Suggestion: improve mixed ship handling (colonies/troops)

[godel]

When I hit invade, I would hope for an effortless invasion, and one that would make best use of my resouces.
So when i have local non mobile troops and a mix of other troopships, the non mobile are left for last. Then they get scrapped.

Please use the non mobile ones first. (ditto colony and outposts). Then match the needs with the best way to get the job done.
I have had 3x 4x 16x troopship mixes.


Some of this is from September, some from recent play.

[defaultuser]

You can specify which ships are participating in the invasion by selecting them from fleet view.

[godel]

Yeah part of the game is trying to learn the game.

But it still makes me wonder how much I really will need to do in the finished version. Just saying invade and let all take care of all might be less micromanagement. But it would also be more automated, which is a call you all need to make.

[defaultuser]

You have a corner case, as the vast majority of the time you'll be invading with ships. I believe that the default invasion just takes troop ships in the order then appear in the fleet view, so when you want something different you have to manage it. I don't think there is any algorithm for "efficiency" of the invasion in terms of which to use in a given circumstance. I run into this sometimes when I have troop ships carrying different troop strengths. The default won't necessarily be the most efficient invasion, so I have to manually orchestrate things.

[MatGB]

Aye, ordering the ships you don't want used to move away is my preferred method to keep it sane. We're trying as an objective to cut down/eliminate the use of troop drops and in system invading except as an extreme edge case, frankly I'd rather put effort into almost removing the usage of troop drops than improve the UI for using them.

That's not the case for outpost bases and similar, but even then setting a rally point for all queued outpost ships at or near their intended destination has eliminated that problem for me (Rally Points are new and the UI isn't clear, but they work really well).

[Piwoslaw]

Why do we want to cease using troop drop? Reverting to troop ships only would mean that shipyards become necessary. Since flinging a bunch of soldiers to a neighboring planet is so much easier to do than sending them into deep space, then some kind of electromagnetic slingshot would be enough, and much cheaper to build than the shipyard. Maybe that could be an option for in-system ships, like outpost bases, troop drops, etc., while a shipyard would be for interstellar ships?

[MatGB]

We're trying to slow down the steamroller effect, it should be rare that you have direct in system combat—they're not going to be removed or banned, just made less effective in various ways as currently they allow you to bulldoze through enemy territory in a way that's not very balanced.

Exactly what's going to change is of course still open to lots of discussion, but while I'm happy that Drops are there to reclaim a lost planet, I distinctly dislike the capture one planet then use Drops for the rest of the system approach that is still relatively optimal.

[LGM-Doyle]

Have we considered multi-turn combat.

Default to 3 turns. Research blitzkrieg to improve it by 1 turn to 2 turns. Research freedom fighters/garrison planet to increase it by 1.

Landing new troops resets the clock.

It would also allow for some occasional give and take in the system combat, where a defender fleet shows up to save the day.

[Piwoslaw]

We're trying to slow down the steamroller effect, ...

Good point.

Have we considered multi-turn combat.

Default to 3 turns. Research blitzkrieg to improve it by 1 turn to 2 turns.

Would this give an unfair advantage to the empire with higher research tech?

[defaultuser]

We're trying to slow down the steamroller effect

I never really thought of troop drops in that way. About the only time I use them is in a few cases where I happen to have a planet next to a target and I don't want to haul a troop ship over. Example, a system with a stealthed world, that when revealed has no defenses. Build some drops from a colony world and take care of it.

What contributes to steamrolling is the AIs building shipyards everywhere. Besides, it's tough to do much of that until you've knocked out most of the effective forces in the area. I worry that changes like this will tend to make games drag out in what isn't really the most entertaining part. You get that point where the AI is down and you want to finish it off, and having mechanisms that prolong things might end with people terminating games early out of boredom.

[biza]

You can't build troop drop if you have less than 2 troops on planet.
What about happiness? Maybe put condition of X happiness also?
This will slow down build of troop drops at least for X turns as happiness is growing 1/turn.

And one more thing, why is building troop ship 2 turns and troop drop 3 turns?

Cheers!!

[MatGB]

I never really thought of troop drops in that way. About the only time I use them is in a few cases where I happen to have a planet next to a target and I don't want to haul a troop ship over. Example, a system with a stealthed world, that when revealed has no defenses. Build some drops from a colony world and take care of it.

Oh, absolutely, that's a good, and perfectly problem free use of them.

However, the AI will, and a lot of players used to (until we changed the build time) invade a system, take the lowest troop defended planet, then use Drops to take the rest of the system, at that time you could do it the very next turn, so you needed far fewer troop ships to take an enemy out entirely and could steamroller through incredibly efficiently.

Changing the build time of the Base hull they use to three slowed that down and made it a lot less efficient, it's probably now almost always better to bring enough troops with you, but I'm not sure the balance on that is still right.

What contributes to steamrolling is the AIs building shipyards everywhere. Besides, it's tough to do much of that until you've knocked out most of the effective forces in the area. I worry that changes like this will tend to make games drag out in what isn't really the most entertaining part. You get that point where the AI is down and you want to finish it off, and having mechanisms that prolong things might end with people terminating games early out of boredom.

True, true, that's in part due to the AI still being quite bad at handling near defeat situations and a lack of things like diplomacy/surrender/alliance mechanics.

I definitely don't want to make the game more boring in the late game, but I do want to encourage players to predominantly use built troop ships to take entire systems. I think the balance is much closer to that than it was, but I don't think it's quite right yet.

(NB, don't think I was clear above, I don't want to remove them from the game, that would basically be impossible, I want to reduce their optimal use case almost entirely to taking natives in a system, etc)

You can't build troop drop if you have less than 2 troops on planet.

That's very new (see the "New Troops System" thread) and will be ironed out a bit more in future in some way.

What about happiness? Maybe put condition of X happiness also?

That's already planned (but might get replaced with further work in the minimum troops/troops being 'spent' requirement), the main reason it isn't implemented is doing so will require substantial changes to AI planning that the AI team have asked be put off until they've got a lot of other, more important, projects to finish off, including a rework of their production planning system that will make it easier to then do this work (ie changing the current system will take work, putting it as part of planned other changes will be easier and better)

This will slow down build of troop drops at least for X turns as happiness is growing 1/turn.

True, and at the moment true, there's a different thread on that somewhere

And one more thing, why is building troop ship 2 turns and troop drop 3 turns?

We changed the build time of the Colony Base Hull to three turns awhileback, hence Drops take three turns, we could (and probably should) also change the min build time for troop ships to three turns but haven't done so.

(as is always the case with an Open Source project, the frequent answer to an obvious thing is "no one's gotten around to it", and I'm not 100% sure on the balance/AI implications in the very early game)

[defaultuser]

However, the AI will, and a lot of players used to (until we changed the build time) invade a system, take the lowest troop defended planet, then use Drops to take the rest of the system, at that time you could do it the very next turn, so you needed far fewer troop ships to take an enemy out entirely and could steamroller through incredibly efficiently.

Changing the build time of the Base hull they use to three slowed that down and made it a lot less efficient, it's probably now almost always better to bring enough troops with you, but I'm not sure the balance on that is still right.

I have done that on occasion, usually incidentally. A targeted system has no shipyards, and there's only enough troop ships readily available for one or so worlds, so go ahead and take what you can and finish with drops. Even with the extra turn to build that can be faster than making more troop ships and sending them, especially if that system is farther out from the nearest shipyard.

Still, an overwhelming amount of the time I'm using troopships. It's not unusual to have a game where I never used drops at all. I don't think any version I played had the one-turn build setting. I'm sure I would have used them more under that.