orbital bombardment

About a billion times, use the search button. I despise the idea and think it a cowards option, but the dev's have said it'll be in the expansion pack.

Anything other than hand-to-hand combat is a coward's option! I'd like to see the combat screen modified to show fleets docking with each other and then the occupants of each of the ships fighting to the death using fists, tentacles, knives, fangs and horns.

Pah. You know an enemy is stronger than you, so you blow up their planet? Makes war too easy. I know I'll remove them from my game (if they aren't optional)

that would be cool-but its not neccessary the coward's option to decimate a planet-why waste tax paying citizens when you can nuke the slimy aliens instead? Plus some planets can be a burden to try and maintain in certain situations-if you are deep in a strong enemy's space-why risk having them retake the world a turn later when you can deprive them of it for good?

I despise the idea and think it a cowards option, but the dev's have said it'll be in the expansion pack.

Attitude like that doesn't win war. Someone needs to read some Clausewitz.

"Pull out, and nuke the planet from orbit. Its the only way to be sure."

One reason America built up such a massive nuclear arsenal in the cold war was that it simply worked out cheaper to be capable of wiping out the foe rather than use extensive conventional fighting/occupation forces -much more effective deterrent. Same goes for actually using them-Hiroshima and Nagasaki were nuked to prevent thousnds of U.S casualties-and well to see if their nuclear technology worked. So yeah-if people do this sorta thing in real life then why not gal civ-humans are among the stars-WITH NUKES!

Why does everyone think that it's either:
"No Orbital Bombardment"
or
"Orbital Bombardment which is capable of leveling civilizations without thought"
???
I mean, as awesome as our fleets are, they have precisions weapon designed specifically to hit a small moving object very very far away (space is big) ... then to do damage in such a concentrated fasion that it is capable of penetrating the thickest armor, strongest shields and densest PD systems... these weapons aren't the same thing I think of when I think "mass destruction from orbit"
I honstly feel that we can have a balance with Orbittal Bombardment which allows for the option while precluding it as a large scale replacement for invasions ... and still fitting in with our diverse views of reality.

In realistic terms (as best as possible)
Yes:
-A ship in orbit can CAN fire on a planet
-These weapons CAN cause massive damage to the population / infrastructure in general

But realise that:
-On a world with a population of only 5 billion (like ours) there is a HUGE infrastructure. There are more cities than can be counted, and within them more city blocks, buildings and people that your (relatively) puny dozen or so laser Mk3s must select from as targets. Honestly, a week may be a long time, but there is simply too much for your precision weapons to fire at to make much of an impact.

Now imagine a world of 27 billion! Maybe a PQ of 16-18? Imagine the huge stretches of infrastructure that make up a SINGLE manufacturing sector. It would take a lot of fire power to reduce such an area to nothing. Damage? sure, destroy? hmmm....

Granted, later in the game you will have hull sizes, fleet sizes and weapons of the right scale to turn a planet into ash, but I would imagine planetary defenses will rise to meet the challenge. Just as we no longer build buildings from wood and stone, in the future of GalCiv2, I would expect concrete and steel to phase out as well...
...not to mention the massive planetary shields and such which I can only imagine are a part of a "normal" planets repitoire of defenses.
Personally, the weapons I envision doing the most damage to planets, would not be the same weapons I'd fire at ships (large area effect vs. concentrated damage ... IE stick of dynamyte vs. a shaped charge)

Balance, that's the point.
-Let people fire on civilion populations (Hell, I'd love to myself )
-But don't give attackers an unrealistic (or unbalancing) advantage over transports.
-Early game weapons would likely be ineffective, at most killing a few people and reducing the social/military/tech production by a smal fraction.
-Late game weapons capable of demolishing buildings, eliminating tiles (-PQ) and killing people by the millions would be offset by planetary defenses geared to countering/lessening them. (I can smell two new tech trees... perhaps alignment based!? )

mmm... nukes, massive napalm-esque payloads, viral payloads, orbittally launched core detonators (oh, evil races have it soooo good!)

...

First Time I've chimed in on it, and based on the frequency of this topic, likely not the last

Yeah orbital borbadment would be cool but it cant be over powered like most of the peaple say " i want ot destroy planets blaaah ;" my opinion
Make 3 types of borbadment with 3 types of weapons
1- mass drivers - randomly demage several imrpovements and population. You would attack and it would do the demage to 9 adjent tiles and could be upgraded with all the new singularity driver etc etc ( for more splash demage_
2 - missiles - anti improvement radomly attack one improvement and destroy the building ( further missile technologies could enabe you to pick what improvement you want to destroy, but it should be a very lategame or only evil tech ) this would work with minimal population killed
3 - lasers - they would be designed to kill populaon effectively with each new weapon type add more demage to pop.

of course that systme would need some kind of new planetary defense system becouse this one is really crappy like build satelite deflectors etc

This is not as bad an idea as some of you think. Does anyone here remember "Stars!" or "Birth of the Federation"? Those games allowed you to bombard planets as well as invade. Your bombs or planetary assault ships decimated a certain percentage of population and infrastructure per turn. This allowed you to soften up a planet before invading so it wouldn't take as many troops to be victorious. But if you truly hated a civilization and wanted to wipe them out you could just continue bombarding thier worlds. The downside is bombers are easy prey for fighters and other warships.

The bombardment incoming will be destroying planets entirely, terror stars. No killing the people for invasion, just BOOM planet gone.

There are really 4 things you can accomplish from Orbital Bombardment
1) Kill population
2) Destroy Infrastructure
3) Create enough havoc to reduce production (social/military/tech) by a varaible percentage
4) Reduce PQ

Most "normal weapons" would accomplish 1-3 with varying degrees of success (perhaps not type dependant though)
Expensive "specialized" tech tree weapons might be able to accel in one or more fields however.
Virus bombs -for example - might kill the population and hinder production while leaving PQ and and Infrastructure intact

And oh yes, there would have to be defenses... perhaps a single building on a single tile labeled "planetary defense" which grew as you got deeper in the tree to contain such defenses such as "Viral Containment Procedures"

I remember Birth of the Federation... the daamage done was a percentage based. Taking a planet down to 66% wasn't too hard... but taking it down to 33% or wiping it out took concentrated effort! (evil) because of the diminishing returns.
I also recall playing MoO3 and having my ships start out doing an apropriate amount of no damage whatsoever, then ending the game leveling things into dust.

You can already initiate orbital bombardment *nearly* without troops. You do need to use one transport, but that could be loaded with only one troop if you like. That way you can blow the bejesus out of a planet's infrastructure, without wasting your troop strength. A tactic like this would make the most sense against a strong opponent who had an advantage in soldier skill and/or population, while you had naval supremacy.

I don't know about destroying an entire planet. A planet is a massive thing if you have enough firepower to destroy a planet then you would go through fleets of ships like a hot knife through butter. No one could stand against you.

I don't know about destroying an entire planet. A planet is a massive thing if you have enough firepower to destroy a planet then you would go through fleets of ships like a hot knife through butter. No one could stand against you.

wrong, it's being done so you can't attack fleets, just blow up planets. I'm looking for the quote now.

IYou can already initiate orbital bombardment *nearly* without troops. You do need to use one transport, but that could be loaded with only one troop if you like. That way you can blow the bejesus out of a planet's infrastructure, without wasting your troop strength. A tactic like this would make the most sense against a strong opponent who had an advantage in soldier skill and/or population, while you had naval supremacy.

I personally feel that those who can manage things effectively enough to remember to have sufficient transports in proportion to their fleet size and level of open hostility are the ones who are against/don't care about planetary bombardment.

If I had to wager a guess, it would that most of the most adament individuals who are 'for' Orbittal Bombardment would be among the same individuals who either forget to properly manage their transport-fleet proportion in regards to their level of open hostility...
...or simply hate micro managing so many transports (but do it anyways) and would prefer to keep their fleets busy while their acceptable level of micro managed transports slowly absorb othecivs.

I don't know about destroying an entire planet. A planet is a massive thing if you have enough firepower to destroy a planet then you would go through fleets of ships like a hot knife through butter. No one could stand against you.

Exactly ... all things in moderation.

I'd like to see orbital platforms as a defense. Then an invader couldn't just send in a transport to invade a well developed world and you wouldn't be forced to leave fighters in orbit around key worlds.

Finally found it, and the edit is giving me the "server application error"

#2 by BoogieBac [Stardock] Friday, April 07, 2006 1:34 PM Terror Stars are planned for the expansion pack, only this time (for UI and ease of use purposes) will only destroy planets.

wrong, it's being done so you can't attack fleets, just blow up planets. I'm looking for the quote now.

I thought he was talking about the relative power of weapons in regards to what would be necissary to demolish a planet versus what is available in terms of power against other ships...
...not that he was implying that orbittaly specialized weapons would be capable of being used in fleet to fleet combat

...Too many ways to read text!

If your going to add orbital bombardment then you better add orbital defences. Back in the day, Ascendency greeted its players with the capability of building orbital missile launchers that you could fire at any enemy ships that lay in range of your planet. This, combined with planetary defences that boosted the advantage of the defender, made invasions have four objectives:

1) Eliminate enemy fleet.
2) Eliminate orbital defences.
3) Soften planetary infrastructure for invasion; hopefully by nuking some planetary defences from orbit.
4) Invade.

Combined with the present choices that Stardock has included with Gal Civ II, orbital defences and orbital bombardment could enhance the tactical aspects of this game without ruining the tradition and strategic nature of it.

As far as game code is concerned the devs can create whatever limitations they like, but I still don't like the idea of destroying an entire planet. No mater how you look at it any technology that that allows you to attack a planet from a ship or a starbase would also be effective against other ships or starbases. The only difficulty would be hitting other ships and a fleet only increases your chance of doing damage. The Death Star from Star Wars is aperfect example of this and clearly what the terror stars are based on.

I despise the idea and think it a cowards option, but the dev's have said it'll be in the expansion pack.

UGH PLEASE TELL ME THIS WILL BE AN OPTION or ends up not included.

Why stop at planets? Heck, lets blow up stars! Through a massive chunk of some exotic metal into a star and watch it go nova! Boom! No more planets in that system.

Those arguing for a 'realistic' option are only going to get so far since its a game, and not real life. I for one wouldn't mind if they put in some orbital bombardment options, but only if it didn't decimate the entire planet. It would be nice to cause some heartache for the AI, but if I am truely a superpower I stop having fun. Something about fighting back a more powerful race and then trying to figure out how to overcome his massive population advantage seems to get me thinking. And isn't that the point of a turn based game, strategy?

Combined with the present choices that Stardock has included with Gal Civ II, orbital defences and orbital bombardment could enhance the tactical aspects of this game without ruining the tradition and strategic nature of it.

Hehe, the originals all had bombardment. This is the version changing the tradition.

Shogun, if it isn't an option I'll submit a modified (terrorless) .xml the second I can. I appreciate the work being done, but I'm against planets being destroyed in general.

The cowardly/non-cowardly argument aside I would have to say that orbital bombarment is too "realistic" a tactic to leave out of the game. Destroying targets from space to hinder an enemy without endangering your own men is a reasonable tactic.

That said, I think it would have to be implemented in moderation. The ability to complete wipe out a planet in single strike shouldn't be allowed. But the ability to destroy one or two buildings in a turn should be allowed. I think there are additional restrictions that need to be in place to prevent players and AI opponents from creating fast ships and just going from planet to planet destroying an enemy's infratructions. I think they could do something like create additional weapons for the three weapon types that are only for use on ground targets. They would not be able to be used in space battle against other ships. They could also restrict those weapons to only large or even only huge hulls and limit them to one per ship (and make them large enough in size to really limit the other componets you could add). Those two options would allow a player to use bombardment as an option but they would be forced to committ specialized ships to the task that would be vulnerable to more conventional warships.

On the other side, if orbital bombardment is going to be an option, I think some form of orbital defenses become necessary for balance. Something like defense satellites, ground cannons or missiles capable of targeting space ships, ground based shields/missile defenses, an airbase with some kind of mini automated fighters (just a few ideas off the top of my head). And to keep you from having to sacrifice multiple tiles to defend your planet (i think we get few enough on most planets as it is, lol) maybe there could be a ground defense builiding that would get more defense options as it is upgraded (maybe make a new research tree for ground weapons or add to planetary defense tree). However these defenses should not be enough to wipe out an entire attacking fleet but strong enough to make them pay for the attack with some damage or strong enough to wipe out a single (or pair) of orbital bombardment ships (would stop cheap hit and run tactics by a single ship or two on a well defended planet). Maybe they could even make it so that the defenses have to be destroyed first before a ship could fire on other targets.

So you could have your orbital bombardment but a player or AI would have a chance to send ships to save/defend the planet (and the bombarder's escort ships could fight them off and allow them to continue their rain of lasers/missiles/shells). If a player or AI doesn't come to the rescue then they deserve to have the planet wiped out if that is what the attacker wants to do. (They could even make extra bonuses for good and evil alignments for defenses/bombardment respectively). But the attacker would need to spend the time doing that and can't get away with it in one quick turn.

I also think the automated defenses could free up ships from having to defend planets and my personal feeling is that the game would be more fun if you and your opponents could have more ships out there fighting space battles than sitting around defending planets that aren't in any danger most of the time.