Boots on the ground?

[Raventhefuhrer]

Hello.

One aspect of Sci-fi warfare that I feel most 4x games poorly represent is the effect of actual infantry - the grunts that go to take and hold territory. Virtually every Sci-fi series I can think of - Star Wars, Mass Effect, Halo, Starship Troopers, and more - have ground forces and boarding actions featuring as a fairly significant part of how they wage war, yet very few 4x games even bother to represent this.

For the most part, games just have you completely eradicate a planet's population upon conquest, and then having to re-colonize with your own people. Or else you simply 'occupy' the planet without much of a fuss.

Now I know that in some of the screenshots we've been given, it's clear that ships have some sort of troop complement. But whether this is actual transportation of ground forces for use in planetary invasions, or simply represents self-defense soldiers that ships have to repel boarders is not immediately clear to me.

I'd like to hear the developers comment on the scale of non-ship warfare in the game. How important will boarding actions be, how interesting a mechanic will it be? Or is it just a random chance to capture an enemy ship at the end of a fight? I'd also like to hear a comment on the scale of ground warfare, if it's included at all.

Ultimately I'd like a system where terrestrial battles, and securing space stations/boarding enemy ships were nearly as important as actual ship to ship combat, with a reasonable level of development and customization available in terms of how you train, equip, and deploy these ground/marine forces.

For everyone else - do you have information or theories on how ground combat/boarding actions will work? Would you like to see this sort of warfare represented, or do you prefer it to be heavily abstracted or non-existent? Discuss!

 

[Slargos]

I was literally just discussing this with PIP.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SciFiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale

Here's part of the problem.

If you invade a world with 10 or 50 or 100 billion inhabitants, how do you possibly bring enough ground troops?

How do you transport even a million troops through space, let alone the billions you'd need in a scenario like this?

Let's say even a minimum of one occupation soldier per 100 natives gives us a need for between 100 million and ONE THOUSAND MILLION troops in the aforementioned scenarios.

That's one big ass ship, or maybe hundreds of thousands or even millions of big ass ships.

 

[aruon]

i'd like to see boarding parties and scrappers be an element of ship to ship combat. though we need to know what weapon types are used because some are potentially make-or-break.

as for planetary invasion... now that is a bit of a conundrum. in reality (technically speaking) all you'd really need to control a hostile planet would be to neutralize all enemy ships, control/destroy orbital platforms/shipyards, and not have any planet-based AAA guns taking potshots from downstairs. with all those requirements fufilled, you have indisputible control of a planet.

now occupying or rather OWNING an occupied planet on the other hand, that is a whole different beast. the most important fact though- you can't control everything. that is simply an impossibility. you can't fan an army out throughout a city and expect them to be welcomed with open arms.
this is when your invasion objectives come into play. a standard tier 1 target is something vital for establishing dominance like a spaceport, communications hub, military base, or political center like a town hall. if you hold these areas you have control over the local population. period.

alternative targets can vary on the kind of world your invading; like a mining colony- you take the the mines. bypass the locals altogether and take the source of economy for your war machine. or a desert planet- major oasises, control the water supply, control the people.

you don't have to pacify everyone, you just need to establish that *sigh* resistance is futile. with the right people in the right places, an early occupation force can number in the hundreds. garrisons can come later after all the serious fighting is done with.

 

[Dr.Livingstone]

If there is ground combat, it should be a rather messy guerrilla war rather than an organized army, as those can be taken our from orbit.

 

[robbiow]

However, the conundrum only really applies to 'home planets' or very well established planets with the huge population...

Thus presumably:
- new settlements could be 'voided'
- recent conquests and/or cruel overlords could be reversed. Maybe an option there to "win" a planet by helping the rebels.

 

[FelixG]

I was literally just discussing this with PIP.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SciFiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale

Here's part of the problem.

If you invade a world with 10 or 50 or 100 billion inhabitants, how do you possibly bring enough ground troops?

How do you transport even a million troops through space, let alone the billions you'd need in a scenario like this?

Let's say even a minimum of one occupation soldier per 100 natives gives us a need for between 100 million and ONE THOUSAND MILLION troops in the aforementioned scenarios.

That's one big ass ship, or maybe hundreds of thousands or even millions of big ass ships.

One could employ a limited number of soldiers and commanders, guarding factories that churn out automated combat systems, the humans/beings can secure the beach(planet?)-head to get the factories ground side which then start to turn local resources into machines to wage a greater war and police the population after the fact?

 

[Raventhefuhrer]

Most planets wouldn't, or shouldn't be populated in the tens of billions. Likely they're more I'm the tens of millions, assuming you're sending a colony ship to naturally grow a population of civilians.

Truly massive planets would need significant resources to subdue, and might be more worthwhile to just bombard/devastate from orbit. But, to my mind, those should be the very rare exception.

 

[Slargos]

One could employ a limited number of soldiers and commanders, guarding factories that churn out automated combat systems, the humans/beings can secure the beach(planet?)-head to get the factories ground side which then start to turn local resources into machines to wage a greater war and police the population after the fact?

That would seem like one plausible solution, yes.

 

[lwarmonger]

You do not need Billions of troops to take a planet. You need enough troops to knock over the government and conventional military (a few thousand guys in armored power suits with air support and tactical nukes should do the trick). Once you've got that done, some happy neighborhood "public safety drones" that randomly kill anyone detected conducting subversive activities should do the trick at keeping most of the population in line. Big Brother is always watching, and with the technology that comes with interstellar travel, Big Brother should be much more effective at watching than he is today!

The bottom line is that for conventional warfighting, the age of mass conscript armies is over (and that is in the world today, as technology becomes more sophisticated that will only become more true). The armies of interstellar combat will be sophisticated and very small, able to destroy much larger but unsophisticated forces (think of 200,000 American soldiers attacking 500,000 Iraqis and winning with minimal casualties except more so). The book Starship Troopers really is a good read on a plausible type of warfare for the future.

For the occupation afterwards... I have to imagine that we can do better than Zoidberg's people with the "Mobile Oppression Palace." I think the answer to pacifying a large population without a huge number of occupying troops would be in drones combined with sophisticated computer programs and tracking equipment finding targets for said drones.

 

[Slargos]

Most planets wouldn't, or shouldn't be populated in the tens of billions. Likely they're more I'm the tens of millions, assuming you're sending a colony ship to naturally grow a population of civilians.

Truly massive planets would need significant resources to subdue, and might be more worthwhile to just bombard/devastate from orbit. But, to my mind, those should be the very rare exception.

Given population over pressure on the home world, any early colonized planets will receive a steady stream of immigration from the home world to the point where while they may not see the population numbers of the home world certainly they will quickly reach population in their billions unless the emigration from the home world can be channeled into an unlimited amount of new colonies. In which case most colonies will be smaller, sure.