Beta 4c: Orbital Fleet Controller Illogical

the thing is though they now have to calculate the effect of being in orbit now and when your trying to attack an enemy in space while your moving thousands of miles per hour over the planet and at the same timetrying to coordinate your movements with th other ships in the area and it gets a little more complicated

Yes, and keep in mind that the object your ships are trying to protect (aka. your planet) is directly in harms way if a heavy weaponry goes astray. In space you're alot less restricted when aiming your Black-Hole gun 

BoogieBac: If you're not careful with your black-hole gun near a planet, I dont' think being in a fleet or not is going to matter

Question (the descriptions don't make it clear, it is relevant to this discussion, and I suspect the answer may depend on the type of installation in question): Do these improvements allow you to defend the planet with a fleet of all the orbiting ships, or only up to your current logistics limit? The super-project version definitely sounds like it's for ALL the orbiting ships, but the other two really don't say one way or the other.

As for game balance, here's my issue with the way it works right now:

1) The very early game belongs to the defender, since by the time you put life support or engines on a ship, you've got little or no room left for weapons.
2) This reverses very strongly once a decent ship can be created and you get basic logistics. Now all of a sudden you're trying to defend against forces which can easily be 50% stronger than you, are probably more experienced than you, and get one of your techs if they take one of your planets. At this point in the game, it's a warmonger's game, plain and simple. Those of us that aren't warmongers just try to get through it as fast as possible.
3) Finally, we start getting the abillity to defend colonies with fleets. The real issue comes at this stage. If I've managed to survive the previous phase, I probably have the technology and industry to create single ships that outclass any fleet my opponent can field, so why do I need to increase my military maintenance by defending with fleets of ships instead of single superships? I'm not even talking end-game weapon/defense techs here. I'll have equal or slightly better weapon/defense techs, better miniturization techs, a better balance of the various branches of weapon/defense techs so that I can adapt to the attacker better, and the industry to field larger hulls.

I can see there's definitely an issue balancing offense and defense on the strategic level. We don't want to make defense so easy that attacking is impossible. But right now, phase two of the game is both easier to go offensive, and better rewards. The only reason to not go to war at that point in the game is because you want to be the good guy and you see war as a less than good thing. (I can't remember the last time I declared war on anyone in GC1 or GC2, except to come to the aid of an ally. On the other hand, declare war on me without provocation, and you'd better be ready to pay some major reparations before I'll be willing to talk peace).

Bah, tangent. The real issue is that by the time we can create fleets around our planets, we don't need to anymore. Or at least I don't, I'm usually the technology leader in any GC game I play.

GC2 has almost no concept of home court advantage. I'd really like to be able to build 0-movement ships that can fleet with the defending starship(s) from the start of the game. Think defensive platforms in orbit around the planet. Moo2 had defensive platforms, and MoO3 had custom-designed orbital defense installations as well as system defense ships. I'm not saying that GC2 needs it because MoO3 had it, just that I enjoyed it and find it missing, even in a simplified manner in GC2.

Hmmm.... this idea may be worth something, and not too hard to implement (may be, not saying it isn't too hard). Imagine if you will, a new colony stat, let's call it fortification. Fortification is a military project, but not one that actually creates a ship (military because it is in orbit, and I really don't want to see it taking up a tile). Fortification represents captor mines and other minefields, orbital weapons platforms intended for engaging attacking starships, etc. It should take damage or deplete when used to help a defending ship (by boosting the ship's attack value), and if there's no defending ship, any ship with attack value should be able to decimate fortification in a single turn if there's no defending ship, though fortification could keep unarmed transports from landing. I'm not sure if you'd want to handle fortification as a % bonus or a fixed + to attack (both obviously based on tech level and amount of manufacturing spent on it.

Anyway, a given amount of fortification would be good for X attacks (by the ship, so unless the defender one-shots the attacker, a single defensive action would deplete more than 1 use of the fortification.

Then again, maybe it's really not worth worrying about, and I should just start pre-positioning carefully placed military starbases everywhere, though I hate the idea of the amount of micromanagement that would entail.

attack an enemy in space while your moving thousands of miles per hour over the planet and at the same timetrying to coordinate your movements with th other ships in the area and it gets a little more complicated

No it gets easier actually... Your enemy has to come to opne point in space while you are unrestricted. It makes no sense whatsoever to be able to attck with fleets before you can defend with them. If your agrument held any wieght then you shouldn't be able to attack a planet with fleets either.

You can't have it both ways and still make any semblance of logic.

If I can attack as a fleet in a gravity well then I can defend as a fleet in a gravity well.

I mean really... an enemy fleet appears on the horizon and you send up one ship at a time? Black-ninja style? Thats ridiculous!

"Oops there goes Bob. Well guess it's Tony's turn again.. sure hope he does better against all those ships!"

"Say do you think it might work better if we launched everybody liek we do in all other military operations?"

"Naw, that just crazy talk!"

when aiming your Black-Hole gun

This would make sense if the planet was a targettable item for ships. But it isn't and even then it would only make sense (barely) if you had heavy weapons (which is factored into logistics requirements for fleets that are big enough to have big guns).

I agree. you should be able to defend planets with fleets.

Just had an odd thought. The AI has shown little or no interest in preserving PQ while invading (I had a PQ 7 colony get blown down to PQ3 in a single invasion, at that point, why bother retaking it?). With that attitude, and the fact that noone takes prisoners in this game, you'd be an idiot to let an alien task force near your planet to begin with. If you're engaging the enemy close enough that you firing away from the planet might damage the planet, the enemy, firing towards you, hence towards the planet, is much more likely to damage the planet, and given the ancedotal evidence above, they're probably a lot less concerned about hitting the planet as well. Sounds like an argument in favor of what you're saying, right? Wrong. The whole argument is bogus, as under these circumstances, no defender in their right mind would fail to engage the enemy before said enemy can fire on civilian targets. It's not like there's hidden ships waiting to attack the planet the moment you move away from it, you can see just about any ship out there from a week away.

If you want to read a recent and interesting SF book touching on the topic, read "At all Cost" from the Honor Harrington series. There's a battle or two in there that makes it clear that unless the attacker isn't worried about civilian casualties, he has to be more careful than the defender in situations like this, mostly because the defender line of fire is away from the planet. If you think that the enemy doesn't care about civilian casualties, then that just means that the encounter isn't going to happen in orbit of the planet. If it does, the defenders have already lost.

The early game does not belong to the defender IMO.

Early on, I have a logistics of say 5.  I can put a small ship (attack: 4) and a tiny ship (attack: 2) into a fleet and take out pretty much any single ship on a planet.

Once the planet gets planetary defense and builds the orbital command center, then your ships in orbit are treated as a fleet.  I think that's pretty fair.

At some point, players should be protecting their space.  Relying purely on fortified planets seems to be little more than way to bog down the game.

One of the main strategies of the game should be to build interceptors and other fast ships that can ensure that you intercept incoming invasions. 

 

Early on, I have a logistics of say 5. I can put a small ship (attack: 4) and a tiny ship (attack: 2) into a fleet and take out pretty much any single ship on a planet.

I could see that except if you do that, neither ship can have any real life support or engines or anything can you?

I didn't even bother designing any real ships until I had at least one mini tech and a III-IV level weapon, because otherwise my ships couldn't go anywhere near enemy planets, let alone take anything out...

Then again, it's quite likely I don't really know what I'm doing.

One of the main strategies of the game should be to build interceptors and other fast ships that can ensure that you intercept incoming invasions.

It is not a question of strategy.. it is a question of the logic behind the game mechanic.. it simply makes no sense for the reasons I have already listed.

Minor nits: Without Basic Logistics, your logistics is 3 in Beta 4C. So add time to research Basic Logistics to that.

It also takes some research to fit an attack of 4 in a small hull. Missiles are the shortest path, and even then I think you're talking Stinger IIIs before you can fit two in a small hull. You're still not going to get any engines, sensors, or life support in there.

By the time you've accomplished the research needed to overcome these two nits, you're in the second phase I was discussing. There, the game belongs to the offensive players. This is the phase that can get very interesting quite rapidly.

As for creating fast interceptors, it doesn't work without a tech advantage. Just getting speed above 1 in the early game takes up half your hull space. That said, one of the most intensly enjoyable game of ANY 4X space game I've ever played was a GC2 game where I was technologically far ahead, but the Yor were building single ships that could slaughter any fleet I could build. The only possible response was the light raider, too light to take out military ships, but fast enough to avoid anything the Yor had. Those little buggers could spend 4 movement points moving towards a target, one killing the target, then 5 running away. The Yor never got a non-fleeted transport near my planets, and couldn't take the planets landing one transport at a time. Any human player probably would have started including more than one transport per fleet, and I would have gone down fast.

I suspect we have vastly different play styles. I'm an empire builder, and only go to war when someone declares it on me (happens eary usually, as I focus very much on my economy and have no military until my relations with a neighbor go south). Once war is engaged, I tend to go into rabid pit bull mode and not let go until he who declared war is willing to make major concessions. Any allies he had that were only halfheartedly in the war can have peace, though I'll still ask for whatever concessions I can get. In GC1, I financed an entire war by letting the members of the opposing alliance buy peace one at a time

Still, I really wish the AI had feelings sometime, so that I could see the expression on it's face when, the turn after it declared war on me because my military rating was a third his, my military rating is suddenly in the lead by 50-100%. Beware declaring war against the tech leader, especially when his economy is generating money faster than he can spend it.

Problem with defending an planet:
The enemy has the choice of engaging. They can disengage if they desire prior to the the battle actually occuring.

Second a ship that is in actual orbit is a sitting duck for an attacker. In speed, speed, speed is the greatest weapon. And the attacker can generate alot of speed coming in. So if the defender doesn't want to get wipe off the map they have to go out and meet the attacker. Which gives the attacker the choice to disengage if they don't like what they see coming at them.

Space is big, even around a planet. Depending on what you are willing to do to said planet you can be out in the asteriod fields to attack it. That means the defending ships have a lot of volume that they need to cover in order to prevent ships slipping past them. That means that their lines of communication are much larger then any attacking fleets, because they are out patroling. So unless they are patrolling in a fleet formation (which means a lot of open attack avenues) they are most likely only going to have one ship in position to meet the attackers, unless of course they invest in planetary defenses.

In space combat around planets it is a traditionally held view that the attacker has the advantage pound for pound. Which is true in any situation where the defender's mobility is limited and the attackers is not. Even if you know the target, unless you can build fortifications that the attacker has to work at by passing. And in space that is hard.

Biggest problem is that defenses don't move, so the enemy can sit just out of their range and send some asteroids in to take them out. Opps a few went through and hit the planet. Oh well fewer enemies down there for me to kill, saves me some soldiers.

All in all I would say that logic sides with how things already are.

Frogboy: Actually, Mass Drivers IV may be a shorter path to 4 attack on a small hull. I really hope the game becomes stable enough soon that I can explore the tech tree, my own meanderings through it have obviously missed a few things.

CrispyMouse: True, the enemy has the choice of engaging. Doesn't affect the topic at hand, however.

Second, speed isn't the advantage you think it is. The ability to ALTER your velocity/vector is a big advantage because you can determine/maintain a favorable engagement distance, and neither the attacker nor defender win here. Sure, the attacker can start a run up to a huge speed from well outside the system, but that just means you're moving very fast in a straight line. Your ability to divert from that straight line is no greater in absolute magnitude than my ability to start accellerating from a standstill.

If your fleet is actually capable of more accelleration than mine, then this point may have some validity, but since I don't need to carry any supplies, my mass is going to be lower, so if anything, the defender would have the advantage here.

And, as you pointed out, space is big, a fleet stationed at a planet isn't necessarily in orbit around the planet. Again, this doesn't apply to the topic at hand.

Third, yes space is big. However, you'll notice that I addressed this point already. We can see ships coming from a week's travel time away. They're not going to be able to sneak around behind us. It should be a fleet vs. fleet engagement. Besides, the technology to let a planet host a defensive fleet in no way would change this, so the logic is flawed. If I have to patrol space, I have to patrol space. And yes, you can throw asteroids at me from as far away as you want. But keep in mind that not only do I have weapons to destroy the asteroids you're throwing at me, I have the same technology that you do to divert them from their course. Your only hope is that you can manage to throw the asteroid at me without me noticing, or to overwhelm me with multiple asteroids. Seeing as I saw your ships coming a week out, I really doubt that I'm going to ignore the way they're dancing around in the asteroid belt. If you did that, I'd assume that you're pushing asteroids out of orbit, and direct the observatories to watch for them. Heck, we have had people watching for asteroids back in the 20th century. The only real question, and one we can't answer, only the devs can, is how easily 23rd century technology can spot the redirected asteroids.

I'll agree that the attacker has the advantage around the planet IF AND ONLY IF the attacker doesn't care about damage to the planet. I'll grant that this is probably the case in the GC2 universe. However, I did address this point as well in my post. We can see them coming, we're not going to let them get close to our planet, because if we do, we've already lost.

As for the fortifications, bypassing? I put weapons platforms around my planet. How do you bypass that, except by either swatting them with asteroids (which may or may not be possible given GC2 tech) or simply by not going near the planet? Remember, in GC2, a star system is several squares in each direction, so in any given square, the planet, its satellites, and any infrastructure in orbit around the planet are the only possible targets.

Another interesting question concerning GC tech: would defensive satellites really be immobile (given their orbit)? Heck, with their technology level, there would be little reason not to put just enough of a drive on them to subtly alter their orbit once an hour. So, unless you're riding your asteroid or throwing it at C-relative speeds, you're gonna miss.

The idea that a fleet becomes a non-fleet as soon as it moves into the same square as a planet is what needs to be analyzed. The only relevant claim that has been made is that a fleet is harder to maintain near a planet.

You argue that the need to patrol the space near the planet means that the fleet couldn't concentrate. I disagree on this point, since as I pointed out, we saw you coming a week out. Besides, if I've got 6 ships stationed at a planet and only enough logistics for a fleet of 3 ships, the other three ships can do the patroling.

BoogieBac mentions the need to maintain weapon discipline. Given that the square that contains the Earth (a diameter of about 12KKm) also contains the moon, (who's orbit has a diameter of about 768KKm), that means that at worst, the earth takes up a very small fraction of that space. Unless there's a need to stay near the planet while we engage, I think I can find a place to engage the enemy where I'm not going to have any reasonable chance of damaging the planet. And, as I pointed out before, it is in my best interest not to engage near the planet. I also pointed out that being in a fleet or not doesn't matter if you're firing weapons that could damage the planet , and what we're firing matters less than what our opponents are firing.

I'm not closed-minded on this subject. It's just that the arguments supporting the status quo have been far from convincing.

I guess from my point of view I have always viewed the scanners as detecting the ships in Hyperspace, thus they are not that effective in normal space. Which is why I was of the opinion that while you might be in the same square as the planet, you won't necessaryly be able to pinpoint the enemy.

But yes I would agree that a fleet should not become individual ships when it moves into orbit. I haven't played with fleets yet (never found the need) so I didn't realize that was the case. My apologizies

Orbital Fleet Controller Illogical

Oh yeah? YOU'RE ILLOGICAL!

To the best of my knowledge, only one of the orbital fleet improvements allows you to excede your normal logistics limit in the size of the defending fleet, so if a regular fleet could be used to defend a planet and act as a fleet without one of those improvements, those other improvements would be obsolete.

So far, the best reason was put forward by Frogboy. The devs don't want us turtling, they want us playing an active game. I'll admit that an active defense is more fun than turtling, it just goes against my instincts (requires actively preparing for war, and I often don't think that way).

I have to agree with the OP on this one. The term "planetary defense" just makes no sense. If the purpose of this device is to improve coordination among orbiting ships, then it is really a Fleet Operations Center...a far more descriptive term.

Planetary Defense has the connatation of consisting of some form of ground based or orbital weapons platform or it could also be fighters. I was hoping that building a military starbase would assist a planet but I gather that it only can defend itself and not a nearby planet. I think this is a bit odd too.

Sabre21

Ok..I messed up on this one..I was thinking the Planetary defense rather than what the OP indicated. But still confused by it:)

Sabre21