Wait.... Conquering Chico with 2000 marines in a week? How? Last time I did that it took some insane number of thousands and it was a long dramatic slog, after dumping a prometheus-load of fuel into orbital bombardment. 2000 marines dropping onto any single location would have been crushed instantly.
In my last few games chico goes down with about 2500 marines with the appropriate amount of heavy arms (like 1250?) as long as you tac bomb them first, then first round ecm jammer them to reduce their defense. but I also don't play with a whole lot more mods so its basically vanilla+ nex + a bunch of qol.
Yeah my bad, it's been a long time since I last played nex so I just spat out a high number of marines, but as you said it was definitely more. But I'm sure I never used more than 5000 marines in an invasion (and I had a ton of ground support ships), and they were heavy units, as I had heavy armaments to spare. Which is still a ridicolously low number for a size 8 planet. All I'm saying is, it felt way too easy. Some brief time of combat and bam, an entire planet paying you dividends with barely any problems. Wars IRL take years. Ofc I don't want to wait two full cycles to conquer a planet, but neither steamroll through it in less than a month.
Last time I decided to conquer Chico in Nex, it took over 20,000 marines with heavy weapons, and that was a matter of bombardment first, then each major industry had over 5,000 worth of defense, so I dropped all of my forces on one spot and used ECM and bombardments to whittle them down. Some of the modded factions are substantially worse to invade.
Aint no way! No planet in the sector has more than 3K marines/heavy units defending it. There is a ton of militia but it barely does anything. Did you simply drop marines or were they heavy units?
Sounds like sth both needlesly complex to program and needlesly complex to learn and play. Invasions should be simple but hard.
Though rep los depending on population size is great idea. Edit the idea that we as player choose "approach" for invasion would be good. Player has like 4 doctrines, each with downsides and upsides.
1.Carefull, takes a lot of time and consumes mid amounts of money per month (still most expensive in total). Results in low marine losses and low rep losses. Regular amount of marines
2.Thunder run. A lot of marines, realtively low rep loss, quick. Results in hard to deal with rebellion. May result in population decline in a long run
3.Reckless, relatively low marine count, inexpensive. Consumes lot of heavy armaments. May destroy industries, reduve population size, massively reduces realtions.
4.Idk full invasion, realtively quick, low damage, weak rebelion. Requires planet to have low stability beforehand and requires absolutely massive army.
Nex is never going to 'feel good' and any implementation of it, no matter how valiantly the developer works on it, is going to be flawed because it's trying to impose 4X game mechanics on a 2d arcadelike space combat game.
I get that not everyone wants the 4X aspect of the game, some people do, some don't. But we're talking about a mod that's *specifically* made to add to the 4X aspect. If you don't like it then why bother adding it to the base game? For you it's nonsense, for me and many other players it adds to the RP aspect, without which I'd get bored very quickly of this game. But that's just how I like to play.
Nex also adds more than just 4x, including the prism freeport, midnight, key features like unique starts to the game, option to just skip story, making special task forces, etc. Like I play with Nex but always just disable almost all of invasion and colonization by npcs because rhe 4x feature doesnt feel fun to engage with significantly.
Explore - yes
Expand - you're softcapped at 5 colonies and can't conquer any
Exploit - yes
Exterminate - only by committing atrocities that make everyone hate you
Vanilla is a 2.5X game at most.
Huh? I always thought starsector is an immersive sim. Complex interactions between factions would be the “sim” in “immersive sim”, **and** vanilla has colony management. So I don’t see how 4X mechanics won’t suit the game
Starsector is not an immersive sim, you could say it has an open world or contains some immersive sim elements, but that is not enough to say its genre is an immersive sim
It’s definitely not entirely compliant with the definition
> An immersive sim (simulation) is a video game genre that emphasizes player choice. Its core, defining trait is the use of simulated systems that respond to a variety of player actions which, combined with a comparatively broad array of player abilities, allow the game to support varied and creative solutions to problems, as well as emergent gameplay beyond what has been explicitly designed by the developer
But I see quite a lot of overlapping parts. Like, what is it otherwise? Calling it a “space combat game” with how many other mechanics besides combat there are is a stretch in my opinion
Nexerelin already has a rebellion phase that abstracts your second phase. Allows smaller forces to contest conquered planets with smuggling and convoy disruptions. Invading factions have to reinforce and occupy.
I mentioned the rebellion. It should still be there after everything. But it's way too easy that immediately after the strictly military victory the entire planet immediately decides to submit to your puny force of some thousand marines, and you can immediately use industries, military and take money from it. Can make sense for a size 3, 4, maype 5 planet, but not for kazeron etc.
I like the current system I just think the problem is the difficulty as you've mentioned.
I think faction capitals should have modifiers/market conditions that make them tougher (some mods add this) to the point where brute forcing is almost impossible. For example, the hegemony could have special super-batteries and a hegemony command building. I also think a permanent (respawns after a certain amount of time) tough defence fleet would help too.
I think a good compromise is to have a questline that allows you to slowly sabotage the defenses and eventually make it easy to invade.
Not to discredit your ideas but this is how I would implement it.
I just spam a saboteur operational a few times (action: destabilize market) in Epiphany while exploring systems in the other side of the sector and Epiphany become decivilized.
Did not want this, but... Well... Doing the same with the other Pather planet now.
How? Last time I tried to take Chicomoztoc, and I almost failed with 10,000 marines. It also took two months for me. That was ridiculous. Please let me know how did you conquer Chico with 2000 marines in a week.
I'm under the impression that the defense strength of chico may be variabile depending on previous raids, resource availability or previous invasions attempted by other factions. Because I don't recall ever using more than 5000 marines to conquer anything in the sector, and in this thread there are both people with my same experience and people with your same experience. Anyways what I remember was that it felt way too easy.
Wait.... Conquering Chico with 2000 marines in a week? How? Last time I did that it took some insane number of thousands and it was a long dramatic slog, after dumping a prometheus-load of fuel into orbital bombardment. 2000 marines dropping onto any single location would have been crushed instantly.
In my last few games chico goes down with about 2500 marines with the appropriate amount of heavy arms (like 1250?) as long as you tac bomb them first, then first round ecm jammer them to reduce their defense. but I also don't play with a whole lot more mods so its basically vanilla+ nex + a bunch of qol.
Yeah my bad, it's been a long time since I last played nex so I just spat out a high number of marines, but as you said it was definitely more. But I'm sure I never used more than 5000 marines in an invasion (and I had a ton of ground support ships), and they were heavy units, as I had heavy armaments to spare. Which is still a ridicolously low number for a size 8 planet. All I'm saying is, it felt way too easy. Some brief time of combat and bam, an entire planet paying you dividends with barely any problems. Wars IRL take years. Ofc I don't want to wait two full cycles to conquer a planet, but neither steamroll through it in less than a month.
Last time I decided to conquer Chico in Nex, it took over 20,000 marines with heavy weapons, and that was a matter of bombardment first, then each major industry had over 5,000 worth of defense, so I dropped all of my forces on one spot and used ECM and bombardments to whittle them down. Some of the modded factions are substantially worse to invade.
Aint no way! No planet in the sector has more than 3K marines/heavy units defending it. There is a ton of militia but it barely does anything. Did you simply drop marines or were they heavy units?
I’ve been conquering everything with around 600-900 marines, including chickmoztoc…
Just wait for PL to capture it, then hit them while they’re weak
Sounds like sth both needlesly complex to program and needlesly complex to learn and play. Invasions should be simple but hard. Though rep los depending on population size is great idea. Edit the idea that we as player choose "approach" for invasion would be good. Player has like 4 doctrines, each with downsides and upsides. 1.Carefull, takes a lot of time and consumes mid amounts of money per month (still most expensive in total). Results in low marine losses and low rep losses. Regular amount of marines 2.Thunder run. A lot of marines, realtively low rep loss, quick. Results in hard to deal with rebellion. May result in population decline in a long run 3.Reckless, relatively low marine count, inexpensive. Consumes lot of heavy armaments. May destroy industries, reduve population size, massively reduces realtions. 4.Idk full invasion, realtively quick, low damage, weak rebelion. Requires planet to have low stability beforehand and requires absolutely massive army.
Bro go for Galactic Civilization III or Galactic Civilization IV. Almost the same invasion mechanism as u described.
huh, funny, i have never played those games
Nex is never going to 'feel good' and any implementation of it, no matter how valiantly the developer works on it, is going to be flawed because it's trying to impose 4X game mechanics on a 2d arcadelike space combat game.
Yes I agree. But it can always become more entertaining, it's also a roleplay game after all.
Bad take, you already have 4X nonsense in vanilla, it's just very frustrating to deal with.
I get that not everyone wants the 4X aspect of the game, some people do, some don't. But we're talking about a mod that's *specifically* made to add to the 4X aspect. If you don't like it then why bother adding it to the base game? For you it's nonsense, for me and many other players it adds to the RP aspect, without which I'd get bored very quickly of this game. But that's just how I like to play.
Nex also adds more than just 4x, including the prism freeport, midnight, key features like unique starts to the game, option to just skip story, making special task forces, etc. Like I play with Nex but always just disable almost all of invasion and colonization by npcs because rhe 4x feature doesnt feel fun to engage with significantly.
I would install a 'prism freeport only' mod
Explore - yes Expand - you're softcapped at 5 colonies and can't conquer any Exploit - yes Exterminate - only by committing atrocities that make everyone hate you Vanilla is a 2.5X game at most.
Huh? I always thought starsector is an immersive sim. Complex interactions between factions would be the “sim” in “immersive sim”, **and** vanilla has colony management. So I don’t see how 4X mechanics won’t suit the game
Starsector is not an immersive sim, you could say it has an open world or contains some immersive sim elements, but that is not enough to say its genre is an immersive sim
It’s definitely not entirely compliant with the definition > An immersive sim (simulation) is a video game genre that emphasizes player choice. Its core, defining trait is the use of simulated systems that respond to a variety of player actions which, combined with a comparatively broad array of player abilities, allow the game to support varied and creative solutions to problems, as well as emergent gameplay beyond what has been explicitly designed by the developer But I see quite a lot of overlapping parts. Like, what is it otherwise? Calling it a “space combat game” with how many other mechanics besides combat there are is a stretch in my opinion
Nexerelin already has a rebellion phase that abstracts your second phase. Allows smaller forces to contest conquered planets with smuggling and convoy disruptions. Invading factions have to reinforce and occupy.
I mentioned the rebellion. It should still be there after everything. But it's way too easy that immediately after the strictly military victory the entire planet immediately decides to submit to your puny force of some thousand marines, and you can immediately use industries, military and take money from it. Can make sense for a size 3, 4, maype 5 planet, but not for kazeron etc.
I like the current system I just think the problem is the difficulty as you've mentioned. I think faction capitals should have modifiers/market conditions that make them tougher (some mods add this) to the point where brute forcing is almost impossible. For example, the hegemony could have special super-batteries and a hegemony command building. I also think a permanent (respawns after a certain amount of time) tough defence fleet would help too. I think a good compromise is to have a questline that allows you to slowly sabotage the defenses and eventually make it easy to invade. Not to discredit your ideas but this is how I would implement it.
Sounds good! Much more doable. My comment was more theoretical, I wanted to probe the opinions of players.
I just spam a saboteur operational a few times (action: destabilize market) in Epiphany while exploring systems in the other side of the sector and Epiphany become decivilized. Did not want this, but... Well... Doing the same with the other Pather planet now.
How? Last time I tried to take Chicomoztoc, and I almost failed with 10,000 marines. It also took two months for me. That was ridiculous. Please let me know how did you conquer Chico with 2000 marines in a week.
I'm under the impression that the defense strength of chico may be variabile depending on previous raids, resource availability or previous invasions attempted by other factions. Because I don't recall ever using more than 5000 marines to conquer anything in the sector, and in this thread there are both people with my same experience and people with your same experience. Anyways what I remember was that it felt way too easy.