ground troops
 

Orbital battle between spaceships is nice, but what I'd like to see is landing ships and invasion troops.
That would require:
- a new construction: barracks to produce and station troops
- a transport ship (or 2) to land or drop the soldiers

What would troops do:
They would fight each other for the control of buildings. If the attacker control buildings, their production/benefit goes to his home planet, until enough troops can defeat him.

How does the ground battle work:
Could be very simple: each tick troops are lost on both sides depending on ratio and races bonus, population settings... each camp has the option to withdraw, if 1side loses half its initial number, it is routed. The number of invaders determine the number of buildings they can control (buildings would be chosen randomly).

Re: ground troops
 

Wouldn't it be far more logical to have troops as part of your population settings - and then maybe have some sort of barracks to determine the quality of the troops etc.

Anyway, I don't see how ground combat would be any use, as you can't conquer a planet... I mean, from a logical point of view, why spend lots of resources on attacking with ground units so you can get short-term benefits, when you instead could spend those resources on (hopefully) long-term gain when buying ships?

Re: ground troops
 

What happens if the home planet loses half its troops and gets 'routed'? How would a planet regain control of its lost constructions? Do you want there to be some kind of interaction between ships and troops (think orbital bombardment)? When (init plays a role here) do troops get dropped, and how does combat work (also refer to the previous question, consider init)? Can planets send defensive as well as offensive troops? What about fleetslots, do you want any changes?

I'm not trying to dismiss the idea, there is definitely something interesting about it, but there's a lot of blanks to fill in, imo.

Re: ground troops
 

MOO2 here we come! (For those who are acronym challenged MOO2= Masters of Orion 2).

Re: ground troops
 

A planet will produce troops if it has barracks. In case a planet loses the control of some constructions, it can:
- modify the population settings to produce more troops per barracks (those troops will be engaged in combat as they arrive, each tick)
- build more barracks to produce even more troops
- receive the help of gal mates/alliance troops because of course troops could be sent in defence

I don't see a need for any extra fleet slot
Would it require the creation of a new class ship for the troop transport... maybe.
If the def fire before troops are dropped it has to be considered in the global set of ships stats. But it could be possible that the troops are dropped first, then the def fires at empty ships, meaning the dropped troop (or some of them) would have no possibility to leave the planet and would have no choice but to fight till death, or be lost if the attacker is routed (just like a board wargame... troops which can"t retreat die).

Re: ground troops
 

I think this will just add another slightly complex issue to the game, I think the game is challenging enough for new players already, so I think we should keep to the spacewarfare ;)

Re: ground troops
 

I quite like the idea although yes it would make it more complicated for new players. The obvious reason that you would do this I would assume would be in order to cripple planets in an alliance when you attack them. At the moment it is hard to cripple an alliance in one attack however consider the impact that it would have on an alliance if say 20 of its planets lose control of half of their constructions.

Re: ground troops
 

- There was an attempt at making PA easy for new players (PAX) it didn't bring more players
- I don't see that many new players joining every round, maybe we should think of the current players
- Launching, scanning recalling/landing is not that complicated atm
- New players are quick to learn when they are helped by their gal mates

Of course my idea may be a bad one, but I think we should keep trying to find and add new dimensions to the game.