I'm on my laptop right now so I can't test, but off the top of my head:

A) I'm like 95% certain if you mouseover tooltip an enemy fleet, you can see its manpower distribution.

B) I'm like 95% certain if you mouseover tooltip an enemy system within your current vision, you can see its manpower distribution.

C) I'm 50% certain (i.e., I'm not sure) if you mouseover tooltip an enemy system outside your current vision, you can see its current manpower distribution.  If not, perhaps you see the last known manpower distribution or nothing at all.

D) I'm like 95% certain if you mouseover an invasion in progress icon, you can see the manpower distribution for both sides.

E) I'm 50% certain (i.e., I'm not sure) that a defending empire changing its manpower distribution from the military screen will propagate immediately to a system under attack.  If not, then the blockade and/or invasion must be broken for the change to propagate.

F) I'm 50% certain (i.e., I'm not sure) that an attacking empire changing its manpower distribution from the military screen will propagate immediately to a system under attack.  If not, then the troops must be returned to the ship and/or the ship must return to empire territory for the change to propagate.

Consider the following sequence:

1) My default troop composition is 100% infantry.

2) An enemy empire declares war on me.  Oh my!  I have vision of one of their systems and/or fleets.  I mouseover it and check the manpower distribution.  It's 100% armor.  Now I have a decision to make.  Do I change my manpower distribution now to 50% armor and 50% air?  Note that there *IS* a tradeoff for changing your distribution -- it costs manpower.

3) The enemy empire doesn't have vision of me.  He sends his invasion fleet out with a 100% armor comp.

4) His invasion fleet comes into vision of my system, he mouseovers and sees that a 50% armor + 50% air comp is waiting for him.  Now he has several decisions to make.  Does he throw his troops into the meat grinder and invade immediately once he arrives?  Does he siege first to reduce my defending manpower and delay his invasion?  Does he leave a few ships to blockade the system to prevent the defender from changing the distribution on the system and send other ships back to change the distribution to 50% armor + 50% infantry?  Does he change his composition to 100% infantry, send a reinforcement fleet to the system (composed of a few fast ships stacked with manpower modules) so that when the fleets combine for invasion, the effective distribution is 50% armor + 50% infantry?  In both cases, if he makes distribution changes, it costs manpower.

That whole sequence involves a bunch of choices.  However, if a player never bothers to observe another empire's troop composition OR other empires always have predictable troop compositions, then across many games, you reach a min/max conclusion that armor only is the way to go and never bother to make any choices.  I actually feel that the latter is the major culprit -- the enemy AI doesn't change troop compositions in ways to punish static troop compositions.  Speaking from my own experience, the enemy AI does attempt to punish my 100% infantry composition by going heavy armor, but since I'm obsessed with preserving infrastructure/population, I make the *decision* to siege first.  I make the *decision* in my low resource games to use titanium and hyperium sparingly so I can afford to max out my infantry upgrades earlier.  I make the *decision* to research the troop health and damage upgrades from the economic tech tree early.

Dragar wrote:

As it is, I'd still prefer to fix the distributions, with a single chain of 'manpower upgrades', and leave it alone.

Even if you feel that micro-managing manpower distributions like the above sequence is tedious and decide not to participate in it, another player may elect to participate in it and a variable distribution is meaningful.

Even if you feel that system improvement damage and population damage during an invasion is inconsequential, another player may find it meaningful and a variable distribution is meaningful.

I would claim that every player refines their strategies through their own experiences in the game across their various playthroughs.  If 90% of the playerbase feels the same way you do and *arrives* at the conclusion that there is just one meta way to set your troop composition and upgrade it, that doesn't make it a false choice.

I would love for the devs (or a modder) to make improvements to the system, but even if they leave it alone, if 90% of the playerbase learns the 'meta' in a natural way across playthroughs, then the distribution and upgrade path is already fixed in practice.  It's not a problem that requires an extreme step of gutting.

@Aitarus -- Cheers for your input.  I was feeling a bit down that the conversation so far was steering so hard to removing the troop composition mini game >_<.

-HP

On a side note, off the top of my head, does system ownership only impact food output and influence output indirectly via system unhappiness?  Is industry output completely unaffected?  Is that a bug or intended behavior?  Perhaps this is why people think that infrastructure destruction is negligible since they just rebuild those improvements while the system is at zero approval which makes zero sense (why would a freshly conquered system not sandbag their labor and hold out for rescue?).

Along those lines, what does system ownership actually affect?  I know it blocks evacuating/razing a system (which is necessary for game balance because 12.5 turns of occupation gives time for counterplay to retake the system).  I'm like 75% sure that system ownership affects the troop cap on the system (which is necessary for game balance to reward using the tactical surrender option and quick mobilization to retake the system).  Does system ownership affect dust or science output on the system directly (empire approval is two layers removed, so the effect there only shows up if you blitzkrieg too many systems at once)?

-HP

I'm pretty sure A = preemptive bombing which includes +50% improvement destruction and +50% population death.  C = blitz which includes +25% improvement destruction and +25% population death.  In fact, B = guerilla does exactly what you said -- +33% health on invading troops and -20% damage done to defender.  It's the only option with 0% improvement destruction and 0% population death.  Basically all of my invasions are 100% infantry guerilla invasions.

Note that my personal goal of avoiding collateral damage involves both the tactic card and troop composition.

In my experiments so far today, I can't prove that defending forces trigger collateral damage.  Maybe I was just imagining it.  That being said, in one of my earlier posts I suggesting giving empires two troop breakdowns instead of just one -- an invasion breakdown and a system defense breakdown.  That way, without fiddling with it every single assualt/defense, I can simply set my assaults to be infantry only and my defenses to be meta (if they indeed do not trigger imaginary collateral damage ^_^).

-HP

This discussion makes me wonder about the possibility of more detail in how Manpower can be setup.

First, as stated in a similar manner earlier, if there could be two standing force compositions for factions? So the idea expands the Empire Manpower into two distinct areas:

1. Ship based Marines for Invasion Forces
2. Planet based Armies for System Defense

When we click on Manage, we can have one distribution for what is used on Naval Fleets and one on Systems. 

Second, then the ground force Evolutions, that are possible, could instead of being just boosts, could be trade-offs that lean either towards aggressive invasion forces or for defending against invasions.  So instead of investing into +20% Infantry Health on Empire or +20% Armor Damage on Empire

For example, an Option might be able to see either/or choices of:

1. Marine Forces intended to capture buildings or raze them
2. Army Forces intended to deal with Infantry or be armed with missiles to take our Air and/or Armor
3. Armor / Anti-Armor so an Invasion Force would benefit more from a fast moving tank, where a Defender could instead benefit from Missile Artillery
4. or an Invader would want Bombers, and a Defender would want Interceptors or Anti-Tank Fighters and so on.

That way we'd have to either balance out ground forces or favor aggressive or defensive postures and compliment how we manage our Fleets as we could only have up to four choices active from a total of eight paired choices for Infantry, Armor and Air. In other words, Infantry would have 4 pairs of choices and we can only have one of the choices active from the pair, so it would still be the five we can see in the Troop Management screen now and be able to choose how the forces get boosted.

Third, for composition changes to take effect, could need Fleets to be in friendly space to gear up the troops properly, as it does to upgrade ship weapons?

Last, I also have to wonder if Armor would have a crew compliment, where 1 manpower is one Soldier and so Armor would take say 4 manpower for one Armor? Then 1 Air is maybe 2 manpower?

I hope I'm clear in the examples shared, if this could deepen and expand on this area, I'd welcome such changes.

Dragar wrote:

There are only two sliders in Endless Space 2, and I consider both a significant regression in what has been a huge improvement in game design.

I haven't played any of the Civ's at all (my only 4X outside of ES1/EL/ES2 was MOO2/3 from way back in the day).  I do agree that sliders are bad -- if food production were reduced to a slider, I'd be pretty mad (shameless plug for my infrastructure idea).  In practice, they end up being set to 'optimal' values.  That being said, what Darvo posted has clarified what I think I actually want.

I am *extremely* resistant to the idea that there is a single fixed optimal value -- single choice means zero choice.  For what Dragar values in a system invasion which is primarily speed and minimum manpower lost, the optimal value is 100% armor.  For what I value in a system invasion which is infrastructure/population preservation, the optimal value is 100% infantry.  If I'm interpreting what Darvo stated correctly, he is advocating having upgrade toggles that achieve certain optimizations without using a slider -- I think that's a great idea.  It's like a talent tree for invasion forces and a talent tree for defending forces.

To expand, I think that having having a talent tree for invasion forces and a talent tree for defending forces that is managed from the military screen is a good idea as long as there are *significant* costs for constantly fiddling with them.  I want a sense of inertia to my decisions.  I envision something like swapping my assault marines from being anti-armor specialized or anti-air specialized at the empire level costs me manpower, strategics, and dust -- heck, I'd love it if it actually took a variable number of turns for your talent changes to kick in depending on how severely you changed the talents around and how vast your empire is (swap one talent in a two system empire, it takes one turn; swap every talent in a twenty system empire, it takes five turns).  That would then allow for a deck of ground tactic cards that could be used by commanders on the ground to immediately adapt the army they are given from the empire to the situation at hand.

Talent trees with meaningful costs to change at the empire level gives you long term 'choice' in your invasion/defense posturing layered with ground tactic cards to allow you to adapt the armies you have crafted to your immediate situation.

Off the top of my head, I'd love for every minor faction to have a single unique ground tactic card that reflects the way their pre-spacefaring civilization fights.  It can be added to their 50 tier population bonus.

I suppose reading over this again, this brings ground combat closer to space combat.  Talent trees for invasion forces is like module installation for hunter/attacker ships; talent trees for system defense forces is like module installation for coordinator/protector ships -- these are what get propagated to your entire empire at the cost of manpower/dust/strategics (and perhaps time).  You then use ground tactic cards to adapt them to what they face in the field.

-HP

The whole point of the siege, optimal invasion comps, and the tradeoffs associated is so that empires have *TIME* to react to invasions.

Do you want to know what is unfun?  Having an enemy empire move some seeker fleet from outside of your empire's vision range to one of your systems, successfully invade it in one turn, and then sell off all the improvements, terraform + buyout all your lava/ash/desert planets into crappier types, etc.  They can even add salt by improsing a truce (provided enough war pressure) on you on the same turn to block your counterinvasion.

ZERO counterplay = bad game design.

Besieging is the absolute cleanest way to take over a system.  You lose zero manpower, you keep the entire population intact, and you keep all of the system improvements intact.  What's the downside?  It takes a long time to do it.  That's GREAT GAME DESIGN -- it allows the enemy time to counterplay by moving their own fleets to defend.  It gives them time to counterplay by besieging one of your systems in exchange.  Want to cut down the time to siege?  Install siege modules on your vessels, but there's a tradeoff.  Siege modules take strategic resources; siege modules take up module slots -- both of those can end up making your fleets weaker.  I always play with resource abundance set to low -- that means blowing strategic resources on siege modules may require me to forego using strategic resources on weapon slots.  Blowing a support module slot on a siege module means not being able to install an energy enhancer instead which would make your vessels stronger.

What is another way to cut down siege time?  INVADE!  Consider the following fairy tale.  Once upon a time, there was only one troop type available to both sides and it was called infantry.  You could upgrade your infantry units with various technologies and strategics and they would battle it out, but it was simply a numbers game and was kind of boring.  So a designer decided to include some counterplay and the armor unit was invented.  The armor unit was more effective against infantry, but the designer decided to include some tradeoffs -- armor would destroy infrastructure; armor would have separate upgrades from infantry (extra science costs, extra strategic costs, oh my!).  Then the designer decided to expand the counterplay to a triangle and invented the air unit.  The air unit would be more effective against armor, but it also had severe tradeoffs -- it would destroy both infrastructure and population; it also had separate upgrades; and it would be weak against infantry.

Ever wonder why there is a 900 manpower deployment limit during an invasion for both sides?  It's so that even with an optimal invasion composition (which from what I read above is all armor), you can't finish in one turn on the same turn that your fleet arrives at the system.  This gives the defender time to draw things out by using conscription reinforcements (which has a tradeoff of consuming a population unit).  This gives empires options to research system defense improvements to allow more reinforcement manpower to stay on the system.  An invasion that stalemates due to conscription is playing out correctly -- the attacking empire is burning manpower turn after turn to the meat grinder while the defender is conscipting until every single population unit on the system is gone.  Once the attacking empire sees that their reinforcements are dwindling, they retreat their forces back to the orbiting ships and go back to sieging.

Dragar wrote:

That's pretty much where my thoughts went - though having the false choices left for the player just seems sloppy.

Not exploring the choice to siege, not exploring the choice to preserve population/infrastructure, does not equate to a false choice.  It just means that in the process of min/maxing in the games you have played, you have 'concluded' that 100% armor is optimal and not felt any consequences from your choice.  I play my games with resource abundance set to low.  Stockpiling adamantium and antimatter to upgrade armor has very real consequences for me -- I need that adamantium and antimatter to build the trade clearing bureau and other resource heavy system improvements; I need that adamantium and antimatter to put repair modules and evasion engines on my ships.  When I invade an enemy system in order to get a hold of a resource deposit, I don't want my invasion to blow up the mining union and expanded mines on the system.  I need those improvements to stay intact so that I can maximize the strategic resource output as soon as I take control.  By making the REAL choice to not perform a destructive invasion, I can not use dust to buy out rebuilding key system improvements, and instead use that dust elsewhere.

I like to play the population mini-game.  I like to grow populations to 20 units so I can ship them off to my other systems and exploit their bonuses.  I've had games where I had nothing but crappy minor civilization spawn next to me.  I have to preserve population units when I take over enemy systems.  Why bother?  For example, if I can get my hands on 20 units of a population that improves influence generation *EARLIER*, then the borders of my empire will expand faster which will allow me to use pacific conversion to take over systems.  I made a choice to play the population mini-game which in turn makes my troop composition a REAL choice.

To be constructive, I think that the developers should actually have two manpower breakdowns -- an invasion manpower breakdown and a system defense manpower breakdown.  That would allow players to actually take advantage of the troop composition triangle.  If my opponent has a one track mind that puts everything into armor, I can set my invasion troop composition to be 100% infantry and accept the tradeoff that I have spend turns sieging before invading.  I can then set my defense troop composition to be 50% armor and 50% air to counter his 100% armor composition.

-HP