Slitherine

Hello,

Firstly, thank you for implementing this game mode. I feel like you understand your audience and the type of game mode they like to play.

I finished my first Planetary supremacy campaign today which took only 5 overworld turns. This is not because I’m particularly impressive. I was playing as space marines and the Necrons beelined to the Tyranids main base and eliminated them. Which left an easy invasion on the Necrons for me. It was an enjoyable experience but not one that I could repeat endlessly. The following are suggestions which would not require a major overhaul of the board but would make the board much more meaningful.

The State of the Board

Strategic Importance
The game board currently plays little strategic importance to the campaign. I simply aimed for the major bonuses and then drastically outnumbered my opponents, such that it was hard to lose. In the final battle with the Necrons I had 2800 points in my army while they only had 1900. And I had little reason to attack the neutral areas. It felt more like an unfair skirmish battle rather than a well fought campaign.

Size
The board is quite small at the moment, with many points of access into other territories. This means there is little strategy in which direction to choose, and tiles which provide little bonuses can be safely ignored and remain neutral.


Strategic possibilities

The small start
When I loaded in my first Planetary Supremacy map I was surprised that I could recruit all the units and even equip them with the best upgrades. As such you are only a few turns away from playing skirmish battles, except it's unfair because you have 1000 more points than the opponent. A way to make each campaign feel unique would be the small start, where the only units that are unlocked are 3-4 core units for each race, and then at the start of the game you can choose 2 locked units out of a pool of 3 that you also start with. This randomness at the beginning of each game would immediately make it feel different, adding to replay ability.

For example, one game you start with the space marines:
Core: Intercessors, Assault Squad, Land Speeder
Random Unlock (choose 2 out of 3): Furioso dreadnought, Death company, Inceptor

But in the next game you start the core is the same but the random unlock is: Aggressors, Tech Marine, Librarian

This would make every start unique and could lead to being forced into some interesting gameplay.

But to make this work you need ways of unlocking additional units.


Campaign unlock/progression system
Some have suggested a progression system like the campaign tech tree where you slowly unlock bonuses for each unit and add extra specialties. This could allow the small start to work as you could unlock each unit as a tech tree development. However, this is both a lot of work for the developer and would often lead to optimum builds being found, which ultimately decreases replay ability as there will be 2-3 effective styles per race.


Map tile unlock/progression system

Another option is to tie the unlocks to the map tiles themselves. So, in addition to the map tiles giving their current bonuses (although the extra action point is pretty OP), have each of the locked units as a reward for occupying that tile. These would be randomised each game after you have chosen your unlocks, so every unit is available so long as you conquer the entire board. This works two ways, because not only do you unlock one of your units, you can see what it would unlock for the other races and strategically block them from being able to recruit their strong units.

The benefit of this is that is makes every tile have strategic importance. Even the edge ones. Imagine looking over the board to see what units you want, and which ones you really want to block. You then have to weigh up whether it's worth beelining it to your favourite unit, or blocking the unit you fear most (or in a rare case it may be both at the same time).

You could even start the game with all weapon upgrades locked and have two "weapons stash" tiles which once occupied allows you to unlock all weapon upgrades. The could be highly desirable if it is key to your build.

This progression system focuses mainly on unlocks for replay ability rather than buffs as found in the main campaign. But buffs are another possibility for some tiles, especially as the map gets bigger when more races are added.

I'm not a game developer, but i think this would be easier to implement than a full campaign style progression system. While also making the game feel different.

HOWEVER, it will not work unless is harder to capture your opponents main base. this is because for most of the game you outnumber your opponents, it's pretty hard to lose that way. Which is why we need to address Battle size

Battle size

Currently for some battles you can outnumber your opponents 3:1 (especially neutral factions). To make this less of a stomping ground i would propose Small, Medium, Large and "All out Assault" requisition caps for each map.

Where the requisition caps are:

Small: 1000
Medium: 1500
Large : 2500
All out assault: uncapped

(These are all just suggestions not set in stone numbers)

This would make the snaller battles more interesting, but also allow you to bench units which aren't good against particular factions, but are great against others.

The All out assault category would be for the main bases of each faction.

Main base possibilities

One of the issues with the main bases is that they are just as vunerable as any other map, and yet once defeated eliminated an opponent. It is important then to make it a tough battle, otherwise the best strategic option is to just rush it. Here are some possibilites to counteract that.

Each main base could have a standing garrison of 1000-1500 points of units in addition to their current army. This would encourage capturing more of the map rather than beelining to the capitol.

The garrison amount could simply be around ~200 points of each unit they have unlocked using the map tile progression system.
(This idea could be extended to each tile which has a unit unlock, that whoever is defending has an extra 1-2 units of the type to help defend giving a defenders advantage. (that may be too powerful though)

Set maps for each faction main base is an additional option for increasing the difficulty, but would require a lot of work for balancing purposes.

Closing statement

If you've managed to get to the end thankyou for reading my ideas. I really enjoy the game and would like to play it more but it does require a bit more variety. It is a solid start though and I look forward to whatever improvements are made.

Braxxy

Well i can agree to most of your points.

The whole system doenst feel like " a campaign" its just a row of (unfair) skirmishes against a strange playing ai. I think it would be more fun to play simply 10+ skirmishes vs AI. But i dislike playing skirmishes, so i cant even tell if you can gibe that AI more points in the fights. Sorry i was hoping for a real campaign.

Ressources are simply "more army points" which turn out to make the fights even more boring
Bases are like all other fights nothing special in attacking an enemy base

Neutral tiles are most boring, i mean: fight the sisters with 3 diffrent types of units...
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The AI is making real strange decisions/unit choices. And well in my playthrough the marines faction was not even able to conquer a single neutral tile...?
the last fight against the nids base was really disappointing. I formed a ball of defense and kept waiting.

At he point i did the first "stratgic" decision i already got 77 points. end turn --> auto overwatch won this fight for me. And yes, this is no exxagaration. I formed my def-ball and pressed end turn auto overwatch...until 77 points...

So please:
im prove AI behavior
give us a chance to increase AI starting points
pls more ressources
pls more strategic decisions on the "campaign" map
pls add some more units to the sisters, to make neutral tiles more challenging or more factions
pls add some kind of '"reinforcement" system for the ai

i mean i played the main-game campaign on hardest diff, and every fight was a real struggle. every single run i had to think of every unit, positioning, actions, which unit i take out from the nids and so on. I spent more time on a single mission during the main campaign, than now for the complete supremancy campaign.

I will tryout the supremancy system again with space marines, but i doubt it will be more fun.

And yes i know, it was a free upgrade, but really, i would have preferred a "real" campaign for necrons, even if the DLC would have costed 30 bucks. the supremancy mode really needs some love :/


Buuuuut:
Necrons are fun to play, visuals, music are awesome as always. the game is great, i love battlesector, but i dislike the current state of the supremancy system.

I have now completed the planetary Supremacy campaign once for each faction:

Blood Angels - Astartes, 5 overworld turns
Necrons - Lieutenant, 6 overworld turns
Tyranids - Company Captain, 4 overworld turns


I will note a few issues with the current format before updating some of the previous suggestions i made.

Current Issues with the format

Strategic AI & Recruitment
When playing the other main factions struggle hard.
One of the main reasons for this is that they do not seem to cheat, something which is rather nice, (i really do mean that, it's nice to know that they play by the same rules). But it requires more complicated programming.

It seems that like the player the AI have limited recruitment and requisition points. This means that they recruit a bunch of units, and they are then on a cooldown. All good so far. But then they go into battle, and instead of putting the unlimited recruitment fodder up front to tank the damage, they lose their valuable requisition units. I've even seen the AI be wiped to 0 by a neutral faction. Then i fought them, and they only had 1 unit of deathmarks and only necron warriors, flayed ones and scarabs.

not really a fair fight.

The Ai struggles to hold on to their requisition units and is often weak when you finally meet them. I found this is only worse as the difficulty increases. The most interesting battle i had with the ai faction was the necrons at astartes difficulty. They actually had a plasmancer and an overlord, along with two deathmarks, two lychguard and a bunch of other units.

I recognise the requisition system is hard to balance, on the one hand you want losing requisition units to be meaningful, but on the other you don't want your ai opponent to be neutered by the time you get to them.

Whatever the system that is landed on, I think it is important that the AI learns to use cannon fodder, just like the human player does. That way, they can retain as many requisition units as possible and provide for an interesting final fight rather than an end turn, overwatch, repeat, fight. Which is exactly what I did for the ai base fights with the tyranids (on the hardest difficulty) against the space marines and the necrons.

The AI may even have to learn to withdraw rather than lose everything, or perhaps a comeback mechanic where if you lose, you choose 3 requisition units to save but they have a -2 campaign history badge.

Autoresolve
Autoresolve is good when the enemy has 250 and you have 2500, because it means you don't waste time. but it is really bad for the ai when they have 2250 and you have 2500. because they just retreat to their capital to be beaten there rather than grind you down on your approach. It needs some tweaks.

Tactical AI & trickling

As DasTactic pointed out in his post "The issues I see with Planetary Supremacy" the Ai tactics are lacking. This was okay for the main campaign where the units are scripted to appear in number close by you, but here it doesn't really work.

I can confirm that Bee1976 is right, the death ball overwatch at the start of the mission is OP. If you simply form a good line and overwatch the ai will slowly trickle in and you'll kill them with no problem, the only exception I will talk about in the neutral faction composition. Part of the reason for this is the pathing of the ai units, they seem to separate more, the further away they are.

The complicated solution is to give them far better ai. which I would recommend.

A stopgap solution is to reduce the distance from starting zone to starting zone to around 10 squares and give 4 squares behind so that units can retreat a little bit. Perhaps even expanding the starting zones to be 4 squares wider to allow easier positioning right away. (part of the reason I opted for the end turn overwatch play is because it was so much effort to move my units for 3 turns to get to the battle.)

A different halfway solution is to have the AI take up a wide or tall defensive position and wait for you. Give a 20 turn limit, and unless the attacker wins by that point the defender wins. I think the map would still have to be smaller for this to work, otherwise I can see players cheesing this mechanic putting in a single small fast unit and zipping around the enemy when on the defence.

Particular unit ai

The Hexmark destroyer needs the overwatch button to be deleted from its ai scripting.
It is an awesome unit which, when the ai controls it does no damage because it moves into range and goes into overwatch.

The scripting should be: move into range of 3 units, target optimisation, multi-threat eliminator, then second attack.
This would deal roughly 650 damage, rather than the 0 it usually does.
Or if less than 3 units, attack twice.

The flayed ones almost scarred me when 6 units translocated in front of me, until they just stood there in front of my entire army... and they were the first to arrive. I killed them all the next turn with no damage.
I actually really like the idea of the flayed ones teleporting on top of my army, i think it would be better if they channelled it for one turn and then appeared on the next with their AP ready to go so they can attack. They might need the distance they can teleport reduce slightly, But It would mean that getting better vision of the field would let you know a strike is coming.

Neutral Faction composition

People have said it multiple times, but fighting the battle sisters for 90% of the campaign gets old. The neural necrons are a bit more interesting, but they also have the Neutral doomstack.

The Necron Neutral doomstack is 20 necron warriors with gauss flayers, they are the hardest opponent i have come across. The only time i have almost lost was on astartes difficulty against 20 necron warriors. I think that their low movement along with their long range means that they actually walk up together and pose an actual threat rather than trickling in. That along with their resurrection mechanic makes them hard to kill, especially when i had only fielded 13/20 space marine units. This made me rather hesitant when as tyranids (hardest difficulty) with 2000 points i fought against neutral necrons with 2250. Never have i been so glad to see 7 Skorpekh Destroyers, because that meant 7 less necron warriors.

The skorptekh destroys are good tanks but their 3 movement means that they are unreliable dps, especially when controlled by the ai.

Many have complained about the Battle sisters, but with tyranids, you just need a tyrannofex, they can tank all the damage and take either 0 or minor damage, the only threat is the sister hero unit and the seraphim with melta guns.
With Necrons the plasmancer's quantum orb/harbringer of destruction is your friend, along with a few fodder scarabs and the OP ability i am about to talk about.

I don't think you fight Sisters of Battle as Space marines, which while lore accurate means that it's just necrons.

It would good to see themed armies in neutral zones. especially as 90% of the fights occur there, rather than against the ai factions.

E.G. Neutral Necrons:
Elite Tomb guards - Overlord with staff of light, 4 lychguard, two with warscythes and 2 Praetorian (985)
Assassins - 2 Hexmark destroyers, 6 deathmarks, 4 scarab swarms (1000)
The endless march - 18 Necron warriors (990)
The diseased - 1 plasmancer, 8 flayed ones, 10 scarab swarms (985)
Destroyer patrol - Annihilation barge, 2 lokhust heavy destroyers, 3 tomb blades, 2 Triarch Praetorian (990)
Elite infantry - 4 Triarch Praetorian, 6 Immortals (970)
etc.

E.G Rogue Tyranids
Genestealer cult - 1 Broodlord, 5 genestealer, 5 genestealer with fleshborer(+5 each)* (will require giving them fleshborers) (995)
Prime time - 3 Primes, 10 Hormagaunt (980)
Rogue Tyrant - 1 Tyrant, 2 Hive Guard, 6 Termagant, 2 gargoyles (1000)
Rogue Swarm - 1 Tervigon, 2 Warriors, 6 Termagant, 6 Hormagaunt, 4 Gargoyle (975)
Rogue Monsters - 1 Tervigon, 1 Trygon, 1 Thornback, 1 Exocrine, 1 Tyrannofex, 4 termgant, 2 hormagaunt (1000)
etc.

Note: Not all neutral tiles need to pose the possibility of defeat, but they should pose a threat of losing units, so that you are careful as to what you allow to be exposed.

In general, armies with 20 units are better than smaller armies in this game, but I think facing a variety of armies would make it much more interesting. You could even have a voice line for each faction when they come across each themed variety.


OP abilities I found

The necrons first command ability is bonkers. It summons 2 sets of scarabs which immediately attack the unit you cast it on. dealing around 120 damage, then you get to move and attack with them. dealing another 120 damage. Then you move them into position such that they lock 4-5 units into melee. And at minimum, they take 4 actions to eliminate, but usually more. But it gets better, their deaths fuel the command point gauge so halfway through the next turn you can do it again. I actually found out this strat from the Ai the first time I faced an overlord, and he cast the command ability twice on the same turn. that's 480 points of damage and 8-12 actions worth of clean up for 2AP on the necrons part!

As much as I love it when playing as the necrons it is pretty broken.

Issues with tiles
Currently unclaimed tiles only provide the boost to army size if you are first to capture it, making it worthless to take off the enemy, unless it's on the way to their main base. I think each tile should work more like the resource tiles, in that you have to hold them to have the bonus.

Also, for the ai's sake the damage to neutral tile forces should persist. that way ai can break through harder neutral tiles and also others can take advantage of a failed assault.


I know that I’ve talked about a lot, but I hope this is helpful feedback for making the game mode better. I've been trying to highlight issues that I have found and possible solutions, but ultimately that is up to you. Now that I have played all three factions though I still think the small start, with map tile progression is a good idea.

Updating suggestions

I stand by my previous suggestions, especially the map tile progression system, but i know it needs additional work, so that is what I am hoping to provide here.

Map tile Progression
The main idea behind map tile progression is that your requisition units are locked behind map tiles. As such each tile has strategic importance because it allows your army to add diversity with each tile you take. As well as blocking units that you don't like from the ai.

At the start of the game you can choose two of three requisition units randomly drawn that your faction tile provides. The others are locked away behind the rest of the tiles.

The start of each game is different as you have your core + 2 unlocks.

Some examples:

Space Marines:
Core + Inceptor, Librarian
Core + Aggressor, Death guard
Core + Librarian Dreadnought, Tech Marine (dream team)


Tyranids
Core + Prime, Trygon
Core + Hive Tyrant, Genestealer
Core + Thornback, Exocrine

Necrons
Core + Plasmancer, Triarch Praetorian
Core + Deathmarks, Locust Heavy Destroyers
Core + Hexmark, Lychguard

Every new game you need to make what you've got work, you need to look at the map and see where the most valuable additions to the army are.


Core units

I thought I’d ought to expand on the core units for each faction. Each has the units which have unlimited recruitment along with some which require requisition points.

Space Marines:
Intercessors
Assault Squad
Land Speeder (1 Req point)

Necrons:
warriors
flayed ones
scarab swarms
tomb blades (1 Req point)

Tyranids:
Gargoyle
Termagaunt
Hormagaunt
Warriors (1 Req point)

Requisition point tweak
Instead of all units being able to be recruited with 1 requisition point then waiting for a cooldown. Each unit costs the amount of req points as their cooldown. E.g Land Speeder = 1 req point, Baal predator = 3 req points.

The reason for this tweak is that it still limits the units you can recruit making them valuable, without punishing the ai for being bad at keeping their req units safe. This is especially true of higher difficulties.


Requisition amounts per difficulty level
Player
Initiate: 8 Req Points
Astartes: 8 Req points
Lieutenant: 6 Req points
Company Captain: 4 Req points

AI Factions:
Initiate: 6 Req Points
Astartes: 8 Req points
Lieutenant: 8 Req points
Company Captain: 8 Req points

These amounts may sound low, but they may even be a bit high in the astartes and lieutenant difficulty.

Cohesion penalty change
At the moment the penalty for non-cohesion is a momentum debuff. Which I’ve never found to be an issue, so it's not really a punishment.

A 5% accuracy debuff for each unit over the limit (Capped at 15%-20%) would be much more effective at encouraging builds around a cohesive army. Rather than doomstacking a bunch of single powerful units, especially with the requisition point overhaul. Which I think is what the cooldowns of requisition units is trying to avoid.

This also would help against the necron warrior doomstack.


Battle size limits

I am convinced that this is a necessary component for the ai factions to stand any chance against the player. This would make it so they don't have to retreat at the first sign of danger, they can fight a 1500/1500 skirmish and actually do some damage to the player. Then they reinforce making it harder to attack a second time.

Additionally it would add three keys things to the campaign: Challenge, progression and variety. When you have a battle size limit the playing field is more even and so you have a greater challenge. Progression, especially when the maps are smaller as you need to decide which units you want to gain veterancy or are willing to see killed. Variety, as playing with a small taskforce is different to the small battles and even more different to the all out Assault.

Battle sizes:
Taskforce: 500
Small: 1000
Medium: 1500
Large: 2500
All out Assault: unlimited

I think the taskforce maps would be particularly fun with dangerous single entities.
You need to choose 500 points of units to take down a single hive tyrant. Or even more dangerous 3 tyrgon!

The Ai should have a bonus to the amount of points they can take into battle depending on the difficulty. If you manage to make the Ai really good you may need to remove this bonus. I'm thinking in the short term.

Initiate: no bonus
Astartes: no bonus
Lieutenant: 10% bonus
Company Captain: 20% bonus

Main base garrison
A main base garrison of 1000 points of units is in my opinion necessary, even for the hardest difficulty. This should be in addition to the 20 units that the faction has in their army. This will give the ai time to recruit better units as attacking into a 3000 point army is a harder task. (I hope they know how to dismiss their fodder).


Change to neutral faction tiles

Neutral faction tiles should wet the appetite rather than be the main grind of the game. Most should be taskforce - small battles with a few medium battles and 1-2 Large. Additional battle types would also be welcome, but I’ll leave that for another post. Also, the Ai factions shouldn't be losing all their req units to them.

Hopefully with these changes this will mean that the ai faction captures more of the map, and the can fight you in balanced fights before you destroy their capitol in an all out assault.

Closing Statement

I'm really hopeful for this game mode. I know other would have preferred a full campaign, but i think it is a strong foundation to work from. If you have read through this and agree with me on my suggestions, it would be great if you could indicate that. Also if you disagree with my suggestions and think they suck, please reply and let me know why. (you can also agree with some parts and disagree on others). I'm sure that it would be helpful for the developers if the kind of progression i've suggested is what others want to and not just what i think would be good.

Hi Braxxy
Thanks a lot for taking the time to write just detailed feedback. It will take a while to go through all of it, but we will. A few points from my first readthrough of your comments.

* Adding progression is something we plan to explore soon
* The Scarab Swarm command ability will be addressed very soon
* The neutral factions are definitely intended to be smaller starter battles, not the main grind. This aspect will get some attention in the short term.

Thanks again!