Time for GDD n°14 - Ground Battle! Go! Go! Go!

Our intel says Early Access status regarding Ground Battle has been located at the bottom of the post. 

Now, let's move on and read, soldier!

RATIONALE

The goal is to create a minimalist system with very few player actions, but very significant impact on the overall strategic choices of the game.

The ground battle starts by building the empire’s army from the population living in a system, and will conclude through epic battles that will last a few turns in order to capture that system.

MANPOWER, TROOPS & SYSTEM DEFENCE

GENERATING MANPOWER

Manpower represents the conscription of the population to man the empire’s army. It’s used to fill the spaceships' crews and especially resolving ground invasions.

Generating Manpower is going to consume the growth of the empire, slowing down its development. We really want to make wars a population sink that will make the economy of involved empires plummet if it lasts for too long.

Passive Generation

We’ve added to the empire a new resource called “Manpower”. This resource is filled thanks to growth from systems every turn. All systems will have an upkeep based on the manpower max limit of the empire, which will slow down their growth and even make them lose population.

Instant generation

In case of emergency, the player has two options to get a huge amount of Manpower in a short time:

• Locally, it can use an instant action that turns a part of growth stock into manpower. The taken growth is equivalent to the last population point. The improvement tooltip needs to feedback the output of Manpower.
• Empire-wide: a button is available next to the Manpower gauge. Using it costs Influence, and will consume one population on all systems to generate Manpower. Hovering the button need to display the gain of Manpower, visually on the gauge and numerically just below.

TROOPS

There are 3 types of troops:

• Infantry
• Ground vehicles (“tanks”)
• Flying vehicles (“planes”)

Each type has a different attribute which defines their efficiency and cost.

Upgrading troops

Thanks to technologies, the player can unlock two types of improvements for their troops to:

• Improve their stats
• Unlock bonuses against specific troop types
• Modulate the repartition of newly-generated troop types

At the beginning, players start with infantry only (so 100% of the manpower will be turned into infantry), and then by unlocking the technology they will be able to adjust the ratio. If 1 infantry technology and 1 tank technology are unlocked, troops will split equally, with 50% of the Manpower going to infantry and 50% to tanks.

Population impact

In addition to the technology, the different populations can provide bonuses to troops, either on damages, health or effectiveness against another type of troops.

In order to unlock the bonuses, the empire needs to maintain a certain number of this population within its systems. If the population goes below the threshold, the bonus is deactivated.

System’s Defence

Defence allows protection for the system against invasions, and provides bonuses to the troops during battles. Each system is going to generate troops by itself when attacked depending on the local Manpower stock and the current population count.

The attacker can besiege the system to lower the defence before engaging the invasion, or attack it directly but will then face buffed troops.

INVASION FLOW

BESIEGING

When orbiting an opponent’s system (that the player is at war with), a siege is automatically triggered. A system under siege suffers from:

• The same consequences as a blockade
• The loss of system defence every turn
  • If the system defence is null: there is loss of Manpower

The system’s loss is based on the orbiting Manpower: the more military power the higher the loss suffered by the defender.

STARTING AN INVASION

In order to trigger an invasion a player needs:

• To orbit an opponent system without owned/allied fleet protecting it
• The system not to be under invasion already
• To have at least one ship with invasion modules in orbit
• To have more than 0 Manpower

Tactical Choices

Before the battle, both the defender and the attacker can choose between different tactical choices. These choices will affect the proceedings of the battle, by providing bonuses to troops, involving some risk/rewards. Thanks to these choices, players will be able to modulate the length of the invasion, or surrender to protect the system in order to be able to take it back undamaged.

As they are part of the ground battle notification, players will be able to adapt to the situation every turn.

COMPUTING THE INVASION

First, we instantiate the troops for both sides, based on their empire ratio. The visual of the troops is based on the population living in the empire, but has no gameplay consequences.

Then, we compute the bonuses based on:

• The hero skills (both the hero in orbit or on the system provide bonuses to their side)
• The system properties
• The orbiting fleets: some module allows preventive bombing or support troops on the field

The battle is divided into rounds, during which troops will attack each other. We consider 1 stack per type in terms of resolution and not each unit individually. Each type of troop is going to deal damage to all types of troops in the opposing side.

The number of rounds will vary depending on the tactical decision taken by the attacker, meaning a ground battle could last more or less turns based on that.

Computing damages

When a stack of units attacks another stacks, it generates X damages. X is the sum of damages computed for each units of the stack. A unit deals damage, randomly between its min and max damage values.

Improvement destruction

For each round, we compute a probability of losing an improvement on the invaded system. This probability depends on the troop’s types, the system’s improvement, and the tactical decisions taken at the beginning of the turn.

INVASION REPORT

At the end of the battle, the report displays the loss of troops for both sides, and the consequences on the system (population loss and improvement destroyed).

If both sides are still alive, the attacker can click on a button to continue the invasion: at the beginning of the next turn, an invasion notification will be generated, allowing both players to choose their strategy and start a new invasion process.

If new ships arrived in orbit, they will be able to reinforce their side by dropping their manpower to generate new troops on the battlefield.

If the attacker wins, the system is captured:

• Ownership is set based on the previous empire’s ownership value and will climb towards 100.
• The previous owner ownership will decrease turn by turn until reaching zero.

HOW'S THE EARLY ACCESS VERSION ON THIS ASPECT?

Generating Manpower

• The active, instantaneous generation of manpower is implemented in the Early Access version of the game, but not in its full extent yet.

Troops

• Planes aren't in the Early Access version of the game.
• Technologies improving troops are in the Early Access version of the game but not implemented in their full extent.

hello, i like the design document but i'm unsure about how it actually plays out in game.  It might be a balance concern more than design, though; My very first game was ended rather suddenly by a very early game basic Cravers fleet easily ganking my capital in ground combat.  There doesn't seem to be any real consequence to the ground combat because it's pretty heftily weighed in the attackers favor; there is no need to ever engage in the siege mechanic because of the weight of manpower even completely un-upgraded fleets can carry; 200 from a base fleet will work for about any target in the early game when combined with the infiltration tactic.   In tier II fleets go from outmatching planetary defenses to dominating them in every way, just using core techs like the ship size upgrade.  a fleet in tier 2 can carry 900 manpower with 2 techs (9 frigates with 100 manpower each) which is absurd in the context of even capitals having 250-350 manpower at most.

also, the effects of 'tractable armaments' and'preliminary bombardment' are opaque to me as a user; they are just a bunch of numbers that i cannot relate to how effective they might be.  +%health or +%damage tells me exactly what the buff is; i have no idea if "+100 max damage" is absurdly OP or totally useless.

balance/design suggestions:

-The manpower upgrade on small hulls from tier 2 hull techs should simply be removed. There's already a tech to get if you want to have stronger invasions; 'more manpower than you ever need' shouldn't be a feature of a base combat tech.

-Early game fleets of 4 frigates should only be able to easily invade - at best - fresh colonies. Well established colonies and capitals should be far stronger than no-tech fleets.   Enough stronger that they take a serious amount of Sieging to take down. Given how long it can take to make a combat fleet early game, even a long  period of sieging - say 6-10 turns - won't help someone caught with their pants down.  The means to do this are various, but I would suggest reducing frigates base manpower amount for starters (25 each?), giving the racial capital structure a +300 (or more) manpower buff, and making it so that colonies only have a base manpower restoration of say +25/level. So in that case a colony that is new will only hit max manpower after 8 turns or so.  In this way a tier 1 fleet has 100 manpower, requiring sieging to deal with a 200-manpower colony; a tier 2 fleet has 225 (frigates) - 300 (medium hulls) manpower, giving them superiority over normal colonies.  This should be more than countered with defense technologies - more on that later.

Max manpower should also perhaps scale with population (nonlinearly) rather than level;  the way 'system level' works in ES2 is really weird anyway with no relation to how developed a system is or not.  An industrial/population juggernaut might still all be level 1 systems because of a lack of luxury resources, meanwhile another player has their crappiest newest outpost with good levels.   The economics consequences of this are fine, since thats directly related to a tech, but the system-defense consequences are non-intuitive and questionable.

-Manpower and sieging.  If manpower is intended to be an important resource, it probably should NOT be reduced by sieging.  Getting your theoretically valuable manpower heavily drained by small fleets orbiting random undefended colonies would be quite aggravating.   It is also weird how troops defending colonies fight on an equal level to troops invading it... or more accurately, fight at a massive disadvantage because of attackers quantity and quality advantages.  It might be advisable to use a mechanic like Endless Legend, where garrisons and defending troops got a really strong free-hp buff that made them disproportionately annoying to take out without sieging.  In the context of ES2,  that might work out to a huge health and/or damage buff  that is reduced by sieging

-Exploration frigates shouldn't carry manpower at all - it's straight up literally a waste of manpower; if manpower is intended to be a significant resource it shouldn't be wasted pointlessly like this.  You can't carry enough manpower to make it useful, therefore its wasted.  Similarly, its odd that you load up ALL your combat ships with manpower.  I realize you dont want to make manpower carried with only modules, because then people will just take them off to minmax their combat ships;  but there should be a way around the pointless waste of manpower that is loading up ships that you never intend to attack enemy systems.   For all I know, you don't actually lose manpower when you lose ships though; this is just another way in which the current system is somewhat opaque. Perhaps you should only lose manpower in fights in neutral/enemy systems;  you recover all or most manpower lost on ships in your own territory, except on explicit troop carrier ships using manpower modules.

-manpower seems really weird. as a resource, it's opaque; it's a 'headline' resource that can cause big problems if there's a shortage but you have to go into a specific menu to check your levels.  if it is going to be important it should probably be displayed on the main UI, so you know when it's getting depleted.   It's okay for science to be put behind a submenu because you can't actually run short of science.  

-Defense technologies range from confusing to pointless. N-way fusion - it sucks so bad. Lose an entire research slot to get a pointless +50 manpower buff?  That gets you at best 1 turn of sieging before the enemy is stronger than your normal colony anyway. Hardened bunkers should be an enormous impact on the game given how vital and important the other tier 1 technologies can be.  I would suggest a troop buff for the system (+health%?) coupled with a really hefty siege damage resistance.  Another aspect to the tech could be siege modules like ES1;  this might be important owing to the fact that if you build a hardened bunker to defend a system and it gets taken anyway you then have to face the uphill battle of taking on your own hardened bunker.

-Drawing another comparison to Endless Legend, its kind of weird that there's no defensive assistance for defending fleets whatsoever.  This is a little outside the 'ground combat' scope, but planetary cannons, space stations, minefields, or 'system defence garrison fighters' or anything to help defending fleets even a little against an opponent that outmatches them in military technology would be welcome IMO.    It would be another thing to pile on N-way Fusion, perhaps.

*deep breathe* whew okay i think thats enough for now.

EDIT: ADDENDUM.  Under a model where siege reduces fortification rather than manpower, you could also do things like have manpower in besieged systems increase with their own production.  This opens up interesting avenues for gameplay and for hero skills.

There's also some potential for a mechanic where control of a system varies by degrees depending on the progress the attacker has made in previous turns. Control would penalize system production and manpower enrollment. So for example, it might be worth it as an attacker to take a bunch of casualties pushing against fortifications early to reduce the system's production so they cant pump out ships as easily while you're sieging.