. There is no defending a planet in space, partially because transport can just pick any point on the orbital circle to launch from. Any space far away from defending weapons.

But I do not think all orbit spots should be equally valid. Any planet will have some orbit spots that are simply better to put a spaceport or invasion fleet at. These spots have a better bandwidth to all the cities on the ground.
If the space port takes up the primary spot (because it does the most space/ground transport work), then defense platforms could cover the rest for a decent orbital defense. The invasion or raiding force has to come for the better defended spots.

Invasions and Supplies, Orbital Bandwidth
Currently, all the Troop Transport needs to deliver is the troops. Once those are deployed, the Troop transport can leave the system.
But troops on the ground should also need some supplies. Especially a hostile invasion force should have a huge issue getting supplies. So what if troop transports had to provide those supplies?

Defending and recapturing forces would have a easier time here. Invading and occupying forces should have a issue. So depending on how much of the planet is held - and how well that population supports one side - they would just provide supplies.

Naturally if they need to transport supplies, Transport would have issues ferrying in more troops. But the Orbital Bandwidth would mater - so much easier to do a invasion if you do disable their spaceport first.

Relative Ground Control Weight & damage modifiers
Currently there is a bar, but all it does is compare the relative strenght. But what if that bar mattered for gameplay effects?
Lets say it had 4 segments - with separators at 25, 50 and 75% control.
Different units have different control "weight", for that bar.
Only infantry is really good at holding ground. Tanks, Special Forces and Titans would be really good at doing combat - but baring something dedicated to actually controlling population (like a Mobile Mind Control Tower Titan), they would not actually hold ground or population.

Reaching or approaching specific thresholds would have gameplay effects:
- being below 25% gives your side considerable damage resistance. That makes it harder to finish off remaining defenders, overrun initial invaders and the like.
- being above 25% allows you to collect local supplies, based on how much support the population gives you.
- actually taking stuff during raiding requires a certain amount of control. Say, around the 50% mark so you can start transferring stuff off-world
- raiding forces are launched with: Damage Received Reductions (it is harder to pin down and destroy a raiding force), bigger Damage Dealt reductions (their focus is on plundering, not dealing damage), control weight increase (they initially have a easy time getting enough control to actually plunder). However, those modifiers would decay towards being more normal. So if a raiding force does not do a hit&run, it will eventually get "bogged down" into a proper invasion.

Garrison Setting & Military Settlement
One question that should come up who (or what) is defending a planet. The options I can think off:

Local Garrison:
A Garrison force of made up the local population. It should be the cheapest option - as they are recruited locally and don't need equipment for interstellar warfare. However, they would be bad outside a defense role.
And most importantly: In case of rebellion, they might side with the locals! They are still somewhat on the side of the government, but can not be entirely trusted.
Also you can not actually recruit them, until you start having meaningful control over the population.

Occupation Force:
A slaving invader like the Dhayut might instead prefer importing a occupation force of Dhayut, rather then recruit from the local, enslaved population. Which might aid rebellions, rather the suppress them. But even a Democracy might prefer having their their garrison forces be the integrated Boskara.

Such a force would be more expensive - after all, you need to ship in replacement soldiers from another planet. Possibly ship and support their families locally. But they would in turn be much more loyal to the government. And given you any other advantages of that species.
But such a Occupation force would also somewhat settle the on the planet. If you station a few Infantry units worth of Soliders on the planet, eventually there will be enough of that Race to create a effective population. So this would be a way to get some small populations that can grow normally onto every planet.

[Jorgen_CAB]

Allot if good options for sure...

I can only say what I did to help the AI and make invasions more of an effort but that it does not break the AI. In fact, it now plays better.

In my "AI mod" I have halved the maintenance cost of all units and ground war based facilities (including planetary defence) and reduced the attack value of all units to 1/3. I also made sure that no unit have more attack than defence at any stage in the game.

This has made the AI play the invasion game and defending planets better. First of all it will require a much more dedicated effort to invade a planet, especially planets with large populations. It also is way more costly to keep a large invasion force standing and less to keep a decent defensive force.

Then again I have also made sure the AI build much better assault carrier ships to invade planets and better invasion fleets in general. The AI even combine several invasion fleets to invade planets and seem able to wait for each other before they send the troops down to the planet.

Invading planets in vanilla game is way too easy and keeping a decent defending garrison way to expensive.

[AKicebear]

I dislike the idea of making all races troops similar or even identical.

But I do agree with all of your other comments. The supply lines idea is especially interesting. Perhaps troops and all related mechanics could use a full balance pass or even expansion at some point.

@jorgen - any plans to make your AI changes a publicly available mod? They sound good.

[Jorgen_CAB]

I dislike the idea of making all races troops similar or even identical.

But I do agree with all of your other comments. The supply lines idea is especially interesting. Perhaps troops and all related mechanics could use a full balance pass or even expansion at some point.

@jorgen - any plans to make your AI changes a publicly available mod? They sound good.

Yes... when it is done... or at least half done.

I will likely publish some initial overview of the changes I'm doing and perhaps I will post some beta there before I publish it on steam.