the_wamburger wrote:
A card system would be an interesting addition for ground assaults/invasions/bombing raids, but a full blown tactical battle on the ground sounds like it pertains to another game entirely.

Yeah having the card system sounds cool.

What as well sounds cool is mixed ownership of planets.





Depending on how advanced a planet is, it you could have several strategic important areas to control. Like the capital, the main star port, planetary defense headquarter, etc

Players can than prioritize where to attack and which structures most important to defend. Take over the planetary defense grid and now your ships in orbit get support from the planet instead of your enemies fleets, etc





Though overall this might be kind of wasted effort, because most often orbital bombardment first and invading with troops afterwards ends up as most effective. Until that simple balance issue is resolved somehow a more complicated ground combat scenario sounds not really worth the effort.

Space Empires 5/4

Distant Words: Universe



Are two that come to mind.

Extensive micromanagement is one potential issue of having a detailed combat system in a 4x game, but I believe there is a different, more important issue at work.

Game development takes time, and people need to be paid. Companies only have a limited amount of time and money to invest in a project, and improving the 4x aspects of the game will usually have a higher priority than adding a full-fledged tactical combat system. That is, in my opinion, one of the main reasons we often see rushed and badly done battle systems in 4x games.

Just addressing to the point of realism.



We never actually got numbers for how many people the opulation: stands for.



Colonies of an empire I could easly imagine would conisist for a considerable amount of time realy just out of one city. So imho small maps wouldnt be so extrem unrealistic.



Saying that I dont see ground battles coming though I realy would love that feature.



But other people fletched already out why we cant have anything we want.



Only thing I hope is that as Nomas said that we get someting more then just a "you won" screen.

And in case it is just a "you won" screen,

I hope that at least it is a screen with many race specific and different cinematic movies of burning cities and planets.

I know that there is priorities in a game and probably the devs wanna focus more on the empire buidling aspect, but combat (space and ground) is a key feature of 4X games. From what i ve seen so far, (space) combat will be cinematic, so a BotF (Birth of the Federation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek:_Birth_of_the_Federation) approach could be the right one. You decide the maneuver at the start of each turn and the turn is resolved based on the enemies maneuver too. Or something similar. The battle cards of ES wasnt a bad idea. It just turned out to be boring because it didnt offer much interaction.

Ground combats, as i said, a "Battle for the Capital" EL style approach could be awesome but i dont know what the devs have in mind. I think overview 4 will offer more info about combat, so lets wait and see what the devs have to say about it. Call me pessimist but i dont want the first DLC to be focusing around battles again.

I'd rather have one good combat system (space in this case) than two mediocre or even poor ones. StarDrive 2 added ground combat and it wasn't well-received.

stilz wrote:
I'd rather have one good combat system (space in this case) than two mediocre or even poor ones.

Agreed, unless they nail them both.... but we do need smoking of representation for ground combat I believe.

I would be happy with just an abstract overview of ground combat. It should be more than just numbers rising and falling, but I'd be fine with something like a VR display of a wireframe globe, showing colored patches of conflict and the final resolution. I don't need to see details on the ground. Spend that energy and developer resources on space combat.

stilz wrote:
I'd rather have one good combat system (space in this case) than two mediocre or even poor ones. StarDrive 2 added ground combat and it wasn't well-received.

This.



Ground combat should rank the lowest on the priority scale, as far as I am concerned. What I think would be a nice addition however is better troop management. I've always had a problem with the idea of being able to use a colony's entire population as troops. I would much rather they implement a system where, depending on the set policy and faction, only a certain percentage of troops can be built in specific colonies out of the total population. Likewise, the entire population of a colony should not be able to participate in its defense, but only a certain percentage depending on faction and policy. Only exception to this rule could be the Cravers, which would give them a very big advantage (balanced by maluses like a decreasing population if they don't expand).

Zenicetus wrote:
I would be happy with just an abstract overview of ground combat. It should be more than just numbers rising and falling, but I'd be fine with something like a VR display of a wireframe globe, showing colored patches of conflict and the final resolution. I don't need to see details on the ground. Spend that energy and developer resources on space combat.

Same here.

Moreover, ground battle only occur once the space battle is over and only one faction totally control the orbit. So, defending during ground battle could only make you buy time. It would be discouraging to spend time and energy only to win some turns before the system get invaded.

I may be repeating myself at this point, but I agree to many of the points made in this threat. Some greater granularity when it comes to sieges and invasions would be nice to see. Defensive improvements that damage an attacker or mitigate the blockage penalty. More possible outcomes of invasion and bombardment, perhaps. An option to "raid" a system, landing troops and only fighting a few skirmishes on the surface to steal resources.



The idea of invasions requiring multiple turns could also offer some interesting gameplay options. Perhaps after landing troops, taking over the system could take a few turns based on number and quality of troops and the opposition they are facing as well as the size of the system (population and planets), and if you lose orbital superiority in that time your troops suffers massive penalties, slowing or even stopping your progress to give the enemy time to bring reinforcing defenders of his own. Perhaps troops would need to remain stations on a recently captured system to ensure their obedience and slow conversion to your cause, and an enemy blockade would interfere with that.



In any case, I would love to get some visual representation of the outcome, even if its just artwork with simple animation like the diplomatic messages of Endless Legend.

Considering the new model of star systems where you can see the different orbits of the planets I wonder if different players can own different planets within the same star systems. This could also bring an intresting change and possibilities to the invasion system.

Would love to see ground battle in the same play style as space. Starts with long rang, or Artillery and sniping. then to mid range, any armored vehicles and assault rifles come out. Close range, charging and melee. I think it'd be a great addition. ^.^

Sovereign wrote:
Considering the new model of star systems where you can see the different orbits of the planets I wonder if different players can own different planets within the same star systems. TThis could also bring an intresting change and possibilities to the invasion system.

Probably not, but the system owner can have multiple species within the same system with each being represented by a different political faction. At least that's how I think it will work since when conquering a planet, it looks like the survivors "join" your empire.

Ground combat is a feature that no 4X game ever managed to do properly. I liked the EL combat and would love to see something like that in ES2 though i doubt it. This is 2015, i want something more than a "you won" screen.



Same goes for space battles. From the video and comments so far i fear its going to be ES style again and this time no interaction at all, just a cinematic that will get boring after a couple games. I really dont understand why combat is so underated. The excuse thats its micromanage hell and not good for multiplayer its totally ludicrous.

Nasarog wrote:
Probably not, but the system owner can have multiple species within the same system with each being represented by a different political faction. At least that's how I think it will work since when conquering a planet, it looks like the survivors "join" your empire.

IIRC there actually was mention of multiple factions owning planets in a system. In that case nobody would be able to build anything until they got the others through either warfare or other more peaceful options.

Several factions can settle an outpost on a system, but out the other end only one team comes out being the system's owner.

Zenicetus wrote:
I would be happy with just an abstract overview of ground combat. It should be more than just numbers rising and falling, but I'd be fine with something like a VR display of a wireframe globe, showing colored patches of conflict and the final resolution. I don't need to see details on the ground. Spend that energy and developer resources on space combat.

Like having basically system view, except all the FIDS Data is replaced by Strategic Military data. You could like see stuff on different planets happening, enemy progress on different planets, and would be able to move troops between planets like population(Also having 1 troop unit remain all the time so an enemy couldn't concentrate all his troops on one planet so you'd be forced to do the same and then he'd just flank your othe planets using newly arrived troops). Though that would be difficult to do with just normal siege invasion...I dunno.

Frogsquadron wrote:
Several factions can settle an outpost on a system, but out the other end only one team comes out being the system's owner.

Sounds awesome enough to me

Just an idea, but i think a interesting way of doing manual combat would be to zoom in on the solar system as a whole. on a hexagon field with planets and if the system has any, asteroid belts, hell. Maybe there's a orbiting anomaly in the system. so if you own the system you can research some planet means of defense and in a sense shoot rockets, lasers, etc. from either the planet itself or a satellite in orbit, but it's restricted to a certain range. You can also do planet invasions, so you can take specific planets, the larger the pop the harder it is to take the planet.







So just imagine a hex grid over a larger scale of what you see in the picture.