Buildable Orbital System Defenses

Wow, again, you are completely over thinking it.  As I said in my response again:

"insert something into the lore saying these stations have powerful technologies (tractors, powerful electronic countermeasures, whatever) that prevents hostile ships from approaching, targeting or even navigating to planets in the system, forcing a confrontation with these stations before hostile ships can begin invasion operations."

Meaning hostiles need to go to the station and deal with the station first or they can't even see where they are going nor target planets.  Rendering the issues you are worrying about moot.  And before you go off with another complex over analyzation of how that won't work and the mechanics of electronic warfare etc.  I'll simply say this.  It's a game dude.  You have to suspend disbelief at least to a certain extent, or you have the wrong hobby.

+1
Space battle stations so usefull!

i dont get it why its unrealistic. just make it so that each planet has 1 station/thing near it (or 10 , or 100 stations) , the station would defend the planets, not empty space

There's been a lot of good ideas in the comments so far, personally I like the idea of another manpower use being System Defense Craft and having it act like milita from EL. It gives a point to keep Admin heroes ships upgraded and to take fleet upgrades when you inevitably run out of system, plus it make manpower more important especially in the early game. And it means in a pinch you can convert pop to manpower to scramble some defenses together.

I would also like to suggest that there could be another wonder for system defense, fluff it as a concrete endless system defense mega structure (I love mega structures in Sci Fi) hidden in a pocket dimension that your empire has managed to reactivate around the system. If you want you could restrict it to systems with a unique planet.

I like the idea, but the game can already do that as providing defensives ships orbiting.

Maybe it just need to research some new ships called like "orbital station", or thing like that. Eventualy this station is very strong, but with a bad movement, and adding to that a x0.5 movement multiplier.

Hi there, I like this idea a lot, but some made good critisism about it, so this is my idea : we could build different types of spatial defenses effective in an entire system, but instead of some usual assets in battles it could add a "special effect" effective in every battle in this system, like those planned (the conditions affecting the arena, like storm etc). Ultimately a bonus for the defenser ships depending of the platform you choosed, like bonus on shields, a small volley of missiles at the start of each phase, some bonus fighters backup, a little income on every ship destroyed here etc.

Oh, I think it'd work against even middle-weight fleets - the stuff that might be sent out to blockade secopndary systems, while the truly big "main combatant" fleets move on the first-order targets for outright invasion.

Those big fleets would roll over the local forces, but either they would have to use bigger (and fewer) secondary-blockade fleets, OR, would need a significant technological edge for the secondary fleets to be able to handle those local forces.

...

As with all kinds of warfighting strategies, on both sides it's a matter of attrition: which side's economy can handle the needs of war better than the other side?  :)

pax368 wrote:

I agree with a lot of people on this thread that fixed defenses do not work well on the scale of a solar system, they only really make sense when defending against troop landings, but we already have the manpower system and system improvements that cause damage and fortify the system against attack.

The real reason people want a system defense option is you do not want to build and park a fleet around each of your systems to stop pesky leechers, scout ships and smaller pirates from harassing you.

For this you really need mobile defense forces, but that does not mean they have to be hyper-capable.

Having a new ship class that was not hyper capable and you could customize would be far too cumbersome and require a lot of development time.

A more elegant solution would be to use an upgrade system like is used for your troops, tanks and surface defense aircraft in the manpower screen.

Here is how I envision a system like this would play out:

- On the Manpower screen there is one more line for System Defense Craft (SDC). Upgrades to these craft could be unlocked either by Era or new technologies, but would have flat increases in stats, no customization (for development reasons). 

- The System Level and/or CP cap would determine how many SDC you could have. Ex: CP Cap is 4, you can have 4 SDC, or maybe SDC are really only half a CP and you get 8. Or Systems that are level 1 would get one squadron of 12 SDC, Level 2 could get 3 Sqaudrons, Level 3 could get 6 Squadrons etc. The numbers do not matter, just the balance.

-These defenses would not be meant to really stop an incoming invasion. For an example, a couple of squadrons X-Wings can stop a single Star Destroyer, but you would lose a LOT of the X-Wings in the process. So stopping a large pirate fleet should probably wipe out your SDC, and would need to be rebuilt, so they could not take successive attacks.

-If your system has a Hero as System Administrator, it only makes sense for him to lead the defense. This would give a reason to keep your System Admin Heroes ships updated and to maybe choose some of the combat skills even for a System Admin hero.

One current balance problem is how to replenish your SDC, this could be done with a repeatable turn by turn build like Exotic Rations or static generation just from manpower. It is hard to say which because the Devs have said the manpower system is getting reworked.

Good proposition. It's like militia from EL, but working only agains the small annoying fleets.

I agree with a lot of people on this thread that fixed defenses do not work well on the scale of a solar system, they only really make sense when defending against troop landings, but we already have the manpower system and system improvements that cause damage and fortify the system against attack.

The real reason people want a system defense option is you do not want to build and park a fleet around each of your systems to stop pesky leechers, scout ships and smaller pirates from harassing you.

For this you really need mobile defense forces, but that does not mean they have to be hyper-capable.

Having a new ship class that was not hyper capable and you could customize would be far too cumbersome and require a lot of development time.

A more elegant solution would be to use an upgrade system like is used for your troops, tanks and surface defense aircraft in the manpower screen.

Here is how I envision a system like this would play out:

- On the Manpower screen there is one more line for System Defense Craft (SDC). Upgrades to these craft could be unlocked either by Era or new technologies, but would have flat increases in stats, no customization (for development reasons). 

- The System Level and/or CP cap would determine how many SDC you could have. Ex: CP Cap is 4, you can have 4 SDC, or maybe SDC are really only half a CP and you get 8. Or Systems that are level 1 would get one squadron of 12 SDC, Level 2 could get 3 Sqaudrons, Level 3 could get 6 Squadrons etc. The numbers do not matter, just the balance.

-These defenses would not be meant to really stop an incoming invasion. For an example, a couple of squadrons X-Wings can stop a single Star Destroyer, but you would lose a LOT of the X-Wings in the process. So stopping a large pirate fleet should probably wipe out your SDC, and would need to be rebuilt, so they could not take successive attacks.

-If your system has a Hero as System Administrator, it only makes sense for him to lead the defense. This would give a reason to keep your System Admin Heroes ships updated and to maybe choose some of the combat skills even for a System Admin hero.

One current balance problem is how to replenish your SDC, this could be done with a repeatable turn by turn build like Exotic Rations or static generation just from manpower. It is hard to say which because the Devs have said the manpower system is getting reworked.

he problem is when you bend things TOO FAR, you lose the suspension of disbelief necessary for immersion.  And in my case, thus, necessary for enjoyment.

ValhallasAshes wrote:

Wow, again, you are completely over thinking it.  As I said in my response again:

The problem, IMO, is that you are underthinking it.

"insert something into the lore saying these stations have powerful technologies (tractors, powerful electronic countermeasures, whatever) that prevents hostile ships from approaching, targeting or even navigating to planets in the system, forcing a confrontation with these stations before hostile ships can begin invasion operations."

Fine.  Big stations, able to prevent my ships from getting close to your planets.  Great.

I fall back on the Oort cloud, strap engines to a million large chunks of rock and ice, and start playing Orbital Pinball as described in my original post.  I'll get them all up to, say, 60% or 70% of lightspeed.  Then, I can either:

1. Aim them at those stations, blowing them away without ever coming in range of their "powerful technologies" myself.  even if only one tenth of one percent of each salvo actually hits it's target, five or ten thousand rocks means I'm going to get at least the ONE single hit I need, at those energy levels, to absolutely 100% guarantee a kill on anything smaller than a dwarf planet.
2. Aim them at the planet, for the same effect, then just sail away and leave those stations to die of starvation and lack of spare parts.

Planets and large stations, after all, cannot dodge.  Accuracy will be >90% for each rock.

And in neither case do I need to "go to the station" - hell, I'm never coming within a light-hour of a SINGLE ONE of them.

Meaning hostiles need to go to the station and deal with the station first or they can't even see where they are going nor target planets.

That's not how the laws of physics work.  All I need to target those planets with a good old-fashioned dinosaur killer, is a telescope, my own eyeballs, and a slide-rule.

...

Like I said: anti-invasion stuff, I'm on board with.  That DOES mean the enemy has to come close to the planet - they have to LAND TROOPS, after all.

But stopping a blockade?  You'd need to cover a shell a couple light-WEEKS in radius.  That would probably take more matter to build that many stations, than exists in that solar system ... including the star.  Keep in mind that ES2 is a science fiction game, not fantasy like EL.  IT has to be at least somewhat grounded in science that is at least somewhat plausibly believable.

Not a bad idea, but this feels like another layer of the shipbuilding mechanic that the game might not need. The combat system is already based on range and how you approach your opponent's fleet. Stationary defences would be at an immediate disadvantage because they can't move like that and gain the bonuses for certain manoeuvres. Depending on the range of the station's weapon(s), they'd have to have some kind of static buff. Also, it takes people to run stations, so losing them would have to mean you'd lose some Manpower too. They'd also probably have upkeep just like ships, but at that point, they're basically just tougher ships that can't move; you could simulate the same thing by making a class of ship with weak, inexpensive engines and decking it out with better weapons and armour.

I'm just spitballing, though. This could very well be a good idea, like the Starbases in Sins of a Solar Empire, but this is just my two cents on it.

Seems I didn't get my point across well enough: the problem isn't the power of the weapons, it's the volume the weapons must cover.

To quote Douglas Adams,

Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space.

Seriously, that weapons-ring I posited?  160,000,000km is far enough across, that it would take a laser beam almost TEN MINUTES to cross it (one light-minute is 17.99 million kilometers).  Things like missiles and cannon rounds, even if they achieved an astonishing velocity, would take hours to cross that gulf.  And even then, that ring would be comprised of trillions of bigger-than-a-dreadnaught stations and weapons platforms.  If it wasn't totally automated (and got help youif it decides the moon is actually a hostile enemy ship!!), you'd need more than the entire adult population of an entire well-settled star system just to crew them all.

And yet, something like 80% of the volume of our solar system would be out of range for those superweapons.

Absolute, total interdiction of an entire solar system isn't going to happen, not with how weapons are shown to work in ES2, I'm sorry.  A shell around each habitable world, maybe fifteen or twenty light-seconds out, I can see.  Building things that fire at ships actually attempting to land troops, yes, I'm 100% behind that.  But if the enemy fleet is content to stooge around in the outer system, and just intercept freighters, passenger ships, and so forth ... you need your own fleet to be able to go after them.  IOW, a simple blockade or seige ... no "orbital defenses" are going to help against that.

:)

The problem with orbital defenses is .... they might be able to help against a ground invasion, where the goal is to conquer rather than merely destroy.  But, "destroy" becomes child's play at the tech levels of this game.  And there's really no way to build defenses, short of a system-encompassing impenetrible shield of invincibility (which would ruin the whole game on it's own).  Really, there isn't.

Let's look at our own solar system. Let's say we've got Earth, and we have a double-ring of weapons platforms (one 5,000,000 km above, and one 5,000,000 km below, Earth's orbit - so our world is always equally covered, anywhere around the Sun). We'll further endow them with a range of about 160,000,000 km (Earth's mean orbital radius is 149,600,000 km, so there's plenty of overlap over the solar poles), and functionally perfect accuracy across their entire range. At any given point in the covered volume of space, guns numbering what no less than two hundred of ES2's best hulls carry, can fire onto whatever target they like, all at once, with functionally infinite ammunition stocks.

The outer edge of the covered ring is ~310,000,000 km from the centerpoint of our solar system, and that means Mars (and Venus, and Mercury) are quite well covered too, as it's mean orbital radius is about 228,000,000 km - ships would have to get 82,000,000 km inside the system-defense ring's effective range, which means they're getting melted.

So far, so good, right?

Well, here's the hole in that setup: the asteroid belt is ~945,000,000 km out, over six hundred and thirty million kilometers "out of range". PLENTY of distance in which to build up a new vector, at positively planet-shattering (and I mean that literally) speeds. And I mean, BIG stuff ... like the dwarf planet Ceres, not just little car-sized pebbles.  And a big enough fleet could manage to do that to tens of thousands of suitable mountain-sized rocks, simultaneously. Coat the asteroids with a nice radar-absorbent material, and a coat of simple black paint, and shut the engines off before they get halfway fro the belt to the outer limit of the ring's weaponry, and the odds are very good that many of them would gt through every defense, and ..... remember when I said "planet-shattering", up above?

Yeah. That.

Oh, and: including the asteroid belt in your covered area (you'd have to build a second pair of defensive rings, pretty much right on top of the asteroid belt's mean orbital radius) would only mean that the invaders had to move out to the Oort Cloud to get their dinosaur-killers.

...

The only reason ground combat is even possible, is because we're trying to take those planets over with their infrastructure largely intact.  Honestly, once you control the orbits over a planet, there's nothing the people down below can do to prevent you from eliminating every last one of them, if you wanted to (and the game allowed it).

Cool, that clarifies a lot. The reason I was asking is because I have been thinking about space stations not purely as defensive structures, but also as places for habitation in locations (such as gas giants or asteroid belts) that you aren't able to currently colonize. 

With this idea, would the space stations be holding population? Or would they be just used for military purposes? 

After watching few let's play's on youtube, the idea of constructing space stations, mining stations on those asteroid belts etc. seems very appealing. Very good idea in my opinion.

In the current game the voydanis are the only one who have "solid space stations " (Aka ark, damn big space stations ^^).

indeed an ark that is anchored would work the same as a space station. I think we could then have a tech that allow every faction to build space stations they would be like achored arks (meaning ships with 0 movement, bound to the system that built them). And like arks we could give them support module to help with FIDSI or make them full military. The voydanis having already their arks would instead get an upgrade to them as after 10 turns thearks can become quite easy to wreak 

Nope, same idea, just a different approach.  Or may be better if they use a combination of our approaches.

First of all, I think your system for "basic" system defenses is better than mine and I think it could be scaled throughout an empire relatively easily and for fairly cheap/moderate costs to build and maintain from an approach point of view.  Allowing all systems to at least have some basic orbital defense capabilities.  But also, if balanced right, could allow for varying degrees of buildable defenses across the campaign map system locations between minimal, moderate and heavily defended systems via means other than by simply whether or not you have ships in system and how many ships.  I also actually like your concept of building planet ground based missile silos better than my original pitch for having them as orbital platforms.  This concept could also work by making the fighter hangers I proposed ground based as well, as the fighters would be able to provide in-system orbital defense as well as play into the air support mechanic for ground battles that already appears to be blocked out in ground invasions, but we haven't seen the actual units for yet.  These ground based defensive structures just make more sense as they would logically be easier to build and cheaper to maintain allowing more systems to have at least basic defenses (or stronger) for both ground and space.  And would play into the already existing game mechanics, as well as the mechanics you proposed for how they could work.  Although I would point out, that I think they already have items in systems specifically for increasing manpower such as bunkers.  If I remember right, the bunkers tooltip simply states that it increases system manpower by 50.  And if you look in the system view, there is a listing for system manpower.  But currently, I think their only use is for resistance to land invasions.  So I think your idea in that regard, would be more of an expansion to that already existing manpower mechanic rather than an addition by expanding it to account for orbital engagements as well.

I do however worry about how this mechanic could negatively impact blockades though.  Where, when you're not actually attacking a system, but rather simply blockading it.  I don't think fleets that are simply blockading a system should incur this turn based resistance damage.  In which case I would propose a new button option being added to fleets actions.  Keep the one for blockading a system, but also add another one specifically to put your fleets into siege mode.  This would also play into your concept for turn based planetary bombardments weakening a systems defenses over the course of several turns.  This would make a lot more sense to me.

The part of my idea that I think should remain is the Battle station as I've outlined over the course of this thread.  It should be a separate entity locked to the system and should have to be destroyed in a space battle instance before system sieges/invasions can begin.  It should be a super-structure, powerful, and expensive to build and maintain so (even if you wanted to) nobody could afford to build one in every system (This is where so many games get it wrong and ends up turning wars into a slog rather than being fun).  Forcing  players to use these super-structures strategically adding a lot of strategic depth to the campaign map and gameplay, not only for defense but also in an offensive war.  You could put one at a natural choke point, giving you a strong defensible location.  You could, if used in conjunction with this guys idea (https://www.games2gether.com/endless-space-2/ideas/13-space-shipyard) use it to defend your primary shipyards.  You could use one to bolster the defenses of one of your major economic hubs (where if lost, could seriously hurt your empire).  And this is just from the defensive point of view.  Then you've got the offensive point of view.  Where you would no longer be able to just steamroll through system after system.  You now would have to choose your incursions more carefully.  Do you take out this system over here or do you go for the jugular and hit his shipyards, putting a big dent in his war machine.  Whereas before he would just have the same defenses as every other system, with the super-structure as well, you now have to think, I may need a bigger force to take that thing out.  Maybe I should blockade this system over here as well to prevent him from bringing in reinforcements while I deal this thing.  This is the kind of depth I'm looking for on the strategic map, and your part of the idea, plays beautifully into that as well.

In every one of the best space war movies/shows, there's always been that seminal victory or defense scene.  That all important strategic location that could make or break a war campaign for both sides.  They're thrilling to watch.  And in games thrilling to take part in, but have always been heavily scripted events and as a result never really been replicated in a dynamic way in strategy games.  But, I think using a combination of your idea and mine, could actually naturally add this kind of thrill to ES2's gameplay mechanics in a very dynamic way.  I also really like the other aspects of your approach as well.

So no, I don't consider it a completely different idea.  Just a different approach toward the same goal.  But that's what I see these comment sections as for, in the idea thread.  For the community to come together and expand and refine the idea into a solid concept as a group cooperative.  So yeah, keep those thoughts coming.

N.N.Thoughts wrote:

It's also been discussed on the forums here: https://www.games2gether.com/endless-space-2/forum/65-general/thread/20781-passive-space-defenses?page=2#thread so there is definitely a lot of interest in having system technologies augmenting space battles happening in that system's orbit.

Thanks for the heads up.  I've posted in that thread letting them know about this thread.  Hopefully some of them will join and contribute.

It's also been discussed on the forums here: https://www.games2gether.com/endless-space-2/forum/65-general/thread/20781-passive-space-defenses?page=2#thread so there is definitely a lot of interest in having system technologies augmenting space battles happening in that system's orbit.

Sorry for the double-post (and now triple post).  It seems the thread tools are bugged.  I can't edit a post once submitted, and now it also won't let me delete my first posted response because it contains a typo I fixed with the second response.  Sorry.

All really good points.  I did think the same about the stationary issue, which is why I thought they would need to be strong and powerful due to their lack of movement (or if as you said, Sins Vasari style, but I don't know if that would work for this game) and account for their high expense.  I also wondered about how it would work considering everything is mainly looked at from a system level rather than a planetary level, so for it to work, you would think you would want one around each planet or at each access point to the system, but then you get muddled up between multiple stations,  how would that work etc.  The only thing I could think of to kill all birds with one stone is to maybe make a special system project (not specialization since those are planetary level) and then insert something into the lore saying these stations have powerful technologies (tractors, whatever) that prevents hostile ships from approaching planets in the system, forcing a confrontation with the stations.  That would make more sense, allow you to ignore trajectories, planetary orbital positions (logic muddling issues etc.) and allow it to be implemented fairly easily.  The idea behind this is give players more defensive options and add more strategic depth to wars.  Especially since the way the star system navigation setup is perfect for this kind of feature, if we can find a way to implement it in a logical manner.  Hope this helps.