Taking enemy homeworlds way too easy?

[hewwo]

I was just thinking about this issue...

I think my preferred solution would be to have defence platforms, space ports, etc. prioritise incoming troop transports. This gives building space structures an added strategic aspect over just having a lot of fleets to act as mobile planet defences. Partially solves the problem AND adds an interesting gameplay mechanic!

Also, 1 troop per 1 billion people is probably to little. But don't make it much more... and the contribution of militia should somehow be seen in the planet window. For instance, have a different icon or the same icon with a different colour.

[hal9000]

the planetary shield could prevent troop transports from landing, so you would have to deplete it first. or there could be a planetary flak network which has a 50% chance of killing incoming troops, so you could either mass aussault and accept heavy losses or take your time and destroy the flaks but suffer your losses in space.
the orbital stations could also stay in the defenders hands for e.g. 30sek after the successful invasion.

[hewwo]

ORIGINAL: hal9000

the planetary shield could prevent troop transports from landing, so you would have to deplete it first.

Nice idea, but it would be cool if it was something you could research and build instead of having it as default. On the other hand, if you have to build it that kind of defeats the purpose of what were discussing here...

[hal9000]

ORIGINAL: hewwo

Nice idea, but it would be cool if it was something you could research and build instead of having it as default. On the other hand, if you have to build it that kind of defeats the purpose of what were discussing here...

could be early in the tech tree, so you can build it before the first invasions happen and could be expensive enough that you just want to afford it one your main worlds

[BigWolfChris]

Perhaps preventing troops landing while a space port is present may help?
Of course space ports are too easy to take down as well...

I think this issue is going to one of those that's a complete bitch to balance right lol

[BigWolfChris]

ORIGINAL: hal9000

the planetary shield could prevent troop transports from landing, so you would have to deplete it first. or there could be a planetary flak network which has a 50% chance of killing incoming troops, so you could either mass aussault and accept heavy losses or take your time and destroy the flaks but suffer your losses in space.
the orbital stations could also stay in the defenders hands for e.g. 30sek after the successful invasion.

Spotted this after posting, but I do like this idea
Expand it, for that the higher the local population (and bases) the higher the change
So a lightly populated planet with no bases would have basically zero chance of killing incoming troops
Whereas a heavily populated one with a few bases would have a 80% change of killing each troop before landing
Probably needs more thought for better balance, but it could be worth looking into

[hal9000]

ORIGINAL: BigWolf

Spotted this after posting, but I do like this idea
Expand it, for that the higher the local population (and bases) the higher the change
So a lightly populated planet with no bases would have basically zero chance of killing incoming troops
Whereas a heavily populated one with a few bases would have a 80% change of killing each troop before landing
Probably needs more thought for better balance, but it could be worth looking into

just make it moddable, so everyone can balance it like he wishes

[Shark7]

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

Hi everyone,

Elliot will have to chime in too, but I expect that improving the AI's defense of its home worlds will not be a problem. It does try to defend its homeworld, but if you time it right there are certainly moments where its defense is weaker than it should be due to fleets being absent and/or troops being recruited while others were loaded and sent out on ships.

I think the AI in ROTS does do a better job overall than the original Distant Worlds AI, but there's always room for improvement.

Diablo1, this forum is for discussion of Distant Worlds. The general discussion forum is for other games. Your posts come very close to the definition of trolling, consider yourself warned.

Everyone else, please keep your posts and responses civil.

Regards,

- Erik

Erik, perhaps it would be best to have the AI assign a fleet of no fewer than X ships to always be on station at the home planet. Or you could even code it to use 10% of empire fleet firepower (for example), assigned to defend the home planet.

I realize that 'he who defends everything defends nothing.' However, he who attacks everything defends nothing just the same. [;)]

[kenata]

Wow there are a lot of good suggestions in this thread. Honestly, as far as simply taking any world is concerned, I think that a sneaky troop transport should never be a good option unless a colony is small and completely defenseless. As for large population worlds, like a former independent colony or a home world, I think that these hurtles will only delay a player and does nothing to curtail the overwhelming advantage gained from their capture. In most games, I have played I usually bum rush my closest neighbors home world with all the might I can muster, since taking this world will usually mean that my opponent will instantly become subjugated and I will get at least a 33-50% bonus to my income. Since taking the world has few, if any, negatives either for my worlds or the capture world (after the war is over at least) , I can build a small medical/recreational starbase and start cranking up the taxation. This kind of incentive makes any hurtles to getting the world almost meaningless. I think that it might be interesting if conquered worlds had a happiness penalty based on size for being captured, and depending on your race, your own worlds got a happiness penalty based on the conquered populations. This would help balance out the benefits of conquest. This could also incentivize bombarding planets to manage the size of conquered populations. Right now, there is just no good reason to bombard a planet since it basically wrecks the planet so I can't just rape it of its resources and people.

[Nibelung44]

Simple rules are the best, as the AI can cope with them...

- no invasion if a base is present on a planet
- militias generated, for AI only, is one per 200 millions not one per billion or whatever (make the militias cost free). Also the variable should be available to modders, we are in 2010, not 2000.

Ideally, the planetary shield should have hit points and prevent landing too.

[adecoy95]

i still think the orbiting starbase is the key to improving the invasion tactics... it has an upkeep, they take some time to build, and they are stationary on top of the planet. all of these things can create a pro/con situation that planetary shields just dont... since planetary shields cost no upkeep, take hardly any time to build, and have no means of upgrading/customizing. there is no decision making with planetary shields.

i would imagine that large highly populated worlds would have medium/large spaceports, or even customized mega ports that would need to be destroyed before troop transports could invade. this would....

1: eliminate troop transport fleets as a strategy. you would need more balanced fleets.

2: tie your warships in attack AND defense instead of just defense. since you need them to help destroy the space port.

3: combined with fortified bunkers, it makes taking large worlds EXTREMELY difficult without nuking it and your rep to oblivion.


but i couldn't imagine how the ai could make good choices with this. it might just be easier to remove maintenance cost of troops for the ai and give them lots of extra.

i have been doing more peacful games lately, so i havent had alot of testing with the beta patch for invasions, but i am thinking about making an AAR soon where everyone i meet i immediatly declare war with. i will see how i do

[PDiFolco]

ORIGINAL: nammafia

Like most players, I also agree that it is too easy to take over home planet and planets with star base and defend stations.  Star bases and stations must have destroying troop transports and troop carrying ships as its highest priority. 

Seems useless to me given my strategy: I have a combat fleet to destroy the bases, followed by a transport invasion fleet... I don t expect anything better if I mix them, as invasion is lengthy.
To me the AI HW just need plenty more troops.

[Okim]

A new type of weapon\component representing a some kind of barrage cannons or interceptor missiles could be a nice salvation to this problem. Let`s say it is a component that is a branch-off from the current Point-Defence techs that cripples one of the troops with a up to a certain amount of damage per tech level (up to 25% - 50% - 75% etc.). Multiple numbers of these components can target larger amount of troops (only one per each weapon), but wont increase the damage per troop.

This way AI will get a better chances to defend itself from surprise attacks or any troop landers that will break through the defences. The greater the tech - the more attention you`ll have to pay to the destruction of the bases with these systems as 50% and 75% damage is enough to make even Shakturi to think twice before invading.

The size and resource/energy requirements and max number per base can be used to balance these components quite well.

[Sithuk]

Kenata: I agree that the underlying issue is the massive bonus from capturing enemy homeworlds (HW) early in the game. Once you have one, you then have double the troop training capability. Population is everything. It's simple a matter of time to roll over the next and the next. Grabbing them early gives the human player an unassailable lead. The colonised planets, or even independent worlds which have ~100m pop, take a long long time to grow to be the equal of a starting HW. The balance issue needs to stop the homeworlds from being grabbed so easily until they stop being such a game winner, i.e. the other planets grow to be their equal. When an AI has multiple worlds the same size as their HW then losing the HW isn't going to be such a game breaker for them.

Nibel: I like simple rules are best too. This is a SP game and I want the AI to cope (without cheating!!).

I like the following changes to slow down rushing to grab homeworlds at the start (I'm agreeing with Nibel and others):
1) No invasion if a base is present in orbit of a planet. Good luck taking down a 3000 shielded base with 15 destroyers with two T1 missiles each.
2) Militia generated is less than the one per billion population it is currently. Also create a militia icon (little guy with a pitchfork alongside the standard troop garrison unit so we know it is there.

The exact number of militia raised will be a matter of balance. It will depend on troop training time, troop maintenance cost, troop transport cost and other factors. I do like the idea of lowering it from the 1 per billion it is currently. If only to slow the time til we can invade to allow their other colonies to develop so losing the HW isn't as crippling as it is now.

Planet defences are twofold:
a) space based; and
b) ground based.

Space based:
Making it tougher to invade until space defenses are taken down will mitigate the risk of losing a large world with heavy space defences that can simply be circumvented with a heavily shielded transport which walks right past them.

Ground based:
Increasing the number of militia raised per population will start to make researching and deploying space bombarding ships attractive due to the daunting prospect of taking out the ground defenders. I considered increasing the maintenance of troops to delay the number that can be raised so early in the game but that does nothing to make ground bombarding techs relevant.

Please do not make this a tech dependent issue. Some of the players here set the research cost to 999 in game options so tech discovery is slow. Whatever is done must stop high pop planets falling so easily early in the game when everyone is at tech level 1. Tech discovery is not the answer.

I am heartened to see the interest in providing feedback. I think it is reflective of how much we all enjoy this game. Its already more fun than Galciv and Birth of the Federation (which is high praise). Congratulations to the dev team on a fine job.

[fierceking]

Why not just keep it simple.

How about make the AI fleet focus fire on transports and have it so that the transport loses troops as it takes damage.

So if the transport takes 50% damage before it lands its troops then only 50% of the troops gets to land. Since when taking damage usually you get casualties.

Most of the homeworlds have defensive bases and they have AoE damage. Therefore a lot of the incoming transports can lose their troops even before they land. You don't have to completely destroy the transports. So even if some of the transports gets thru your defenses only a portion of the the enemy troops lands.

This can even be moddable by being able to change that percentage higher or lower or put on a slider bar before a new game to set the difficulty of the game.

The only problem is that posting in this long thread, none of the devs will see this.

[ehsumrell1]

ORIGINAL: fierceking

Why not just keep it simple.

How about make the AI fleet focus fire on transports and have it so that the transport loses troops as it takes damage.

So if the transport takes 50% damage before it lands its troops then only 50% of the troops gets to land. Since when taking damage usually you get casualties.

Most of the homeworlds have defensive bases and they have AoE damage. Therefore a lot of the incoming transports can lose their troops even before they land. You don't have to completely destroy the transports. So even if some of the transports gets thru your defenses only a portion of the the enemy troops lands.

This can even be moddable by being able to change that percentage higher or lower or put on a slider bar before a new game to set the difficulty of the game.

The only problem is that posting in this long thread, none of the devs will see this.

Trust me fierceking, the dev team and us beta testers do read all the posts. I DO like your idea out of the many I've read also. It brings to my mind the part
of the Starship Troopers movie when the "bug plasma" was destroying both the
motherships in orbit plus some of the descending landing craft. Good idea! I
say put your idea in a post in the Master Wishlist thread. [:D]

[Shark7]

ORIGINAL: adecoy95

i still think the orbiting starbase is the key to improving the invasion tactics... it has an upkeep, they take some time to build, and they are stationary on top of the planet. all of these things can create a pro/con situation that planetary shields just dont... since planetary shields cost no upkeep, take hardly any time to build, and have no means of upgrading/customizing. there is no decision making with planetary shields.

i would imagine that large highly populated worlds would have medium/large spaceports, or even customized mega ports that would need to be destroyed before troop transports could invade. this would....

1: eliminate troop transport fleets as a strategy. you would need more balanced fleets.

2: tie your warships in attack AND defense instead of just defense. since you need them to help destroy the space port.

3: combined with fortified bunkers, it makes taking large worlds EXTREMELY difficult without nuking it and your rep to oblivion.


but i couldn't imagine how the ai could make good choices with this. it might just be easier to remove maintenance cost of troops for the ai and give them lots of extra.

i have been doing more peacful games lately, so i havent had alot of testing with the beta patch for invasions, but i am thinking about making an AAR soon where everyone i meet i immediatly declare war with. i will see how i do

That is exactly how most games deal with the situation.

As a human, I will look at the situation, weigh my options and act accordingly....not always taking the most intelligent course of action, but that is human error.

The AI will look at its perameters, and perform the result of the if/then algorithm without regard to the intelligence of doing such a thing.

The improvement comes in with coding in a few more if/then statements, for example:

If enemy firewpower >/= (2 * current empire firepower), then 20% of ships should patrol Empire Capital.

etc

You can add in as many as you need to get the AI to perform the desired actions. You can even help weight the actions by the race attributes:

If Caution >/= 125, then 70% of ships defend home territory.
If Caution >/= 100, then 40% of ships defend home territory.
If Caution </= 99, then 10% of ships defend home territory.

So forth and so on.

DISCLAIMER: I am not a coder, so while I understand the IF/THEN theory, this may be completely different from how DW or any other game is currently coded.

[ASHBERY76]

It's a tricky one because you can not make the A.I defend its homeworld to such a state it can not have offensive fleets and troops lauching its own attacks, that would be very dull gameplay.

[Pipewrench]

[quote]ORIGINAL: fierceking

Why not just keep it simple.

How about make the AI fleet focus fire on transports and have it so that the transport loses troops as it takes damage.

So if the transport takes 50% damage before it lands its troops then only 50% of the troops gets to land. Since when taking damage usually you get casualties.



then we would just build many transports to make all things equal. I agree with your ideas but then I would just send in empty transports first to focus the fire.

[lordxorn]

MOO2's homeworlds were usually guarded by the top Starbase, Weapons, and a decent fleet at times, which was sometimes not effective either.

I think the solution is to allow the AI to relocate capitals. The Russian were ready to evacuate Moscow (I think Stalin already did) by the time the first panzer had eyes on it.

This way the race does not immediately lose the whole game.

Maybe this can give the second capital tech more meaning allowing a race to just have the second largest capital become the defacto main capital.