Remove Manpower Composition Screen

I use infantry in order to preserve infrastructure and population.  In my mind, that was always the tradeoff -- having a min/maxed army composition may allow you to invade a system earlier, but going with infantry only puts you at a 'disadvantage' that sometimes requires you to delay your invasion and siege first to reduce enemy manpower first before commencing your invasion.

On the flip side, I like to think that since the AI sees me only using infantry, they stick to using infantry + tank compositions and are demotivated to use air units (have not verified).  I prefer this since air units are the worst offenders in terms of destroying infrastructure and population.

I don't think the gameplay is shallow enough to warrant removal.

-HP

Dragar wrote:

Edit: I've located the tooltips! However, the improvement destruction is typically a benefit, used to remove system defenses that otherwise damage your troops.

Which is why if I siege a system to reduce the manpower to a level where my infantry only army can win and keep all of the defenses intact, I no longer have to rebuild those defenses.  Furthermore, if the enemy tries to reclaim the system, now those very same defenses will work against them.  If I really want to min-max, I'll tune my army composition to be infantry only on the turns where I'm invading systems to keep the defenses intact, then flip them to be armor only on turns where I want to defend.  That being said, I usually keep even my defending army composition infantry only in order to prevent self damage to population/infrastructure (I haven't scientifically verified this).

Also note that the defenses which damage your troops output fixed damage.  For empires/minor factions/technologies that give bonuses to infantry health, you can observe that the percent of infantry troops lost during the bombardment phase is reduced due to their higher health.  That's why these traits are considered a positive -- it gives an empire an option to pursue 'surgical' invasions that minimize population/infrastructure damage.  Why is this meaningful?  Consider the following.

Riftborn can not be grown.  If I do surgical invasions of an enemy riftborn empire's systems, I can *preserve* twenty Riftborn population units.  Having twenty Riftborn population units gives my empire a 15% industry bonus to systems with a Riftborn population unit on it.  I can then transport those twenty Riftborn units away from those frontier systems I have captured and distribute them among my safer home planets giving all of them 15% industry bonuses.

This is the most extreme example, but it applies to population units in general.  It takes time to grow populations to hit the 20 and 50 unit bonuses.  If I invade an enemy frontier system and capture three of their population units, I can ship them individually to three different home systems so that they can start growing.  If I perform a sloppy invasion full of tanks and planes and kill off a population unit, I can now only ship them to two different systems reducing my population ramp up by 33%.

To state it another way, if you feel that population damage and infrastructure damage during an invasion is worthless enough to not consider, then growing population and building infrustructure must also be equally worthless.  I don't feel that way which is why I consider the troop composition mini game valuable enough to not simply throw out.  The devs don't have to devote any resources to it other than perhaps bug fixing (I haven't run into any), but I don't advocate gutting it.  I'm okay leaving it as it is.

-HP

You should post these comments in the otherwise silent thread on this topic. As it stands, nobody else has mentioned this at all.

I actually find this screen to be deep in the UI and in most cases 

TANKS > All else, I wouldn't mind to see this go completely.  Just tie ground combat to empire level, something simpler, this is a mechanic that is in game but isn't working as intended.

I do agree that situationally, they can be worked to your advantage, but I don't think the riftborn case as above is working as intended?

More and more, I am convinced all the choices HP describes above could just be folded into the ground-invasion choices (Blitz, Bombardment, etc.).

Removal of something is the last thing that the devs should do, I feel.

I'd have stronger interplay in army ratios to the actions taken.  So, I'd look to add to the Invasion system, like say attribute bonuses with different choices made to the composition of Armies (where some can be based on Faction strengths), and allow empires to be more diverse in how they relate to the available Choices, while also adding modified choices in the process.

Standard options could remain as:

• Bombardment is most destructive with a certain Ratio of Aircraft (more damage to manpower, population and improvements), and least effective with a high volume of Infantry (Soldiers could get caught in Friendly Fire from the Orbital Bombardment).
• Guerilla is most effective with a higher ratio of Infantry and least effective with Tanks (Infantry can better sweep and avoid getting trapped in kill zones, able to reduce enemy manpower faster, Tanks would take more damage as they get focused down with this tactic).
• Blitz is most effective with a high ration with tanks and least effective with Aircraft (Tanks are pushing through enemy ranks and Aircraft risk Friendly Fire incidents).

Then can have a few specialized sets like Cravers have:

• Extermination - replaces Bombardment with a tactic that focuses on Craver Infantry to slaugther manpower and population.
• Enslavement - replaces Guerilla that focuses on capturing manpower and population, sending civilian ships to the nearest Craver planet (think using Spaceport to move population, or a Curiosity Scan that grants a discovered population).
• Assault - replaces Blitz with a tactic where they only assault military targets and Defenders.

Vodyani are another Faction that I can see have something related to an Essense Leech.

• Bombardment - focus on destroying military improvements and defenders
• Essense Leech - focus on sapping Essense violently targeting defenders and population.
• Essense Purge - idea being that Essense is used to destroy Manpower and population, using Empire Essense.

The Unfallen can also see modified Invasion choices:

• Grow Celestial Vines - can target improvements and defenders, replacing Bombardment
• Take Root - begins to establish a Guardian that reduces enemy manpower, replacing Guerilla
• Disarmament -  Unfallen work to destroy weapons of war, looking to preserve life, sacrificing their own manpower in the process, replacing Blitz.

Hope these ideas relay what I mean as to how this system can be expanded on, with whats already there.

One issue I have with manpower distribution is that it's global.  It does reduce the clicks needed to micromanage each individual fleet, but it also makes it a "fire and forget" layer of the game.  90% of the time you'll just upgrade tanks and steamroll because other options are either not as good for countering or are so late in the tech tree that most can't afford to divert their research enough to get them.

One thing that in retrospect is surprising is that ships can just drop off all their manpower even with no troop modules with no consequences.  One might be forgiven for wondering how your fleets stay in operation when all their manpower is dumped on a system.

Here's a thought that may address the entire thing: require manpower modules for sieges and prevent ships from dropping all their base manpower.  Require a minimum of manpower for the ship to stay operational and function at full strength, then separate this portion from the rest.  All ships should require manpower to operate at full capacity, but then that same manpower shouldn't just be carelessly dropped on a planet because then who's flying the ships?  (Before you reply, I KNOW there's probably autopilot but they still can only do so much.)

The manpower modules would then take on a much greater significance and designing "dropships" filled with troops would go from an attractive, but superfluous option to a strong choice for invasions.  Ships that were previously good for space AND ground battles by virtue of their sheer size and inherent crew would now have an important choice to make--and important choices are a pillar of good gameplay, are they not?