Planetary Invading Discussion

from Sins Forums
I created this thread primarily to discuss and try to find a solution for invasions. I was recently trying to figure out how to simulate a planetary assault which has more to it than just simply bombing a world into oblivion. To do this, I simply turned to how the old classics like Master of Orion managed this. Basicly what you had was a multi-tiered approach. You had your classic bombing-from-space phase, at which point you could opt to do exactly what you do all the time in Sins, i.e. blow them back to hell, or you could "soften them up", then proceed with the ground troops which would capture a planet. Your troops had to, of course, overpower the population first. And you could do any combination of the above. Now, it looks to me that such an approach is doable, at least at the most basic level (which could be improved if we get an ability to script the game). Planets have their infrastructure and their population. It would be possible (and this is the approach I am initially taking for the Last Stand mod) to have, say, your siege frigates bombard a planet and destroy its infrastructure, and then have an "invasion ship" type of vessel land the troops so they can mop up the population. As it is, there is no problem in implementing such tactics, save one. The AI. Again. Obviously if we render the siege frigates unable to eliminate the population, the AI will not be able to elliminate colonies since it does not know it has to use another type of ship to do the task. At least I think that is the case because I don't know jack about how the AI actually works, there has been very little info on that. Further, there should be a way to motivate a player to invade rather than just simply destroy a colony and resettle it. Perhaps a planetary buff, simulating slave labor, increased credit and resource production coupled with an increased chance of rebellion? This is where dedicated scripters come to have their say, can such a thing be done, how, etc. Ideas? Solutions perhaps? ;)
modding
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Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top
Even without additional buffs and debuffs, I think planetary invasion carries two big incentives for the player. The first is that they won't kill off the entire population. When the planet decides to switch its allegiance to your side there will already be some people on it, which means people you can immediately tax (as opposed to no people to tax when the planet has zero population) and the economic advantages that come with that. The other is economic and logistical: planet infrastructure. Planetary improvements that you don't destroy are improvements you won't have to rebuild once that planet becomes yours.

I think the above two should be reasonably easy to mod into the game, although I have no modding experience with Sins (I'm trying to get started with my own small mod at the moment). At the very least the first should be doable; the game already does it to some degree when your culture is overwhelming an enemy planet. The second might be more difficult or impossible at the moment, and I don't know how you want to tie in destroying planetary infrastructure with planetary invasion.

My idea on the subject is that the invading force's chance of success takes into account the number of invaders and the amount of culture your side is exerting on the enemy planet (or how many people on the enemy planet support you). The defenders ability to fend off the invaders is based on their population that doesn't support you and what infrastructure they currently have. This would make it possible to invade without destroying anything if an enemy planet is culturally on your side, and make it necessary to blast everything to oblivion if an enemy planet's population absolutely hates you.

Just my thoughts on the matter. I'd love to see the end result of this regardless of what you decide to do.
Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top
Not to be negative but,

Unless I have missed a trick, the main issue with planetary invasions at the moment is that, firstly there is no way to keep the old planetary information, as soon as the planet owner is changed the planets stats automatically start again, making it purposeless to implement.

Secondly there is no way of making a factor (Allegiance\Population\Anything else) affect a buffs likelyhood of applying, which is what i feel would be necessary for a good invasion simulator.

As to your assumptions about the AI, yes, it would have No idea what to do, the LoGH mod uses planetary invasion as its main method of planetary conquest, and the AI just doesn't get its brain around the fact that it needs to use the new ability to conquer planets. Its most likely something to do with roletypes, so at the very least if we got access to those we might be able to do something, but as it stands its just not sensible, that said you might be able to get away with setting the planetary invasion ships as the colony roletype (We can't so i havent tried it)
Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top
aint brodcast stations doing this ... converting a planet without resorting to bombing it to oblivion...
Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top
But planetary invasion is so much more fun.  :LOL: 
Reply #7 from Sins Forums Top
I already have a colony ship which is able to enact slow bombardment as an alternative to classic sieges, though they still need to be tested with the AI.

What I would ultimately like to have is two types of ships which are needed in order for a planet to be successfully taken over. The first would be your standard siege ship which would be used to crack open the planet's infrastructure, and the second would be the troop ship which could only harm its population. This in itself makes sieging planets more fun (though some would say just more complicated), but in order for the planetary conquest to be really a distinguished facet of a game, a bonus MUST be included. Otherwise its just cosmetics, great for roleplaying but not that different from what exists now. And, of course, the AI must be modded as well for this, otherwise you'd get AI factions which don't use such tactics (though the AI could and would still use the vanilla scorch-and-colonize method).

As for the AI, I believe it builds and uses various ships by their entity type. So the mod would likely have to define a new entity type, for example "TroopTransport". I suppose it is there where you tell the game what that entity is, what it does and how the AI should use it. Hopefully, we will be allowed to mod that.
Reply #8 from Sins Forums Top
Dedicated scripter here *wave*

ManSh00ter - I considered this as well, but destroying a planet's infrastructure wipes out its population, it cannot be carried across. This would be possible if we still had the beta's "flip planet from culture" but right now there's really no way to preserve that population count.

You could, though, hack a way around it by having the buff temporarily accelerate population growth. The problem with this, of course, is I don't think there's a population growth buff type! I'll check around but it's not looking good.

edit: god damn it, beaten by Terraziel. your "dual-tier" planet siege idea isn't bad but the player would just spam the orbital bombardment ships, I think, trying to get that infrastructure count to 0 without messing around with troop ships.
Reply #9 from Sins Forums Top
You could, though, hack a way around it by having the buff temporarily accelerate population growth. The problem with this, of course, is I don't think there's a population growth buff type! I'll check around but it's not looking good.
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EntityModifier - "PlanetPopulationGrowthRate"

But even then it wouldnt really make much of a difference, as the population would only be going up the small amount from 50% to the max allowed by the default planet level
Reply #10 from Sins Forums Top
ManSh00ter - I considered this as well, but destroying a planet's infrastructure wipes out its population, it cannot be carried across. This would be possible if we still had the beta's "flip planet from culture" but right now there's really no way to preserve that population count.
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Isn't there a way to preserve some of the population though? I was playing a vanilla 1.03 game where I started bombing an enemy world, and at the end of it all the population hovered around 250 / 1000. The planet was also pretty much on my side with 100% allegiance. No, the entire population didn't welcome me with open arms but I didn't wipe them out completely either. I'm positive this is related to culture - every other planet I've ever sieged has had its population completely wiped out, but this one had some survivors with that 100% allegiance statistic.
Reply #11 from Sins Forums Top
I am late to this topic however did you check out Kin of the Stars 20060610t1846 mod that was available at the time of beta 2.

It has an invading frigate colony which explodes after attack
Reply #12 from Sins Forums Top
I am late to this topic however did you check out Kin of the Stars 20060610t1846 mod that was available at the time of beta 2.It has an invading frigate colony which explodes after attack
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beta 2 had planet-flipping via culture and therefore preservation of population

ubersnake: i'll check it out, but I'm pretty sure the population is automatically wiped if you take out the infrastructure. if the planet was neutral, you shouldn't even be _getting_ the infrastructure and population counts, so I think you're misremembering.