Only because people aren't very creative with their solutions to current problems. Mini game is bad? Must remove it completely! Change it to be better? Nah.
It seriously needs to be explained better to the player. Like I had no idea you could even stack multiple units on the same tile. So I was losing 40:1 battles I should've effortlessly stomped. So after that is fixed I'd make actually placing the units less taxing on my mouse. Unless there's some secret shortcut I don't know about... I have to actually spamclick till all my units are placed. Why can't I just place them all with Ctrl+click? Or only 5-10 with shift+click?
As for defending planets... civilian population need to be more useful. Having 1 legion effortlessly invade a planet with like 20 billion people doesn't seem right. Defenders should always have the advantage. It's why you need planetary bombardments and other tactics to even it out afterall. Legion and Defense squads shouldn't require such insane social manufacturing costs either. If anything they should generate through a different means that is heavily tied to your population. And once they're trained, if 1 legion is fully depleted you don't permanently lose it. It just goes on CD until it restocks.
For the actual battle itself defenders should get to make temporary bonuses to certain tiles. Like set one up as a trap tile, make a fort and garrison some legions inside it to defend it like a 2nd city, etc. Each one costing money just like how invaders use money to invade. And the attackers should be able to give basic waypoints before the invading AI takes over.
I more-or-less agree with your entire comment. When I made the original post, there were a lot of active threads about major defects in core features of the game and it didn't seem like the invasion mini-game was on Stardock's radar. If it worked and was a fun part of the game, that would be great. It just seemed less important than other aspects, like usefulness of population versus asteroids, and the many open defects that are being discussed in other threads. I was wondering if other people also felt that the invasion mini-game was a less important feature. Most important to me is that the auto-resolve works 100% of the time, both for me and for the AI players. The mini-game is just a nice-to-have (in my opinion or course).
You have some excellent suggestions. In particular:
- "It seriously needs to be explained better to the player. Like I had no idea you could even stack multiple units on the same tile. So I was losing 40:1 battles I should've effortlessly stomped." (Needs in-context help/tooltips/something, for new players who aren't going to read these forums for help)
- "..make actually placing the units less taxing on my mouse. Unless there's some secret shortcut I don't know about... I have to actually spamclick till all my units are placed. Why can't I just place them all with Ctrl+click? Or only 5-10 with shift+click?" (Late-game invasion clickfest is quite annoying. Is there a secret keyboard shortcut?)
- "As for defending planets... civilian population need to be more useful. Having 1 legion effortlessly invade a planet with like 20 billion people doesn't seem right." (Seriously, right? It doesn't sit right with me when my transport of 1 or 2 Legions just massacres a planet of 20 billion, and the invasion wrap-up even says so. I thought that was what "Resistance" was supposed to be used for - factoring in the resistance of the population. Again, no tips or help to explain.)
- "Legion and Defense squads shouldn't require such insane social manufacturing costs either. If anything they should generate through a different means that is heavily tied to your population." (That's an interesting idea. Make that insane production cost be to permanently raise your Legion cap by 1, but the dead Legions regeneration just happens automatically over time? I like it.)
I hope I didn't come off like a jerk for proposing that Stardock remove a game feature. I'd like to see this feature developed to its full potential, but after they have the core game stabilized. I suppose I should have titled my post "would you consider removing/disabling the invasion mini-game until it is fully developed". Again, my opinion is that the invasion auto-resolve needs to work flawlessly before they add another layer of complexity on top of it.
