Other Game Design • Re: Colonization, Invasion and Annexation mechanics are inconsistent and also lead to dangerous false assumptions

A. Troop ships can ignore all hostile ships on the system and land anyway (As long the planet's sheilds are down)

This is the most counter-intuitive aspect, I find. It kind of doesn't contradict anything written in pedia but you'd really expect having ships in system would shield you from invasion - but indeed literally only shields do that. You don't have to "win" fight over system, all it takes is bringing planetary shields down and have enough troop ships survive the encounter (you jump the troop ships along with other ships).

This lulls unaware people into very false sense of security, jeopardizing their valuable buildings very unwisely built on the borders. Also makes planetary shields techs more important than people would perhaps realize (which actually doesn't sound bad). Still, defending planet from invasion is actually very harsh and random. Like, a lot of chaff that can take the heat instead of planet, and heaps of planetary shields, is something to give yourself better odds, but not entirely prevent invasion, unlike annexation or in-system colonization.

Or, well, planteary stealth is actually good here, but more situational and time bound. Which also isn't bad, eh? It's something that in current slow game one player used well to defend himself and another failed to realize they have advantage in this field and it could help them rather well

Certain player indeed is very keen to ruthlessly take advantage of this mechanic and I'm in awe and aspire to be a copy cat I think this was something rather surprising for LR a few games ago, and this game Skyflare had rude realization, too

It's one of those mechanical consequences you discover by accident or are taught by others harshly or from the sidelines, but I am not sure if it is all bad. On one hand yes it really makes planets harder to defend than you would otherwise think, on the other hand, it does indeed makes some techs more useful and some strategic decisions on where to build stuff / where to blockade your turf more important

Statistics: Posted by BlueAward — Mon Apr 07, 2025 7:49 am

---