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[Ufnv]

I suspect it is calculated from the defense buildings you can place on planets. It would be nice to see some techs that enhance your ground combat abilities - say soldier weapons or armour that reflect your tech level, or things such as tanks, mechs or power armour to enhance your marines.

Ground combat is really simplistic now - just number of marines vs numbers from defence buildings.

Some ideas are welcomed here. What I try to avoid is a separate combat level - I do not want to compete with ground combat tactical games.

Currently I have one idea floating in mind. Usually, invasion of any territory is not a quick process. Even if you have your marines and tanks descanted and fortified somewhere, this does not means population immediately start to work for you. Usually you should expect guerrillas and other surprises for quite a long time.

So I think about the model like this - you drop your marines and planet goes into some 'undefined' state for a number of years while your marines fight with local forces. A number of marines and their technical level defines how quick the planet would be converted to your planet.

 

[inteuniso]

Fatal does not appear, it's not a crash just a freeze. It doesn't happen on start. Just tried running it as administrator, commissioned 5 fighters and a scout, clicked again on my system, lead to spitting out of the same error in console.

The patch Alpha15B (available on http://www.softwarware.com/eng.html ) should fix that "console errors".

So, am I right you have a stable problem - you enter any planet and the game freezes and does not react on anything?

Well, it's not so much entering of  a planet but interacting with the UI at all.

[Ufnv]

Well, it's not so much entering of  a planet but interacting with the UI at all.

That sounds really confusing... So, doesn't patch Alpha15B fix this? It should at least remove this "console warnings".

Does crash reporting window ever appear?
Does it freezes in random point of time or is there any sequence of events/actions?

[MonkeyHead]

I suspect it is calculated from the defense buildings you can place on planets. It would be nice to see some techs that enhance your ground combat abilities - say soldier weapons or armour that reflect your tech level, or things such as tanks, mechs or power armour to enhance your marines.

Ground combat is really simplistic now - just number of marines vs numbers from defence buildings.

Some ideas are welcomed here. What I try to avoid is a separate combat level - I do not want to compete with ground combat tactical games.

Currently I have one idea floating in mind. Usually, invasion of any territory is not a quick process. Even if you have your marines and tanks descanted and fortified somewhere, this does not means population immediately start to work for you. Usually you should expect guerrillas and other surprises for quite a long time.

So I think about the model like this - you drop your marines and planet goes into some 'undefined' state for a number of years while your marines fight with local forces. A number of marines and their technical level defines how quick the planet would be converted to your planet.

The player patched version of MoO3 which I was involved with dealt with ground combat in an interesting way - way better than the "it makes no difference" system that was in the factory version. Basically, infantry were built on a planet, and moved in the standard way using transports. The infantry had inherent values for attack, defence, hitpoints, initiative and so on which varied per species, and would be modified by weapons, armour and other techs. These values would be further modified by the planet they were fighting on, structures on the planet, and by the battlefield itself (so humans were useless on gas giant worlds, or underwater battlesites, and so on...). Combat consisted of the attacker and defender choosing from a list of plans, which would further modify the combat properties of the units involved. Dice would roll, the battle would be won or lost. As tech progressed, you could get better units than infantry, and techs that enhanced units such as better guns, suits and so on, and support units that brought their own stats into combat. It boiled down to a complex system hidden behind a few stats tables and the player could interact with it in a few mouse clicks. You probably do not want such a horribly complex system with all the planet and battlefield modifiers, but race specific stats, a range of units and techs might be nice.

[Ufnv]

Yes, this scheme can be used. The only difference I see is the timed nature of getting control over the planet.

Something like this:
1. Attacking side drops a descent that consists from different kind of units (defined by descent modules of a carrier ship). Each unit has its stats and features (like you described, including racial and terrain modifiers)
2. Defending side builds different defending structures that generally "produces" the same kind of units.
3. When invasion begins, a planet enters "ground combat" state that means combat for control over the planet is ongoing. It takes time.
4. The initial values for attackers and defenders defines who will finally win. The ratio of forces defines the time necessary to finalise the ground battle (it can take years).
5. You can drop a fresh descent from another ship - this will immediately affect the ground combat outcome and duration.
6. If during ground combat a fleet belonging to the defending side manages to take control over the star system, ground combat continues and that's defending side who will be able to drop fresh ground forces to the planet to support its forces there.

7. When you click on a planet with a ground combat undergoing, you'll get full information on it - ratio of forces, composition of forces, %% of territory controlled by each side, estimates on when and how it will end.

This opens a way to different ground combat related technologies, additional racial and planetary properties, etc. Plus this allows to more or less realistically model the ground combat abstracting from individual ground units and avoiding "10 tanks + 30 soldiers capture the whole planet in a single turn".

[pinback]

Minor suggestion:  "Arian" (or as it's sometimes spelled in-game, "Aryan") has some pretty negative real-world connotations for some English-speaking people, so I might switch that to something else, just to avoid any negative backlash.

(Yeeesss, I know that the original meaning is not negative and all that stuff.  Still.)

[Ufnv]

Minor suggestion:  "Arian" (or as it's sometimes spelled in-game, "Aryan") has some pretty negative real-world connotations for some English-speaking people, so I might switch that to something else, just to avoid any negative backlash.

Will change it

[inteuniso]

Well, it's not so much entering of  a planet but interacting with the UI at all.

That sounds really confusing... So, doesn't patch Alpha15B fix this? It should at least remove this "console warnings".

Does crash reporting window ever appear?
Does it freezes in random point of time or is there any sequence of events/actions?

Crash reporting window never appears. There doesn't seem to be any sequence required, simply clicking a button in the UI. It could happen in the galaxy generation menu, or in-game.

[Ufnv]

Crash reporting window never appears. There doesn't seem to be any sequence required, simply clicking a button in the UI. It could happen in the galaxy generation menu, or in-game.

Any problems with sound?

The only thing to cause a freeze when pressing any UI button I can imagine is a button click sound. It can be switched off in the Remember.cfg file, line previous to the last one, ButtonClickSound should be set to false.

If this doesn't help the only thing I can offer is I can build a special .exe version that traces everything in details - this trace can be used to spot the problem.

[ptb_ptb]

I've spotted some weird things happening with population numbers when you use a passenger module on a ship to transfer people to a planet with atmosphere domes. I get something like 1000 people (original) + 1000 people (transfered) = 1000 people (still). The remaining 1000 people ... vanished?

I also manually built 6 atmosphere domes on a newly built planet and when I went back there a short while later ... it said there were 69 atmosphere domes there.

[The Scout]

I've spotted some weird things happening with population numbers when you use a passenger module on a ship to transfer people to a planet with atmosphere domes. I get something like 1000 people (original) + 1000 people (transfered) = 1000 people (still). The remaining 1000 people ... vanished?

I also manually built 6 atmosphere domes on a newly built planet and when I went back there a short while later ... it said there were 69 atmosphere domes there.

That would be how many can be built.

[Ufnv]

I've spotted some weird things happening with population numbers when you use a passenger module on a ship to transfer people to a planet with atmosphere domes. I get something like 1000 people (original) + 1000 people (transfered) = 1000 people (still). The remaining 1000 people ... vanished?

Thanks, will check this.

I also manually built 6 atmosphere domes on a newly built planet and when I went back there a short while later ... it said there were 69 atmosphere domes there.

What is the planet automation type? What is the planet population?

Sorry to ask, but are you sure 69 domes built (written in white) but not "available to build" (written in yellow after the list of buildings present)?

[TheDarkStar]

I've spotted some weird things happening with population numbers when you use a passenger module on a ship to transfer people to a planet with atmosphere domes. I get something like 1000 people (original) + 1000 people (transfered) = 1000 people (still). The remaining 1000 people ... vanished?

I've also seen some similar stuff, but with troop transports - when I invade a planet, the population usually doubles (with half of that being "available"), although it can also disappear.

[inteuniso]

Crash reporting window never appears. There doesn't seem to be any sequence required, simply clicking a button in the UI. It could happen in the galaxy generation menu, or in-game.

Any problems with sound?

The only thing to cause a freeze when pressing any UI button I can imagine is a button click sound. It can be switched off in the Remember.cfg file, line previous to the last one, ButtonClickSound should be set to false.

If this doesn't help the only thing I can offer is I can build a special .exe version that traces everything in details - this trace can be used to spot the problem.

Set to false, still continuing to have problems. Hopefully I can help you fix it.

[Frumple]

Rumbled my way through the tutorial and post-tutorial squishing of the cats. Faintly impressed by what I've seen -- most things are very smooth, automation and whatnot is pleasing, etc., so forth, so on. Definitely feels like there's work still ahead, but what's there is quite well done.

Various thoughts:
-Enemy AI that's fleeing a space battle should probably be running away from enemy forces instead of toward them, ha. Looks like they just head toward the top right-ish of the battle map, but that tends to be directly toward hostile forces and that seems... a little silly.

-Economic plans that just won't work (like scientific on an exhausted planet, ferex) should probably be greyed out or somethin'.

-Realize it's probably for future builds, but I definitely missed "civilian", so to speak, research. Lots of shooty stuff, but very little in the way of improving the lives of my people, heh. Improved research/industry/etc. research would be nice... probably stuff for improving population limits, health (for whenever/if random events get in, resistance to plague or whatev'), stuff like that. High-end research enabling things like transhumanism/roboticization (population starts eating part metal instead of only food, with potential bonuses to research/industry/ground combat), planet construction. I've always preferred the sort of kingdom building aspect (building a small group to great heights, as opposed to empire building by way of conquering everything) to 4x games over the overt steamroll errytin' with dakka part. More stuff like the orbital research/factory things, basically. Terraforming would be wonderful, heh.

Of course, that sort of thing might not be intended for how the game is being planned out, and that's definitely okay. S'just something I personally enjoy seeing.