SABA wrote:
mash all the people to goo and make grease, to lube their parts

Hey check out my new lubricant, it's "organic"... I'm definitely going to play that race

yup... scale has always been my annoyance with planet takeovers. How do 6.. or 600 or even 6000 marines, interceptors or pick your Mech unit type quell an entire native population?

With big and nasty guns, well at least nastier than the planet you are invading's guns. 6000 is plenty if the opponent only has 4000.



And yes, you will always have to use a bit of imagination regarding scale. You wouldn't want to go through umpteen different battles for every city a planet might have. You just want to defeat them militarily. 1 battle with all the planets military forces and then its over one way or the other.

Well a 4x Game is about the big picture, not about the micro-management, I think.



Keep in mind that he, who controls the space around the planet can blast you to oblivion if need be... means that the need for troops is rather on the low side.

Perhaps as a must for occupation, one could have an obligation to have a small fleet orbiting the planet for a certain number of turns, till assimilation is complete.

SABA wrote:
With big and nasty guns, well at least nastier than the planet you are invading's guns. 6000 is plenty if the opponent only has 4000.



And yes, you will always have to use a bit of imagination regarding scale. You wouldn't want to go through umpteen different battles for every city a planet might have. You just want to defeat them militarily. 1 battle with all the planets military forces and then its over one way or the other.

Yes, if the owner of the planet is able to get superiority in the space overhead, it could just bomb the invasion forces to scrap.

Sharidann wrote:
Well a 4x Game is about the big picture, not about the micro-management, I think.



Keep in mind that he, who controls the space around the planet can blast you to oblivion if need be... means that the need for troops is rather on the low side.

Perhaps as a must for occupation, one could have an obligation to have a small fleet orbiting the planet for a certain number of turns, till assimilation is complete.

What woudl be interesting are options : when you invade, the game calculates how much time is needed, then you can shorten that length with deadly weapons. But at the cost of livability and population you get.

For instance you have 1000 pop to subdue, and 1000 Military Power It would take 10 turns. If you want to do it in 9 turns you'll kill 10% of the pop and the planet will have it's growth halved for 10 turns. If you want to get it in 8 turns, you'll kill 20% of the population and you'll get half growth for 20 turns, etc.

VieuxChat wrote:
What woudl be interesting are options : when you invade, the game calculates how much time is needed, then you can shorten that length with deadly weapons. But at the cost of livability and population you get.

For instance you have 1000 pop to subdue, and 1000 Military Power It would take 10 turns. If you want to do it in 9 turns you'll kill 10% of the pop and the planet will have it's growth halved for 10 turns. If you want to get it in 8 turns, you'll kill 20% of the population and you'll get half growth for 20 turns, etc.

Of course the already installed planetary infrastructure gets damaged worse than by "just" invading. There should be a chance for every interesting building to become scrapped, depending on your brutality..

Exactly. One little ship might kill the home fleet with tech but a fear of rebellion should require a fleet to control.



Plus I hated the sotse (tho I understand) bomb the home planet and all the surrounding installations shut down.

I do wonder whether the Cravers would even be interested in preserving any population of planets they invade. Their primary interest is in the resources - dust / Endless remains which they consume, so they probably wouldn't even care if things are in one piece or smashed during warfare. IDK. maybe they can use the population as slave labor or for scientific experiments or something (mash all the people to goo and make grease, to lube their parts). (Apologies to the squeamish)

The cravers could choose to kill everyone and get as much Dust as the population killed (with the proper tech for sure).

yup... scale has always been my annoyance with planet takeovers. How do 6.. or 600 or even 6000 marines, interceptors or pick your Mech unit type quell an entire native population?



that many couldnt even take over New York! (or Paris for u Frenchie types)



Perhaps it's better to leave it abstract if a sense of realistic depth is desired. but... yeah I still want it

Environmentally friendly too!

SABA wrote:
Environmentally friendly too!

absolutely, well it could be sort of biohazardous if handled inappropriately, due to its origin, but if you do that to dozens of planets you start perfecting the tech

Off topic I know but all this got me thinking about the Cravers... yeah for these guys who cares about ground combat? they do not need you or your planet alive.



Wow. nothing left behind so no danger of an uprising. no research without destruction so no stopping the expansion. no diplomacy worries so no issues with betrayal or loyalty. who are these guys!?



Cravers sound like a spreading stain of darkness through the Galaxy consuming everything in their path. In fact, once they perfect their Sun harvester even suns will wink out in their wake...



clearly i'm taking their race credo to an extreme but. how on earth do you keep a race wtih none of the physical/ethical constraints of a true civilization in check? Do they have a 'Genghis Khan' hero which keeps them focused outward who could potentially die? Is their lack of infrastructure limiting to their supply chain forcing them to expand from their homeworld in 'waves'?



Are these guys so pissed off at the Endless that they hate/devour everyone or, devoid of emotion, do they focus their destruction on certain race types?



Since they can only derive research/military points from conquest would it be reasonable to assume they would not learn a higher tech level than their 'victim'?



I just knoooooow the Craver backstory is gonna get more interesting as we start to explore their Raison d'être.



Now, if only they had cool HATS

maceman wrote:
Off topic I know but all this got me thinking about the Cravers... yeah for these guys who cares about ground combat? they do not need you or your planet alive.

No, but perhaps killing something with bombs is not as efficient for dust-gathering or they just miss the bloodcurding screams of their victims as they rip them apart...

maceman wrote:
clearly i'm taking their race credo to an extreme but. how on earth do you keep a race wtih none of the physical/ethical constraints of a true civilization in check? Do they have a 'Genghis Khan' hero which keeps them focused outward who could potentially die? Is their lack of infrastructure limiting to their supply chain forcing them to expand from their homeworld in 'waves'?

I think the common denominator is: "WE Waaaaaaaaaant DUSSSSSSSSSSSSSST!", you know? Think of the worst addictives in the universe. If heroes had some kind of control, they'd probably be the drug dealers equivalent of the cravers race. I can imagine it like: "See, people? You give me taxes, I show you the next nice dustcache. If you don't honor me, I'm going to let you go crazy with craving. Understood? Good almost brainless robot race. *pat pat*"

maceman wrote:
Are these guys so pissed off at the Endless that they hate/devour everyone or, devoid of emotion, do they focus their destruction on certain race types?

Robot race and emotion don't necessarily mix. We're not talking about no. 5 here, I imagine.

maceman wrote:
Since they can only derive research/military points from conquest would it be reasonable to assume they would not learn a higher tech level than their 'victim'?

I understood it, so far at least, in the way, that you get research points by conquest. It is not as if they'd just assimilate foreign technology. So you can still research the way you want to, but only if you kill sufficient numbers of victims for it.

maceman wrote:
I just knoooooow the Craver backstory is gonna get more interesting as we start to explore their Raison d'être.

Seconded.

maceman wrote:
Now, if only they had cool HATS

Robot heads > metallic hats!

I wonder if we can expect some kind of evolution in the Cravers in terms of changing behavioral pattern and developing more complex relationships with the other races. This could be something that becomes available through the tech tree or is activated by some notable galactic events... After all one of the key features mentioned in the Craver's description is their rapid evolution. Would we have a word in how this evolution goes though...

maceman wrote:
Are these guys so pissed off at the Endless that they hate/devour everyone or, devoid of emotion, do they focus their destruction on certain race types?

Lore says that they don't care about the Endless because they don't really know who they were (they were bombed to ston age or close to it by the endless, so no memories of what have been before). For now.

VieuxChat wrote:
Lore says that they don't care about the Endless because they don't really know who they were (they were bombed to ston age or close to it by the endless, so no memories of what have been before). For now.

Still



Nothing does nothing for no reason (see what I did there? triple negative! I think that reaffirms the nearly cancelled out double negative. or something)



I'm just waiting for Skamaks to drop a bomb and bring out the really outlandish races :P



til then I keep dreaming of Cravers in their massive ships shaped like yurts drinking salt tea. (mongolia is reeeeaaallly close by)

(mongolia is reeeeaaallly close by)

Are you sure they have enough hatz for you ?

I think time consuming ground combat would drag the game and make it too slow.I would only like see an abstracted system but with some depth to that abstraction like the MOO3.

Not a heck of a lot is mentioned on ground battles other than that there will be ground battles and they will involve heroes of a certain type for melee. As time goes by I am sure we will find out more.



I like your ideas, and agree, some good involvement with ground battles could add a nice extra flavor to the game.