Planetary Invasion imbalances

OpzX

Join Date 03/2006

Planetary Invasion imbalances

One of the things that bothers me about this game is the inexplicable advantage Attackers get when invading a planet. I haven't bothered with any hard statistics, but it is extremely obvious to me that attackers get some huge inherent advantage when attacking. For instance, as a rule I tend to make sure I develop all the invasion techs (with soldering bonuses) and the Tri Quan training facility. I have no problems taking out planets with 10-15 billion with an invasion force of 2-4 billion under most circumstances. Now, in the same game, if I happen to let an enemy transport slip through, they might have 1-2 billion on the transport, and yet they manage to inflict at the very minimum, casualties on a 1:1 ratio, but often closer to 1:2 or even 1:3 (in their advantage). So how is it that I can invade a planet with 4 times the population of my invading force, and wipe them all out, while that same AI can invade one of my planets, being outnumbered 10 or 15 to 1, and inflict such lopsided damage?

One of the most well known rules in war about attacking is that you should at least outnumber your opponent by at least 2:1 before you consider attacking a hardened defender, but this game does not seem to follow any logic in this regard.

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Well, unless they nuke everything from orbit as the only way to be sure.

In all seriousness, though, static defenses do presuppose a 2D attack. You can't exactly build a wall to keep orbital bombardment out. You could basically release a steel telephone pole in orbit (with minor fins and guidance systems) and let gravity do the work. The amount of armor penetration you'd get from that would be almost obscene. This, in addition to whatever other dirty tricks the attacker would choose to employ, would give him a substantial advantage over the defender--especially since every invasion is a genocide/democide, so he wouldn't have to worry about collateral damage.

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All the defense has to do is hole up and not get killed. Read: Massively fortified STATIC defense positions. Now, static defenses such as the maginot line may be out of favor, but the fact is, there is NOTHING better at simply holding on to a position than static defense. Sure, you can go around it, but when you need to kill the people in it, you still have to tackle it.

I have to disagree with this. We are talking about warfare in the distant future, not the 21st century. The main problem with Static Defenses is just that. Static. Non-mobile. The weapons we are talking about here aren't weapons that will simply destroy a fighter plane or a tank, or even wipe out an entire city. We are talking about weapons that can be launched from space that have the potential of erasing an entire mountian and effectively removing any defensive positions within. Again, once planetary defenses have been eliminated and near orbit defenders have been obliterated, in my humble opinion, the attacker has the advantage.

whatever other dirty tricks the attacker would choose to employ, would give him a substantial advantage over the defender--especially since every invasion is a genocide/democide, so he wouldn't have to worry about collateral damage.

Bingo.

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Stop nagging. If you do not like that attackers have an unfair advantage, fix it yourselves

Just add a planetdefence tag to you default Initial Colony planetary improvement and correct the problem

For example, open PlanetImprovements.xml and add "[PlanetaryDefenseBonus]50[/PlanetaryDefenseBonus]" to Initial Colony to give defending planet a 50% bonus

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