I don't get the resistance to more in-depth but strategic ground combat.So much immersion could be added.
That is actually simple. I, for one, do no longer believe in unsustained claims of added immersion/strategy/deep. Everyone can argue for everything just stating it will be cool. That is first.
Second, many people on Paradox Plaza treat Stellaris (or any other Paradox game, actually), like it was Stardew Valley. Stardew Valley is a game where main character inherit a farm, and then he can grow plants and sell them, or go fishing, fight monsters, mine, romance with pixelart characters etc etc. What is crucial, these activities are separated from each other. Actually the more you are into the game, the more they are separated, as two activities demanding most player attention - watering plants and feeding animals - can be partially automated. There are also no dangers you have to abide, no rent you have to pay monthly or whatever. As game and design are concerned, you can stop your farming activities for a year, doing nothing but fishing, and still be ok.
Grand strategy games are not Stardew Valley. You cannot snap and glue any new mechanics to existing systems and call it a day - unless you want to read threads that, I don't know, designing your tanks for ground invasion is not exciting enough. What makes grand strategies... strategies, at all, are interconnections between mechanics. To play competitively, you have to pay attention to all elements, at all times. You cannot decide 'ok, for this year of war I do not want to care about military operations, I want to spend some time with economy'.
As number of moving elements and micro in micromanagement increase (and let's face it, Stellaris like to add more micro into micromanagement), there is more and more things attention has to be used for, and the thing in, average person attention span is limited. The more elements there are, the slower player has to play to actually keep track of them, which leads to increase of ratio between player actions, and meaningful things actually happening. When before you had to do 20 clicks to get planet, now you have to do 100 clicks. Start conditions are the same, end conditions are the same, only difference is that you do things 5 times slower.
Standard answer here is 'well, you can automate ground invasions'. Yes, that is true I can just do not play game.
Third aspect is tediousness trying to present itself as deep strategy. Standard vision of ground invasion is something akin of 'Well, lets make units into infantry, tanks and artillery, and then artillery will kill infantry, tanks will kill artillery, and infantry will kill tanks'. Yeah, where strategy? If enemy planet is defended by tanks, I send infantry. If by artillery, I send tanks etc. Start conditions are almost the same, end conditions are exactly the same, I just need to make, like, 10 more clicks to get the same result.
With these arguments against some unspecified ground combat rework, and no arguments in support for it, other than unsustained claims of immersion, I hope I answered your question.
