orbital bombardment ships?

That's something that will have to wait until a sequel unfortunately.

Really? GalCiv2 or the Paid Expansion?

The bomber was mooted for GCX but it did not materialise for some reason. Since GC-AD (Altarian Darkness - it's the name of the non-free Xpack) is supposed to have new ships, we could see it appearing then.

~SDC~

That's what I was thinking, Ray. That it might appear in the Pay For XP, AD. If so, that would make GC almost an entirely different game, wouldn't it?

Bombers would have a major impact on the tactical game. Maybe that's why they held it back, for game balance reasons.

AIs are currently much better with obtaining space superiority than with planetary invasions. With bombers, they could simply go with a scorched earth policy. However, I believe the bomber implementation was supposed to only reduce pop but killing off lots of pop can be very painful for humans as well.

~SDC~

I would think they didn't make it due to AI changes needed. Being able to blow off planets pop to make it easy to invade with a small force. Humm... well, you still have to wipe out the orbitals, I bet. And a few new techs to "shield" worlds from bombing. So not truly significant that way, other then you don't have to have a bunch of transports.

Now, if they allow for PQ destruction... that would be scorched earth! You just EXTERMINATE those pesky aliens! That AI would need to understand to have roving reserves to beat your forces in space, or at least beat them to the threatened world, and not get trapped strung out travelling to the threatened worlds. Quite a significant change to the AI for that, eh?

You're probably right. We don't need new ships that AIs don't know how to use. We already have AMMs and Terror Stars in this category.

We do already have scorched earth but implemented in the form of transport specials (mass drivers) and Terror Stars. That's a different implementation from the direct bombardment we can do with capital ships in Moo.

I'm not a scorched earth person so this part is not really impt for me.

~SDC~

Well, it depends.

In MoO, it allowed you to deny your enemies those resources, and make for easy colonization by you later. The world wasn't damaged, other then some infrastructure.

SMAC was a very easy game, compared to Civ, and the reason for that was because the AI in SMAC did not understand how to use the new stuff. That is why it was so easy for the average gamer to beat SMAC on its top level. And for beginners beat it on average. It is important to good Single Player experience that the AI understands how to use what it has available at least at a certain competence (at the average and up difficulty levels). This is because the human will eventually figure it out, and any resources wasted just drag down the AI, rather then aid it in giving the Human an obstacle to be over-come, conquered, or otherwise surmounted. For instance, the AI is still very wasteful in 1.10A with star bases... and it's really killing it's economy, which is making them be less significant in the game. All because it will build 3 starbases in a sector... one for Defense, one for Social Production bonus, and one for resource harvesting, when a human would have built just ONE to get around the wasted constructors on the base level, and avoid the 20 bc hit.

Scorched earth is a legitimate tactic. Very useful for cutting down the enemy to a more manageable size to beat apart (just piecemeal attrition tactic). Sometimes, it may just be the tactic that helps turn the tide. Othertimes, it's just fun to blow up a planet. But in GC, you cannot scorch until you are significantly up the tech tree. Heck, my medium and large normal games are over LONG before that is possible. Most are over before battleships are the main combat unit.
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i remember they said they had to tone down the ai so it wouldn't mass amm's and then kill everything in one strike. that sorta annoyed me.

i don't like invasions since it reduces my population. i just want the enemy wiped out.

I want the AI to mass AMMs and kill me in one strike! Or build Terror Stars and obliterate all my planets.

~SDC~

I can see the AI not doing that on the lower levels... but it seems to me that on the more difficult levels, one of the AI at least should try to do that. Maybe more? Would be worth adding it into a beta and see what the beta users think, wouldn't it?

What if a bombarding unit was only useable on certain systems? Would not be the ultimate weapon then. To that effect, if they add a bomber, then also perhaps add a system orbital platform. Could not be launched, only good for defending against the bomber, only way to destroy it is via trasport invasion, would be fairly expensive to build with no rush buy option, ect/whatever.

Just a thought.

Who buys on Rush?

That's what I said... you'd get bombers, then a defense against them, then advances to defeat to the defense, and then a new defense, then you'd get Terror Stars...

If bombers are simple, like star fighters or even A1/D1 stats, then you'd have to escort them with something to keep any basic ship from popping up and killing it on it's own. SD could use a lot of the escorted transport code to model the bomber code, couldn't they?

But I'd allow for rushing. If you can rush a Dreadnaught or an AMM, then why not rush whatever could stop simple or advanced bombers? No reason. And it would let the AI defend its worlds from bomber raids, wouldn't it? Just rush that defense, and force the player to have to break it, somehow. Sound reasonable?

Thats exactly why. As the player could also spend a bunch of money to twart a bomber invasion. It would be something you would always have to consider far in advance of the possible threat. If you decide to forgo building an expensive improvement on a non-production world, then you will always have that nagging little fear a fleet of bombers will appear and decimate your system.

I can appreaciate what your suggesting, but to that same effect, they could just add bombardment capabilities to the combat transport.

Effectively, once the orbitals defending a world are elimainated, all Transports (Battle and otherwise) that fail are in effect "bombers". They killed pop, after all.

And I don't see the point of the no-rush this... it just doesn't seem consistant internally (game world setting). You could still rush everything else, right? So where is the universe logic? I can rush a 500 cost building, EXCEPT for the super anti-bomber battery? That's what rush is for... paying out the yin/yang, one way or another, to get something now.

Remember, the way to fix that "Rush to save my worlds" is a simple Tech research/improvement.
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