Mid- to Late-Game Blahs?

[RandomAttack]

I'm really not complaining, just interested in other folks' experiences. My latest game is a good example. Normal, 5 players, 200 stars. There are 3 "major powers" left: Me (humans), Urgans, Drills. We all have planets numbering in the 60-ish range. I think I have a slight tech advantage. It's kinda me & Urgans vs. Drills right now-- but of course can't really "trust" the Urgans. So here's the rub: the game has turned into an endless slog.
- EVERY Drill planet I attack is fortified with bases, ground forces, etc.
- Stealth is mostly ineffective and certainly not decisive.
- I find I have to play every tactical battle. Even when it looks like a clear victory, if I autoresolve I lose. Sigh.
- Even when I win the fleet battle I then have to assault the planet in question. Glassing seems the only option because I would probably need at least a dozen assault ships worth of troops to even have a chance at conquering it. Even after nuking it I still wind up fighting for a colony with only around 2K people but it STILL has a large ground force! Sure wish we could target orbital strikes on military targets-- all the best SF allows for that.
- Rinse & repeat.

There is no real opportunity for a "strategic breakthrough". It doesn't really matter that I have a "better" fleet-- because that's not where the real action is. Instead it's systematically reducing *every-single-planet*. I don't really know how the Drills have done this on so many low population planets, but they have. The thought of having to do this another 100 times or so to get to the point I am granted "victory" is kinda mind-numbing, and I don't think it will be much fun at all.

Suggestion: Make it easier to "control/conquer" planets. Most SF has an analogy with Medieval siege protocol. Once the walls were breached, the garrison was considered to have done it's duty and should surrender. If not, the city was subject being sacked/depopulated/annihilated/etc. For a planet, if you control the orbitals you control the fate of the populace. We should either be able to target military facilities/troops only, or to glass the planet with no penalty if it doesn't surrender. This way, planets can change hands frequently without having entire populations exterminated, etc. Have more of a flow to the game. Add some kind of unrest/production penalty to large pop enemy planets so you have to garrison it-- but not have to wipe out the entire pop just to keep it. Just the fact I have to FEED them adds up over time.

To sum up, the early game seems fun and interesting to me. After everyone has staked out areas and starts to consolidate? Not so much.

[bobarossa]

Pretty much the same problem. Haven't played it since I realized glassing the planet was the only option to take a planet. Logan's are building massive defense forces and have 5 bases (76% loss on landing). No way to take it. I had the exact same thought about SF always allowing targeting of military and infrastructure. Only xenophobic races kill the inhabitants. Waiting to see what happens in next patch.

[FireStorm1010]

Well it takes some logistic planning, but conquering planets is definitely an option, i havent so far bombed even one planet(comquered around 120 systems from start, playing on hard).

You need some well designed transports and hitting the enemy the moment you clear the orbit(so the planet doesnt have time to build up even more defenses). Definitely not a dozen transpots tough. I would say for me ~4 on the frontline and ~4 moving troops from the rear to the front does the job.

That being said there is a moment when it becomes a bit to repetiive for not much gain.When you had 40 planets conqueirng a few more is exciting, when you have 140 not that much.But i dont really see a solution to that without destorying the current game balance. If you make conquering easier, then troops become meaningless and you can as well eliminate that whole layer from the game. But fear not , even if you are wiping the floor with the enemies , there is a twist in the end that will make it very exciting again:)

[freifrei]

The key point is that you are trying to take over already heavily fortified frontier planets first before moving on.

The simple solution is blitz tactics, rapid expansion of your conquest efforts towards the softer planets, before AI could fortify those. Just transfer orbital stations or leave backup fleets on orbit of "hard' planets - you could try to force opponent to give you blockaded planets later if you are able to press them hard enough.

Also, espionage is the key for breaking hard defenses - leave newbie stealth ships idle in enemy systems to gain 2* experience first, then break their spine in all-out building sabotage sweep. Its important to move your spies 2 jumps deep into your space before the operation in case if they were discovered and fed false intel, or else you wont succeed at this task, ever.

[Flef]

I do agree with Freifrei. I never invade heavily fortified planet. I simply put a battle satellite or left a corvette in orbit and I move forward. I was doing massives invasions but I realized that it was not really a good option. If I need an industrial planet and I assault it while it is well defended, I'll lose most of the factories. And orbital bombardement are really a bad option un less you really need the purge the planet before acquiring it. They destroy the infrastructures and they can bring a burden of new wars at some extent.

At the moment of peace negociation, I ask for getting the blockaded planet.
Can require a big bunch of corvettes and satellites :p

[RandomAttack]

The key point is that you are trying to take over already heavily fortified frontier planets first before moving on.

I hear you, but in my game they are ALL fortified-- every single one. Even going several planets deep (which is about all you can do until you actually take something to use as a refueling stop). Even skipping thru a wormhole on a suicide run to look towards their rear areas I have not seen a single "soft" planet for the Drills at the mid-game stage. They seem to fortify everything. Where they skimp is on "offensive" space forces... Bottom Line for me is that when you take over the orbitals there should be a less-destructive/more-selective way to take over the planet. Even if that means intense periods of unrest, etc., for awhile.

i havent so far bombed even one planet(comquered around 120 systems from start, playing on hard).

Wow! I'm impressed. I can't see how you can take over an earth-like planet with a pop of 150K, multiple defenses and a large amount of ground forces without bombing it. I understand you can BYPASS it, but sooner or later you HAVE to take it. Realize you can do the peace treaty/gimme your planets thing, but I don't believe in doing that over and over and over again-- feels like an exploit to me.

[FireStorm1010]

Wow! I'm impressed. I can't see how you can take over an earth-like planet with a pop of 150K, multiple defenses and a large amount of ground forces without bombing it. I understand you can BYPASS it, but sooner or later you HAVE to take it. Realize you can do the peace treaty/gimme your planets thing, but I don't believe in doing that over and over and over again-- feels like an exploit to me.

No, I invade them. Nothing fancy. 4 transports holding 6-8k troops each seem to do the trick until late game. I take planets with 86 % interception defense. Just be sure to have enough troops for a second run 1 planet out. 2 runs from what i remember alwys worked. I use fighters and ground attack ships, sometimes throw afew tanks.

[Flef]

I hear you, but in my game they are ALL fortified-- every single one. Even going several planets deep (which is about all you can do until you actually take something to use as a refueling stop). Even skipping thru a wormhole on a suicide run to look towards their rear areas I have not seen a single "soft" planet for the Drills at the mid-game stage. They seem to fortify everything.

Weird.
Seems like the AI went crazy.

[bobarossa]

Also, espionage is the key for breaking hard defenses - leave newbie stealth ships idle in enemy systems to gain 2* experience first, then break their spine in all-out building sabotage sweep. Its important to move your spies 2 jumps deep into your space before the operation in case if they were discovered and fed false intel, or else you wont succeed at this task, ever.

I can find nothing in the manual that implies espionage can destroy buildings, only fleets. It would seem much easier to just 'drop a rock on it' (as in dozens of SciFi books) than to try infiltrating and destroying them.

[bobarossa]

Wow! I'm impressed. I take planets with 86 % interception defense. Just be sure to have enough troops for a second run 1 planet out. 2 runs from what i remember alwys worked. I use fighters and ground attack ships, sometimes throw afew tanks.

FireStorm1010
I interpret the 86% defense as meaning 86% of invading troops are destroyed. That would mean you need 7x as many troops as present on the planet just to be at 1:1 odds. Does it mean something else? The planet I was planning to invade had as many troops as I could hold in my 3 transports. I assumed (at 76% defense) that I would need 12 transports just to be at 1:1 odds. Additionally, while looking at the manual just now, it says that orbital bombardments destroy population, troops and building but my test bombardment showed only pops getting killed. Is this a bug or was game not updating planet info for some reason?

[FireStorm1010]

Wow! I'm impressed. I take planets with 86 % interception defense. Just be sure to have enough troops for a second run 1 planet out. 2 runs from what i remember alwys worked. I use fighters and ground attack ships, sometimes throw afew tanks.

FireStorm1010
I interpret the 86% defense as meaning 86% of invading troops are destroyed. That would mean you need 7x as many troops as present on the planet just to be at 1:1 odds. Does it mean something else? The planet I was planning to invade had as many troops as I could hold in my 3 transports. I assumed (at 76% defense) that I would need 12 transports just to be at 1:1 odds. Additionally, while looking at the manual just now, it says that orbital bombardments destroy population, troops and building but my test bombardment showed only pops getting killed. Is this a bug or was game not updating planet info for some reason?

I never bombard so not sure. I also dont have any formula knowledge how the defenses work. I just went in, saw the defence, tought "Tough luck guys, get ready to land in hell" and tried landing the forces. Some got trough, if it isnt enough i go back and bring some more.It works. I ahvent foguht the Drills for a long time, maybe they are specially tough for ground assaults.
What you must take into account is :
1-If you bring any not-stealthed ship in orbit of enemy systems, the planets will instantly switch to full land defense mod, spamming dfenses and troops. So only sensible way is to coordinate very tightly space attack and ground invasion.
2- Even if you are loosing the ground battle, fighting the ground forces:
a) Stops the planet from producing anymore defenses/troops.
b)It usually after soem time start to destroy the defence buildings, so you might be able to land the next batch with for example 50 % defence only remianing.

[FireStorm1010]

Wow! I'm impressed. I take planets with 86 % interception defense. Just be sure to have enough troops for a second run 1 planet out. 2 runs from what i remember alwys worked. I use fighters and ground attack ships, sometimes throw afew tanks.

FireStorm1010
I interpret the 86% defense as meaning 86% of invading troops are destroyed. That would mean you need 7x as many troops as present on the planet just to be at 1:1 odds. Does it mean something else? The planet I was planning to invade had as many troops as I could hold in my 3 transports. I assumed (at 76% defense) that I would need 12 transports just to be at 1:1 odds. Additionally, while looking at the manual just now, it says that orbital bombardments destroy population, troops and building but my test bombardment showed only pops getting killed. Is this a bug or was game not updating planet info for some reason?

I never bombard so not sure. I also dont have any formula knowledge how the defenses work. I just went in, saw the defence, tought "Tough luck guys, get ready to land in hell" and tried landing the forces. Some got trough, if it isnt enough i go back and bring some more.It works. I ahvent foguht the Drills for a long time, maybe they are specially tough for ground assaults.
What you must take into account is :
1-If you bring any not-stealthed ship in orbit of enemy systems, the planets will instantly switch to full land defense mod, spamming dfenses and troops. So only sensible way is to coordinate very tightly space attack and ground invasion.
2- Even if you are loosing the ground battle, fighting the ground forces:
a) Stops the planet from producing anymore defenses/troops.
b)It usually after soem time start to destroy the defence buildings, so you might be able to land the next batch with for example 50 % defence only remianing.

[bobarossa]

Thanks for info. Didn't know they couldn't build while invasion was underway. I just assumed my first force would get wiped out so I kept bringing up more troops. But they were building as fast as I could. I also assumed that battle would be over before I could ship in new troops. Another thought is that If 76% interception chance means that 76% will get damaged instead of 76% destroyed then I will feel much better.

[RandomAttack]

1-If you bring any not-stealthed ship in orbit of enemy systems, the planets will instantly switch to full land defense mod, spamming dfenses and troops. So only sensible way is to coordinate very tightly space attack and ground invasion.

I almost always have ground troops right behind the fleet. But it doesn't matter when the minute you win the battle you look at the planet and see 5 defense complexes, 2000 marines, 100 tanks/fighters/ships, oodles of police. If you want to spend 100 years trying to conquer that with conventional forces, have at it.

Also, whenever you make peace by asking for all blockaded planets, all their native population just disappears. How can THAT be justified? Did they all just commit ritual suicide? Did a minor power on the ropes suddenly have enough transport capacity to instantaneously move all 100K beings (on an Ocean planet I got once)? If it was a HUMAN planet, and was ceded to another race by the "Government", do you just think all the people would just roll over and die?

I maintain the entire mechanic of conquering colonies should be changed.
- If you control the orbitals, the colony should surrender after a very short period of time. At the very least, we should be able to selectively target all the military assets w/o "glassing" the planet.
- When either surrendered OR ceded, the civ population should stay in place and eventually be assimilated (current mechanic for that is ok). The time it takes should be based on the numbers. Maybe major unrest problems the first few years, etc. Could also vary that rate by race if you wanted, but that might be a major effort. Sure, it might take me a hundred years to assimilate the "natives", but at least I would CONTROL the colony.
- This whole "you have to destroy it to save it" theme just doesn't work for me. And spending years of game time shuttling thousands of assault troops back and forth to wear down/conquer a major colony is incredibly boring to me.

I would like to be able to mod some of this stuff, the actual GAMEPLAY not the graphics, but it doesn't seem very straightforward to me (compared to many other games) and a lot of answers in the modding forum are very cryptic/partial/not specific. This is yet another Slitherine game that I feel is *so* close to being really good, but will probably never be significantly improved as the developer runs off to the next project. For heavens sake, at least give us some concrete feedback as to how to mod some of this stuff. If not, this will be yet another "I coulda been a contender!" game that goes on the shelf that I'll look at from time to time with regret for what might have been.

[Protagoras01]

1-If you bring any not-stealthed ship in orbit of enemy systems, the planets will instantly switch to full land defense mod, spamming dfenses and troops. So only sensible way is to coordinate very tightly space attack and ground invasion.

I almost always have ground troops right behind the fleet. But it doesn't matter when the minute you win the battle you look at the planet and see 5 defense complexes, 2000 marines, 100 tanks/fighters/ships, oodles of police. If you want to spend 100 years trying to conquer that with conventional forces, have at it.

Also, whenever you make peace by asking for all blockaded planets, all their native population just disappears. How can THAT be justified? Did they all just commit ritual suicide? Did a minor power on the ropes suddenly have enough transport capacity to instantaneously move all 100K beings (on an Ocean planet I got once)? If it was a HUMAN planet, and was ceded to another race by the "Government", do you just think all the people would just roll over and die?

I maintain the entire mechanic of conquering colonies should be changed.
- If you control the orbitals, the colony should surrender after a very short period of time. At the very least, we should be able to selectively target all the military assets w/o "glassing" the planet.
- When either surrendered OR ceded, the civ population should stay in place and eventually be assimilated (current mechanic for that is ok). The time it takes should be based on the numbers. Maybe major unrest problems the first few years, etc. Could also vary that rate by race if you wanted, but that might be a major effort. Sure, it might take me a hundred years to assimilate the "natives", but at least I would CONTROL the colony.
- This whole "you have to destroy it to save it" theme just doesn't work for me. And spending years of game time shuttling thousands of assault troops back and forth to wear down/conquer a major colony is incredibly boring to me.

I would like to be able to mod some of this stuff, the actual GAMEPLAY not the graphics, but it doesn't seem very straightforward to me (compared to many other games) and a lot of answers in the modding forum are very cryptic/partial/not specific. This is yet another Slitherine game that I feel is *so* close to being really good, but will probably never be significantly improved as the developer runs off to the next project. For heavens sake, at least give us some concrete feedback as to how to mod some of this stuff. If not, this will be yet another "I coulda been a contender!" game that goes on the shelf that I'll look at from time to time with regret for what might have been.

I have as yet to have a real problem with this. Perhaps I overbuild troops and transports, but I always have overwhelming force in troops to make an assault as I like to take multiple planets in quick succession. I have even been known to bring some hardened troop transports with the space fleet to drop and 'hold the planet from building defenses' while my main troop fleet comes from the previous conquest. I think taking over a well developed planet should require significant assets.

[RandomAttack]

I think taking over a well developed planet should require significant assets.

I agree completely-- I just think it should be reflected in a long period of unrest/revolt/reduced production that forces you to garrison it rather than either "glassing" it or needing "Huuuge" (as Trump would say ) assault forces. I may be biased here by my recent game where EVERY SINGLE Drill colony (60+, large or small, frontier, in the rear, in the middle) has EXTENSIVE ground defense buildings and troops. It's more like WWI trench warfare. I checked this mostly using my stealthy Prion ship (and how I LOVE that thing!) Maybe that game is an anomaly. I have never *quickly* conquered any one of these uber-defended colonies, no matter how many troops I bring to the fight, without nuking it. I just don't think I should have to either nuke it or have a 30-year ground battle. At that rate, w/o nukes it would take me about 2,000 years just to conquer the Drills alone.

[Protagoras01]

Perhaps my experience is not typical. But I usually have between 8-12 troop ships on an assault that each have capacity 10k-12k (5000-6000 marines) I assault with Marines Fighters and Ground Attack only, and I drop about 30k Marines and 500-600 each of fighters and ground attack craft. I follow this up with a group of 2-3 garrison ships carrying occupying troops, typically some marines and police. They will come in and garrison to let the assault troops move to the next planet. Along with this I have 5-6 really fast troop transports that are about 4k capacity, they shuttle troops from my troop producers to the garrison worlds I have recently conquored. Then the garrison transports shuttle these new combat troops up to the front line to replace losses. This usually works fairly well, I conquer planets quickly and take less losses. I also tend to build up lots of troops before I begin an assault as I need to replace losses so my assaults don't turn anemic. I have as yet been required to bombard any planets. I have been known if I am running low on troops because my logistics chain is stressed to drop off some ships to keep reinforcements from arriving and bypass really well defended planets till I can manage to do an assault where I have plenty of reserves to bring in quickly after the initial drop.

As I said I have upon occasion built freighters with shields, engines to be reasonably fast, and some troop capacity, these I bring with the initial space navy assault and keep them out of harms way during the space battle. They then immediatly drop troops to prevent the planet from bulking up while the slower heavy transports bring the true assault force,

I lose lots of troops, but troops are cheap, the main investment being the time to build them up. If I do not loose my troop ships (which I try very hard to make sure I don't) then troop actions are expensive only in terms of years invested in building the troops themselves.

[RandomAttack]

Wow-- that's quite a force! So you're using an invasion "task force" of 15-20 transports of various flavors on a single front. I must admit that is waaaay more than I've been willing to build for a front, and sounds like a great deal of micromanagement to keep all the piece-parts/troops moving. Not a criticism, and thanks for sharing a very sound approach. But man, that alone seems as much work as the whole rest of the game requires (the way I play anyway ). I still wish taking over a planet didn't require a move-large-amounts-of-manpower-all-over-the-galaxy-logistics-simulator given the rest of the game seems pretty streamlined.

[Protagoras01]

Ideally. The garrison troop ships are usually ones I build early and do not bother upgrading. And often I do not have the full complement of fast reinforcing transports. But once I have decided "I am going to eliminate this player" that is what I try and have so that I can take defended worlds usually in about a year.

I will also agree with you, I wish it was not quite so onerous to take a planet. I wish there was a way orbital assets could assist both pre-invasion and during the fighting by targeting military buildings and troops (with a chance of collateral damage of course).