Conquering Planet:why only bombardment

Well u dont really kill all the people on the planet, just those who are in charge and the infrastructure. While some flavor can be added, like maybe Advent sending battle bots to the surface to enslave the people and destroy stuff, while Vasari deploy their slavemasters, or whatever they do. And of course TEC would remain the nuke the planet type

I agree that some alternate method really does need to be devised. Right now your choices are to bomb the planet into oblivion or turn it neutral through culture, both of which destroy all the upgrades. Some form of invasion would be nice, perhaps a new type of frigate or cruiser that carries troops, costs a lot, and has to be protected or something.

I would also agree. I think an "invasion" option is a tactical item that is sorely missing. Look at it this way, bombarding a planet and destroying ALL of their infrastructure is the fastest and dirtiest way to do things. It also involves a lot of reconstruction costs. Training an invasion force takes more prep time, is more expensive upfront, and takes time to implement. It's a lot easier to just bow up a city rather than send in the ground troops. And yet, I think we should have the option to choose. I can't even begin to speculate on how the balance of this would all tie in-Why invade when you can bombard in half the time? But I think it would be a worthwhile addition.

troop carriers could be implented

it would slowly take over the planet instead of nuking it

step 1: troops are launched on planet, production + income rate is slowed
step 2: troops are taking over strategic points, production halted, no more income
step 3: planet is under your control, low starting culture (people wont be happy you being on (their) planet)

step 4: all resistace is crushed and normal allegiance rules take over, planet is 100% yours with all the upgrades applied by the previous owner


all this ofcourse takes some time, troop carriers are VERY vulnerable and need to stay opperational during the time it is taking over the planet (troop command post)


all implentable ... just need more rules n stuff

I always saw the planet genocide thing as a SIN of a solar empire.

You guys are missing a rather critical point...

Invasion is a tactic to preserve the resources of a given area so that they can be used against the enemy. However, In the case of Sins you have 3 completely difference races competing on a galactic scale! This isn't all human vs human. One could make the argument that since Advent are mostly human they should be able to make some good out of a TEC facility but the fact still remains that Advent use psychic abilities to do everything when the TEC need good old fashioned elbow grease. The Vasari are completely alien, different life support systems, different language entirely, different cultural development.

No the game makes sense the way that it is, the structures are useless wipe them out and rebuild. Capturing would only make sense if you're playing the exact same race. Perhaps, and I'm stretching here, the game designers at Ironclad sat down and had this discussion somewhere about 3 years ago and they made the scorched earth decision based on reason equating with a simple and easily implemented game mechanic? And while this situation doesn't answer, the well I'm the same race so why can't I take this, scenario it does cover the other scenarios quite nicely.

Implementing an entire capture system with relevant ships and special abilities just for a same race vs same race situation is sheer lunacy. It adds another game mechanic to try to balance, it takes development time away from other game wide concepts and it makes the game that much more convoluted for noobs to pick up. Bad design decision, leave this one alone.

I think you're missing the point.

Every planet has 'planetary defenders', right? Those are the people living on that planet and their paltry defense force. Those people are still on the planet. The entire game takes place in TEC space, so be in TEC, Advent, or Vasari, there's really nothing but humans on the planet. The TEC are annexing the planet, the Vasari are enslaving the population, and the Advent... I don't know.

But those people are still there. The planetary bombardment probably kills off a lot, sure, but when you 'colonize' a new planet, you're setting up your government. Population increase is simply war refugees and the like officially becoming recognized as taxpayers for your government.

I believe the Advent "convince" humans to come over to the Unity. Just a theory, not sure, but that seems most likely. As an afterthought, I like to enslave populations. The appeal of locking down a planet so that you just stay in orbit, ready to kill all at any time, gives you a sense of control... and awesomeness. Just my opinion.

Playing as Advent, I've also taken over the planets of other Advent factions and still had to bring them to 0 "health" and 0 upgrades present. Kinda blows the "incompatible infrastructure" argument out of the water.

-- Retro

I think the invasion idea would be a nice new way to grab a planet. Shadow of Light's Idea would seem the best to me, it would be an interesting way to grab a planet and not spend a boatload of resources to repair when I can just send troops down to grab it all.

As for incompatible races Retro has a point if your Advent you shouldn't have to smash a planet to conquer another Advent planet. Just convince them your Coalescence is the better one to lead them.

Tec space is where it takes place so it's not much different then any war on Earth. Send in the troops, grab the city and secure.

As for Vasari it states in the book they wouldn't really set foot on the planet just lock it down and rule from space for who cares who ran it, you have huge siege guns aimed down on the planet to make em say "Yes Sir" when you order something done.

As for Advent/Tec vs. Vasari planets. Again it's Tec space so it's likely the population is human to a vast extent. Tec would liberate, Advent would convert depending on the situation

Either way I agree that you'd have to loose some 0of the population in an invasion and you could just say that was the " conquering faction/ defenders getting wiped out in defense.

So... would doing this be a lot more costly in terms of ships and time than simply bombarding the planet or is this idea meant to take the place of a current siege?

Assuming this is just an alternative, it already takes a good long time to siege a planet (unless you've devoted a good chunk of your fleet to siege frigates/caps, or have a couple of siege-specializing caps at level 6+ on hand). Unless we're proposing that siege damage gets a huge shot in the arm which would make it worthwhile to continue taking the siege option, an invasion would probably take quite a while.

You guys do know that I've been advocating this idea for a while now right?

As JFJohnny5 mentioned the invasion cost would be high up front to build the ships and do research and then to deploy you would have to keep the ships there anyway to guard the troop transports. In the end it would pay for itself though as you would not spend resources to research all the planetary upgrades since you captured them intact. So after maybe 3-4 planets taken this way it's paid for itself.

I have to admit in the end game where you are starting to gain the upper hand on your opponent being able to grab a planet in their system nearly intact off the bat is not just easier, it's pretty much standard military practice. Grab an airport or a seaport as intact as you can and voila, instant foothold you can expand from quickly.

Instead of bombing the planet you can use culture to revert it to neutral and then just take it over.

Ah but wheres the fun in that?  

Well, maybe the "cleansing" is necessary. After all they are 3 completely different races of beings. Perhaps the tech need oxygen to live while it would be toxic to the vasari, so they need to wipe the planet clean of oxygen and rebuild using arsenic or whatever. And the bombardments contain warheads that effectively neutralize the oxygen while supplying the arsenic to the planets atmosphere.

Ok, kind of a long shot, but at least its something other then why is it this way. Well thats why! Soldiers would die invading the planet! Bombardments cleanse! Orbital terraforming at its best! Whoot!

As for culture, the inhabitants simply get up and leave. It's very racist in that way. Their like, Ooo, the hoodlums are invading so we should move, bye. Instead of trying to get to know them and learn to live with them. Perhaps that should be the discussion here... Why does sins have racism in its basis?

Something to think about!

Humans take over countries inhabited by humans too, doesn't mean the government is going to be able to collect taxes the next day, which is all population means.

Hi guys...

A very interesting group of posts

Well, the idea of invasion never seemed to be a problem in other games like Master of Orion, Galactic Civilizations etc. In galciv, your troops went in and killed off the enemy forces and you took over, and that was quite fun. In MOO you could mind control the populace - Advent possibilities come to mind! I understand the dilemma of different races etc, but every race produces refined resources and materials what are universal e.g. metals and construction materials from the various elements the planet is rich with, so the invasion idea means that you could access such resources (theoretically) without bombing them all to hell and setting up a whole new system

In other words, some (if not all) of the alien infrastructure is likely to be useful to the new owner of the planet in some way...e.g. roads, mineshafts or fuel reserves. I know I'm getting quite technical, but it makes sense to me to invade sometimes rather than totally trash everything.

I'd like to see the option for invasion be incorporated into this game. The invasion options were great in Galciv, but in that game...u never had the option to bombard the planet without ruining it completely as u did in other games e.g. bio-terminators! It seems we've got the opposite problem here...

Keep well.

Uranium, pretending it's a real military/economy simulation and not just a game for a minute, even if the local population's leadership practiced a scorched earth policy as they went down to defeat, at minimum the invading force gets a huge boost in the net amount of recyclable stuff that's sitting around waiting for the first available forge. Even a razed city, unless it's been completely nuked and is radioactive for centuries, is going to be full of metal girders that are much easier and faster to access and process than orbital shipments from an asteroid that must be mined would be.

-- Retro

Just because Saddam had an assload of palaces didn't mean we were able to get power to Baghdad any faster. Hell they still have blackouts.

It's infrastructure, that's what the upgrades are called. When you're dropping bombs in the upper megaton range like the TEC are doing, you're wiping out that infrastructure. You've not only uprooted the government, you've displaced millions of people (certainly killed quite a few, too). You have refugees in camps, their cities are full of insurgents, rioting, and anarchy. When you first take over, your government only controls a small part of that planet, a "green zone". It's taking a lot of money to deal with the starving population who are lacking proper hospital care, food, water, and power. These people need to get back to their homes in the cities, and that's where spending money on relocation, reconstruction.

Taking care of these refugees and re-naturalizing them is a time-consuming and costly process. As you spend money, you make major population areas livable. Refugees in camps don't pay taxes - a working legal citizen DOES.

You COULD make a case for retaining this infrastructure via culture flip, and maybe that's a nice incentive to do so vs. invasion. But to say that you can just use this twisted radioactive debris and should be able to keep it is insanity. It makes absolutely perfect sense to me both in regards to the population and the infrastructure costs.

Agreed for TEC's nuke-em approach, but that doesn't apply to Vasari. Their entire conquering process is to subjugate the local population as rapidly as possible and turn them into slave labourers. Their orbital beam weapons strike me as surgical tools to cut out the leadership without a lot of collateral damage, not kill-everything planetglassing nature of TEC-bombs, so there would be lots of things like food production, water treatment, power generation, etc. left to kick off a quick start with.

So, again, looking at this as if it's real and not a game, one would expect that the Vasari, who are masters at population subjugation, would be able to kickstart the economy much faster after conquering a planet than the TEC, even if the latter might result in a happier, "native" population of pure humans who like their government and have much higher allegiance in the longer term.

Mind you, this is just a theoretical examination of the conquered population's disposition, not a request or suggestion to change any game mechanics. But it could perhaps play a bigger role in Sins 2: faster growth for Vasari and higher percentage of planetary development from day 1 of re-conquering a world, but lower overall population caps than a willing TEC population in the long term. Advent might be somewhere in the middle, maybe?

-- Retro

Hi again!

I agree that if you nuke the place - its all disaster zone after that But why not add the invade option (but would take time and effort to subdue the enemy army) or bio-termination (bio-weapons) as they did in MOO followed by a clean-up or something? Galciv also had invasion capability with lots of options. I think it could be done, but not much point to flatten the place then try to invade

I miss those bio-terminators and mind control in MOO   

Hi

Wiliamnight owe you an apology just seen your post "ground attack". Must check all forum posts next time.  :p    At least there's a few of us who would like to see this incorporated in some form or another.

If they did agree to such an inclusion, would it be a difficult technical change to the game code?

Anyway apologies again for submitting duplicate thread..duh.

K

I dont think I saw anyone say this exactly so I might as well throw in my opinion.

Occuping a conqured planet would be a huge strain of resourses for a very long time. Look at the US in Iraq right now, that war would have been over when they said it would if they just nuked them into dust. Keeping the population of an entire conqured planet in check would be a nightmare.

Theres no need to apologize plenty of people I believe have posted this before.

And no my idea wouldnt change that much coding. My idea that I've posted would be easy and simple. Streamlining teh proscess of taking over a world. All it would need is a new ship,two new tech trees,a cool circular health bar that denotes your armies and the enemy armies health and some other real minor stuff. It's all quite doable and wouldnt over complicate things.