While it makes invasion pretty smooth i guess it needs to be said.

Creating special ships only for siege loss is way too powerfull.

In every one of my games i dont need much manpower at all, because i usally dont lose much of them anyway. I alway create special ships with the siege loss improvement (Titanium A2S Slugs) so that i only need 2-4 turns to completly wipe out enemy defenses to 0. Invading the system afterwards is not even a fight, i instantly win and just take the system.

This one module makes ground battles completly trivial and i thought i cant be the only one thinking that.

Agreed. Manpower/invasions mechanics are quickly made redundant by Titanium A2S slugs.

A solution would be to limit their number per ship. That way you need to bring way more ships to the invasion if you want to really eat away at system manpower.

Consider that slug ships, unlike manpower ships, have to STAY IN SYSTEM to continue sieging, whereas a "dropship" can dump it's MP and run off if need be.  The above point about slugs taking up critical module slots and CP is also valid, though no more so than manpower modules.  The reason A2s slugs seem less useful is that invading and sieging both attack the same stat, but sieging can be STOPPED.  A fleet of slugs can be chased off, but once sufficient manpower is dropped on a system, that's it.  It's getting taken and there's squat the defender can do but sacrifice population or give it up early.

That said, slugs also don't require extra manpower to fill, leaving more for your other ships without demanding masses of extra food.

If someone has a huge fleet to protect another huge bomber fleet, that sounds like that one deserves to win the planet tbh.

Dreepa wrote:

If someone has a huge fleet to protect another huge bomber fleet, that sounds like that one deserves to win the planet tbh.

Sure but because those bombers belong to the tech tier 2 that opens a lot of rush possibilities and pushes factions that already prevail in the early agression to the limit. Horatio and Unfallen have tough early game against cravers and empire even without slugs, but when those can rush them faster than you can set your defenses or build fleets...

mamarider wrote:

[...] I agree that it makes invasions against AI pretty dumb.

Put dumb in it. I once managed to kill a sophons, like you, in endless difficulty in turn under turn 40 at fast speed by dominating all his most usefull systems, but not whit a titanium a2 slug strategy, but a basic manpower one. 

If AI learned to get tanks early... they would be much more better in play.

Hi,

We have been reworking part of the ground battle ecosystem and the manpower modules should be much more useful in the next update. If the slugs are still deemed too powerful after that we'll look into solutions.

Thanks for the feedback!

Velorace how did you support that amount of manpower through all the battles? You lose A LOT of manpower when they pop a system defense strategy that exchanges 1 pop for troops several times in a row. And AI seems to build a lot of defensive buildings after 1-2 acts of agression towards them. Also slugs let you not even care about gaining manpower in the first place. Every new colony absorbs 200 manpower as well, and your initial mp production is super low. I tried eraly manpower invasions myself and they only worked smoothly with factions who produce a lot of food and with Exotic Rations or Patriot Pills Plant supporting my manpower reserves, because I lost about 30-50% of my troops every invasion and had to refill in conquered systems after. 

jhell wrote:

Hi,

We have been reworking part of the ground battle ecosystem and the manpower modules should be much more useful in the next update. If the slugs are still deemed too powerful after that we'll look into solutions.

Thanks for the feedback!

You leave my slugs alone you monster.

Frogsquadron wrote:

jhell wrote:

Hi,

We have been reworking part of the ground battle ecosystem and the manpower modules should be much more useful in the next update. If the slugs are still deemed too powerful after that we'll look into solutions.

Thanks for the feedback!

You leave my slugs alone you monster.

Conflict brewing??? 

You think the Titanium ones are strong, the Quest Slugs are the Best Slugs, adds manpower and sieging power in one module! :D

mamarider wrote:

Velorace how did you support that amount of manpower through all the battles? You lose A LOT of manpower when they pop a system defense strategy that exchanges 1 pop for troops several times in a row. And AI seems to build a lot of defensive buildings after 1-2 acts of agression towards them. Also slugs let you not even care about gaining manpower in the first place. Every new colony absorbs 200 manpower as well, and your initial mp production is super low. I tried eraly manpower invasions myself and they only worked smoothly with factions who produce a lot of food and with Exotic Rations or Patriot Pills Plant supporting my manpower reserves, because I lost about 30-50% of my troops every invasion and had to refill in conquered systems after. 

I think i may have sacrificed a great number of populations for the cause lol 

Plus i had only 4 systems at that rate, i remember...

Frogsquadron wrote:

jhell wrote:

Hi,

We have been reworking part of the ground battle ecosystem and the manpower modules should be much more useful in the next update. If the slugs are still deemed too powerful after that we'll look into solutions.

Thanks for the feedback!

You leave my slugs alone you monster.

Can't let it go eh? ;)

mamarider wrote:

Velorace how did you support that amount of manpower through all the battles? You lose A LOT of manpower when they pop a system defense strategy that exchanges 1 pop for troops several times in a row. And AI seems to build a lot of defensive buildings after 1-2 acts of agression towards them. Also slugs let you not even care about gaining manpower in the first place. Every new colony absorbs 200 manpower as well, and your initial mp production is super low. I tried eraly manpower invasions myself and they only worked smoothly with factions who produce a lot of food and with Exotic Rations or Patriot Pills Plant supporting my manpower reserves, because I lost about 30-50% of my troops every invasion and had to refill in conquered systems after. 

But i have to agree whit you... for some reason i found difficulties in beating the AI in endless mode. Moslty because he retreated tatically on his home system... damn.

plutar wrote:

You think the Titanium ones are strong, the Quest Slugs are the Best Slugs, adds manpower and sieging power in one module! :D

I have never found these.  They sound terrifying.

Daynen wrote:

plutar wrote:

You think the Titanium ones are strong, the Quest Slugs are the Best Slugs, adds manpower and sieging power in one module! :D

I have never found these.  They sound terrifying.

Those are sometimes given as a reward for completing the military deed in the third era. They grant 350 manpower capacity, 30 sieging power and 150 health.

Didnt extensivly tried out the new expansion yet, just 2 games with the Hissho yet, and saw they even got better slugs 

so how is it going? Did manpower invasions get better? Couldnt spot much differences besides the fact that defender deploy limits are upgradable which actually makes manpower invasions  less attractive, i guess?

Would somebody PLEASE think of the ch... Vodyani?

Whatever your opinions regarding titanium slugs, they're the ONLY way Vodyani can handle pirates in the early to mid game. Nerfing them means leaving the V. at the pirates' mercy. You'd need to find a way to compensate for this...

Yea terodil I actually am on your side.  The primary problem in my eyes is manpower is very different among the different races when it comes to offense and defense.  

Playing vodyani good luck being able to generate enough manpower to take on endless pirates, and the modules are a neccecity.  Same goes when attacking a unfallen hw early in the game, you can not win without a siege module to help you along your way.  

Manpower itself also can be completely lost on accident (ever flown over a system being invaded by accident and find your fleet at zero manpower?) 

And manpower problems also give the illusion of certain things being too strong, a example would be somebody starts invading a vaulters system.  They can then portal over after your invasion has begun, with ships now at zero manpower, and simply take them over with boarding pods, giving them the appearence of being OP when in most situations they are not.

I'd like to see a way to lock manpower to a fleet so you get your choice as to when to deploy, and the percentage you wish to deploy.  While slowing the pace of the siege module would also be nice, but its one of those items that is too fast early game, too slow late game.  Also a siege module's ability to function and how much manpower its pulling off of a system is in direct relation to that systems ability to create manpower, so with manpower heavy races the ONLY way to beat them is to seige them fully then invade.

I don't know where the fix is, it could be in scaling siege modules like weapons? 

Dragar wrote:

Agreed. Manpower/invasions mechanics are quickly made redundant by Titanium A2S slugs.

This could be addressed by increasing base ship invasion values and reducing the value of the slugs. Many times a single module on a single ship is as powerful as an entire fleet at defensive manpower reduction. These slugs should compliments, not overshadow. For people who want that high level of bang, Adamantium and Orichalcix A2S Slugs could be added to later stages of the tech tree.

It should never take 30 normal turns for a moderate-sized fleet to seige an average system from max to zero.

Whatever the strenght of the module it will always be a problem if they just stack.

I mean that if you reduce damage from 30 to 5 for example then you just need to stack more ships and it is a lineral trend that is easy.

What would be better is to have attack power grow logaritmically. Maybe like the defence modules.

In this way adding more and more ships with slugs will have less and less of an impact.

This way you will never have fleets that just remove all manpower in a single turn but you would still be able to reduce it to 0 if you wait long enough.

The only reason people even make specialized invasion fleets is because the base invasion rate is so ridiculously slow compared to the A2G modules.

Mhh, excuse me if i'm talking heresy but is it a bad thing that a fleet specifically designed for one job does that job efficiently?

Is it bad game design when good planning (in this case good fleet composition) results in success?

Would it be better if any ship was just good at everything by default and only the total number of ships made a difference?

I personally think it's a good thing that you need to bring specialized assault fleets if you want to reliably and quickly take over enemy systems. That way we have to make choices, do we need invasion fleets or simply combat ships to defend our territory? How big an army can we afford knowing we need different ships for different jobs and possibly need several fleets to sucessfully invade enemies?

I also think it's a good thing that we have several (well, actually 2) options to invade enemy systems, either by bringing lots of troops or with special sieging fleets. This allows different races with different manpower generation to use different tools. When i played Hissho recently i didn't even bother with Titanium Slugs (they have a different name with the DLC), i assembled 2 full transport fleets that could move anywhere and drop tons of troops and those could take any syetem apart from citadel defended in 1-2 turns of ground battle and still had enough MP to do several planets in a row. For citadel defended systems i had to battle for 4-5 turns. Now, playing as Vodyani i sure wouldn't have had that MP to spare and probably would have resorted to the slugs. They have advantaged and disadvantages as already explained.

Just because something is too efficient against the AI doesn't mean it's too powerful. The AI is (still) rather bad on the military front, as every 4x AI i've played against is, even thought it's getting better. As an example, i was surprised during that Hissho game when the UE who had declared war on me a looooong time before and i always dominated without ever totally conquering (as i was too busy doing nothing useful) suddenly showed at my door with 2 large hero-led fleets after being quiet for some time. They actually managed to stop the skirmishes they consistently lost long enough to assemble real fleets that packed quite a punch. It wasn't enough to break through my Citadel defended frontier system but it was a nice change from what i used to see in this game and others where the AI is brain-dead when their initial invasion fails. Anyway, it's still pretty bad at managing combat on several fronts and often leaves it's systems badly defended when it goes on the offensive allowing easy invasions by non-combat fleets, making those specialized fleets seem stronger then they really are.

That being said, if really you don't like the idea of winning systems simply by keeping a fleet in orbit for a few turns, i think the best "fix" would be to have defensive improvements (at least those like Bunkers and Shields) make some of the system's MP unsiegeable like Citadels do. This way while still making invasion easier and faster, slugs wouldn't totally make MP irrelevent which i think, is the core of the issue as it's hard to imagine being able to invade a system without having at least some combat on the surface (apart from surrender, but that's already an option).

LordYanaek wrote:

The only reason people even make specialized invasion fleets is because the base invasion rate is so ridiculously slow compared to the A2G modules.

Mhh, excuse me if i'm talking heresy but is it a bad thing that a fleet specifically designed for one job does that job efficiently?

Is it bad game design when good planning (in this case good fleet composition) results in success?

Would it be better if any ship was just good at everything by default and only the total number of ships made a difference?

I personally think it's a good thing that you need to bring specialized assault fleets if you want to reliably and quickly take over enemy systems. That way we have to make choices, do we need invasion fleets or simply combat ships to defend our territory? How big an army can we afford knowing we need different ships for different jobs and possibly need several fleets to sucessfully invade enemies?

I also think it's a good thing that we have several (well, actually 2) options to invade enemy systems, either by bringing lots of troops or with special sieging fleets. This allows different races with different manpower generation to use different tools. When i played Hissho recently i didn't even bother with Titanium Slugs (they have a different name with the DLC), i assembled 2 full transport fleets that could move anywhere and drop tons of troops and those could take any syetem apart from citadel defended in 1-2 turns of ground battle and still had enough MP to do several planets in a row. For citadel defended systems i had to battle for 4-5 turns. Now, playing as Vodyani i sure wouldn't have had that MP to spare and probably would have resorted to the slugs. They have advantaged and disadvantages as already explained.

Just because something is too efficient against the AI doesn't mean it's too powerful. The AI is (still) rather bad on the military front, as every 4x AI i've played against is, even thought it's getting better. As an example, i was surprised during that Hissho game when the UE who had declared war on me a looooong time before and i always dominated without ever totally conquering (as i was too busy doing nothing useful) suddenly showed at my door with 2 large hero-led fleets after being quiet for some time. They actually managed to stop the skirmishes they consistently lost long enough to assemble real fleets that packed quite a punch. It wasn't enough to break through my Citadel defended frontier system but it was a nice change from what i used to see in this game and others where the AI is brain-dead when their initial invasion fails. Anyway, it's still pretty bad at managing combat on several fronts and often leaves it's systems badly defended when it goes on the offensive allowing easy invasions by non-combat fleets, making those specialized fleets seem stronger then they really are.

That being said, if really you don't like the idea of winning systems simply by keeping a fleet in orbit for a few turns, i think the best "fix" would be to have defensive improvements (at least those like Bunkers and Shields) make some of the system's MP unsiegeable like Citadels do. This way while still making invasion easier and faster, slugs wouldn't totally make MP irrelevent which i think, is the core of the issue as it's hard to imagine being able to invade a system without having at least some combat on the surface (apart from surrender, but that's already an option).

Yes. It is bad. The whole module setup seems designed to avoid the attack fleet/invasion fleet problem of ES1. If that is the original intent, this specific module completely breaks it.

Abrasax wrote:

Mhh, excuse me if i'm talking heresy but is it a bad thing that a fleet specifically designed for one job does that job efficiently?

Yes. It is bad. The whole module setup seems designed to avoid the attack fleet/invasion fleet problem of ES1. If that is the original intent, this specific module completely breaks it.

I agree with LordYanaek here. I like specialisation, it increases strategic depth. There is a good reason why the rock-paper-scissors-principle can be found in so many games.

Why do you think that it's bad? I've got the feeling that you dislike something else that's more specific but that you tie it to the issue of specialisation, which needn't necessarily be warranted.

I was thinking... maybe you can tie manpower into draw essence for Vodyani? This way those modules won't become obsolete when you have 3+ arks, and your fleets can replenish their manpower when fighting in foreign territory (also gives you an incentive to put such a module on your ships instead of making a leecher only one for essence).

Then early pirates won't be impossible on endless diff, you can make some defenders paired with figthers that can orbit the pirate lair and drain it down while reinforcing your manpower as you lay siege / ground battles to punish the lumeris errr I mean the vaulters priva... err no the pirates, damn those pirates the unfaithful shall be purged!

Anelyn wrote:

I was thinking... maybe you can tie manpower into draw essence for Vodyani? This way those modules won't become obsolete when you have 3+ arks, and your fleets can replenish their manpower when fighting in foreign territory (also gives you an incentive to put such a module on your ships instead of making a leecher only one for essence).

Then early pirates won't be impossible on endless diff, you can make some defenders paired with figthers that can orbit the pirate lair and drain it down while reinforcing your manpower as you lay siege / ground battles to punish the lumeris errr I mean the vaulters priva... err no the pirates, damn those pirates the unfaithful shall be purged!

A good idea. Their basic conscription is based on Essence to Manpower conversion. Perhaps a 10% conversion rate for Essence instead of food should be standard for Vodyani. Patriot Pills and Exotic Rations could be changed according for Vodyani specifically to give more control over which systems are used for higher Essence conversion?

Also, the Unfallen, if their Vineship is taken out swiftly, can be isolated to a single system and dispatched rather quickly, and a few Leechers can draw Essence from Koyasil as a side bonus.

But I like trees! :D I wouldn't do it to them! But Horatio on the other side.... they are the ideal stock for fuel (all clones ya know!)

Just so you all know, there are Vodyani manpower changes in the testing phase. If you want to test them out for yourselves and possibly provide feedback, you can enable them for your games by using the dev-made G2G Balance mod.

Touko wrote:

Just so you all know, there are Vodyani manpower changes in the testing phase. If you want to test them out for yourselves and possibly provide feedback, you can enable them for your games by using the dev-made G2G Balance mod.

If I enable this, will it bug my current saves? I mean I don't want to mess up my games in progress with various factions after struggling through endless begining :)

Yeah I had to ask because getting past the early game on endless speed is like ~3 hours experience (if you are like me and play it RPG style for maximum immersion, and not clicking / rightlicking when you discover a new system, skipping notifications / diplomacy pop-ups etc, reading all quest through) :) I guess I would make a bad tester hehe!

So is the only thing slugs keeping from getting nerfed the problem with the vodyani not being able to utilize enough manpower? And falling of too much without slugs? 

What exactly are the changes you are speaking of, Touko?

I wanna play a game, where manpower is an important rescource not just something that can easily become redundant because of one technologie

There are more problems with Vodyani than just this one. Riftborn also greatly suffer early to mid game from lack of manpower (after that it becomes a non-issue once you have 1-2 systems that produce decent industry and you complete a faction quest).

But the problem is really only in early to mid game, after that all factions can generate manpower to their desire (obviously more standard factions do it passively due to their insane food generation, while riftborn & vodyani have to invest in creating it).

Mb Vodyani and Riftborn could get a slightly different version of Drone Networks that'll give 10 manpower and 10 industry instead of food? And like have some other food improvements slightly altered? Like it was with Hissho.

mamarider wrote:

Mb Vodyani and Riftborn could get a slightly different version of Drone Networks that'll give 10 manpower and 10 industry instead of food? And like have some other food improvements slightly altered? Like it was with Hissho.

Without Drone Networks like 75% of your starts are basically automatic losses since you'll lose your first population to starvation before you ever build a drone network. Remove that and you'll never have any population until a third of the way through the game.

That being said we're probably getting passive essence -> manpower soon

IMHO the simplest fix for Vodyani would be to have gargantuan kick in for pops greater than 1. This will ensure that you will never lose your only pop no matter of the start, but you still have to grealtly emphasis food production before deciding to build a 2nd pop.

I don't like that change because then you end up with the wonderful "Pop grows then dies the following turn" spiral. A spiral I hate in general but which is exaggerated for gargantuan population.

There's a bunch of fixes depending on what you think the problem is exactly

1) The problem is pop growth requirements being unaffected by difficulty. Affect them by difficulty.

2) The problem is gargantuan population's negative being too strong. Change the negative i na way to make it less problematic (Population requires 2x the food to grow or population consumes double food).

3) The problem is Shipbound heavily reducing emphasis on food production. Solution is to decouple pop growth from food production (its based on essesnce anyway). Food can be repurposed to be useful in another way (Manpower, Happiness Bonus, etc)

4) The problem is population growth mechanics. Solution is to tweak growth mechanics to be more forgiving at low population and less fgorgiving at high population.

Honestly I'd combine 3+4.