Heya again!



I would like to discuss about some changes regarding the invasion aspect of the game.



First I believe the very first defensive building available for systems should also provide another bonus: makes the system immune to invasion if the enemy fleets have no invasion mods.



What effect will this have? Well you can still invade early game when this tech is not available, like you normally do, but after a point, you need to build and use invasion mods on your invading fleet. This gives a better importance and role for the invading mods as well for fleet compositions (no more 12 destroyers filled with missiles or beams taking your colony in 4 turns) and a fine balance between strength or defense and number of invasion mods on attacker fleet. IE: make the MP of fleet account for less during an invasion, and more impact gained from number of invasion mods (affected by heroes skills of course). So you can't take 20 destroyers filled with missiles and 1 filled with invasion mods and take a colony in 2 turns in late game, you could take it in 2 turns if you had 20 destroyers filled with invasion mods tho!



It will also change the pace and approach to warmongering, as it would require the player to tech to cruisers for example and several invasion techs if they want to be successful in invading enemy systems, instead of keep spamming same low cost destroyers with upgraded weapons.



I mean it makes no sense that no matter how I develop a system and load it with extra population, fill it with defensive buildings and what not, assign a hero focused on melee, the first tier ship - destroyers, filled with weapons, no invasion mods, come and crush it in couple turns.



It will really put more emphasis on ships role and builds, you won't have same fleet do everything, you will have assault fleets to intercept and clean enemy fleets, fleets that can do invasions, fleets for defending etc.



Looking forward to hear community feedback and ideas to develop this further and improve it, maybe add new things to flourish the gameplay and give it more diversity and tactical / strategic impact

I use invasion modules in almost every fleet, so no argument here.

I think the real problem isnt invasion mechanics in this regard but the role of destroyers and small ships in general, with missile dessie swarms overpowering everything else. Id rather see only cruiser and above contribute invasion power to a system and cut dessies/frigs out completely rather than require invasion modules.

The thing about destroyer spam with missiles is that they are great only until you can make cruisers, which is not that far off. Well the smaller ships should still contribute invasion power, but to a much lesser extent (like 30-50% of their MP maybe?) that would be enough IMHO. We can't cut out completely invasion from early game, because then you would plant outposts wherever you want without any consideration as other players can't do a thing about it until cruissers, by that time your outposts growing into full colonies most likely.

I would be okay with smaller vessels contributing a reduced amount to invasion power, but I agree that they should still contribute some.



I don't know about the requirement of an invasion module. Maybe if it were a mid-game requirement, rather than the 'first defensive' tech. So that later on you could get it and it would require that, by which point you ought to have the modules anyway. I want to recall generally getting a defensive buff pretty early game, so that would just make offensive civs rush for the invasion module and make other civs rush for the defensive buff, I think. It could work, but I think it would also change the game in some other ways that might not be desired (such as having people rush for certain techs).



I think another way to do this would be: Each turn of invasion, the invading fleet takes a minor amount of damage dependent upon the defense strength of the system. Thus, smaller ships can be used for invasion - but they are going to take some noticeable damage doing it. Likewise, larger ships will take damage, but it would be much less noticeable on them. This would also reinforce the usage of invasion modules, because these decrease the time that it takes to invade a system and thus, would lessen that damage. If you didn't use them, the 'damage over time' from invading a system might weaken your fleet enough for your enemy to come in and destroy them.

The last point about invaders taking damage is pretty nice.



At the moment, my biggest problem with invasion is the fact that invasion prodives NO disadvantage to the attacker. It simply serves as a delay barrier to prevent insta-conquering, but nothing else at all. No resource drain, no need to make special ships (your normal ships will do), no invasion losses, and generally, no extra risk at all.



PS: A very close to this is the "stacks" problem, where bigger fleets are generally absolutely immune to any guerrilla tactics by much smaller fleets (even worse, you can actually strengthen the enemy by a weak attack, since combat-repair will happen).

just_dont_do_it wrote:
The last point about invaders taking damage is pretty nice.



At the moment, my biggest problem with invasion is the fact that invasion prodives NO disadvantage to the attacker. It simply serves as a delay barrier to prevent insta-conquering, but nothing else at all. No resource drain, no need to make special ships (your normal ships will do), no invasion losses, and generally, no extra risk at all.



PS: A very close to this is the "stacks" problem, where bigger fleets are generally absolutely immune to any guerrilla tactics by much smaller fleets (even worse, you can actually strengthen the enemy by a weak attack, since combat-repair will happen).

Grate opinion! I agree on the PS as well. The only way to stop a stacking invader is to make a stacking fleet your self.