reynanuy wrote:
I can't help but feel you haven't played many 4x space strategy games, pretty much all of them include some form of ground warfare. After reading your opening on "space rts games", it sure feels like you are coming from a SOASE like background and thus I can understand the point. However if you enjoy tactical space and ground battles, plus the strategy it comes from having them both available, you should really try out Star Wars: Empire at war. This game does everything you want and more, the only problem is that the other Xs are really limited.



Star system based defense systems? The range on those cannons would be "astronomical" ... LITERALLY I strongly agree on the inevitable ability of a species to destroy a planet, a star and even a whole star system if not more; however the plausibility of weapon systems of instant massive death across such distances is IMO too small to be relevant.







Not only that, but the ability to create a planet out of simple mass(debries, asteroids, etc) is also a very real posibility, implying that a creation can benefit a species as(if not more) much as destruction.







Neither forgotten nor seldom, SWR is one of my most beloved 4x games of all time. I break it out at least once a year, to play a couple of matches.

I did mention empire at war, it has one of the best space/ground implementations I've seen in "current gen" games. However, it's issue was a lack of depth, the ground and space battles were bother very generic and lacked any amount of deep strategy. I would say take that foundation and add depth, you could have some really cool invasions scenarios.

Ground troops are already part of the flavour and system defense buildings are the closest thing to space stations i'm interested in.

Maybe not total planet destruction, but the ability to degrade a planets habitable status temporarily from extensive attack.



If you were laying siege or bombarding a planet for a long time, it could eventually do something, like, render the planet bad for farming, or turn the atmosphere noxious, or destroy cities and reduce populations, if it's a garden world the forests a burning, etc.



Total destruction would encompass something like the planet being rendered uninhabitable for a set time, and all the buildings destroyed. This time could be anywhere from 5 minutes to half an hour, and so on. Extensive siege might also have a sort of terraforming effect, like taking the planet down to a desert world, a barren to a volcanic, etc. But that's just my two cents.

Great idea , then You should think twice if better for me is bombarding planet or invade it. Due to that when You would be invader You will consider if I want to destroy spices and planet or I want to take it with a little bit more difficulties. Whish that dev will consider this idea because is something fresh and really good would be to see that.

Maybe not total planet destruction, but the ability to degrade a planets habitable status temporarily from extensive attack.



If you were laying siege or bombarding a planet for a long time, it could eventually do something, like, render the planet bad for farming, or turn the atmosphere noxious, or destroy cities and reduce populations, if it's a garden world the forests a burning, etc.



Total destruction would encompass something like the planet being rendered uninhabitable for a set time, and all the buildings destroyed. This time could be anywhere from 5 minutes to half an hour, and so on. Extensive siege might also have a sort of terraforming effect, like taking the planet down to a desert world, a barren to a volcanic, etc. But that's just my two cents.

I've just sign in for just one reason - to write about planetary battles. I don't know why everyone when producing a space 4xstrategy game thinks that bigger is better - to command hundreds or thousands of ships, to manage hundreds of planets and stellar systems and so on - the bottom line is with every of the such new title - nothing new happens. If one wants to differentiate his/her game from others - planetary battle is answer.

Many people remember IG2's simple tactical planetary battles, perhaps because of wonderful scenery behind - remember the sky! Is it so complicated to have a few continents and oceans in every planet, a few strategic points such as major cities, mines, factories, or underground military or missile base, and very important one - shipyard, and dozen of different ground units with variable attributes - morale, experience, technical level of weaponry. Adding a leader for every of those units, whose career develops during the game, make the tactical game as simple as possible from the graphical point of view (check approach, i.e.), and I think you have a winner.

Of course, you can always blast those from the sky, but those action can result in bigger partisan/revolt factor, and loosing potentially precious industrial capabilities and natural resources of conquered planet. Adding the strategic scarce natural resource will make decision about entering the war with somebody more the necessity than the whim of a player.

Zep' wrote:
Keep in mind guys that they are just 14 people working on this title, so they might don't have the task force to do everything in time

This is true, however, even if this doesn't make it into the initial game, I'd love to see this kind of thing as an expansion, at the very least, if not getting the whole ground level stuff in at least see some planet/space interaction.

If you guys ever played the Twilight Imperium boardgame (3rd edition), you might remember that you could take control of enemy infrastuctures with spies. I think it would be a nice addition to have special units that would reduce the damage you cause on enemy buildings and stuff, so you can take them and start using them straight away.

This could be countered with just destroying your buildings before you're conquered, of course.

benzfilth wrote:
With planetary defense; could moons be used as some sort of defense platform for planets/systems. also could races create space bases similar to death star or perhaps a starfort type thing like the one shown here http://www.forgeworld.co.uk/Warhammer-40000/RAMILIES-CLASS-STARFORT.html. they could act as places where ships can be repaired, bonus to trade as well as a defense/weapons platform. Having a weapons system capable of destroying or seriously damaging a planet reminiscent of the death star would be an idea.

Moons is a good idea, but I think that from the planets surface would be far more cost effective & more able to encompass the whole planet. Moons would be ineffective to fleets on the opposite side of the planet to what they are.

Zep' wrote:
Keep in mind guys that they are just 14 people working on this title, so they might don't have the task force to do everything in time

True, we should be understanding of such facts, but the people making the game for us are also very interested in what we would like to see in games. It can't hurt to talk about it.



Personally I would love to see planets be able to defend themselves against fleets. Missiles, beams or something like ion bolts coming from the planets surface and smacking into ships would just look awesome. More passive abilities like jamming dishes, antenna and or small satellites that don't necessarily have any graphics at all could be an achievable option also.



Of course these types of things should have to be researched and or built. Another thing to think about and manage for shore, but not that much. And it would add nice difference to just fleet V's fleet battles all the time.

That's the problem with gamers when you ask for their advice, they all have top ideas without necessarily realizing what it takes to make them workable in terms of time and manpower.



Like with everything in Real Life actually. People always want more but when you ask them how, they usually come up a bit short.

Slowhands wrote:
Thanks for keeping this in mind, Zep'

Zep' wrote:
Keep in mind guys that they are just 14 people working on this title, so they might don't have the task force to do everything in time

Thanks for keeping this in mind, Zep'

With planetary defense; could moons be used as some sort of defense platform for planets/systems. also could races create space bases similar to death star or perhaps a starfort type thing like the one shown here http://www.forgeworld.co.uk/Warhammer-40000/RAMILIES-CLASS-STARFORT.html. they could act as places where ships can be repaired, bonus to trade as well as a defense/weapons platform. Having a weapons system capable of destroying or seriously damaging a planet reminiscent of the death star would be an idea.

Keep in mind guys that they are just 14 people working on this title, so they might don't have the task force to do everything in time

Remember good ol' Imperium Galactica 2? That had a limited ground RTS element. Building cities, defenses etc and well as defense and invasion aspects.

So, planet use are always a feature that seems to get overlooked in a lot of space rts games, and while I can understand the reasoning, the focus is the ships, combat, diplomacy, resource management etc, I'd like to see planets become a bigger part of the game. I may be overspeaking or perhaps some of this kind of thing is already implemented as I tried to scan all the stickied posts.



A lot of space strategy games tend to use their planets as more resource hubs, while this is all well and good, I would love to see planets take a more active role. In this case I'm talking planetary defenses (space stations that are upgradeable and the like), orbital defense guns, troops to resist attack. I'm thinking in terms of, you come in with your fleet, destroy the space defenses around the planet, then bombard it from orbit, land ground troop, and completely take it over, or destroy it, maybe even in some extreme cases preform exterminatus (bonus to you 40k people), and leave the planet a barren wasteland, needing to be repopulated or terraformed again.



Now, in my ideal world (it really is a very happy place), this whole secondary part of planet conquest would be its own game mode and rts (something that this game isn't necessarily focused on right now). This adds a level of complexity to the game, but to my knowledge has never really been accomplished by any game up to this point (you could argue that star wars empire at war did this and you would be correct, however, the space and land modes were so shallow that it kind of took away from any strategy experience).



But now that I've got my thoughts out there, what are your thoughts on planet roles? Would anyone be interested in seeing some kind of ground rts that seemlessly fit into the games space portion (as say and expansion or something)?

TBK wrote:
So, planet use are always a feature that seems to get overlooked in a lot of space rts games, and while I can understand the reasoning, the focus is the ships, combat, diplomacy, resource management etc, I'd like to see planets become a bigger part of the game. I may be overspeaking or perhaps some of this kind of thing is already implemented as I tried to scan all the stickied posts.



A lot of space strategy games tend to use their planets as more resource hubs, while this is all well and good, I would love to see planets take a more active role. In this case I'm talking planetary defenses (space stations that are upgradeable and the like), orbital defense guns, troops to resist attack. I'm thinking in terms of, you come in with your fleet, destroy the space defenses around the planet, then bombard it from orbit, land ground troop, and completely take it over, or destroy it, maybe even in some extreme cases preform exterminatus (bonus to you 40k people), and leave the planet a barren wasteland, needing to be repopulated or terraformed again.



Now, in my ideal world (it really is a very happy place), this whole secondary part of planet conquest would be its own game mode and rts (something that this game isn't necessarily focused on right now). This adds a level of complexity to the game, but to my knowledge has never really been accomplished by any game up to this point (you could argue that star wars empire at war did this and you would be correct, however, the space and land modes were so shallow that it kind of took away from any strategy experience).



But now that I've got my thoughts out there, what are your thoughts on planet roles? Would anyone be interested in seeing some kind of ground rts that seemlessly fit into the games space portion (as say and expansion or something)?

I can't help but feel you haven't played many 4x space strategy games, pretty much all of them include some form of ground warfare. After reading your opening on "space rts games", it sure feels like you are coming from a SOASE like background and thus I can understand the point. However if you enjoy tactical space and ground battles, plus the strategy it comes from having them both available, you should really try out Star Wars: Empire at war. This game does everything you want and more, the only problem is that the other Xs are really limited.

Shazbot wrote:
If i'm playing an aggressive game, it would be much easier to build up a strong empire and then simply destroy the rest of the habitable planets on the map, giving opponents nowhere to run. I think planet devastation or even destruction in the late game would be a refreshing change of pace and add an extra element of fear. Perhaps even the ability to cause a system star to go nova and destroy the system. It would include a new strategic element to the game. Instead of having just planetary defenses, I would like to see the ability to include system defenses such as massive outposts or long-range cannons. Sins does a good job of this on the planetary level, but it would be awesome to see fighters scramble across an entire system.

Star system based defense systems? The range on those cannons would be "astronomical" ... LITERALLY I strongly agree on the inevitable ability of a species to destroy a planet, a star and even a whole star system if not more; however the plausibility of weapon systems of instant massive death across such distances is IMO too small to be relevant.

TBK wrote:
That's why you would have the terraforming ships, ones with the ability to make a planet habitable again (after an extended period of time). Turning planets into useless balls of rock, like nightraid said, could open up some interesting strategic plays in later game, possibly destroying some planets to not allow an enemy to build in a sector, making an area of dead space, or cutting them off from vital resources, assuming different planets give different bonus type things. Also, it should really be easy to completely make a planet uninhabitable, that'd most likely be a late game thing.

Not only that, but the ability to create a planet out of simple mass(debries, asteroids, etc) is also a very real posibility, implying that a creation can benefit a species as(if not more) much as destruction.

7Tenths wrote:
The oft forgotten and seldom loved Star Wars: Rebellion did similar to this. You could add defenses to the planets, which would limit the production you could create from the planet. Then you could also garison troops on the planet which would have to be destroyed prior to losing the planet to the opposing faction.

Neither forgotten nor seldom, SWR is one of my most beloved 4x games of all time. I break it out at least once a year, to play a couple of matches.

Destroying planets /systems in a single player game have one advantage. At some point you just don't want to have/manage anymore systems, so instead of constantly battling for them with persistently settling AI , you could destroy planests.

Monterce wrote:
I like you ideas but I'd like it to go even further, with pollution, over population, different religions, civil wars on the same planet etc... unfortunately this would probably make the game too complicated and it would fail in the end but I can dream haha.



About your ideas you should check the game Emperors of the fading suns. I think you'd like it. Very strong ground combat with a good (a little weaker though) space portion too.

That's interesting, I hadn't heard about that game. I was just lamenting the fact that there aren't any current gen games like that

The oft forgotten and seldom loved Star Wars: Rebellion did similar to this. You could add defenses to the planets, which would limit the production you could create from the planet. Then you could also garison troops on the planet which would have to be destroyed prior to losing the planet to the opposing faction.

I like you ideas but I'd like it to go even further, with pollution, over population, different religions, civil wars on the same planet etc... unfortunately this would probably make the game too complicated and it would fail in the end but I can dream haha.



About your ideas you should check the game Emperors of the fading suns. I think you'd like it. Very strong ground combat with a good (a little weaker though) space portion too.

Nightraid wrote:
Well, it really depends on how much you're willing to do yourself and how much you leave to the AI. As long as you remember to check on what you Ai is doing and adjust it's orders you can focus on the important things and leave the less interesting stuff aside.

This could also be helped out with alerts to what is getting attacked, but any defenses you build should be able to be put on auto to an extent.